Break Free Update, April 2023

The BRICS alliance, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is said to be collaborating on developing their own currency. Could nearly half the world dump the US dollar?

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Wow, crazy days. As most of you know, I am now in Costa Rica. Last night I sat in one corner of my room where the internet connection was best while being interviewed by Hrvoje Moric on TNT Radio. I will post a link when it’s available. The wind and the bugs were so loud I had to use my phone instead of my microphone. The technological challenges of living in the rainforest are many but that’s one reason why I’m here. I am now living more connected to nature and away from Big Brother. I already spent 6 months here previously, plus I’ve lived in many other out-of-the-way places in the world, so it isn’t anything new for me. I love it.

There’s always a lot to choose from for these updates, but here are a few of the stories that I’m finding most interesting at the moment.

Twitter Inc. 'No Longer Exists' As Elon Musk Inches Closer To X 'Everything App' Ambitions

Two take-aways from the Forbes article:

• Musk has indicated he hopes to transform Twitter/X into a wide-ranging service akin to China’s WeChat, telling a Morgan Stanley conference last month he wants his app to become “the biggest financial institution in the world.”

• Musk said at the time he wanted X to become a peer-to-peer mobile payment platform where users can earn interest on their cash like at a bank, previously suggesting he wants his app to include a glut of services including ride-hailing and food delivery.

Yep, I wrote about this on October 11, 2022, in my essay:

X: "Twitter is an accelerant to creating the 'everything' app." -- Elon Musk

I brought it all together in that essay like this little mathematical equation:

Twitter completes what I call Musk’s Circle of 5:

Twitter + Dogecoin/crypto + Neuralink + Starlink + SpaceX = x

I have been following Musk’s journey for two years now. Why? Because Musk’s dream is (I say it again so it will sink in) to make X “THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL INSTITUTION IN THE WORLD”.

It drives me a little crazy when people rave about “free speech on Twitter”. Musk does not care about free speech. He cares about capturing your data. He wants to trap everyone inside his dream. No different from any of the other despots. He’s just better at marketing himself.

Tweektown got it right:

Musk is going to do something with all of that data that is housed in Twitter's servers and algorithms, which could be fed into Neuralink... the perfect data set. Everything the world has typed into 140-character tweets since its inception, with an AI learning it all... and then the BCI (brain-computer interface) being inserted, quite literally, into your head.

All of these guys, from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos to Jack Dorsey to Vitalik Buterin, etc., are in a battle to see whose coin will be the one to partner with the government’s digital dollar.

The Federal Reserve is acting CBDC-shy, but don’t let that fool you. It’s easing us toward acceptance with something called FedNow:

The Federal Reserve is on track to deliver an instant payment service called FedNow between May and July 2023, the central bank's clearest timeline yet for a new system enabling settlement of U.S. payments in seconds.

Wow—in seconds!!! This is what we all want, right? More convenience. I mean…seconds!!! And don’t worry, this has nothing to do with a digital dollar:

Treasury official says they are still unclear if a digital dollar is needed.

But, look, we all know how we’ve been conditioned to crave that next big fix. I mean, it’s always been “bigger is better” who would want a regular size Coke when you can get a “Big Gulp” right?

Who would want to cook food at home when you can pick it up at a “Fast Food” restaurant. And now, since Covid, everything can be delivered to your door. (thank you Jeff Bezos!) You don’t need to leave your cubicle apartment, let alone your 15-minute city. Who would ever want to go into a real bank and sit in a chair and talk to a real person about your money? When was the last time you did that? It’s all an illusion anyway. Might as well go along with the flow.

We all know where this is heading. Once they launch FedNow, people will be ready for even MORE convenience. Just look how we’ve given up just about every freedom we ever had in order to have more convenience.

Freedom is such hard work.

The populace has been roped in by apps like CashApp. A great app, by the way. Who wouldn’t want to be able to send and receive money instantly. Shoot, gangsters use it anonymously to move money and crypto around. Sex traffickers do, too.

You can read about Dorsey’s “700 million $ monster” in a Forbes article, For Sex Traffickers, Jack Dorsey’s Cash App Is ‘King.’

Joe Scaramucci, a detective who set up the human trafficking unit for the McLennan County Sheriff's Office in Waco, Texas, says that in his experience, outside of physical cash, Block’s tech is the primary payment tool used by people selling sex, whether they’re trafficking adults or children.

These are justifications, along with the mega-disaster of Sam Bankman-Fried and his company FTX’s fall, for the government to take over. They made our health “safe” with Covid shots, didn’t they? Now they are going to make our money “safe” by taking over all of our accounts. Bless the government!

I’m adding in here that Nima Momeni, the owner of information technology consulting company Expand IT and fellow graduate of UC Berkley, has been arrested for the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder, Bob Lee. The darker side of the tech world.

Unlike Musk, Dorsey stays under the radar, but his ambitions are no different from Musk and everyone else’s. He recently launched his rival to Twitter, BlueSky, which hit the App Store as an invite-only app in February.

I’m interested to see how the battle plays out between the old owner of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and the new owner of what is now X. I will be following this closely and it’s a good bet I’ll be writing about it in the future.

Will Gavin Newsom run for president?

Sorry to raise such a scary specter but it certainly looks like he’s heading that way.

Gavin Newsom has paid for billboard banners in Mississippi, Texas and several other Republican-run states… The California governor’s campaign has aired TV advertisements in Florida, and he’s challenged the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to a nationally televised debate.

“No, no, I’m not running,” he humbly asserts.

Okay. By now we all recognize that in the “Fun House” where we live, yes means no and no means yes.

He has insisted that he has “subzero interest” in being president, and he reiterated the point during a talk last week in Austin, where he was billed to speak “on what the nation’s most populous state” could teach the other 49.

“I cannot say it enough,” Newsom said. “I never trust politicians, so I get why you keep asking.”

But denial is the tradition of pretty much every politician who has flirted with chief executive ambitions. Why else is he touting his visits to the White House (to “meet with national leaders” and pick up an education award) and speaking engagements in New York (to amplify his climate policies)?

“Yeah, he’s definitely running for president,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has advised Republican candidates. “The only question is whether he’s running in 2024 or 2028.”

“Never trust politicians.” That’s a laugh.

Puppet Gavin Newsom is like puppet Joe Biden only younger and with better Botox. You get the feeling that if you removed both their masks, the same thing would be underneath, and I don’t like to think about what that thing might be.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa Working on Developing ‘New Currency’

The BRICS alliance, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is said to be collaborating on developing their own currency. This initiative is seen as a strategy for promoting shared objectives among the BRICS nations and reducing dependence on the United States.

BRICS alliance poses a significant threat to the Biden administration and America. With a combined population of 3.1 billion people (40% of the world’s population) and a nominal GDP of $40 trillion (over 20% of the world’s GDP), the BRICS alliance is a force to be reckoned with. China, as the largest member in terms of population, nominal GDP, and export value, is positioned as the de facto leader of the group.

It’s quite possible that HALF THE WORLD could dump the US dollar.

Just imagine if the US dollar is no longer the only currency option. One of the major ways the US has controlled other countries has been with sanctions. Smaller nations who do not bow to the will of the most powerful country in the world are punished. As we’ve recently seen, such sanctions had little impact on a larger economy like Russia.

Vladimir Putin warned that “instead of having the affect the West desired, the sanctions were eroding the quality of life for Europeans and poorer countries were losing access to food”.

In Venezuela, for example, the U.S. government has “placed sanctions on people and organizations”, whereby “the ‘sanctions need not be permanent for those who want to contribute to Venezuela’s democratic future.’ But ‘others who continue to profit from or support Maduro should take warning’.”

I was living in Sucre, Bolivia when Evo Morales was president, and it was just about my favorite place out of everywhere I have been.

Back in 2019, Morales was ousted. Of course, such claims are denied by the US. However, Mexico, Uruguay, Cuba and Venezuela have said Morales was deposed illegally. Argentina President-elect Alberto Fernández joined that analysis.

It’s quite funny how the Biden administration carries on about “inclusion” and “equity”, and Biden himself criticizes the ‘white man’s culture of violence’ while being exactly what he and the Democratic party rail against.

Here’s what the indigenous president of Boliva had to say on the matter:

“The relationship between the government of the United States and social and indigenous movements has always been difficult. Not just in Bolivia but worldwide. We need to have bilateral relations characterized by mutual respect.” — Evo Morales

Why we would discount what Morales says and believe what Biden says does not make sense. At least we must be open to the possibility that the United States finds itself in the position it’s in because it has acted like a big bully to the rest of the world for so long and they have had enough.

Here’s what the US says on the matter:

Senior officials at the U.S. State Department said Monday the situation in Bolivia is not a coup, despite what some Latin American governments have claimed.

The U.S. officials said the Bolivian military merely pointed out the fact that public security had deteriorated by the time they asked Morales to resign. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to reporters.

The control that the United States has over the rest of the world is certainly in decline. It’s no longer a given that the US government will be able to exert influence over smaller countries, such as it has done in Bolivia and Venezuela, once they have other options at their fingertips.

A Twitter post by NerumWim encapsulates what Donald Trump had to say in a recent interview about the decline of the United States’ influence around the world and how he dealt with China and Russia:

In the interview Trump talks about how some journalists asked him, “Who is the biggest problem, is it China, Russia, or could it be North Korea?”

Trump said, “No. It’s the sick, radical people from within. Because we can handle, if we’re smart, we can handle Russia, China. I did.”

And he’s right. Trump upset the old ways of the swamp creatures in Washington DC, both Democrat and Republican. Their method of threats and sanctions and toppling unfriendly regimes. I wrote about all of this in my recent piece, The Trouble with Trump.

Get ready for more demonization if you stand, not just for Trump, but for Robert F. Kennedy Jr, or anyone for that matter who believes in freedom.

Here’s what Salon has to say—quoting the “experts” they love so well— about those who dare vote for Trump:

Political scientists, social psychologists, and other researchers have repeatedly shown that Trump's followers are deeply attracted to his lawbreaking and general contempt for democracy and social norms because they see such antisocial behavior as an example of a "strong leader" who "will fight for people like them." This is a defining feature of the conservative-authoritarian political personality type.

Hmm, those who despise freedom talking about “contempt for democracy.”

If you want to see the real enemies of the people, check out cosminDZS video showing the absolute contempt radical educators have for parents, after they blatantly say they are making it more difficult for parents to access information about their children’s education online:

Gender ideologues only have contempt and mockery for parental rights and believe the state should be the final authority over kids. Watch @ChilliwackSD33 Chair Willow Reichelt laugh at a trustee after she says children belong to their parents.

@earlkralik comments:

After my wife's family escaped Communist Czechoslovakia in the early 80s, her parents were found guilty in absentia for "stealing the state's children." Communist believe the children belong to them, not the parents. That's why Chair Willow Reichelt laughed.

Protect your children from this dangerous system.

Twitter isn’t letting me share those last two videos, only links to them.

After Elon Musk shut down all Substack writers’ ability to share their writing on Twitter, and then graciously allowed it back again, he is still playing games with us.

That’s why I encourage everyone to get on Substack’s new platform, Notes. I really like it. It’s a great place to share ideas freely. I see posts from all sides. It remains to be seen if algorithms will cut us off from one another, but I like the interaction so far.

Substack is the last bastion of free speech, as I wrote in The Bluebird of Unhappiness. Bans are back on Twitter.

When it’s gone, I don’t know what we will do. Go back to writing articles and essays by hand and passing them out on the streets and in cafes. Imagine, sitting in a cafe and holding an article hot-off-the-illegal-press, operated out of someone’s living room, reading the words on actual pieces of paper. That’s probably a dream since how would anyone access paper at that point or have the freedom to pass the writing out? And who would be sitting in a cafe after the next pandemic hits? And if they were, they’d probably be too terrified to read something so subversive in public.

Russia delivers warning with intercontinental ballistic missile launch

Oh well. For now, I am so thankful to Substack. Let’s just hope Elon Musk doesn’t have his eye on it, too… Assuming World War III hasn’t happened before that…Ugh, I better stop there!