Free Republic

...If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be? At the risk of appearing predictable, the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking. I was raised reading it, memorizing passages from it and being guided by it. I still find it a source of wisdom, comfort and encouragement...

Dropped wallets, mile-long lines to buy a hotdog, and stolen cash are a thing of the past - at least at music festivals in Sweden. Cash is no longer king. Many Swedish music festivals will soon be entirely cashless, organizers announced on Friday. "All festival armbands will have chips," said Niklas Westergren, marketing director at FKP Scorpio, one of the largest organizers of music festivals in Sweden. "Before the festival begins, people can create a profile where they can add their bank details." Instead of keeping track of cash, festival-goers can transfer money from their accounts and then just swipe...

With the recent revelations by NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden, it’s no secret that we live on a planet characterized by mass surveillance and virtually zero privacy. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with the idea that we face threats, that a high level of national security is needed in order to keep us safe. Think about it, the United States pumps a large majority of their money into the Department of Defence. A state of fear, war and terror is needed to keep those funds flowing in that direction. Many people are starting to wake...

We're finally on the brink of the cashless society that futurists and other have been forecasting for years. The average consumer owns at least two credit cards and early adopters have begun ditching plastic for virtual wallets. Even businesses that used to rely heavily on cash — think taxis, food trucks or even craft fairs — can now go cashless, thanks to new technology like Square. Yet, the more we abandon paper bills for plastic, smartphone payments and even cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the perils of the new, cashless economy are becoming more apparent. Recent security breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus...

Humans who opt to have technological implants will become society’s biggest earners and the average working week could rise by a third to 50.5 hours, according to futurologists. Thirty years from now it may be necessary for human workers to receive implants providing “additional processing power for our brains”, they claimed. …

The data breach that struck our company spotlighted the sophistication of criminal hacker networks operating across the globe. We know the attack created significant concerns for millions of customers. We will learn from this incident and we will work to make Target, and the wider business community, more secure in the future. One step American businesses could now take that would dramatically improve the security of all credit and debit cards: adoption of chip-enabled smartcards. The technology is already widely used throughout the world. For many reasons, the United States has been slow to embrace the technology at home. We...

Will TSA agents be replaced by machines? One of the main reasons that Americans hate to fly is the Transporation Security Administration (TSA). Not only is it annoying to have to strip down at security checkpoints, submit to the occasional patdown and stand in long lines to verify our identities, but the entire system is inefficient. So what happens if we take humans off of those jobs and use machines instead? Several European airports are looking to answer that question by installing eye and face scanners, along with fingerprint readers, at security checkpoints. Many airports’ immigration checks have used these...

The recent health care reforms of Barrack Obama is being associated with the mark of the beast 666 . A controversial section of the Health Care Reform act talked of ‘(ii) a class II device that is implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining’. One of the class (ii) devices is an implantable Verichip or RFID-Chip. Verichip is an inject-able identification chip that can be inserted under the skin of a human being to provide biometric verification. It is about the size of a grain of rice and holds an identification number, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data, and a tuning capacitor all...

The U.S. is following Canada's footsteps regarding the production of pennies and nickels. According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Giethner, our U.S. Mint intends to remove the penny and nickel coins from circulation beginning early in January 2013.

In an article for the New York Times, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and his Polish counterpart Radek Sikorski have proposed a drastic revamp of the European Union. To provide the democratic legitimacy that must accompany greater centralization they propose a directly elected president of the European Commission and endowing the European Parliament with the powers to initiate legislation and not merely block it as is the practice today. … The centralization will not be merely economic, but will seek integration in foreign and defense policy that will no longer be hobbled by the need to achieve unanimity. Changes would...

This week science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon argues that everyone should be given a barcode at birth. “If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached - a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals.

Each week a global thinker from the worlds of philosophy, science, psychology or the arts is given a minute to put forward a radical, inspiring or controversial idea – no matter how improbable – that they believe would change the world. This week science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon argues that everyone should be given a barcode at birth. “If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached - a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals. It would be imprinted...

...What that basically means is that in an emergency situation, such as a declaration of martial law, chipping stations will be immediately deployed. It will be for you and your family, and will ensure that you’ll receive emergency rations and other services in the event of a serious catastrophe. Next, they’ll require all government healthcare recipients to be chipped in order to prevent rampant fraud. An off-shoot may be to implement nationwide chipping programs for those receiving any government benefits including social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance. Prisoners and even detainees will be part of the first adopter...

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn. “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which...

A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday.

A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday. The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science. "It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could...

People are already purchasing things, not with cash, but using the chip they have had implanted in themselves.

STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today. It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said. That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.

... "Republicans, however, later agreed to pass it by unanimous consent."

Presented in a speech from Santa Cruz, CA: Video, "Globalism and Tyranny: Dr. Stan Monteith & Sheriff Richard Mack Speech from Santa Cruz, CA": Read this International Document yourself The Earth Charter Initiative: Preamble We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common...