Australian oppn. leader wants to do something about Bitcoin, because terrorism and crypto Australia's opposition leader Bill Shorten has suggested that governmental action to deny use of encryption to terrorists should extend to Bitcoin. In a speech to the House of Representatives yesterday, Shorten fell into lock-step with Australia's plan to compel technology companies to build not-backdoors into their products …
I'm not sure Mr. Shorten could have sounded any more old if he'd broken out the rocking chair and walking stick and followed by shouting at the interns to get off his damn lawn...
I'll be honest, I've never really given Bitcoin enough of my attention to fully understand it, but I'm at least bright enough to know that there are people out there who do. If you're looking to know more about such a thing, you trust these subject matter experts, and listen to what they have to say.
It's also not like money laundering hasn't been a thing for decades...
Breaking bitcoin is not about anonymity or terrorism it is about controlling money and being able to tax shit. Bitcoin gives rise to a potential "World Currency" that is harder to print like it's going out of fashion or tax into oblivion to pay for your asshatted spending plans. At present banks control money (and Governments) and they'd like it to stay that way. Disintermediation is not in their interest.
A lot depends on one's own stance. As one of Geoffrey Blainey's students once remarked: "When you're to the left of Pol Pot, everyone else is right wing!" Still, you do have a point... When I resigned from the ALP, I wrote in my letter: "If you ever hear of anyone starting a Labour Party in Australia, please let me know because I'd love to join."
"If you ever hear of anyone starting a Labour Party in Australia, please let me know because I'd love to join."
Right, I once thought there was a "Labour Party" in Oz in the days of the very effective anti-Vietnam War demonstrations but I was very wrong. From at least the Chifley Labor Government of 1945 onward The Australian Labor Party hasn't been able to organise its way out of a wet paper bag on the deck of a sinking ship without a fight.
More accurately they're centre-right, neoliberal economically and strongly authoritarian. They're also equally lickspittles to the USA even with Trump in office.
They keep a couple of left sounding soft policies on the books but never act on them.
The Unions that fund them are mostly leftovers from the catholic anti-communist forces. They were never even vaguely left wing nor for personal rights. It's why they've been so week on the damning investigations into the church in education also.
Why do these people continue to open their mouths about things they simply don't understand?
The whole Australian government is a joke when it comes to technology understanding, hell, our prime minister is the guy who managed to shaft the public on the NBN as communications minister.
It's 2017, we should have specific people in high level government / the cabinet with proven knowledge and preferably qualifications in Technology and only allow these people to talk about technology rather than allowing the 2 most senior politicians to sound like my Nan talking about "that infernal machine"
"It's 2017, we should have specific people in high level government / the cabinet with proven knowledge and preferably qualifications in Technology and only allow these people to talk about technology rather than allowing the 2 most senior politicians to sound like my Nan talking about "that infernal machine""
How would you go about forcing this into place AND keeping it in place given the political environment? You're trying to force intelligence on a body that PRIDES itself on being stupid.
If you want to move money around, create a web of offshore companies, pay an accountant and hide your funds in tax havens, just like real companies do. Armament manufacturers even get the president to rubber stamp deals.
Bill Shorten says there are things 'we do not know enough about.....
So Bill, get someone to talk who does know, and if you can't find someone on your team of dickhead politicians, stand aside for a new generation.
You can't see the world is being run by conservative dickheads who don't have a clue.
The time is soon coming when we put the bastards up against a wall...
"Vive la Revolution"
"There are ... things we simply do not know enough about to deal with properly"
He should have just stopped there. It seems to apply to pretty much all politicians in the Anglophone countries (with the occasional exception of Canada). They don't know enough about anything to to deal with it properly.
Bitcoin is doomed. Those comments would be the first major shot across the bow, ponzi scheme would be the next (first crypto grinders get money for free, late comers pay the price) and a straight up history of criminal activity. That it comes from the opposition leader in Australia, is definitely a five eye feeler for a rest of the block push.
Can they kill crypto currency overnight, absolutely, and this would be a major sign that they working up to it. Next up will be talk about foreign governments using it for secret espionage payments.
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