Bitcoin isn't the lone currency in the country and the dollar is still widely used there. Expect more of this as the president of El Salvador has invited the ire of the US government by exposing the US's involvement in corruption in his country: https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1469045510442864642
The media is about to go full court press on this guy, BTC is just one angle they'll use.
"El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has been a relative success to date – the country became the first in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender; a larger proportion of the population has a Chivo digital asset wallet than a bank account"
Those who control the output of popular media firms are suddenly really nervous about Latin America in general. The right-wing coups in Bolivia and Brazil have failed, the ones planned in Venezuela never got off the ground, NED electoral interference in recent elections throughout the region didn't work, OAS is replaced by CELAC, the Chinese are preparing to dig an "inter-ocean canal" through Nicaragua, etc. Billionaires are nervous, so turn up the skepticism on anything produced by billionaire mouthpieces.
>I doubt any theories of “the media” having anything to gain from conspiring against the country
Aside from your sweeping and snide remarks on Americans, this is a woefully naive take. The US derives a lot of its power through the global monetary system. It can essentially isolate an entire country from large segments of global trade by simply sanctioning it (severing SWIFT transactions and threatening any banks with loss of settlement/SWIFT access/penalties for dealing with the country). Most of global trade is settled in dollars and a lot of reserves are held in dollars. The US exports dollars. The US takes advantage of those circumstances for its own benefit and seeks to preserve this system. BTC doesn't really pose a threat (not enough of it, slow throughput, too volatile).
Bottom line: There is clear incentives for the US to have its way in El Salvador and elsewhere. There is also a clear track record of the US doing anything it can, legal or illegal, to achieve its desired outcomes in South America. Leveraging a largely US based mega-corporate-owned media to assist in those endeavors is only natural (and blithely dismissed by midwits like yourself). The president of El Salvador has disrespected the empire, so El Salvador delenda est.
I'm not doubting your point that the U.S. has both the incentive and track record to interfere with El Salvador.
How do you back up your suggestion that the media is being controlled by U.S. interests, that there is collusion on the part of the media and U.S. government?
You’re right about all of that, and most people really don’t know the extent of corporate and security state capture in US “free press”… but it’s pretty useless as a defense of BTC policy in El Salvador, or as a critique of this article.
There is no defense of BTC inherent to my point, quite the contrary. BTC is largely irrelevant. What's relevant is that this leader in a South American country has thumbed his nose at the empire and the empire will seek to undermine him through all means at its disposal, media hit pieces included.
How is being a BTC bro thumbing one's nose at empire? The winners from any kind of successful BTC movement will overwhelmingly be just a slightly different set of private, unaccountable, economically (and hence politically) powerful people, who are even more ideologically predisposed to libertarian fairy tales.
BTC success in El Salvador would be a defeat for the vast majority of the populace, and a non-event for empire, except maybe to be used as a model to repeat elsewhere.
I'm not familiar, but can see how different things like that might be thumbing one's nose. There have been coups started over such things in Latin America in just the last couple of years. I'm totally unconvinced that El Salvador is a similar situation.
That’s a few ex-spies that get to spend retirement in relative luxury in return for occasionally and sternly looking into a camera and making some completely obvious point, but with a lot of authority.
There are more military veterans at McDonald’s, maybe even in relative terms. That doesn’t mean the Marines are infiltrating the McNugget supply.
But, yea, top politicians and “the mainstream media” sometimes have similar world views. That’s as non-scandalous as it is obvious and unavoidable.
We're well beyond your cognitive capabilities in this discussion if you're suggesting that a comparison between powerful ex-directors of the US intelligence apparatus landing post-gig jobs as political commentators at media organizations and "Marines" at McDonalds is apt (or even relevant).
If the topic is geopolitics with national security implications, I’d think the opinions and insights of former national security and intelligence officials would be valuable. There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy when Occam’s razor works fine here. They are getting paid to provide commentary people want to hear because of their unique background and perspective.
Now you’re textbook begging-the-question: you were trying to proof that “the media” is somehow corrupt. Your argument was their hiring of some former national security politicos. Now you’re arguing that practice is so obviously evil because of its association with the known-to-be-evil media?
I’ve heard better definitions of porn from the Supreme Court.
The snide remarks against Americans are essential for my point; Even if the media had those interests and ability to coordinate, their efforts are directed at an audience, and that audience needs to care for anything further to happen. And unless you find oil or Muslims in El Sal, they don’t and won’t.
This whole circus is about as contrived as it gets, complete with the "think of the children" gimmick. The timing, the theatrics, the manufactured celebrity of a middle manager at Facebook who is doing the "right" kind of whistleblowing that the establishment likes.
Facebook's predatory business model isn't unique or new. This is about raw power to censor.
I mean, it's a stupid plan. A whistleblower to advocate for censorship? Do they think the people are that stupid?
I guess like most things they don't need the majority of public on board, just a bit of plausible deniability.
If anyone was really concerned about the algorithms, they'd make transparency requirements, not censorship requirements.
If anyone was really concerned about the results of teenagers in the study, they'd go after TikTok, where teenagers are and where they rank them by looks.
If anyone was really concerned about bad foreign actors on social media they'd go after the Taliban and the Ayatollah on Twitter.
Actually this messaging has achieved significant impact in the past 3 years.
They might not have the majority of the public on board, but they do have the majority of Dems:
The Taliban aren't running disinformation campaigns on Americans via Facebook or Twitter.
Like it or not, people care more about a problem that affects them. That's like saying "if Americans /really/ cared about democracy, they would all be advocating for an invasion of Belarus".
I completely disagree with your assessment. No one is trying to silence people for saying "poor people are worth less than me, taxes are inherently evil, non-whites are probably illegals, and abortion is murder". I'm using the most offensive stereotypes to make the point that no one is even trying to ban those ideas.
The concern is the spread of lies known to be generated by bad actors, and how to handle it. Does "more truth" win against "lies"? Or should we try to limit facebook groups and twitter feeds that say Biden lost the election against all facts and evidence, when we see millions of people believe it just because it feels right to them?
It's not an easy problem, and doesn't seem to have any easy solution.
They are banning dissenting information that looks bad for them.
Similar to how CCP bans political dissent, Dems ban any stories on Hunter Biden for example.
The Dems also ban things that look bad on China, like the lab leak, I suppose because they share some of the same goals.
Also the election is perfectly reasonable to question. It's fine to question why the bell weathers and many other record indicators were broken during the 2020 election. It's fine to want to audit and make sure something is secure, especially after we spent $20 million and 5 years investigating the 2016 election for "Russian interference".
A simple search for "hunter biden laptop" on Facebook immediately kicks up three news articles, dozens of site posts, and (in the bubble I can see from my own friends list) several dozen posts on the topic from the point of view that the laptop was real.
If this is Democratic censorship in action, it's incredibly bad at its goals.
It was censored on all tech platforms at once when the story broke so the information wouldn't hit mainstream weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Yes eventually they had to allow it because it was blatant censorship, but the damage is done.
You are correct, so I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. Facebook explicitly suppressed the story.
> While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
-- Andy Stone, Facebook Policy Communications Director
Coincidentally enough, if you check Andy Stone's LinkedIn you will see that before he started working at Facebook he worked for various organizations associated with the Democratic party.
No one has called for bans of discussions of the lab leak theory (or no one mainstream). It was simply obvious that early harping about it from Tucker Carlson was a useless distraction in the early time of the pandemic, when the rest of the world was focusing on how to respond to the pandemic instead of beating the shit out of Asians and calling Coronavirus "Wuhan flu" to enrage the libs.
No one has "banned" discussion of Hunter Biden. (I just saw your reply to someone else saying it was censored from facebook; I would be interested in seeing any evidence of that). Downvoting isn't censorship. Lack of prioritizing coverage by a newspaper could be a concern, but that isn't censorship (and boy, do I have some news for you if you don't know how Fox does its reporting).
Republicans have barely lifted a finger when in power to secure voting systems, or take any interest in voting security. You keep on acting like Republicans care about election security (or election fairness at all) but they don't. They care about disenfranchisement.
There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020, as stated by Secretaries of State from multiple states Republican-led and Democrat-led. As shown by reviews in multiple states that were done for partisan reasons (we lost and we don't like Democrats winning).
Voting records might have been broken because political polarization is at a high note and we had a hugely polarizing president in office.
The investigation into Russian interference was related to disinformation campaigns and collusion with members of the Trump campaign, NOT voter or election fraud.
edit2: Ah, yes, you're talking about the discredited hitpieces that were released in the weeks before the election. Yes, it seems those were throttled, openly and transparently, due to them being discredited hitpieces.
> The main point is "It was simply obvious that early harping about it from Tucker Carlson was a useless distraction in the early time of the pandemic, "
"Simply obvious" - who is to draw the line?
Where do you find the impartial parties to do this job?
Do you trust facebook or other actors to have the power to decide that something is "simply obvious"?
IMHI, the society has worked out the rules: If there is a legitimate concern for imminante violavce safety etc, go to court. If that's not enough to persecute then perhaps free speech outweighs the concerns, as in practice, "simply obvious" is too vague of a definition.
> There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020
There was also no evidence of Russia collusion either, but that didn't stop a very long investigation from the FBI that was being advertised on all news channels.
You are factually incorrect re: Russia for reasons cited in the linked post above.
Re: Hunter, that is new info worth looking. Good thing it's not censored like the OP claims to say.
Some thoughts:
The democratic legislative agenda, and more broadly, the issues facing this country such as a pandemic, job uncertainty, healthcare and infrastructure should be a lot more important than the family drama of the Bidens. Republicans don't have any solutions to income inequality, healthcare access, homelessness or climate. Instead of coming up with a competing idea to the Democratic agenda, the Republicans only stand against ideas, rather than for any.
And, to appease your sensibilities: I would totally support a bill that banned family members of federally elected or appointed officials from serving on the boards of foreign companies.
It appeared now in some press, but NYP twitter account was suspended for even mentioning Hunter's laptop. It was definitely censorship on Twitter and Facebook even against one of the largest media entities in the country.
This is a surprinsingly balanced opinion on this matter:
There is no new info, it was all released before the elections. It's true, the moment was chosen for max damage against Biden, but it was/is a real thing.
It's not about "family drama" at all. That would be stuff like how Hunter had an affair with his dead brother's wife. This is about Hunter using his father's name to make money. It's not unreasonable to believe that using just the name is not that valueble for other parties, it's the influence they buy. And there are some direct hints to that in the emails, while also showing how Biden senior wants to protect his name.
And this goes on today. Hunter is selling art to anonymous buyers for 500k a painting. If this doesn't scream corruption, I don't know what.
I for one don't want such a ban on all businesses. If you do that, then why not ban internal businesses too? How about banning businesses before and after office? It makes little sense IMO. I am just absolutely appalled that the average american does not care even when they see this blatant corruption exposed. The same with Trump hiring his son in law at the WH...why is that acceptable?
I would rather ban trading stocks. That is a time sensitive act, you can easily ban it for the duration of the term. You could put all the owned stocks in a generic fund, say VTI or whatever, and not be able to touch it immediately for day trading.
It's true that in general Republicans want to be against things. After all, they are conservatives, they don't want to change stuff, they want to preserve the current order, that is their philosophy. I don't find it that surprising, and I don't get why people don't get this.
I am more progressive than conservatives, what you would call a socially progressive but lower taxes guy.
Your assessment is a bit off: while Trump was against corona measures, which is mind blowing, cause it was his own government doing them, he was very much for creating jobs. The tax cuts and import tarriffs were both meant to create jobs. The idea was to make it easier to invest in the US, and harder to import stuff, I think that's a pretty clear thing to do if you want more domestic jobs. These are long term measures, but it worked while there was no corona, unemployment was low across the board.
Healthcare is idiotic from both parties, Republicans don't want to spend money for other people (even though it would be cheaper overall to do so) while Democrats want to spend money on as many people as possible, without reducing costs, which make it impossible to cover everyone. Bernie's might be the only option that makes sense, but I haven't looked too much into it, probably because I despise socialists too much.
Are you saying the middle manager was bribed to leak docs or is some plant by “The Shadow Powers”?
Are you saying we shouldn’t care about a company targeting children with products it knows increase suicidal thoughts in substantial numbers of children?
Who is the establishment. Spell it out for me.
How did they orchestrate the Facebook leak? Spell it out.
This borders on conspiratorial. What "establishment" are you talking about? You might as well have said boogey man. I'm guessing you mean Democrats, since Republicans have greatly benefited from the distribution of propaganda and misinformation that social media like Facebook enables. These are the same Democrats who barely have a majority in Congress. They're struggling to pass legislation because the moment they lose even a single senator, they don't have the votes. The Republicans, who favor no intervention, are as much "establishment" as those who want to reign in FB and still hold a lot of power.
> Facebook's predatory business model isn't unique or new.
I don't get this. Nothing to see here because other companies are also bad? Someone who worked at the company leaked documents showing that Facebook's own research shows they are causing harm and we should do nothing because this isn't new? I don't understand this logic.
> This is about raw power to censor.
The implication here is that our society's free speech is largely dependent on Facebook. Free speech existed before social media, why is it that now it can't exist without it? Now the health of our democracy is linked to what Facebook, which is controlled by a single person, decides to do on the platform. That seems pretty unhealthy and something worth correcting. Government intervention has its downsides, but what else do you suggest?
>> I'm guessing you mean Democrats, since Republicans have greatly benefited from the distribution of propaganda and misinformation that social media like Facebook enables.
Right, propaganda is only a thing the Right peddles.
This isn't the first time we've seen this PR package. Some of the architects of the story are the same. I dunno whom one writes a check out to, to order this service, but I bet it needs a few more digits on it than I could muster.
You’re right, and that’s why the story is boring - nothing is going to happen.
Even if a majority could agree on a more heavy-handed approach to the tech giants (which it won’t), there’s been 0 discussion of the First Amendment implications of any proposed “solution.” For anyone who’s unsure or confused, the chances of the Roberts’ Court upholding content restrictions are zip. There will NEVER be a law that penalizes FB for promoting LEGAL SPEECH.
Though there are similarities, the US and Japan have very different circumstances. The US runs twin deficits, has extreme inequality compared to its peers, and extremely high costs for healthcare and education. This is not a recipe for stability.
I don't think it's as straightforward as you propose. Debt is itself deflationary and dampens growth. Public and private debt are already at global highs. Every dollar of debt is far less effective at stimulating the real economy than in decades past. Further, how much infrastructure spending would stay in a local economy without a significant manufacturing base?
I don't have the answers, but this seems to be borrowing from a playbook written for a different era.
Private debt is deflationary as people prioritize paying it off, reducing the velocity of money that would otherwise be spent.
The causality is reversed for public debt though - governments react to deflationary environments by increasing public spending to compensate for the private sector's propensity to save - as a "spender of last resort" as it were.
That's how Japan ended up the way it did.
Arguably it should have spent even more to offset deflation in the 90s.
>The causality is reversed for public debt though - governments react to deflationary environments by increasing public spending to compensate for the private sector's propensity to save - as a "spender of last resort" as it were.
Again, we're at levels record levels of global public debt. There is no free lunch. Debt financed spending is only possible through financial repression (real default through inflation in this case and in the 1940's following WWII, the last time US debt reached 130% of GDP) which ultimately drives speculation as capital searches for yield. Rinse repeat deflationary shock as a result.
All this speculation and capital going a little crazy searching for yield are side effects of an overabundance of capital.
We are seeing this now thanks to wealth inequality brought on by capital being given preferential tax status to labor for decades and stagnant wage growth again for decades.
This wasnt a problem following WW2 - wage growth was high and given vastly preferential tax treatment to labor.
>All this speculation and capital going a little crazy searching for yield are side effects of an overabundance of capital.
The stock market is where savers have been forced to. Pensions included. ZIRP/negative real rates have consequences. There "isn't too much capital". It's being misallocated due to misguided policy. It will get worse.
You need to start thinking in second and third order effects.
The data and financial instruments available to investors is a completely different universe than what they had in the 1940's. It's very unlikely that history will repeat itself.
The media is about to go full court press on this guy, BTC is just one angle they'll use.