What we do in life…

                    … echoes in eternity.\

07/01/2024

**Quick **
Hello, I am about to rant from the Greeks, to Rome to the modern UK and a little on CBDCs. Take the ticket, go for the ride.

Long

With the mud of Albion beneath their feet, the Romans, shield and sword in hand, the woods on their back could see a locus of Britons descend to the plain. The vast stretch of Boudicca’s army dominated the scene and the noise it casted stood the hairs up on the Romans necks that would gulp in anticipation in hope to sink any fear.

Vastly outnumbered, the Romans held their formation and gave faith to their preparation. Conquering Europe, Asia Minor and Africa does provide a plate of confidence in times such as this, in times where one has to face the rage of an indigenous people.

Forward came the hoard, tattooed and bellowing. Breath pours out like steam from the nostrils. As it draws closer to the Roman formation, the front of Britons change from roaring men into silent beasts as the whites of the eyes become clear. The angst of a charge, pushed on by the will for vindication, zones into midnight rage locking into prey.

The adrenaline of both sides overwhelms the hearing to deafness, for a second or two there is only the sound of internal breath.

The Romans braced theirs shields and instinctively tightened their muscles. With such venom and force, a wave of Britons slam into the Roman wall, the legion slides back on the grass and mud, the wind is knocked out of the frontline of Britons as they are squeezed between their fellow comrades and the block of Romans.

Contain the initial burst, the Romans then thrust their gladius swords, twist for more bloody coverage of the stab and return to defence. Britons clamber over shields, sweep and attempt to break lines but the Romans and their stubborn fortitude bounce the Britons back. Wave after wave slam against the rocks. An arm over reaches and snaps in two. A liver is sliced open. Over friends bodies the Britons must clamber.

With a whistle, the Romans swap position, fresh arms, fresh wit to front, reprieve for their comrades. Terrifying energy, corybantic rage of no bounds is no match against a professional, organised force.

The Romans slaughtered a massive mob of Britons in one day on Wattling Street in 60AD. With any ounce of strategy and organisation, Boudicca could have defeated the Roman army that day. All she had brought to the field was heart but an incoherent rabble that was comprised of men, women and children, unprepared for the controlled, trained, armoured Romans.

A battle is chaos and the Romans treated it like a riot. Today, we have Roman tactics with riot police for it is a similar dynamic when civilians take on the police to that of Romans versus barbarians. There is a tactic called Kettling, police use this on peaceful protest. The police know if they attack first, they are viewed as the wrong thus the idea is to provoke and police are often outnumbered at these protests.

The police set a parameter around the demonstrators, then gradually step forward a little. Then a little more. Inch by inch they constrict the space the demonstrators operate in. Soon the protestors are squished and cannot breathe, they get hot and anxious. The police take another step forward. At some point the protestors have to push back and with you get police vs protestor footage on the news and a narrative how protestors are bad citizens and violent.

The Romans know this well, they experienced it against them at Cannae where Hannibal kettled and killed around 70,000 Romans in one day.

The Romans learnt from everyone they encountered. Their famous gladius sword came from meeting Iberian tribes, their navy improved after reverse engineering a Carthaginian boat, later in the Eastern/Byzantine half they incorporated horse archers, these are just a few examples, time and time again the Romans met something superior to their current idea and they incorporated it. They overcame the odds at places such as Alesia, and the mad lads eventually beat Hannibal in the end – and Hannibal was a genius and his defeat changes the course of history for the Mediterranean thus the world today.

And the basis of Roman culture is from Greece. The Greeks needed boats for the hills and mountains made it quicker to sail rather than traverse the land on foot, plus there are thousands of islands all over the Aegean.

Greece had little colonies dotted around the Mediterranean, they reached Britain and loved its tin and even got to Iceland – supposedly – it may have been the land known as Thule that Pytheas spoke of.  With the technology of the time and their understanding of the world, the stories after going to places with olive heat to places as far as the fog of Thule would be something akin to sci-fi.

The Greeks settled on Sicily and southern Italy what is known as Magna Graecia. This exposure to the Greeks led to Romans doing what they do best aside from engineering that is incorporating ideas. In the 5th Century BC, they sent a delegation to Athens to copy the laws of Solon.

It was theme in Roman history, if you wanted to learn the upper echelons of knowledge, go to Greece. At this juncture, the Romans sent 10 men to go shopping in Athens. In the century prior to this road trip, Athens had a fella called Solon and Athens was not doing too good.

Athens had Draco before Solon and pretty much punished anything by death. Draco’s laws were a bit mad to say the least however, it was in response to the what I call the “Chat Shit” system preceding it. The aristocracy of Athens dictated the law, it was not written down it was all oratory, therefore with their higher education, particularly in rhetoric, they manipulated laws for themselves. Draco had enough and wrote it down so everyone can see, this helped solidify some sort of order.

Athens was essentially a two-tier state, property owners and serfs/slaves. In Athens, if you could not pay back your creditors you had to forfeit land and give a sum of your produce to your creditor. If your debt held more value than your land then you would become a slave and so too would your family. You either served these aristocrats or you were sold abroad.

With a few moments thought it is easy to see how the creditors would rather encumber people with debt than cannot pay for they can a lot of power that way. Aforementioned, the aristocracy had the benefit of education and did not toil in the fields as much therefore leveraged their time and wealth to capture more power and wealth.

The common people were essentially serfs to the wealthy who kept siphoning the land. Solon was merchant who became wealthy and connected.

One of the side effects of having money is having time to think. When humans have time to think they tend to be creative, which is great! Art makes life extraordinary. Solon was performing political poetry, engaging debates, and imparted his wisdom around Athens. This guy had bars. He wrote verse after verse, he would memorise it, espouse it, perform it and the Athenians loved it.

The guy rapped Athenians into a war to take Salamis from Megara – and he won. A successful merchant, a poet, a general… what next?

Solon was in a unique position, as a charismatic profitable-war-hero-rapper, he did not seem to fit into a single faction. He had many allies thus in the tense situation socioeconomically Athens was in, he was given role of Archon – chief ruler.

Here Solon seisachtheia – translates to shook the burdens. He relieved people of their debts and Athens life improved. An important detail is he most likely stopped a civil war. It is a thing to comprehend how charismatic you must be to convince the rich to give to the poor and forfeit power.

He went on to reform political classes, laws, Athens economy was reformed and became richer. Not having slaves makes a society stronger, people can contribute in more effective ways and Athens had a stronger army for it, not just for soldiers but to be able to provide for an army. For 10 years, only Solon was allowed to change the laws he imposed. He had Athens in the palm of his hand and he decides to exile himself to avoid Athens falling into his tyranny. I love this man.

Solon a man is not blessed until dead. Meaning only when you can look back on your life can you judge if it is blessed or not. This man stabilised Athens and entwined democracy and justice and that is just one chapter of his life! He had a truly remarkable time on Earth.

What we do in life echoes in eternity.

A city with an archon was an anarchy, the word itself simply means “without ruler”. The rich of Athens sought to garner their old power back, when the rich are outnumbered and have deceitful intentions they are hardly going to succeed by a bar brawl. They turn power structures towards a more chaotic state for in those situations you can cease power for yourself when there is confusion and rapacious winds.

The result was ups and downs. Tyranny and uprising to democracy. Society, it is all a big drama really.

On and on imitation happens particularly of the successful. Those within the yoke of the old Romans have continuously sought to be the spiritual successor to Rome. There was the Sultan of Rum, Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Ottomans, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Franks, the Spanish, Napoleon, your mum.

Out of the states that followed Rome, it is the inconvenient island of tin and wheat on the other side of the continent that went on to dominate the world, mostly due to the trading hub the Romans set up on the north side of the Thames. This is now the City of London, which is a city within London, it is a county and a corporation all in one. It is full of money and gold and it has dragons dotted around its square mile boundaries to “guard” it.

Churchill is quoted, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key.” Furthermore, he said, “Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug.”

Well, I do wonder how my European cousins look on at the United Kingdom these days. If Russia is a dog fight under a rug, Britain is several mutts on top of one another dressed in a trench coat, each scrambling to be the head whilst maintaining appearances in order to gain entrance into the gentlemen’s club.

England has a long history and the City of London existed before England. Coffee Houses were popular in the City, think about it, if finance guys are notorious for cocaine use in modern society, what would be the nearest thing to the stimulus of cocaine in the 1600s? Coffee. People would drink alcohol, have coffee, chat business, shag hookers, gambled. All this is the basis for what became the largest empire of the world.

Jonathan’s Coffee House is where the London Stock Exchange started. Lloyds of London was named after Lloyd’s coffee house. The Bank of England, aka The Bank, was born out of the City and helped England win the Nine Years War against France as it provided credit to the red coats allowing England go further into a war than France.

A lot of English Law is tied up with the modern banking system. A deposit does not exist in law, the bank is buying your security. The Bank was a key part to England and then the UKs success imperially.

Fast forward a whole empire rise and collapse later, the UK has a dichotomy. It is often in the top 8 economies yearly yet outside of London there is a great stagnation.

This is a quote where I have long lost the source for it - “The system in Britain has been the intentional destruction of any competitive British business on the world-stage; small, medium-sized, large businesses, through selling them off, underfunding them, over-regulating/taxing them or simply allowing their intellectual property to be sold-off to favoured-foreign-country companies. This is the reason for the low-growth and GDP in the UK since at least the 60's. The balance of payments that sustains Britain's GDP and currency then requires billions of pounds of investment per year from abroad. This is why so many universities are implicated, the banking system and key real estate locations among others, to allow the facilitation of money to enter the system.”

Keynes said his grand children will only work 15 hours a week. Well, perhaps his grandchildren do as they inherited great wealth but others today are actually working two jobs just to stay afloat with barely any time to connect with friends, communities and hobbies.

2008 saw the massive banking crisis and this led to Quantative Easing, those that caused it were rewarded, money was printed to absorb their damage, and the poor had to endure austerity measures this pumped stock and asset prices. THEN COVID HIT.

The rich spend money on luxury, and it provides jobs for ordinary people. Ordinary people have to have these jobs because imperial capitalism took them from their land, forced them into rent and mortgages and have to work to pay these bills. When lockdowns occurred, rich could not do what they usually do, go on holiday, dine at fine restaurants, go to car showrooms, etc. This meant ordinary people were without work and any means to pay their bills. There was going to be mass homelessness and hunger and that leads to revolts.

Therefore, the government went to The Bank and printed lots of money, this was given out as the Furlough Scheme. The rich were not spending money and bought up assets and stocks. The poorer half were spending it on bills but they too had time on their hands and invested in stocks, meme stocks and crypto.

£450bn was printed, there are around 170 billionaires in UK, during COVID, the average billionaire increased their wealth by £620mm. Since then taxes on ordinary people have gone up, food inflation has occurred and inflation of assets has gone up. The Cantillon Effect of pumping money into the UK economy straight from the Central Bank means the poor were passive-aggressively taxed, the rich received the money and bought up stocks and assets. You notice this happens time and again when money is printed, the rich don’t buy from the poor unless it is your nans house. Then after the printing, they tax the poor aggressively and the rich say they earned their money.

The poor are in a situation where they are in a losing game and the youth know it, then it is deemed their own fault if they do not get out of it. No wonder mental health is all over the place.  Within that was the decision for Brexit and this makes moving to Europe harder. £800bn has left London as firms seek other financial centres.

In the political chaos, we have had one Prime Minister insider trading after another. In COVID, The Bank asked for legal permission to make programmable CBDC.

CBs make up 3% of the money supply and are actively anti-bank. Under the ECB, five thousand banks have perished, under the Fed ten thousand have gone. The BIS openly say they want programmable money and want to tokenise everything that they have the right to control that, to determine who has the right to assets, where you spend your money, and who you spend it with. The Central Banks are a cartel that want to install negative interest, the ability to take from you at will.

Dr Richard Werner puts its aptly, we have used BDCs for decades, now that we can program digital currencies, the ref – the Central Banks – want to join the game.

Ideologies that are coming to the fore are Effective Acceleration, which dispels doomers and wants there to be little regulation in order for growth, let AI free but huge tech change does put those that are not tech-orientated at social risk and we have a responsibility to not simply punish these peoples for not understanding advance technology. Lots of cons can arise from AI on the vulnerable. Then there is the Degrowth movement that sees the perils of environmental disaster and we need to slow down but with this movement I always ask who is degrowing exactly? The intentions may be good but with the recipe of society that we have, it isn’t going to be noble and pretty. These are two I have heard more noise of late.

Dr Werner posits this about money creation and his point being the Far East got it right when they created money to gain prosperity.

If banks use credit creation for ownership rights this inflates asset price. Leads to boom and bust.This is not a part of GDP, which is a value-added concept. Trading ownership rights to is not creating value. When bank credit is used for consumption, consumer loans go up, spending goes up but quantity of services hasn’t gone up. This is consumer price inflation.

When banks create credit for productive business investment, new tech, new ideas then value is added. It is not inflationary. More demand happens so too does goods and services. This is what happened in the Far East Asia. The IMF installed loans on developing nations and it impeded their development. Japan, Korea, Singapore and China are examples of developing nations that made it to developed because of their strategy.

Japan learned from Germany you need lots of smaller banks to help finance smaller businesses. Big banks only lend to big business yet it is smaller firms that employ most of the people. China, unlike the Soviets, decided to go with what works and they learned from the Japanese thus did the same. The UK is seemingly against SME banking and loves the super rich. China has lifted the most people out of poverty in a short time period yet the UK is demoting itself from “developed” status. It is reliant on foreign investment and each Prime Minister blames the one before… the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and counting!

In Canada, the government froze protestors banks accounts but more importantly, they even froze the Bitcoin addresses. This meant protestors couldn’t get water and food, this nullified the protest and they were over in two days. We are beyond democracy already, we are in a beta-phase of a centrally planned faux-democracy.

SBF stole money from rich people, that is why he is in jail. In the UK, Liz Truss bombed the pound and was fired from Prime Minster position, now has a pension for life.

Notice how the rich never defend the poor, they happily let taxes get raised for the poor but you will have people of the poor defend the rich when it comes to taxation. One way to see that is the poor aspire to be rich, the rich never aspire to be poor, they look down upon them yet desperately need them otherwise the whole façade of wealth collapses.

There is a pull between decentralisation and extreme centralisation. The pessimist in me believes the Central Banks will win but, and a big but, they won’t if people simply organise and bring them to light. They are cowards and do not have the skill set that your public CEO’s and politicians have – charisma and thick skin. They wilt under public audience, they are powerful when they are never confronted.

The developing world uses a lot of mobile phones and in some ways being discouraged from industrialising like the West did and other developed economies.  With neo-banks and the digital world forming, the developing world can more or less circumvent the “industrial” process. It still leaves them vulnerable.

In developed nations, there is a tendency for more robust laws and rights for citizens. For projects such as World Coin, they LOVE the developing world because there isn’t the legal infrastructure in place to protect citizens rights thus ripe for exploitation. World Coin cannot operate in Europe the way in Africa, in Europe they have the protective apparatus.

Over the last year, Apple has an offer of a high yield savings account only through their iPhone, Apple is not technically a bank but it is fronting Goldman Sachs. Through Apple, Sachs can reach the 2 billion users of iPhones.

The Central Banks know from their tests and pilots that the developing world is more open to CBDCs therefore you will hear a lot about financial inclusion in the coming years, if you haven’t already. There is a big risk to this – that is wanting to provide a lot of loans to people who cannot pay it back. Sachs standards were too lax for Apples liking and the deal between the two was called off. Goldman Sachs is one of the most corrupt investment banks in the world. That in itself is a warning sign of why a bust will happen.

Through these devices, products and incentives can appeal to the users in both the developing world and developed world.

The Central Banks know it will be hard to convince people but they are determined to get you on board. First, I predict, it will be incentives to bring people onto CBDCs, such as financial rewards, one example, will be like a lottery. Not too dissimilar to premium bonds in UK where each month people can win some money back. That will bring on some users, after that they will bring more draconian laws and then even ostracise those that do not onboard. That is where you are left with the prisoner’s dilemma, you must partake in the system or make it on your own in the woods.

People are being socioeconomically kettled. At what point does one push back? People who are struggling to pay rent are told to, simultaneously, consume to save the economy and told not to drink a Starbucks. Take protestors who may slash the tires of an Oil Magnates car. Those protestors get questioned for being violent but the Oil Magnate who has displaced indigenous populations and spilt oil all over the ocean, is that not violent?

My fear with CBDCs is people will react too late. The poor are hit already in the UK, we’ve had food banks on the rise and even our doctors are paid pittance. The NHS is under creative destruction because the NHS anchors the price of medication in Europe and the USA and big pharma need NHS to cave in order to raise the price of their drugs.

People are more dependent on their parents and grandparents in the UK. The middle class are being ground down in this next phase. As interest rates get cut over 2024, the rich have not only been acquiring assets, with savings they have been reaping the interest. Over 2024, they will buy more property from the middle-class who see the asset prices as a good cash out.

In 2021, the FED and Blackrock made a plan for Blackrock to buy up all the assets and over Covid when people were locked in doors, Blackrock bought the land beneath their feet. If grandparents cash out on their houses in 2024, they may have lost out in the long run for their family but each person has different circumstances. Asset management companies will reap this.

In Britain, people will be outraged for a bit, people may even do a protest or two but I think it will not get far, from my own experience, the Brits tend to scoff when people protest even if it is for the greater good. I do have a little hope with the younger generation in that they do not consume the old media, there is potential for them to band together akin to Arab Spring.

However, there is a hitch now. Arab Spring took the world by storm and scared governments worldwide.

Think of this quote, Solon said the good state is when “the people obey the rulers and the rulers obey the laws”. What happens when the laws are not in place? Pre-Draconian, the aristocrats simply waffled what the laws were. I won’t go too much into it here, please do check out my piece on SPACE AND TIME for more information but in Israel there are many surveillance software, hardware, companies that have been cooking for a while. They track your face, your supposed mood, and this is all with the Big Tech guys.

One piece of spyware is Pegasus. NSO is an Israeli start-up by 3 guys, Niv, Shalev and Omri. It is also known as Q Cyber Technologies. It sells mobile spyware to governments, the Saudi’s hacked Jeff Bezos’s phone with Pegasus. In the Middle-East, governments use this often to track journalists, some disappear shortly after a Pegasus hack. RIP Khashoggi.

It is used from India to Egypt to Jordan to Serbia to Poland to North America, it is used on journalists, protestors, opposition leaders, innocent civilians, anyone within civil society. In 2023, Citizen Lab (citizenlab.ca) found more iOS exploits from Pegasus and by chance, a journalist did not feel a text message was right and let Citizen Lab know.

Magic Lantern is a bit of malware, you receive an email, open the attachment and your computer is infected. It can then record every key stroke you do and sends it back to a central system, the FBI.

Other countries that do actually stick up for themselves, they will react and the riot police will come out. They will enact violence and the protestors will have their accounts frozen. CBDCs will continue.

Civil society must learn from the Canadian protests.

This is what happens if we do not stop CBDCs. We may have a governor that says we do not intend to freeze accounts, to dictate what is bought. It will be that way for a while. Then a new CB governor will come in and do precisely that. Your money will essentially be a coupon, spent only in certain places on certain things and with a time limit.

The economy will be like a twisted piece of clockwork. In the nightmare-come-to-life scenario, the chip will be in your wrist. Your bank will tell you what to eat and consume.

With Libra/Diem, Zuckerbergs developers put into the code the ability to control your funds. Something 0L Network, who took the Move language, had to engineer out of their blockchain. In July 2023 over in Brazil, Pedro Magalhães reverse-engineered the Brazilian CBDC pilot and guess what he found? The ability to target an account and remove funds and freeze it. Vini Barbosa reports here - https://twitter.com/vinibarbosabr/status/1678511787610603523 .

Alas, what follows draconian laws? Solon constitution, that is if people of virtue stand up and enough people rally around it. In the 50s, civil disobedience was successful in USA for civil rights, it can still be but there is a more sophisticated tech edge to it these days. Central Bankers need to be brought to light and hackers need to play their part.

It is the same story, a class of people grabbing more power and do not see people as human rather a means to end to gain more. They keep reinventing the wheel in order for them to constrict your land, your resources and your food, and this inflicts stress on society. Stress is a dis-ease, this has ramifications that if not rectified, you are more likely to destroy the society you feel the need to lord over.

Cobie, of crypto fame, once said on a podcast, not verbatim, when he made a good fortune out of crypto he helped his parents pay off debts and provide them the ability of freedom. He noticed that he saw a different side to his parents, a more relaxed side to his parents. He noticed that without bills and mortgage his parents had this energy, their personalities changed. He was robbed of that when he was growing up as they had to worry about making ends meet. They say crypto is a scam, Cobie says everything is a scam for some weird numbers on a screen.

King Croesus, vain of his wealth, expecting his palace to receive praise asked Solon, "Have you ever seen a more beautiful sight?"

"Yes" Solon shocked, "Roosters and pheasants and peacocks, since they have been adorned with a natural brilliancy are ten thousand times more beautiful"

What we do in life…

                    … echoes in eternity.\

07/01/2024

**Quick **
Hello, I am about to rant from the Greeks, to Rome to the modern UK and a little on CBDCs. Take the ticket, go for the ride.

Long

With the mud of Albion beneath their feet, the Romans, shield and sword in hand, the woods on their back could see a locus of Britons descend to the plain. The vast stretch of Boudicca’s army dominated the scene and the noise it casted stood the hairs up on the Romans necks that would gulp in anticipation in hope to sink any fear.

Vastly outnumbered, the Romans held their formation and gave faith to their preparation. Conquering Europe, Asia Minor and Africa does provide a plate of confidence in times such as this, in times where one has to face the rage of an indigenous people.

Forward came the hoard, tattooed and bellowing. Breath pours out like steam from the nostrils. As it draws closer to the Roman formation, the front of Britons change from roaring men into silent beasts as the whites of the eyes become clear. The angst of a charge, pushed on by the will for vindication, zones into midnight rage locking into prey.

The adrenaline of both sides overwhelms the hearing to deafness, for a second or two there is only the sound of internal breath.

The Romans braced theirs shields and instinctively tightened their muscles. With such venom and force, a wave of Britons slam into the Roman wall, the legion slides back on the grass and mud, the wind is knocked out of the frontline of Britons as they are squeezed between their fellow comrades and the block of Romans.

Contain the initial burst, the Romans then thrust their gladius swords, twist for more bloody coverage of the stab and return to defence. Britons clamber over shields, sweep and attempt to break lines but the Romans and their stubborn fortitude bounce the Britons back. Wave after wave slam against the rocks. An arm over reaches and snaps in two. A liver is sliced open. Over friends bodies the Britons must clamber.

With a whistle, the Romans swap position, fresh arms, fresh wit to front, reprieve for their comrades. Terrifying energy, corybantic rage of no bounds is no match against a professional, organised force.

The Romans slaughtered a massive mob of Britons in one day on Wattling Street in 60AD. With any ounce of strategy and organisation, Boudicca could have defeated the Roman army that day. All she had brought to the field was heart but an incoherent rabble that was comprised of men, women and children, unprepared for the controlled, trained, armoured Romans.

A battle is chaos and the Romans treated it like a riot. Today, we have Roman tactics with riot police for it is a similar dynamic when civilians take on the police to that of Romans versus barbarians. There is a tactic called Kettling, police use this on peaceful protest. The police know if they attack first, they are viewed as the wrong thus the idea is to provoke and police are often outnumbered at these protests.

The police set a parameter around the demonstrators, then gradually step forward a little. Then a little more. Inch by inch they constrict the space the demonstrators operate in. Soon the protestors are squished and cannot breathe, they get hot and anxious. The police take another step forward. At some point the protestors have to push back and with you get police vs protestor footage on the news and a narrative how protestors are bad citizens and violent.

The Romans know this well, they experienced it against them at Cannae where Hannibal kettled and killed around 70,000 Romans in one day.

The Romans learnt from everyone they encountered. Their famous gladius sword came from meeting Iberian tribes, their navy improved after reverse engineering a Carthaginian boat, later in the Eastern/Byzantine half they incorporated horse archers, these are just a few examples, time and time again the Romans met something superior to their current idea and they incorporated it. They overcame the odds at places such as Alesia, and the mad lads eventually beat Hannibal in the end – and Hannibal was a genius and his defeat changes the course of history for the Mediterranean thus the world today.

And the basis of Roman culture is from Greece. The Greeks needed boats for the hills and mountains made it quicker to sail rather than traverse the land on foot, plus there are thousands of islands all over the Aegean.

Greece had little colonies dotted around the Mediterranean, they reached Britain and loved its tin and even got to Iceland – supposedly – it may have been the land known as Thule that Pytheas spoke of.  With the technology of the time and their understanding of the world, the stories after going to places with olive heat to places as far as the fog of Thule would be something akin to sci-fi.

The Greeks settled on Sicily and southern Italy what is known as Magna Graecia. This exposure to the Greeks led to Romans doing what they do best aside from engineering that is incorporating ideas. In the 5th Century BC, they sent a delegation to Athens to copy the laws of Solon.

It was theme in Roman history, if you wanted to learn the upper echelons of knowledge, go to Greece. At this juncture, the Romans sent 10 men to go shopping in Athens. In the century prior to this road trip, Athens had a fella called Solon and Athens was not doing too good.

Athens had Draco before Solon and pretty much punished anything by death. Draco’s laws were a bit mad to say the least however, it was in response to the what I call the “Chat Shit” system preceding it. The aristocracy of Athens dictated the law, it was not written down it was all oratory, therefore with their higher education, particularly in rhetoric, they manipulated laws for themselves. Draco had enough and wrote it down so everyone can see, this helped solidify some sort of order.

Athens was essentially a two-tier state, property owners and serfs/slaves. In Athens, if you could not pay back your creditors you had to forfeit land and give a sum of your produce to your creditor. If your debt held more value than your land then you would become a slave and so too would your family. You either served these aristocrats or you were sold abroad.

With a few moments thought it is easy to see how the creditors would rather encumber people with debt than cannot pay for they can a lot of power that way. Aforementioned, the aristocracy had the benefit of education and did not toil in the fields as much therefore leveraged their time and wealth to capture more power and wealth.

The common people were essentially serfs to the wealthy who kept siphoning the land. Solon was merchant who became wealthy and connected.

One of the side effects of having money is having time to think. When humans have time to think they tend to be creative, which is great! Art makes life extraordinary. Solon was performing political poetry, engaging debates, and imparted his wisdom around Athens. This guy had bars. He wrote verse after verse, he would memorise it, espouse it, perform it and the Athenians loved it.

The guy rapped Athenians into a war to take Salamis from Megara – and he won. A successful merchant, a poet, a general… what next?

Solon was in a unique position, as a charismatic profitable-war-hero-rapper, he did not seem to fit into a single faction. He had many allies thus in the tense situation socioeconomically Athens was in, he was given role of Archon – chief ruler.

Here Solon seisachtheia – translates to shook the burdens. He relieved people of their debts and Athens life improved. An important detail is he most likely stopped a civil war. It is a thing to comprehend how charismatic you must be to convince the rich to give to the poor and forfeit power.

He went on to reform political classes, laws, Athens economy was reformed and became richer. Not having slaves makes a society stronger, people can contribute in more effective ways and Athens had a stronger army for it, not just for soldiers but to be able to provide for an army. For 10 years, only Solon was allowed to change the laws he imposed. He had Athens in the palm of his hand and he decides to exile himself to avoid Athens falling into his tyranny. I love this man.

Solon a man is not blessed until dead. Meaning only when you can look back on your life can you judge if it is blessed or not. This man stabilised Athens and entwined democracy and justice and that is just one chapter of his life! He had a truly remarkable time on Earth.

What we do in life echoes in eternity.

A city with an archon was an anarchy, the word itself simply means “without ruler”. The rich of Athens sought to garner their old power back, when the rich are outnumbered and have deceitful intentions they are hardly going to succeed by a bar brawl. They turn power structures towards a more chaotic state for in those situations you can cease power for yourself when there is confusion and rapacious winds.

The result was ups and downs. Tyranny and uprising to democracy. Society, it is all a big drama really.

On and on imitation happens particularly of the successful. Those within the yoke of the old Romans have continuously sought to be the spiritual successor to Rome. There was the Sultan of Rum, Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Ottomans, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Franks, the Spanish, Napoleon, your mum.

Out of the states that followed Rome, it is the inconvenient island of tin and wheat on the other side of the continent that went on to dominate the world, mostly due to the trading hub the Romans set up on the north side of the Thames. This is now the City of London, which is a city within London, it is a county and a corporation all in one. It is full of money and gold and it has dragons dotted around its square mile boundaries to “guard” it.

Churchill is quoted, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key.” Furthermore, he said, “Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug.”

Well, I do wonder how my European cousins look on at the United Kingdom these days. If Russia is a dog fight under a rug, Britain is several mutts on top of one another dressed in a trench coat, each scrambling to be the head whilst maintaining appearances in order to gain entrance into the gentlemen’s club.

England has a long history and the City of London existed before England. Coffee Houses were popular in the City, think about it, if finance guys are notorious for cocaine use in modern society, what would be the nearest thing to the stimulus of cocaine in the 1600s? Coffee. People would drink alcohol, have coffee, chat business, shag hookers, gambled. All this is the basis for what became the largest empire of the world.

Jonathan’s Coffee House is where the London Stock Exchange started. Lloyds of London was named after Lloyd’s coffee house. The Bank of England, aka The Bank, was born out of the City and helped England win the Nine Years War against France as it provided credit to the red coats allowing England go further into a war than France.

A lot of English Law is tied up with the modern banking system. A deposit does not exist in law, the bank is buying your security. The Bank was a key part to England and then the UKs success imperially.

Fast forward a whole empire rise and collapse later, the UK has a dichotomy. It is often in the top 8 economies yearly yet outside of London there is a great stagnation.

This is a quote where I have long lost the source for it - “The system in Britain has been the intentional destruction of any competitive British business on the world-stage; small, medium-sized, large businesses, through selling them off, underfunding them, over-regulating/taxing them or simply allowing their intellectual property to be sold-off to favoured-foreign-country companies. This is the reason for the low-growth and GDP in the UK since at least the 60's. The balance of payments that sustains Britain's GDP and currency then requires billions of pounds of investment per year from abroad. This is why so many universities are implicated, the banking system and key real estate locations among others, to allow the facilitation of money to enter the system.”

Keynes said his grand children will only work 15 hours a week. Well, perhaps his grandchildren do as they inherited great wealth but others today are actually working two jobs just to stay afloat with barely any time to connect with friends, communities and hobbies.

2008 saw the massive banking crisis and this led to Quantative Easing, those that caused it were rewarded, money was printed to absorb their damage, and the poor had to endure austerity measures this pumped stock and asset prices. THEN COVID HIT.

The rich spend money on luxury, and it provides jobs for ordinary people. Ordinary people have to have these jobs because imperial capitalism took them from their land, forced them into rent and mortgages and have to work to pay these bills. When lockdowns occurred, rich could not do what they usually do, go on holiday, dine at fine restaurants, go to car showrooms, etc. This meant ordinary people were without work and any means to pay their bills. There was going to be mass homelessness and hunger and that leads to revolts.

Therefore, the government went to The Bank and printed lots of money, this was given out as the Furlough Scheme. The rich were not spending money and bought up assets and stocks. The poorer half were spending it on bills but they too had time on their hands and invested in stocks, meme stocks and crypto.

£450bn was printed, there are around 170 billionaires in UK, during COVID, the average billionaire increased their wealth by £620mm. Since then taxes on ordinary people have gone up, food inflation has occurred and inflation of assets has gone up. The Cantillon Effect of pumping money into the UK economy straight from the Central Bank means the poor were passive-aggressively taxed, the rich received the money and bought up stocks and assets. You notice this happens time and again when money is printed, the rich don’t buy from the poor unless it is your nans house. Then after the printing, they tax the poor aggressively and the rich say they earned their money.

The poor are in a situation where they are in a losing game and the youth know it, then it is deemed their own fault if they do not get out of it. No wonder mental health is all over the place.  Within that was the decision for Brexit and this makes moving to Europe harder. £800bn has left London as firms seek other financial centres.

In the political chaos, we have had one Prime Minister insider trading after another. In COVID, The Bank asked for legal permission to make programmable CBDC.

CBs make up 3% of the money supply and are actively anti-bank. Under the ECB, five thousand banks have perished, under the Fed ten thousand have gone. The BIS openly say they want programmable money and want to tokenise everything that they have the right to control that, to determine who has the right to assets, where you spend your money, and who you spend it with. The Central Banks are a cartel that want to install negative interest, the ability to take from you at will.

Dr Richard Werner puts its aptly, we have used BDCs for decades, now that we can program digital currencies, the ref – the Central Banks – want to join the game.

Ideologies that are coming to the fore are Effective Acceleration, which dispels doomers and wants there to be little regulation in order for growth, let AI free but huge tech change does put those that are not tech-orientated at social risk and we have a responsibility to not simply punish these peoples for not understanding advance technology. Lots of cons can arise from AI on the vulnerable. Then there is the Degrowth movement that sees the perils of environmental disaster and we need to slow down but with this movement I always ask who is degrowing exactly? The intentions may be good but with the recipe of society that we have, it isn’t going to be noble and pretty. These are two I have heard more noise of late.

Dr Werner posits this about money creation and his point being the Far East got it right when they created money to gain prosperity.

If banks use credit creation for ownership rights this inflates asset price. Leads to boom and bust.This is not a part of GDP, which is a value-added concept. Trading ownership rights to is not creating value. When bank credit is used for consumption, consumer loans go up, spending goes up but quantity of services hasn’t gone up. This is consumer price inflation.

When banks create credit for productive business investment, new tech, new ideas then value is added. It is not inflationary. More demand happens so too does goods and services. This is what happened in the Far East Asia. The IMF installed loans on developing nations and it impeded their development. Japan, Korea, Singapore and China are examples of developing nations that made it to developed because of their strategy.

Japan learned from Germany you need lots of smaller banks to help finance smaller businesses. Big banks only lend to big business yet it is smaller firms that employ most of the people. China, unlike the Soviets, decided to go with what works and they learned from the Japanese thus did the same. The UK is seemingly against SME banking and loves the super rich. China has lifted the most people out of poverty in a short time period yet the UK is demoting itself from “developed” status. It is reliant on foreign investment and each Prime Minister blames the one before… the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and counting!

In Canada, the government froze protestors banks accounts but more importantly, they even froze the Bitcoin addresses. This meant protestors couldn’t get water and food, this nullified the protest and they were over in two days. We are beyond democracy already, we are in a beta-phase of a centrally planned faux-democracy.

SBF stole money from rich people, that is why he is in jail. In the UK, Liz Truss bombed the pound and was fired from Prime Minster position, now has a pension for life.

Notice how the rich never defend the poor, they happily let taxes get raised for the poor but you will have people of the poor defend the rich when it comes to taxation. One way to see that is the poor aspire to be rich, the rich never aspire to be poor, they look down upon them yet desperately need them otherwise the whole façade of wealth collapses.

There is a pull between decentralisation and extreme centralisation. The pessimist in me believes the Central Banks will win but, and a big but, they won’t if people simply organise and bring them to light. They are cowards and do not have the skill set that your public CEO’s and politicians have – charisma and thick skin. They wilt under public audience, they are powerful when they are never confronted.

The developing world uses a lot of mobile phones and in some ways being discouraged from industrialising like the West did and other developed economies.  With neo-banks and the digital world forming, the developing world can more or less circumvent the “industrial” process. It still leaves them vulnerable.

In developed nations, there is a tendency for more robust laws and rights for citizens. For projects such as World Coin, they LOVE the developing world because there isn’t the legal infrastructure in place to protect citizens rights thus ripe for exploitation. World Coin cannot operate in Europe the way in Africa, in Europe they have the protective apparatus.

Over the last year, Apple has an offer of a high yield savings account only through their iPhone, Apple is not technically a bank but it is fronting Goldman Sachs. Through Apple, Sachs can reach the 2 billion users of iPhones.

The Central Banks know from their tests and pilots that the developing world is more open to CBDCs therefore you will hear a lot about financial inclusion in the coming years, if you haven’t already. There is a big risk to this – that is wanting to provide a lot of loans to people who cannot pay it back. Sachs standards were too lax for Apples liking and the deal between the two was called off. Goldman Sachs is one of the most corrupt investment banks in the world. That in itself is a warning sign of why a bust will happen.

Through these devices, products and incentives can appeal to the users in both the developing world and developed world.

The Central Banks know it will be hard to convince people but they are determined to get you on board. First, I predict, it will be incentives to bring people onto CBDCs, such as financial rewards, one example, will be like a lottery. Not too dissimilar to premium bonds in UK where each month people can win some money back. That will bring on some users, after that they will bring more draconian laws and then even ostracise those that do not onboard. That is where you are left with the prisoner’s dilemma, you must partake in the system or make it on your own in the woods.

People are being socioeconomically kettled. At what point does one push back? People who are struggling to pay rent are told to, simultaneously, consume to save the economy and told not to drink a Starbucks. Take protestors who may slash the tires of an Oil Magnates car. Those protestors get questioned for being violent but the Oil Magnate who has displaced indigenous populations and spilt oil all over the ocean, is that not violent?

My fear with CBDCs is people will react too late. The poor are hit already in the UK, we’ve had food banks on the rise and even our doctors are paid pittance. The NHS is under creative destruction because the NHS anchors the price of medication in Europe and the USA and big pharma need NHS to cave in order to raise the price of their drugs.

People are more dependent on their parents and grandparents in the UK. The middle class are being ground down in this next phase. As interest rates get cut over 2024, the rich have not only been acquiring assets, with savings they have been reaping the interest. Over 2024, they will buy more property from the middle-class who see the asset prices as a good cash out.

In 2021, the FED and Blackrock made a plan for Blackrock to buy up all the assets and over Covid when people were locked in doors, Blackrock bought the land beneath their feet. If grandparents cash out on their houses in 2024, they may have lost out in the long run for their family but each person has different circumstances. Asset management companies will reap this.

In Britain, people will be outraged for a bit, people may even do a protest or two but I think it will not get far, from my own experience, the Brits tend to scoff when people protest even if it is for the greater good. I do have a little hope with the younger generation in that they do not consume the old media, there is potential for them to band together akin to Arab Spring.

However, there is a hitch now. Arab Spring took the world by storm and scared governments worldwide.

Think of this quote, Solon said the good state is when “the people obey the rulers and the rulers obey the laws”. What happens when the laws are not in place? Pre-Draconian, the aristocrats simply waffled what the laws were. I won’t go too much into it here, please do check out my piece on SPACE AND TIME for more information but in Israel there are many surveillance software, hardware, companies that have been cooking for a while. They track your face, your supposed mood, and this is all with the Big Tech guys.

One piece of spyware is Pegasus. NSO is an Israeli start-up by 3 guys, Niv, Shalev and Omri. It is also known as Q Cyber Technologies. It sells mobile spyware to governments, the Saudi’s hacked Jeff Bezos’s phone with Pegasus. In the Middle-East, governments use this often to track journalists, some disappear shortly after a Pegasus hack. RIP Khashoggi.

It is used from India to Egypt to Jordan to Serbia to Poland to North America, it is used on journalists, protestors, opposition leaders, innocent civilians, anyone within civil society. In 2023, Citizen Lab (citizenlab.ca) found more iOS exploits from Pegasus and by chance, a journalist did not feel a text message was right and let Citizen Lab know.

Magic Lantern is a bit of malware, you receive an email, open the attachment and your computer is infected. It can then record every key stroke you do and sends it back to a central system, the FBI.

Other countries that do actually stick up for themselves, they will react and the riot police will come out. They will enact violence and the protestors will have their accounts frozen. CBDCs will continue.

Civil society must learn from the Canadian protests.

This is what happens if we do not stop CBDCs. We may have a governor that says we do not intend to freeze accounts, to dictate what is bought. It will be that way for a while. Then a new CB governor will come in and do precisely that. Your money will essentially be a coupon, spent only in certain places on certain things and with a time limit.

The economy will be like a twisted piece of clockwork. In the nightmare-come-to-life scenario, the chip will be in your wrist. Your bank will tell you what to eat and consume.

With Libra/Diem, Zuckerbergs developers put into the code the ability to control your funds. Something 0L Network, who took the Move language, had to engineer out of their blockchain. In July 2023 over in Brazil, Pedro Magalhães reverse-engineered the Brazilian CBDC pilot and guess what he found? The ability to target an account and remove funds and freeze it. Vini Barbosa reports here - https://twitter.com/vinibarbosabr/status/1678511787610603523 .

Alas, what follows draconian laws? Solon constitution, that is if people of virtue stand up and enough people rally around it. In the 50s, civil disobedience was successful in USA for civil rights, it can still be but there is a more sophisticated tech edge to it these days. Central Bankers need to be brought to light and hackers need to play their part.

It is the same story, a class of people grabbing more power and do not see people as human rather a means to end to gain more. They keep reinventing the wheel in order for them to constrict your land, your resources and your food, and this inflicts stress on society. Stress is a dis-ease, this has ramifications that if not rectified, you are more likely to destroy the society you feel the need to lord over.

Cobie, of crypto fame, once said on a podcast, not verbatim, when he made a good fortune out of crypto he helped his parents pay off debts and provide them the ability of freedom. He noticed that he saw a different side to his parents, a more relaxed side to his parents. He noticed that without bills and mortgage his parents had this energy, their personalities changed. He was robbed of that when he was growing up as they had to worry about making ends meet. They say crypto is a scam, Cobie says everything is a scam for some weird numbers on a screen.

King Croesus, vain of his wealth, expecting his palace to receive praise asked Solon, "Have you ever seen a more beautiful sight?"

"Yes" Solon shocked, "Roosters and pheasants and peacocks, since they have been adorned with a natural brilliancy are ten thousand times more beautiful"