Code to save Free Speech on the Net, the economy, and yourself.
The European Central Bank is now pushing for the ability to take over a participating nation's sovereignty, in order to enforce the desired austerity measures. That is, a private bank will have higher authority than the State itself. What many people do not realize is that a central bank (or the Federal Reserve) does not belong to the public. Instead, it makes money from the public by lending money to the government (which it prints out of thin air), for which it later collects interest payments covered by our taxes. These institutions are in fact "for-profit" private organizations. The ECB is not public, Bank of England is not public, the Federal Reserve is not public. They are private institutions, much like WalMart or McDonalds. The only difference is that politicians in the western world have 'gifted' them the exclusive right to print their country's money, in exchange for hefty bribes. It is the equivalent of giving McDonalds the exclusive right to print dollars and lend them to the government with interest. In that context, the Federal Reserve is no more Federal than McDonalds, the Bank of England is no more England's than Tesco, and the same goes for the European Central Bank. The majority of their shares are privately owned, there is legislation in place to protect the identity of their shareholders, their names are not required to be disclosed in public filings, and on top of that, these institutions cannot be audited.

The fact that our nations cannot print their own money and that they have to borrow it from a private institution with interest, means that every dollar, sterling, or euro, is "borrowed into existence". We, as taxpayers, are effectively paying for that interest, and the central bankers are getting a free lunch. And it's a big one. And not only that, this system along with Wall Street gives them all the money they need to buy the political, the legislative, and the media scene, which is key for keeping this ponzi fraud running. That's how politicians and regulators appear so blind to what seems so obvious to the rest of us, and that's why the media feeds us propaganda, sports and soap operas, instead of screaming about the central banker occupation and educating the public.

A few years ago I finished my MBA at a top school. Later I was shocked to realize that we were first taught about the role of the central banks, but only later we were given the tools to understand cartels, collusion, etc.. Had this happened the other way around, the whole class would have screamed: "THE BANKING CARTEL IS THE BIGGEST OF THEM ALL!!!" I can't help wondering, do they own education too?

In the past, control was exercised by the means of force. Today the political theater has been invented, whereby marketing a good excuse to the public allows one in "democratic" power to steal their money and freedom without them revolting! Yesterday the chairman of the European Central Bank announced that the bank will seek to gain sovereign control of a participating nation when required, enforced by amending the EU Treaty. Greece has already lost their sovereignty, and more nations are next in line, including the US (beware of the IMF). That's not democracy, that's cleptocracy. It is institutionalized dictatorship, we are occupied by the central bankers! I mean, we really are at war and most people haven't realized. People's wealth and savings are to be stolen via benefit cuts, taxation, and for those with more liquid assets, by inflation. If the Treaty Amendments pass (and they will), nations will literarily be governed by the central banks on a political level. I'm trying to recall when was the last time in history that banks were "by law" more powerful than sovereign governments, and I honestly think this will be the first time ever.

The "Occupy" movement is a good start (i.e., occupy Syntagma, occupy Wall Street, occupy London, occupy Vancouver, etc.), but we also need unified and meaningful demands in order to succeed. That is, what is it exactly that protesters are demanding of governments? Because, let's not fool ourselves, it's not just Papandreou, or Bernanke, or Obama, or Merkel, or Cameron. This situation has been propagating for many decades, and with the support of government from all sides of the political scene. No matter who was up there today, the situation would have been exactly the same. These guys are just puppets of the money supply, because unfortunately, everything seems to have a price. The problem is systemic, and here's what I think our goal should be:

1) Move the money supply into the hands of the public, and out of private institutions (i.e., the central banks). The government should determine when to print, and should have the exclusive right to print their own money. The Keynesian argument that "the money supply should be independent of the money demand in order to control inflation", is the most ridiculous excuse I've ever heard! Take a look at today for proof, not only the governments in trouble get all the money they want anyway (thereby beating the purpose of "independent" money supply, i.e., the alleged role of a central bank or the Fed), but they also get in debt at the same time, effectively hurting the economy and the taxpayer further. Moreover, the principal cannot be returned at bond maturity, thereby forcing the government to borrow even more and feed yet another ponzi cycle. It's like a recursive call that never exits. Perhaps most importantly, if the controller of the money supply (i.e. a central bank or the Fed) is actually making a profit when they do supply money, they are obviously not "independent". On the contrary, they have the wrong incentive: to print and loan to the government as much money as possible, effectively stripping people of their wealth during the process (through inflation). In general, the idea of stealing money from the public and gifting it to private individuals (i.e., those who own the central banks) is just outrageous, and only serves the interest of those individuals and their puppet-politicians.

2) Split investment banks from depositor banks. At the moment investment banks use the people's deposits to gamble on Wall Street, and when they win they keep the profit, but when they loose they buy politicians to bail them out and have us pay for it. Instead, depositor banks should NOT be allowed to gamble on Wall Street at all. Only investment banks should be allowed to, with money deposited explicitly for that purpose, so when they loose on their bets, governments will have no excuse to bail them out, because no people will be loosing their savings. It will no longer be the public's problem, it will be that bank's own problem. When they make bad bets they should just be allowed to default without taking the economy down with them.

3) Today, 80% of the trades on Wall Street and London are made by computers which trade between them at very high speed, using "black box" algorithms designed to create "market movement" and illusionary transaction volume. In other words, the market is rigged and participating banks have institutionalized "insider trading". This is illegal for everyone else, but not for the banks. Also, because such computers are positioned in the actual stock exchange, they have the ability to "see" and jump in front of outside orders, effectively skimming off a few pennies on every transaction. That is institutionalized theft. All that has to go, high speed algorithmic trading should be banned.

4) Today, investment banks are allowed to sell assets that they don't have! It's called naked short selling. It means that banks can sell any paper instrument in any quantity they want, affecting price in the process, without actually having any physical possession of that asset. This opens the door to all sorts of scams and market manipulation. It's plain counterfeiting, fake paper assets that do not exist. It is institutionalized fraud. Wall Street and London should be regulated, naked short selling should become illegal and banned.

These changes will bankrupt most fraudsters who operate on cashflows stolen from people, pension funds, and governments. They will also wreck most of the cashflows used to fund bribing and lobbying, so central bankers will then have to use their own money to bribe politicians, legislators, media and educators. Because their own funds are much more limited than the collective taxpayers' funds, corruption will have much less leverage. Very importantly, this will give better chances to politicians who have genuine intentions to represent the people fairly, to compete against today's multimillion $ campaigns of the bribed puppet-politicians, which are funded by enormous donations from the banks. After all, studies have shown that who gets the most votes is directly correlated with the money that has been invested for political campaigning. In other words, it's just marketing.

5) Perhaps most importantly, preserve free speech on the Internet! With mass press and media focusing exclusively on shaping public opinion over the past few decades, the recent evolution of the Internet has given us a small window in modern history to override the propaganda machine. It has given the opportunity to investigative reporters, independent economists, whistler-blowers, academics, and basically anyone who wanted to challenge the status quo, to connect with the public and share their evidence or thoughts openly. It has enabled the surface of news that would have otherwise been suppressed. It has also enabled large numbers of people around the globe to coordinate their efforts, protest, revolt, and speak with one voice. This channel will not be allowed to stay open for much longer. Those in power are fully aware of the importance of the Internet, and are ramping up efforts to exert control. Keeping the masses asleep is of paramount importance to their success, for if the masses realize what's happening, they will revolt. Anyone remember "Net Neutrality"? Connect the dots.

The Internet as it is has a few weaknesses as a free-speech platform:
- Much of the information that flows around is sourced from, or destined to, centralized systems (i.e., Google, Facebook, Twitter, soon iCloud, the usual suspects..). This allows the big hubs to censor content when instructed, and of course to steal our personal information. Don't forget, when you are not paying for something on the web you are the product, not the customer. But that's another discussion.
- When controversial content gains sufficient traction, it can be simply switched off - and we've seen that with sites such as wikileaks, etc. This can be in the form of DDoS attacks, DNS and / or hosting attacks, etc.
- Perhaps even worse, the author of controversial content can be identified and pursued, discredited, imprisoned, killed, or all of the above.

I envisage a subsystem that uses the internet as its transport layer, but one that is not subject to the limitations described above. Information is broken into pieces, replicated multiple times, and distributed across net participants for storage. Encrypted. When information is requested for presentation (i.e., when visiting a compatible web site through a browser extension / app), small pieces of data are gathered from multiple available sources, and re-assembled transparently before presented to the user. There is no centralized storage, no single point to attack, block or switch-off, and no one channel to censor or mute. Further, the original author cannot technically be identified, ensuring the safety of whistle blowers. As a bonus, private information does not get stolen. I envisage an open-source, not-for-profit project, uniting all great minds who are fed up with the financial war that has been launched against us, threatening our freedoms - both financially and literally.

And yes, the propaganda machine could also use this new channel to misinform, in the same way that they use existing channels. But while it may be impossible to filter out fabricated content, at least it will be possible for everyone to speak freely. Propaganda will have to compete with accurate or sub-accurate content, and although it will be down to the reader to make a judgment and separate the truth from the lies, at least there will be a choice. Loosing the battle for freedom of speech on the Net will be tragic, and will crush any hope for people to ever find out how today's "democracy" really works, to organize themselves, and to have some chance of revolting and setting themselves free.

I call for all genius developers out there to unite for the ultimate cause. After all, if we loose our freedoms, who needs a startup? There will be no one left to pay for our services, buy us out, or IPOs. Prioritize correctly, we are at war.

PS
I'd like to touch briefly on the term "conspiracy theory/iest". Realize that this term has been coined by the very people who are responsible for the system that I described above, and that it is designed to make you feel bad about investigating the truth and fighting for justice and your liberties. It is designed to make you feel bad about calling a criminal "criminal". It is a clever attempt to associate you with a group of people who are "weird" and "delusional", and is used against anyone who challenges the status quo. Realize that anyone who calls you that, is really just saying: "I'm trying to discredit you because I can't possibly defend myself against your allegations". Take it as a hint that you are on the right track, and keep pushing.

DT