It’s a strange time to be a cryptocurrency enthusiast. By any rational calculation, the value of Bitcoin and other alternative money relative to government “fiat” currencies should be hitting unheard of highs right now. Yet Bitcoin seems stuck in a perpetual spiral around the US $40,000 mark and most other cryptocurrencies are similarly flat.

What’s up with that?

Last week, Canada’s self-proclaimed “temporary” dictator, Justin Trudeau, made it clear that established, government-created money kept in established, government-regulated institutions like banks isn’t safe if its owner disagrees with — or is  just  thought to disagree with — even a “liberal democratic” regime.

This week, established, government-regulated investments worldwide are flopping back and forth in price as investors try to figure out whether the politicians are about to take us over the edge into the world’s largest pointless and evil war since 1945, which would certainly entail both further investment turmoil and actions by governments to tax/inflate away, or in some cases just openly freeze or seize, your wealth.

If you think these things don’t affect you, the thing you’re doing that you think is thinking isn’t.

If you’re not moving your disposable cash into cryptocurrency or metals — which also seem to be running relatively flat pricing — you’re pretty much just begging Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, and a host of lesser gangsters, to rob you blind.

One caveat, which the Trudeau coup made explicit: Holding cryptocurrency doesn’t protect you if you keep it in exchanges with “custodial” wallets that can be frozen on orders from politicians.

To the extent that there are “old sayings” in a financial milieu that’s just entering its teens, one of the biggest is: “Not your keys, not your crypto.” If you keep your Bitcoin or other assets in the “custodial wallets” of government-regulated exchanges, they’re not safe.

The good news is that there are a number of “non-custodial” wallets available for download. They’re easy to find (Google is your friend).

These wallets don’t store your cryptographic keys; those keys are always in your hands. Your “account” can’t be “frozen” or “seized” — the app is just an interface for sending and receiving, not an actual storage location. Even if the app stops functioning, you can use your keys to reconstitute your wallet elsewhere, or just keep it on paper until you want to move cryptocurrency out of it.

The politicians keep proving you can’t trust their money, or their intentions. So don’t.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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After weeks of unsuccessfully attempting to either bully Russia’s Vladimir Putin into submission or bait him into war, US president Joe Biden may finally be looking for a face-saving exit from of the Ukraine “crisis” of his own making.

Reuters reports that Biden, at the urging of French president Emmanuel Macron, is willing “in principle” to hold a summit with Putin. “We are always ready for diplomacy,” says White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

Unfortunately, it’s US “diplomacy” which brought the US, Russia, Ukraine, and NATO to the current standoff.

As the Warsaw Pact disintegrated and the Soviet Union collapsed, US encouragement for those events included pledges that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization wouldn’t take advantage of the situation to expand eastward. Since then, NATO has inexorably pushed in that direction, nearly doubling the number of member states. Thanks, US “diplomacy.”

Things began coming to a head with the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine that replaced its “Russia-friendly” regime with a “US/Europe-friendly” regime in 2014, courtesy of Barack Obama. Thanks, US “diplomacy.”

Then in 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which forbade the US to place missiles within surprise strike distance of Russia, and Russia to place similar missiles within surprise strike distance of NATO. The US followed up by placing exactly such missiles in Poland, courtesy of Donald Trump. Some “diplomacy.”

Then the US went into overdrive (courtesy of Trump and Biden) against the opening of a pipeline (Nord Stream 2) which would have supplied Russian natural gas to Germany.  The pipeline would have been a force for peace insofar as Russia likes to sell natural gas (at a fraction of prices the US can offer), and Germans like to not freeze to death. To flip and paraphrase an old maxim, when goods are crossing borders, armies usually aren’t.

Putin finally drew a red line at NATO membership for Ukraine specifically, and against the US definition of “diplomacy” — “do exactly as we demand, without question or objection, and we may consider deigning to allow you to kiss our feet for a little while before kicking you in the face again” — generally.

Bullies really, really, really hate to be told “no,” and tend to go into full bluster and posture mode at the first hint of that happening, which explains the Ukraine “crisis.”

Unfortunately for THIS bully, Putin remains seemingly un-frightened. Even as the US and its poodles met in Munich, of all places, to issue more threats, he declined to play the role of Neville Chamberlain.

So now Joe says he may be ready to talk. Whether the willingness is real, or just another exercise in fake “diplomacy,” remains to be seen. As does whether Putin will give Biden a graceful/deniable way out of this mess, or insist on rubbing his nose in the thick layer of filth US “diplomacy” has previously deposited on the ground.

With two nuclear powers at loggerheads, the stakes are far too high for further attempts to disguise US hubris and megalomania as “diplomacy.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

In 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother in the head four times as she slept before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he murdered 27 students and faculty members before killing himself.

Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate attributed Lanza’s actions to “severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems” combined with “access to deadly weapons.”

On February 15, an insurance company representing Remington Arms, the maker of one of the guns Lanza used (a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle), settled a lawsuit with a wounded teacher who survived the Sandy Hook massacre, as well as the families of nine of the dead. The plaintiffs will receive $73 million.

The lawsuit was illegal  under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and therefore correctly dismissed in 2016 by the Connecticut State Superior Court.

Ignoring that law, the Connecticut Supreme Court revived it as a completely meritless claim under the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Law. Remington, the plaintiffs pretended, was responsible for Lanza’s actions because of its marketing practices.

Remington didn’t sell the gun to Lanza. Nor did Remington sell the gun to a third party who sold it to Lanza.  Lanza didn’t buy the gun. He stole the gun, from the mother he murdered with another gun, also hers, and not made by Remington.

He also stole her Honda Civic to get himself to the school where he committed his final crimes.  But, oddly, the Office of the Child Advocate’s report doesn’t mention “access to cars” as a factor in the massacre, nor have the plaintiffs filed suit against Honda.

How did a zombie loser of a lawsuit like this make it so far? Because politics, that’s why.

Whatever actual damages and pain the plaintiffs suffered, those damages and pain were not caused by Remington or Honda selling perfectly legal items — and not even to the perpetrator, but to another victim.

Nor were those damages the real point of the lawsuit. It was a “lawfare” project — abuse of the legal system to conduct political and financial warfare — from beginning to end. It was pursued on behalf of, and with the support of, groups dedicated to disarming prospective future victims of mass shootings.

Those groups refer to their preferred policies as “gun control” because “victim disarmament,” while far more accurate and honest, isn’t good marketing.

The point of this vexatious litigation was to discourage insurers from covering gun manufacturers. Not because those manufacturers are actual liable in any sense for other people’s use of their products, but because the plaintiffs and their supporters want to make it harder for you to get those products.

It’s a Pyrrhic victory. With more than 400 million guns already in the hands of Americans, and an an ever-increasing ability to manufacture guns at home without government “oversight,” they’ve already lost the war.

The unfortunate fallout of this “landmark” case won’t much affect the availability of guns. But, Remington’s insurers having paid the Danegeld, we’ll almost certainly see the Dane relying on the same bad arguments to loot manufacturers of other products.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY