https://www.globalresearch.ca/g20-announces-plan-impose-digital-currencies-ids-worldwide/5832785
G20 Announces Plan to Impose Digital Currencies and IDs Worldwide
The leaders of the Group of 20 nations have agreed to a plan to eventually impose digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations, amid concern that governments might use them to monitor their people’s spending and crush dissent.
The G20, which is made up of the world’s leading rich and developing nations and is currently under India’s presidency, adopted a final declaration on the subject over the weekend in New Delhi.
The group announced last week that they had agreed to build the necessary infrastructure to implement digital currencies and IDs.
While the group said that discussions are already underway to create international regulations for cryptocurrencies, it claimed that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrency” at the summit.
Many critics are concerned that governments and central banks will eventually regulate cryptocurrencies and then immediately replace them with central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which lack similar privacy and security.
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that discussions are underway to build a global framework to regulate crypto assets because they believe that cryptocurrencies can’t be regulated efficiently without total international cooperation.
“India’s [G20] presidency has put on the table key issues related to regulating or understanding that there should be a framework for handling issues related to crypto assets,” Ms. Sitharaman said before the G20 gathering.
The top items discussed at the New Delhi summit included building digital public infrastructure, digital economy, cryptoassets, and CBDCs.
Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first deputy managing director, said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the G20 “helped shape a global perspective on how policymakers should deal with crypto assets.”
She also told Business Today that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrencies, indicating a global consensus against such measures” in the discussions.
However, some of the suggestions call for additional policing of cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and don’t operate under central banks’ control.
Critics say that these proposals might allow government authorities to impose a social credit score system and decide how their citizens can spend their money.
EC Chief Reemphasizes Need for Digital IDs
At the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for digital ID systems similar to COVID-19 vaccine passports and for an international regulatory body for artificial intelligence (AI).
She called for the United Nations to have a role in AI regulation and called the European Union’s COVID-19 digital certificate a perfect model for digital public infrastructures (DPI), which would include digital IDs.
“Many of you are familiar with the COVID-19 digital certificate. The EU developed it for itself. The model was so functional and so trusted that 51 countries on four continents adopted it for free,” Ms. von der Leyen said.
“Today, the WHO uses it as a global standard to facilitate mobility in times of health threats. I want to thank Dr. Tedros again for the excellent cooperation,” she said, referring to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The European Union is currently trying to introduce a bloc-wide “digital identity” app that would consolidate various personal information, including passports, driver’s licenses, and medical history.
“The future is digital. I passed two messages to the G20. We should establish a framework for safe, responsible AI, with a similar body as the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] for climate. Digital public infrastructures are an accelerator of growth. They must be trusted, interoperable & open to all,” Ms. von der Leyen wrote on social media.
Public Support Lacking
The Cato Institute 2023 CBDC National Survey from May found that only 16 percent of Americans support the adoption of a CBDC. At least 68 percent of respondents said they would oppose CBDCs if the government started to monitor their purchases.
Most Democrats and Republicans have expressed concern that the government could control what people spend their money on or even turn off access to their bank accounts.
Governments Prepare Way for CBDCs
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva praised her Indian counterparts via X for leading the way in “setting up a road map for crypto regulations.”
She wrote that the IMF was also “contributing to proposals for a comprehensive policy framework.”
In a separate statement, Ms. Georgieva said,
“More work lies ahead, including in the realm of digital money and crypto assets.”
“To this end, the G20 has tasked relevant institutions to improve regulation and supervision of crypto assets—the IMF is contributing to proposals for a comprehensive policy framework—and advance the debate on how central bank digital currencies could impact the global economy and financial system,” she added.
The IMF chief suggested that rather than recognize cryptocurrency assets as legal tender, governments should create licensing and registration processes for crypto asset issuers and focus on treating their activities similarly.
Several major economies, including Japan and Russia, will roll out their pilot CBDCs this year.
Nigeria introduced the eNaira, the world’s first issued CBDC, although it has proved unpopular.
Less than 0.5 percent of citizens have said they had used the digital currency, and government efforts to encourage its use have failed.
‘The India Stack’
Meanwhile, the World Bank also praised India’s use of digital public infrastructure to “enhance financial inclusion” and delivery of public goods and services in a report written for the G20 summit.
The nation’s India Stack DPI system, which comprises the Aadhaar digital ID and the interoperable UPI digital payments platform, has been cited as an example in the report.
The G20 believes that DPIs can serve people not just in the financial sector, but also in the domains of health, education, and social welfare.
“The India Stack exemplifies this approach, combining digital ID, interoperable payments, a digital credentials ledger, and account aggregation. In just six years, it has achieved a remarkable 80 percent financial inclusion rate—a feat that would have taken nearly five decades without a DPI approach,” Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, who wrote the foreword to the report, said.
The queen is the U.N. secretary-general’s special advocate for inclusive finance for development and was one of the speakers at the IMF—World Bank annual meeting in Washington last year.
“If designed properly, CBDCs could hold great promise to support a digital financial system that works for everyone. But that is an important ‘if,’” Queen Maxima said. “If designed and implemented with inclusion in mind, CBDCs could offer many options to expand access to the unbanked and to serve the vulnerable and the poor.”
However, her statements in support of the plan have come under criticism by some in the debate over digitalization in the Netherlands for violating the norm regarding the role of the Dutch monarchy in politics.
“Maxima openly advocates for programmable money; power in central banks, without parliamentary accountability,” Dutch financial journalist Arno Wellens wrote on X, calling the queen “an unelected official who is outside politics under [Dutch] constitutional law” and her statements “a serious attack on democracy.”
....
https://www.globalresearch.ca/youre-not-supporting-ukraine-enough-until-nuclear-blast-hits-face/5832814
You’re Not Supporting Ukraine Enough Until the Nuclear Blast Hits Your Face
What happened to Elon Musk this past week showcases how completely unhinged and dangerous U.S. policy to Ukraine has become. The condemnation began when the Washington Post published excerpts from a new biography on Musk revealing that he turned down a Ukrainian request to help launch a major sneak attack in September 2022 on the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
There were numerous, legitimate reasons why Musk refused to activate his Starlink internet services for Ukraine to carry out the unprecedented, surprise attack on Russian naval vessels: Musk was providing terminals to Ukraine for free; he was not on a military contract at that time; the late-night request came directly from the Ukrainian—not American—government; and Starlink had never been activated over Crimea because of U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Most importantly, Musk was concerned that enabling the attack could result in serious “conflict escalation.” He worried that he was being asked to turn on Starlink for a “Pearl Harbor like attack” and had no wish to “proactively take part in a major act of war,” possibly provoking a Russian nuclear response.
In response to this nuclear aversion, Musk was called “evil” by a high-level Ukrainian official and “traitor” by American war enthusiasts.
Rachel Maddow on the Russia conspiracy network MSNBC said Musk was “intervening to try to stop Ukraine from winning the war.” Not to be outdone, CNN‘s Jake Tapper described Elon as a “capricious billionaire” who “sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally,” an act that demands “repercussions.” For his part, chief Iraq war salesman-turned-Democrat-darling, David Frum, said that Musk must be stripped of his U.S. government contracts for not reflexively acceding to the Ukrainian Starlink request, and former “progressive,”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, called for an immediate Congressional investigation “to ensure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire.”
But the Musk pile-on was just getting started.
In the days that followed, his detractors used a Ukrainian operation as proof that Musk was overreacting.
Days after the Starlink story broke, Ukraine successfully launched British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into the Russian naval headquarters in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. It was the largest attack since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly 19 months ago, and it damaged a Russian submarine and warship.
When the military action was not followed by World War III, Musk was torched again.
As the pro-war media noted, “It was precisely such a strike, according to Musk, that should have provoked a nuclear war.”
A torrent of international relations pundits on Twitter mocked Musk, tweeting things like “I was assured by an internet service provider executive that this would have caused WWIII and the use of nuclear weapons” and “How’s it going man, after the splendid attack on Sevastopol? WW3 started already?”
Musk’s detractors might think this is all very funny, but attacking Crimea—not to mention the Russian mainland in increasingly frequent drone strikes on Moscow—is no laughing matter. Even the staunchest Western war enthusiasts from the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council to the Estonian defense minister to Biden’s own Secretary of State Antony Blinken all previously acknowledged that threatening Crimea is a possible “red line” that could lead to nuclear war.
As the Russian military specialist Nicolo Fasola pointed out in April, “There’s a definite risk that Putin would use nuclear weapons to counter a Ukrainian offensive in Crimea. And that’s why Ukraine’s Western allies are reluctant.”
But that previous caution has faded—no doubt as a result of the much-touted counteroffensive disappointing American war planners, leading to a seemingly endless and halting war of attrition reminiscent of World War I. Meanwhile, Biden’s political legacy is on the line as the presidential election looms.
The longer the war goes on, the more the Biden administration and its NATO allies are throwing caution to the wind. Biden keeps consenting to supply weapons previously ruled out as excessively escalatory, from Patriot air defense systems to Abrams tanks to cluster munitions to F-16’s. The latest reversal is over the expected transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems that can fly up to 190 miles, enabling Ukrainian forces to strike far beyond Russia’s defensive positions inside Crimea and deep into Russian sovereign territory.
National Security advisor Jake Sullivan used to rule out ATACMS “to ensure that we don’t get into a situation in which we are approaching the Third World War.” Even CNN, an enthusiastic advocate for greater American involvement in the war, has acknowledged the “fears about escalating the conflict.”
A couple months ago, Senator James Risch of Idaho told the Aspen Security Forum, “I’m tired of hearing about escalation. I want Putin to wake up in the morning worried about what he’s going to do that’s going to cause us to escalate.” Biden apparently now agrees.
The view now ruling the Democratic Party and the President is the same as the warmongers:
It’s silly to worry as Musk does about turning the Ukraine war into something catastrophically worse.
It’s un-American not to try to find Russia’s redline for starting World War III.
It’s traitorous to believe—as the President himself did, just a few months ago—that we should be doing all we can to prevent escalation.
The new mantra seems to be:
We’re not trying hard enough in Ukraine until we feel the nuclear blast against our faces.
....
https://bracingviews.com/2023/09/08/talking-and-writing-honestly-about-war/
Talking and Writing Honestly About War
Because words about war matter
As a retired Air Force officer and military historian, I’m familiar with all kinds of euphemisms about killing, e.g. “precision bombing” and “collateral damage.” Just as it’s easier to kill at a distance, it’s easier to kill when we use words that provide distance from the act. Words that facilitate detachment. Words that befuddle and confuse our minds.
When writing honestly about war, it’s best to use bullet-hits-the-bone words: atrocity, murder, war crime, slaughter. Rape, pillage, burn are “old” words associated with war, and these words often most fittingly describe war and its likely effects and outcomes.
Powerful, blunt, and accurate words should remind us that war is inherently horrible and also profoundly anti-democratic. War is consistent with authoritarianism and lack of freedom, yet Americans nowadays seem to think war (and words about war) is conducive to democracy and freedom, e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine.
We used to know better. Military people are fond of the saying, “freedom isn’t free,” but neither is war. Indeed, war and its various manifestations are costing this nation more than a trillion dollars a year while weakening democracy and our constitutional freedoms. And that is a very high price to pay to keep the factories of the merchants of death humming and the generals and admirals happy.
Fortunately, there’s a new guide and website available that alerts us to the importance of language and war. The website is wordsaboutwar.org, from which you can read and download suggestions on how best to use words to convey the horrors and costs of war to people everywhere. I urge you to visit the site and peruse the guide. (Full disclosure: I was an advisor to this effort, which was ably led by David Vine.)
Here’s a sample of a few comments I made in passing to the group:
A war on terror is truly a war of terror because war itself is terrible.
Friendly fire is being killed by one’s own, often due to the chaos of war, the sheer waste of it all, exacerbated by incompetence. “Fire” is always unfriendly.
Very few troops are “heroes,” and indeed most aren’t, because heroes are rare in all walks of life.
The word “casualty” is too benign. I much prefer killed and wounded: the victims of war.
What are “enemy noncombatants”? They are usually innocent civilians.
With respect to the “War on Terror” that the U.S. has prosecuted for 22 years and counting, I noted that:
We (the U.S.) manifested a Manichean world view; as George W. Bush said soon after 9/11, you’re either for America (and all its violence) or you’re for the terrorists (with their violence). If you wanted a non-violent approach, you were dismissed as naive or “for them.” It was good versus evil, thus the infamous “axis of evil” the U.S. allegedly faced.
This is, of course, a problem with all discourse related to war. Subtlety and nuance are thrown out the window. Language is greatly simplified. The U.S. is “doubleplusgood” and the enemy must be the opposite while simultaneously being dehumanized. We kill “cowardly” enemy troops or terrorists (by drone they’re “bugsplat”) yet our “heroic” troops “fall” in battle and are revered as “the fallen.” Violent combat is disguised as “kinetic action” in U.S. military communiques.
In my view, the dishonesty of this language captures the dishonesty of America’s wars.
General William T. Sherman (U.S. Civil War) famously said that “War is all hell.” Sherman knew the hellish and harsh realities of war; he knew, as he wrote, that “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Too many people today are using and manipulating words to refine war. They’re camouflaging war’s harshest realities. Writers should write plainly and honestly, as General Sherman did, to capture war’s hellish nature. By choosing honest words, we also help to create a better future in which the threat of war recedes precisely because we recognize more clearly its horrific nature and terrifying costs.
Other high-ranking military officers, like General Smedley Butler, for example, also wrote plainly about war. As Butler famously said, war is a racket, and he described himself as a gangster for capitalism. Now that was plain speaking about war!
The chief intent of speaking and writing plainly about war is to discourage war and save lives. Some might see it as patriotic—saving the lives of U.S. troops by helping to prevent bloody awful wars—but more broadly the goal is humanistic—to save the lives of all those on the receiving end of bullets and bombs.
Interestingly, U.S. troops at lower levels are generally blunt about what war is about. Talk to sergeants at the front and you’ll hear visceral truths, probably enhanced by choice expletives. I’ve heard U.S. Marines shout “Kill!” at graduation ceremonies. Killing, after all, is what war enables. Mass killing leads to atrocities like My Lai in Vietnam. This fact should never be sugarcoated.
Few people, however, truly want to confront war’s horrors. Gazing upon the face of war is profoundly disturbing, which is why we’re encouraged to look away. And so the face of war is airbrushed and camouflaged with euphemisms and buried under a blizzard of acronyms.
If we are to end war and prevent atrocity, we must seek to name things accurately while calling up mental images (no matter how disturbing) appropriate to the horrors of war. The guide at wordsaboutwar.org is an important step in that direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment