Every revolution needs a good crisis in order to germinate its seed. The cashless revolution is no different. ~Patrick Henningsen
Depending on who you ask, the idea of a cashless society is either a utopia of modern convenience or an Orwellian nightmare, but recent international events coupled with stories about ATM cyber-hacks are fair signals that a major push for the cashless society is underway and will intensify.
It seems the acceleration toward a cashless society is becoming like one of an amusement arcade amid the range of novel payment devices coming onto the market. These innovative payment devices are yet another novelty enticing customers toward fully traceable and trackable digital transactions, indeed cultivating user familiarity with a variety of cashless and contactless methods of payment. ~Steven Tritton
In India, the government just banned the use of two of the most commonly used bank notes, the 500 and 1000 rupee notes (worth about US$7 and $14 respectively), and is reportedly making a move to restrict gold imports. Citibank in Australia just announced that it would no longer accept coins or notes, opting instead for digital transactions only. Denmark, however, may be the first country to go fully cashless, as its government has already begun implementing a program to move retailers off of cash, with the openly stated endgame of creating a fully cashless society.
A cashless society is “no longer an illusion but a vision that can be fulfilled within a reasonable time frame,” said Michael Busk-Jepsen, executive director of the Danish Bankers Association. [Source]
Is Resistance Futile, or Just Inconvenient?
To some, convenience and trendiness are the greatest selling points of a digital currency, but in order to make it obligatory for everyone, there must be a public safety threat included in the sales pitch, so that the government can claim that it is acting in our best interests when they force us to accept a digital currency.
Because an all-out ban on coins and bank notes is not something that would not be unanimously acceptable, to push for such a drastic societal and cultural change, a predictable game plan is being used. It’s the simple dialectic of problem, reaction, solution.
We saw this in play as the threat of terrorism was used to fundamentally change the Bill of Rights and open the door for the creation of a surveillance and police state. We are seeing this in play right now as the push to control information has been introduced as a war on so-called fake news. Now, tell-tale signs are now emerging that the same type of media push is underway to make cash seem like a risky inconvenience in the modern technological world.
READ: Financial Whistleblower Explains What’s About to Happen to the Economy
False Flags in the War on Cash
Consider the following stories, which foreshadow a coming public relations campaign to warn that developments in cyber warfare make the distribution of cash via ATMs too risky to continue.
This first report from Reuters covers ATM attacks in Europe:
Cyber criminals have remotely attacked cash machines in more than a dozen countries across Europe this year, using malicious software that forces machines to spit out cash, according to Russian cyber security firm Group IB.
Diebold Nixdorf and NCR Corp, the world’s two largest ATM makers, said they were aware of the attacks and have been working with customers to mitigate the threat. The newly disclosed heists across Europe follow the hacking of ATMs in Taiwan and Thailand that were widely reported over the summer.
Although cyber criminals have been attacking cash machines for at least five years, the early campaigns mostly involved small numbers of ATMs because hackers needed to have physical access to cash out machines.
The recent heists in Europe and Asia were run from central, remote command centers, enabling criminals to target large numbers of machines in “smash and grab” operations that seek to drain large amounts of cash before banks uncover the hacks.
“They are taking this to the next level in being able to attack a large number of machines at once,” said Nicholas Billett, Diebold Nixdorf’s senior director of core software and ATM Security. “They know they will be caught fairly quickly, so they stage it in such a way that they can get cash from as many ATMs as they can before they get shut down.” [Source]
On November 20th, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported on the following attacks in Asia, under the headline, “Hackers Program Bank ATMs to Spew Cash – After crimes in Taiwan and Thailand, the FBI warns of similar potential attacks in U.S.”
In Taiwan and Thailand earlier this year, the criminals programmed bank ATMs to spew cash. Gang members stood in front of the machines at the appointed hour and collected millions of dollars.
Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned U.S. banks of the potential for similar attacks. The FBI said in a bulletin that it is “monitoring emerging reports indicating that well-resourced and organized malicious cyber actors have intentions to target the U.S. financial sector.” [Source]
Of key significance is the warning that large-scale attacks on ATMs are imminent in the United States. This will be pitched as a problem that must be solved by the cashless society, with every corner of our financial lives being watched over by the very banking system that is already plundering our economy and making debt slaves out of our posterity.
Easiest way to get your first bitcoin (Ad)
A brief primer on the concerns of centrally managed digital currencies in a cashless society:
Liberated from the burden of physical currency, consumers could make purchases from the convenience of a mobile device. Every transaction would come equipped with fraud protection, reward points and a digital record of its time and location. Comprehensive tracking could help the Internal Revenue Service reclaim billions of tax dollars lost to unreported income, like the $80 I made selling a used refrigerator on Craigslist. Drug dealers, helpless without an anonymous medium of exchange, would acquire wholesome professions. El Chapo might become a claims adjuster.
But this universe is missing one of the fundamental aspects of human civilization. A world without paper money is a world without money. Money belongs to its current holder. It doesn’t matter if a banknote was lost or stolen at some point in the past. Money is current; that’s why it’s called currency! A bank deposit, however, grants custody of money to the bank. An account balance is not actually money, but a claim on money.
This is an important distinction. A claim is only as good as its enforceability, and in a cashless society every transaction must pass through a financial gatekeeper. Banks, being private institutions, have the right to refuse transactions at their discretion. We can’t expect every payment to be given due process. ~Elaine Ou
Time.com reported on the move to ban large US and Euro bills by 2018, citing the need to reduce crime, making the following statement:
Large currency denominations are associated with crime. They also make it easier to withdraw large cash sums from banks. [Source]
As if withdrawing cash from a bank is a criminal act. As if holding any or all of your earnings in your hand is a criminal act. As if having a way to protect ourselves from inflation and currency manipulation is a crime. As if we can ever have a crime free world when we are governed and ruled over by the biggest criminals the world has ever seen.
Read more articles by Dylan Charles.
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com, the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com, a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at [email protected].
Like Waking Times on Facebook. Follow Waking Times on Twitter.
This article (Problem, Reaction, Solution – How the Government Will Take Your Cash) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.
~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family…
Good cause for a civil war which could be the point.
You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid. Rahm Emanuel – White House Chief of Staff under Barack Obama
Great article, and your last paragraph is exemplary~ This movement to a cashless society does nothing but further their absolute control, domination and ownership agenda, and they use their Hegelian dialectic of thesis- antithesis- synthesis in just about everything they do. What’s scary is, they’ve been using it all along, we just didn’t see it. More hidden in plain sight corruption exposed to the dark of day.
What we as unwitting slaves need to consider about this switch to digital banking is that it will erase our ability to buy and sell from each other – no more private party transactions without a scanning device. How will we pay our babysitters? How will we loan someone money? How will we buy produce from our local farmer? How will we toss a $20 to a homeless person on the street who has no card at all? The list is endless, the questions legion.
Unless we all have scanning devices, which of course would have to be hand-held therefore easily stolen and hacked, how is a cashless system different or safer than atm cash machines they complain are not safe? It isn’t. It’s exactly the same, and they know it, in fact it’s worse, and it will prompt criminals to rob us instead of those machines. The chaos this will cause makes my hair hurt, but of course we all know chaos is required for them to rush in with their “Order”.
I don’t know about you, but I most certainly wouldn’t offer my bank card to a stranger selling an iphone or a used car. How that makes sense to anyone is beyond me. I think a huge problem today is that people just don’t think things through, they see “convenience” and believe the propaganda the government puts out at face value when the truth is, the government has two of them.
“As if withdrawing cash from a bank is a criminal act. As if holding any or all of your earnings in your hand is a criminal act. As if having a way to protect ourselves from inflation and currency manipulation is a crime. As if we can ever have a crime free world when we are governed and ruled over by the biggest criminals the world has ever seen.”
Yup, the last paragraph is indeed exemplary.
Very, very, very well-written comment, sir.
Thanks so much but I’m not a sir, I’m a lady. 😉
Oh….alright, ma’am.
…..a well-written lie: India is not banning currency notes but replacing them. In Australia, it is the private bank Citi which is going cashless on their own…nothing to do with the government. Wake up, sheep!
More fake news: “In India, the government just banned the use of two of the most commonly used bank notes, the 500 and 1000 rupee notes ..”
The government, as in many nations, is replacing the notes with more secure paper.
The Wall St. Journal reports: ”
WORLD ASIA INDIA NEWS
India to Replace Largest Bank Notes
Country plans to fight counterfeiting by replacing old bills with new 500- and 2,000-rupee notes.”
So unless you are a counterfeiter, this shouldn’t concern you. What should is the lies the author is telling you. That should get you hopping mad. My guess, without looking, is that the sheep among us will swallow this lie and grow indignant, not noting that they are being played as fools.
It’s easy to believe everything you read in the Alternative Media and accept it as gospel much the way sheeple read newspapers and believe the BS as fact. Lying fear-mongers exist on both sides of the divide and stories get passed from site to site with little or no research into the original source. I’m not saying Activist Post is spreading dis-info, rather it’s wise to get more than one perspective on things. Why for example did the Australian Government just go to the bother of bringing out a new $5 bill if the governments of the World are in the process of eradicating cash altogether? I’m afraid it doesn’t add up. With no cash how would produce markets, second-hand vendors and drug dealers get by? And let’s not forget who the main beneficiaries of the drug-trade are (read or watch Gary Webb’s “Kill the Messenger” if you’re uninformed in that department, or even better: John Potash’s “Drugs as Weapons Against Us). I doubt if the PTB are stupid enough to cut off their noses in spite of their face and suddenly legalize all drugs. Because Big-Brother is such a paranoid control freak who gets off on punishing people for victim-less crimes I doubt that would ever occur.
No, no and no. The “secure paper” promise was just a gimmick. The core idea is actually to turn India into a cashless country, so that all financial transactions can be monitored directly by Governments, banks or other financial organizations (and indirectly by global elites & international bankers). There have indeed been some positive effects of demonetization in India, mainly with regards to reduction of certain amounts of black money, decrease in exorbitantly increasing real-estate prices, and so on. BUT, at the end of the day, people are sacrificing their personal human rights & freedoms for the sake of the superficially pseudo “common good” of reducing corruption, illegal money, counterfeit currency, etc, at the COSTS of their OWN hard-earned money, which can be taken, revoked or destroyed at any time, by Governments, Banks or Legal systems. There could have been other alternatives to stop corruption & illegal finances, but demonetization was certainly implemented directly by the globalists, especially in the developing Asian country of India (which has a large amount of population) for ulterior motives.
So if I understand the premise here correctly the fight is to keep the paper money prison in place as opposed to the digital money prison? Irony?
Well, you’re actually semi-correct on that one. When people are given freedoms & free-markets, many almost always misuse them. Common people compete with each other on a regular basis. Frauds, corruptions, crimes, illegal stuff, smuggling, hoarding, black money, etc, are just a few examples. People then judge each other by how much resources, wealth, properties, assets, contacts, etc, they have, or else they are ignored, bullied, censored, defamed or killed competitively. The society becomes are mad jungle rat race wherein people keep fighting among themselves, to climb up to the top of the chain.
On the other hand, when you control people’s finances & resources, then, apart from the “already-formed” global elites or “already rich/wealthy/powerful/etc” kinds of people & groups, the vast majority of world’s general population are kept equally poor or just barely lower middle class (just enough to survive). Then, seeing that none can cheat their way onto becoming rich, they stop competing against each other that much (although internal rivalries & jealousies still exist, that’s human nature), or perhaps unite themselves to overthrow the common “enemies” (elites).
So yeah, one is indirectly paper money prison, while the other is directly digital money prison. If people could behave themselves in organized ways when freedoms were fully available to them, then there wouldn’t have been any need for having Governments, Laws, Legal Systems, International Organizations, etc. The global elites throughout the world are precisely operating on that point (although they themselves are wrong in many, many ways). They want to create a low-populated and highly-controlled world, wherein they (& their generations) can continue to rule the world throughout the future. Either people compete or kill people, or elites control and rule people. It’s a lose-lose situation in either case.
When an article contains the words “so called fake news” the article can be dismissed completely. It’s one of those tell-tale signs.
Speaking about the recent phenomenon of demonetization in India, I mean, this happened all of a sudden, and totally without the public’s consent. The BJP government came into power in India in 2014. Since their arrival, they have been constantly attacking the middle-class (both lower & higher) income generating and safeguarding policies, and several other small & medium enterprise operations, such as those of jewelers, traders, business-persons, shop-owners, etc, as well as the unorganized & daily-wage sectors, such as rural livelihoods, farmers, laborers, workers, and so on. Already well-established people & elites continue to make money (and have little effect on them) while the vast majority of middle class & poor people are the ones who will be the actual losers. Governments across the world have indirectly associated themselves with the upcoming world order, and are steadily stripping off their regional populations’ wealth, rights, freedoms, and other things.
Of course, corruption, black money, illegal rising prices of properties, assets, commodities, etc, ARE genuine issues that need to be dealt with, BOTH from the perspectives of elites, wealthy, powerful, famous, etc (politicians, celebrities, sports-persons, business-persons, etc) and within the common people (government & private officials, positions of powers, misuse of authorities, threats & crimes, competitions & complications, bullying & defamation, etc), BUT not that the cost of the incomes, economic freedom & human rights of the vast majority of common populations.
Debit cards, credit cards, online banking, mobile banking, internet transactions, E-Commerce, M-Commerce, etc, are just the synonyms for various financial and economic activities in cashless societies. While there is absolutely no doubt that demonetization and restriction of physical currency does lead to reduced cases of black money, corruptions, terror issues, crimes, drugs & smuggling issues, real estate issues, illegal properties & assets, etc, there is one major factor that’s overlooked in all of this: The Government and the banks then have almost complete CONTROL over the financial aspects of the general public. Also, really clever & intelligent criminals & bad people, along with global elites & already-wealthy people, won’t be affected that much, because they will always find alternate ways or influences to continue. But the average middle-class people, semi-corrupt people, ethically-differing people, small & medium enterprises & companies, small & medium business-persons & financial-groups, poor people, daily wage & unorganized sectors (all-in-all, the vast majorities of the general masses), will be HEAVILY affected (and controlled as a result). This is nothing different from tyranny or authoritarianism.
That’s all well and good but what does it have to do with governments phasing out cash?
Perhaps next time you should write a book, it might take up less of your time.