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Showing 20 of 191 results by no to the gold cult
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Re: AMAZON GIFT CARDS 80% RATE BULK
by
no to the gold cult
on 07/05/2017, 17:04:03 UTC
Vouch 10+++
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: bitcoin intrusion in your life
by
no to the gold cult
on 02/06/2011, 09:58:54 UTC
You make it sound like it was planned, or managed even.

satoshi's early messages to cypherpunks are informative. there was a discussion of how bitcoin could be marketed to libertarians there, compared to alternatives (e.g., ones that relied on altrustically motivated groups).

Any links?

It is my beleif that Satoshi is not himself a libertarian or anarcho-cap, and that libs and an-caps only think that bitcoin is somehow theirs.  In fact I consider bitcoin to be anyones. Makes monetary policy one more thing that government need not to worry its busy little head about and screw up somehow, like the rotation of the earth or its distance from the sun.

The problem for anyone who isn't a libertarian (or at least a classical liberal) is that if bitcoin succeeds, governments will not longer have central banking and debt financing at their disposal. Without that, they have only taxation. But they would need a tax rate approaching 100% to fund anything close to their current activities, and that's not likely to be very successful. The bitcoin-driven black market would crush the tax-laden "white market". So all their wars and social programs are going bye-bye. Bitcoin may not produce a stateless society, but it sure as hell would destroy the modern warfare/welfare state.

I'm all for the end of the warfare state. Don't get why libertarians hate welfare so much. In my country welfare means affordable quality health care, affordable housing for low income families (instead of the mercy of slum-lords etc) and subsidized income for pensioners and so on. In the US (i think) welfare seems to mean having money taken from you and given to people you don't like, don't resemble, don't consider your fellows, and don't consider to be in the same society as you.

Maybe that's the difference, in the US they shout "We're #1" a lot to make up for not really feeling like they're all on the same team. They do not got each others back, it's every man for his self, fuck the other guy I got mine.

Elsewhere it's more like "Sure, me casa su casa, let's pool the heating bill and the medicine cabinet".

Anyway like I said, fuck the warfare state.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: The $1000 Bitcoin, yes it's worth at least that.
by
no to the gold cult
on 17/05/2011, 17:42:16 UTC
imagine if this was 1850 ...

I think that gold and silver horses will be the most widely used money form of transport, as they have been for the last 5,000 years of human history, and bitcoin railways will merely be measured in grams of gold instead of dollars used by the rich.

Careful with using history as a guide.  Longevity by itself does not guarantee stability.

There is nothing special about gold.  The only reason it has lasted as a money for 5,000 years is because there was no superior alternative for certain financial needs.  P2P cryptocurrencies may change that situation in a very short time.

IMO there is a real possiblility that gold will lose its status as a major exchange vehicle within less than a decade.  The result will be a crash in the price of gold that reflects its value in jewellery and electronics alone.



Gold has been used as a money for most of humanity's civilized history because it possesses all the necessary qualities for money: it is homogeneous, divisible, durable, and scarce. Bitcoin possesses all of those qualities, but it isn't as durable as gold. The fact is that bitcoin's usefulness as money is dependent on all the same things that gold is, and then it is also dependent on other factors as well. Gold carries no risks for technical failure. Gold will still be useful as money if the internet stops working. Bitcoin has advantages over gold, but they all depend on technology never failing to function as it is now. I don't trust that to be the case, and I suspect most other people won't, either. I value gold for its independence from technology.

As for me, if the internet stopped working, I suspect I'd have little use for lumps of shinny yellow metal. For me if the internet no longer functioned wealth would be in canned food, guns, ammo, shelter, medicines and basic tools. I guess wealth is a matter of circumstance.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
[SPLIT]Re: Bitcoin press hits, notable sources
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 20:48:17 UTC
Bitcoins is surely very dangerous. particularly to all the middlemen and other bankster parasites who need to start to think hard if there is anything they actual can do that adds value. Investing into business which trains former bankers to do something useful like electrician or plumber professions might be a good idea.


Hell no.  Those professions require years of committment to master, and flooding those labor markets are going to crash the skilled labor value.

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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: The $1000 Bitcoin, yes it's worth at least that.
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 11:14:21 UTC
"The Geeks will inherit the earth" have just turned into, "Geeks are the new aristocracy", and this is why:

Who owns BitCoins.. There must be some individuals hoarding a large amount, and I wish I was one them. If BitCoins were universally adopted, a BitCoin may well be worth 10,000$, in fact it would probably be worth a whole lot more. On top of that we would have deflation, due to no more BitCoins being generated, ever, and so the value would increase further. If there are 1 Billion people who may adopt this system, and 21 Million BitCoins, you'd be very fortunate (and rich) to own just a single BitCoin. Owning a single BitCoin may be the equivalent of being a multi millionaire today. Having a whopping 1000 BitCoins would rival Gates in his glory days.

The BitCoin system, is perfect, and perfectly flawed. I think we've just discovered how to turn Freetards into Bankers, our new financial overlords.

I have done my research, and conclusion is, it's gonna crash as soon as one of the Hoarders get's scared, and dumps his BitCoins on the exchange. I love the idea, but it reminds me to much of a time when many of my friends got into these "pyramid schemes" selling various crap. And let me just say, pyramid schemes work, when we all buy into them...

I think I will hold out for the next BitCoin, we can probably just reuse the software, it's open source right Wink, be an early adapter, promoter and make my exit.

Good luck to all you scammers, you don't deserve the money.

You can be whatever "adapter" you want, but I am early adopter and ain't going anywhere  Grin

Ignoring your Asperger like comment on my typo Smiley; Good job getting in early mate. So how did you hear about BitCoin (all of you early adopters)?

While returning from work drunk again late one monday night I was approached by this trustworthy looking pair and taken down a dark alley to be shown something cool.

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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Better Alternatives...?
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 10:32:29 UTC
I think you're right roy, dump your coins and move on to something more promising. You can unload any stupid useless bitcoins you have to the address in my sig before you uninstall the client. Smiley
i dont think i have any stupid useless bitcoins, theyre all too inteliigent Cheesy

dont get me wrong, i wish bitcoins success, but i also think it's worth looking at it from different perspectives...
i think bitcoins currently needs:
-more ways of getting btc (exchanges)
-more merchants offering clearcoin
because it will help fund gavin (which i think he deserves), and it provides more confidence/security in the system.

I agree. There's a lot to be built for this thing. It's like some sort of new America.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: bitcoin intrusion in your life
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 10:15:15 UTC
You make it sound like it was planned, or managed even.

satoshi's early messages to cypherpunks are informative. there was a discussion of how bitcoin could be marketed to libertarians there, compared to alternatives (e.g., ones that relied on altrustically motivated groups).

Any links?

It is my beleif that Satoshi is not himself a libertarian or anarcho-cap, and that libs and an-caps only think that bitcoin is somehow theirs.  In fact I consider bitcoin to be anyones. Makes monetary policy one more thing that government need not to worry its busy little head about and screw up somehow, like the rotation of the earth or its distance from the sun.
Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: bitcoin intrusion in your life
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 10:10:43 UTC
you mean me personally? not much yet. this is my tenth post!

if you mean the generic 'you', i'm not a hyper-rationalist. the forum's social, and that's fine. it doesn't need to be obviously productive.

obsessive checking of prices that you don't intend immediately to trade upon, though, is probably counterproductive. that is, it is probably worse than a waste of time. i say that knowing that it won't change anyone's behaviour, for obsessive forces are strong, as i am all too well aware personally.

One of the reasons I think bitcoin will succeed is the fanatical element.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: bitcoin intrusion in your life
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 10:05:31 UTC
the psychological papers have already been written. the (nonscientific but still interesting) classic is of course http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/051788433X. i don't mean that reference to suggest that everyone using bitcoin is deluded, but you might consider whether obsession is rational and what opportunity costs you incur as a result. the public is inclined to be less obsessive than the early adopters, of course.

but i agree that the technology is fascinating. the sociopolitical dynamics of the phenomenon are interesting as well, particularly the marketing of the technology by 'satoshi' as libertarian (which, when you review his original messages on the cypherpunks mailing list, was intentional and strategic). that could have gone very differently and was managed very well in order to appeal to one group of people who could serve as early adopters.

I wonder what opportunity costs you incur as a result of posting on this forum.

Cheesy

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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: bitcoin intrusion in your life
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 10:01:40 UTC
I answered 'Totally'

Somehow I wonder if I'll ever manage to free my mind from this whole project.

I think bitcoin is the first true techno-cult I have ever come across, with evangelical zeal at that.

I remember writing a sci-fi story about the rabid fanatical cult of Protocol 99, who destroyed the Autarchy of the Five Moons in their quest to divert enough energy into the governments Quantum-Transmitter and talk to a billion year old god-mind from M33. Bitcoins are a bit like that really.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Choose your race
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 09:50:34 UTC
Theres no option for Jew? I think op is a Nazi  Tongue

Most Jews are white, although there are also black African, Indian and Chinese jews. I was delighted when I discovered that there are Chinese jews.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Better Alternatives...?
by
no to the gold cult
on 16/05/2011, 09:47:13 UTC
I think you're right roy, dump your coins and move on to something more promising. You can unload any stupid useless bitcoins you have to the address in my sig before you uninstall the client. Smiley
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: "bitcoin is the most dangerous open source project ever created"
by
no to the gold cult
on 15/05/2011, 23:59:33 UTC
MtGox is probably going to go down at some point, targeted by hostile government action. Personally I don't think it's a bad thing, I agree with that crazy Russian guy allegedly behind the ddosing, the Gox is starting to resemble a monopoly and I don't like to see one organization acquire so much power over such a revolutionary economic force as btc.

I don't know what conversations take place in MtGox's 'boardrooms' so to speak, I'm sure the crowd behind MtGox are stand-up guys but the sooner we have a vast range of competing exchanges in various countries the better.
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Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Protectionism in Bitcoinistan
by
no to the gold cult
on 15/05/2011, 23:23:30 UTC
Making it difficult to purchase bitcoins with fiat via Paypal etc actually helps the bitcoin economy in a similar manner to protectionist policies and tariffs to promote domestic industries in developing nations. If people find it harder to just buy bitcoins via exchanges via PayPal, then they are more likely to offer products and services for bitcoin directly.

That's not to say that people won't be able to buy bitcoins in other ways, just that making it less straight forward involving delays by money-transfers or exchanging into this before exchanging into that (LR for instance) will develop Bitcoinistans domestic producers.

The more Bitcoinistan produces the more it will export to it's main trading partner, the United States of Fiatland. Right now most economic activity in Bitcoinistan revolves around producing narcotics that are illegal in the USF, providing casinos (as gambling is not illegal in Bitcoinistan) and real estate for the huge manufacturing and service enterprises planned to be constructed in Bitcoinistans wide and fertile wilderness. Immigrants are flooding to these verdant fields of Bitcoinistan seeking their fortune, so there's a growing workforce too.

Bitcoinistan will still need to import materials and energy though for manufacturing, but so long as the BOP remains positive...

This is where my vaguely worked-out theory of Bitcoinistan mumbles into silence.

Any thoughts?
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: The $1000 Bitcoin, yes it's worth at least that.
by
no to the gold cult
on 14/05/2011, 14:09:07 UTC
I saw this post on another forum and think it's worth mentioning here. Bitcoin must be subjected to all rigorous criticism and I'd like to see if the points raised can be countered...

Quote from: ComputerScientist;15945892
Bitcoin and similar technologies may have a significant role to play in the future, and the technology is legitimately elegant and adeptly applies several modern strains of cryptographical research.  

The recent speculative runup in the main Bitcoin block chain, however, is insane and entirely unfounded.  I can't promise that people buying Bitcoins now will lose money, for no one can easily predict where a bubble will end, but the grandiose claims of most of the people in the official Bitcoin forums are absurd and border on the illegal fraud that is explicitly disclaimed by people like Rezin777.  Investors would be well advised not to risk their money here.  There are several significant reasons for this:

1. Most of the exchanges between Bitcoin and other currencies are illegal or, at the very least, unlicensed and illegitimate.  They likely run afoul of US securities laws and US banking laws.  This is not just a pub-style bull session about law; it is the result of a reasoned consideration informed by legal experts, though of course it does not constitute legal advice to you.  Speaking generally, though, individual users of these exchanges risk having their assets and accounts frozen, risk running afoul of money-laundering laws, and generally risk losing even more than they put into the system.

2. Related, given that the exchanges are entirely unregulated, they can themselves be manipulating the market.  Given that Bitcoin is touted as a distributed currency, it is ironic that there is absolutely no check on "Mt. Gox," the major Bitcoin exchange, through which $200,000/day is (unbelievably) passing.

3. The Bitcoin protocol itself is not robust against denial-of-service and other attacks.  Many on the official Bitcoin forums have noticed this, and some have spelled out the attack vector in detail, but in short, a persistent denial-of-service attack that shuts down Bitcoin entirely can be mounted trivially for about $700,000 and can very likely be mounted with more sophistication at a substantially lower cost.  Indeed, the Google employee who (in a personal capacity) wrote a Java version of part of the Bitcoin client has recognized publicly that any sophisticated analyst could shut down Bitcoin at will, and he explicitly opposed calls for tests of the system's security by the general public.  The system has created the impression of security, but it is not secure.  What ARE secure and robust are the ideas behind the protocol; it is likely that something like Bitcoin will survive, in some form, in the future.  But the main block chain, in which everyone's presumed "wealth" inheres, is of questionable soundness.  (To say that more simply:  Bitcoin as an idea might survive, but it is far less likely that your "bitcoins" will.)

4. Given that technological attacks are possible, a corollary is that economic attacks in the style of securities fraud are possible as well.  If you can disrupt the network at will, you can easily disrupt the network in a strategic way in order to profit from the disruption's effect on the market.  Much unsophisticated analysis of Bitcoin rests on the premise that attacks aren't worthwhile to mount because it would be more profitable, with massive computing resources, to "mine" for Bitcoins, but that entirely neglects (1) the economic motivations that come from market manipulation and (2) ideological, political, regulatory, and commercial competition to the main Bitcoin block chain, which makes attacks relatively more attractive for many parties.

5.  To the extent the official Bitcoin forums have informed investors' views of Bitcoin, they have likely misled the public.  This is interesting from a legal perspective because it amounts to fraud without the individualized intent of fraud (can a mob "defraud" someone when no individual person in the mob is consciously telling a lie from which he or she expects to profit?), but several features of the official forum stand out immediately to informed readers.  These are largely tangents, but they may help paint a more accurate picture of the current users of Bitcoin than the official forums would:

 a. While I said at the outset that Bitcoin is legitimately interesting from a technological standpoint, it is not as creative or novel as most of the adopters seem to think.  Judging from the official forums, the typical adopter is someone with a modicum, but no more, of technical and theoretical experience.  (Perhaps of note:  those who are leading the ongoing "development" of Bitcoin are little different; they are not sophisticated or creative technological thinkers, and they struggle even with the details of the present protocol.  What this means for an investor is that Bitcoin is not practically resilient even to those attacks to which it might respond in theory, such as a compromise of the hash function it mainly uses or the development of a new "mining" technology that cheapens various attack vectors.)  To paint the picture very broadly:  these people know how to run Linux, compile programs on it, and maybe write a few lines of code; they can also evaluate at a very general level the claims of a cryptosystem.  But all except about five people on the official forums have no specific mathematical or systems training, and so the general discussion and enthusiasm creates the impression in a novice that Bitcoin is far sounder than it is.

 b. More obviously, the official forum is filled with disturbing and juvenile, extreme anarchism.  Comments like "I reject all systems of human morality and law" are common.  Uses of Bitcoin to encourage trading in illegal goods and services are routine; even "assassination markets" are encouraged.  Bitcoin as a virtual currency probably does not threaten governments the way that some novices initially imagine upon hearing about the technology, but when the only people buying Bitcoins are (1) engaging in illegal activities, (2) anarchist teenagers who want to promote the technology for ideological reasons, and (3) speculators, sound investors like those in the Fatwallet crowd would be well advised to stay away.  To a mainstream community of investors, however, the deranged rants that are commonplace among early Bitcoin adopters are perhaps reason alone to hesitate to adopt the technology.

6. Probably less significantly, but still interestingly, the Bitcoin block chain has now been demonstrated by at least two good analysts to be able to store arbitrary data "steganographically."  This means that the Bitcoin block chain can contain arbitrary contraband, so that merely by running the Bitcoin client, you may (at least theoretically) be propagating child pornography, Wikileaks, and other material in the style of Freenet and other distributed storage systems.  This is more theoretical than practical at the moment, but it is disconcerting.  How popular would VISA cards be if (say) 4% of them contained contraband information encoded in the holograms on the front of the cards?

NOTHING IN THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS INDIVIDUALIZED LEGAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE.  My motives for writing this are a distaste for fraud, even when that fraud is not consciously propagated.  As a researcher, I also have privately made proposals that address some of the technical drawbacks of Bitcoin, but I have no vested interest in seeing Bitcoin as a technology either succeed or fail.

Taken from here: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1090435/?start=192

I agree with some of what he says, I may even be guilty of some of it myself (this thread in evidence). If ultimately he is right, I'd rather the crash came sooner so that true development can proceed sooner. The upshot will still be worth it. The question is... can the bitcoin implementation of this idea withstand the pressure of the kind of values it must inevitably be expected to bear?
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Re: The $1000 Bitcoin, yes it's worth at least that.
by
no to the gold cult
on 14/05/2011, 14:03:33 UTC
"The Geeks will inherit the earth" have just turned into, "Geeks are the new aristocracy", and this is why:

Who owns BitCoins.. There must be some individuals hoarding a large amount, and I wish I was one them. If BitCoins were universally adopted, a BitCoin may well be worth 10,000$, in fact it would probably be worth a whole lot more. On top of that we would have deflation, due to no more BitCoins being generated, ever, and so the value would increase further. If there are 1 Billion people who may adopt this system, and 21 Million BitCoins, you'd be very fortunate (and rich) to own just a single BitCoin. Owning a single BitCoin may be the equivalent of being a multi millionaire today. Having a whopping 1000 BitCoins would rival Gates in his glory days.

The BitCoin system, is perfect, and perfectly flawed. I think we've just discovered how to turn Freetards into Bankers, our new financial overlords.

I have done my research, and conclusion is, it's gonna crash as soon as one of the Hoarders get's scared, and dumps his BitCoins on the exchange. I love the idea, but it reminds me to much of a time when many of my friends got into these "pyramid schemes" selling various crap. And let me just say, pyramid schemes work, when we all buy into them...

I think I will hold out for the next BitCoin, we can probably just reuse the software, it's open source right Wink, be an early adapter, promoter and make my exit.

Good luck to all you scammers, you don't deserve the money.

Peter Schiff? Really? I'm honored.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: The $1000 Bitcoin, yes it's worth at least that.
by
no to the gold cult
on 14/05/2011, 10:33:51 UTC
Reading this site regarding parabolic ascent in silver:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_08/hamilton051311.html

Very interesting. Perhaps btc will top out and crash then, I modify my opinion. Bitcoin will rocket away until after 2013 and then crash, and bottom out over a couple of grand relative to 2011 dollars. By then people might be using shredded 2013 dollars to stuff soft-toys or something.
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
The $1000 Bitcoin, yes it's worth at least that.
by
no to the gold cult
on 14/05/2011, 09:43:14 UTC
A lot of talk about bubbles right now, and to be fair I'm not surprised, look at the rocketing growth right? But think about it, with the strength, vitality and possibilities of this idea, bitcoin should be worth at least $1000 a coin. Frankly it's probably worth at least $10,000... this is why I think so:

The legs on the bitcoin can carry it all the way to be a major force in the economy within ten years, and as there's only 21 million of them a global market worth billions of 2011 dollars in bitcoin will need a single bitcoin to be worth thousands of 2011 dollars. Ideas this groundbreaking are not free, they are expensive. If bitcoin makes this much sense, you should need a mortgage or a loan or something just to buy one. We're ahead because the world hasn't noticed yet, but it's waking up and we can see the effect in the up-changing value of btc.

I'm not trying to talk the market up, honest, this is what I actually think. I won't try to talk the market down either in the hope of buying more because I am a loudmouth and won't keep my goddamn opinions to myself. And I don't think bitcoin is bubble-proof... I think it is very doubtful however that a major bitcoin bubble could form before 2013. Everyone knows that on that date bitcoin will become twice as expensive to supply regarding capital costs. When the bubbles do start to arrive (from sectors that have adopted bitcoin booming and busting for their own reasons) I doubt the bottom-outs would be less than a couple of grand.

It's like the housing bubble, it didn't happen because people suddenly lost faith in houses, it happened because the credit used to buy housing collapsed like the house of cards it all was. It was actually a debt bubble. Happily people aren't taking out loans to buy bitcoins and never will need to. If $100 dollars is all I have to spend and buys me 0.001 bitcoins, then that's how many I would buy, I am still saving my money and gaining additional buying power relatively quickly and that's the main thing.

The launch of that new and exciting but poorly named stock exchange (GLOBSEX?) is to me a further signal that we shouldn't think current bitcoin prices are realistic. Anyway these are just my thoughts, so tell me if I'm wrong.
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Re: Gavin will visit the CIA
by
no to the gold cult
on 12/05/2011, 22:17:46 UTC
I don't entirely disagree with your sentiment but... this is the CIA we are talking about.

We are talking about the people that have done everything from setup secret brothels to study what happens when they slip people LSD 40 years ago, to helping run secret prisons and torture facilities, run guns, introduced crack into inner cities... and regularly murder people with remote controlled planes.

The CIA is, in my estimation, the enemy of all civilized human beings.

They're just protecting American profits, and their own. It's self-defense, really. But, uh, I digress.

Lol, a psycho breaks into his neighbors house, kills the children, rapes the wife, steals the stuff. It's ok though, he's just protecting his interests. "What's yours is mine fella."

You pretty much just summed up the nature of government across all of human history.  This problem isn't limited to the US government, they just happen to have bigger guns and more resources for bullets.

Yeah I know you believe that, and I think I've made my position quite clear. Wink

*tries not to derail yet another thread*
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Merits 1 from 1 user
Re: Gavin will visit the CIA
by
no to the gold cult
on 12/05/2011, 22:12:30 UTC
⭐ Merited by JayJuanGee (1)
I don't entirely disagree with your sentiment but... this is the CIA we are talking about.

We are talking about the people that have done everything from setup secret brothels to study what happens when they slip people LSD 40 years ago, to helping run secret prisons and torture facilities, run guns, introduced crack into inner cities... and regularly murder people with remote controlled planes.

The CIA is, in my estimation, the enemy of all civilized human beings.

They're just protecting American profits, and their own. It's self-defense, really. But, uh, I digress.

Lol, a psycho breaks into his neighbors house, kills the children, rapes the wife, steals the stuff. It's ok though, he's just protecting his interests. "What's yours is mine fella." They are a terrorist organization, they are not the only apparatus of state terror out there, but that is what they are. Do you feel the need to make excuses for the KGB/FSB too? What about Saddam Husseins Mukhabarat, or the SS or non-state players like Al Qaeda?