The Actual Impact Of Bitcoin On War Authored by Matthew Pines via BitcoinMagazine.com, The impact of Bitcoin on war will not simply be the eradication of violence, a problem of humanity since the dawn of time… As bitcoin has appreciated and seen increased global adoption, it has emerged as a macroeconomically relevant phenomenon. This has turned formerly theoretical debates into live, practical questions on how Bitcoin will affect geopolitical relations. The current balance of global power is defined by complex arrangements of military alliances, trade flows, ethnic and religious affinity, cultural influence, linguistic agreement, and, of course, national borders. In this author’s view, it is hubris to expect Bitcoin to singularly override or sweep away the accumulated weight and historical inertia of this tightly-bound matrix of interlinked forces. Of course, it is tempting to smooth over this irreducible complexity and hypothesize a “saved” world, where bitcoin is that “one weird trick” to fix all that’s wrong with human civilization. This temptation to “immanentize the eschaton” is common among totalizing belief systems and becomes an emotionally attractive picture of the future, especially in an era where formerly trusted verities of common belief are losing their stabilizing force. And yet, we can still, and increasingly must, analyze the question of violence – especially state violence – in a future world order where Bitcoin is a major, if not the dominant, economic and political force. Some reason that Bitcoin will positively adjust the calculus of violence by which states decide how and where to project power and secure their respective interests. By shifting a large portion of national wealth from easily seized and vulnerable tangible assets into digital form, the incentives to violent conflict – as a means of confiscating this wealth – are substantially reduced. This moves the locus of inter-state conflict

The navies of Iran, China, and Russia launched a three-day joint maritime drill on Friday in the northern Indian Ocean designed to signal a “common future” between the three nations, Iranian Rear Admiral Mostafa Tajoldini told Iranian state television.

Durham Vs Horowitz: Tension Over Truth & Consequences Grips FBI’s Trump-Russia Reckoning Authored by Aaron Maté via RealClearInvestigations.com, As he documents the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in generating false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham has also previewed a challenge to the FBI’s claims about how and why its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began. At stake is the completeness of the official reckoning within the U.S. government over the Russiagate scandal – and whether there will be an accounting commensurate with the offense: the abuse of the nation’s highest law enforcement and intelligence powers to damage an opposition presidential candidate turned president, at the behest of his opponent from the governing party he defeated. Trump-Russia Special Counsel John Durham has made plain his dissent from the findings of … … DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who concluded the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane was properly “predicated.” The drama is playing out against the clashing approaches of the two Justice Department officials tasked with scrutinizing the Russia probe’s origins and unearthing any misconduct: Durham, the Sphinx-like prosecutor with a reputation for toughness whose work continues; and Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general, whose December 2019 report faulted the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe but nonetheless concluded that it was launched in good faith. The bureau’s defenders point to Horowitz’s report to argue that the FBI’s Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, is untainted despite its extensive use of the discredited Clinton-funded Steele dossier. Though highly critical of the bureau’s use of Christopher Steele’s reports, Horowitz concluded that they “played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening,” which he said had met the department’s “low threshold” for opening an investigation. But Durham has made plain his dissent. In response to Horowitz’s report, the special counsel announced that his office