Monthly Archives: March 2022

Putin’s Anti-Gay War on Ukraine – Boston Review

Posted: March 17, 2022 at 2:49 am

In Vladimir Putins speech on February 24, announcing what would be a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (in his official Orwellian euphemism, a special military operation in the Donbas region), a whole paragraph was dedicated to the Wests supposed undermining of traditional values:

Properly speaking, theattempts touse us intheir own interests never ceased until quite recently: they sought todestroy our traditional values andforce onus their false values that would erode us, our people from within, theattitudes they have been aggressively imposing ontheir countries, attitudes that are directly leading todegradation anddegeneration, because they are contrary tohuman nature. This is not going tohappen. No one has ever succeeded indoing this, nor will they succeed now.

To anyone following Russian politics and society, these words ring familiar. When Putin entered office for a third presidential term in 2012, in the wake of massive protests and declining popularity, his government wholeheartedly embraced the notion of traditional values as official ideology guiding both domestic and foreign policy. While a usefully vague and often undefined concept, traditional values are seen as encompassing patriotism, spirituality, rootedness in history, respect for authority, and adherence to heteronormative and patriarchal ideals of family and gender. In the rhetoric of the Kremlin and state-loyal media, LGBT rights, feminism, multiculturalism, and atheism are identified not only as foreign to Russias values, but as existential threats to the nation.

The Kremlin has constructed a pernicious ideology of homophobia as geopolitics.

Feminists, whether activists in womens peace movements or researchers in the academic field of feminist international relations, have long known that issues of gender and sexuality are at the heart of security. War is gendered not just in the sense that decisions to go to war are overwhelmingly made by men and that almost all the killing and other atrocities in wartime are performed by male bodies. Gender norms and gendered inequalities also shape how people are affected by war, whether we speak of men not being allowed to leave Ukraine, women being charged with the responsibility for evacuating children and elderly, or trans people whose mobility may be hindered by a mismatch between their gender and what is stated in their passport. As political scientist Iris Marion Young argued in The Logic of Masculinist Protection, ideas of masculinity, femininity, family, proper and improper sexuality are vital elements of stories about who and what needs to be protected, from whom and by whom. Keeping to this script, Russian Kremlin-loyal media circulate footage of women and children in Donbas who, the story goes, are under attack from Ukrainian Nazi forces forced to flee to Russia.

Of course, questions of gender are seldom at the forefront of analysis when bombs are falling, tanks are rolling in, and civilians are slaughtered. As militarization unfolds, establishment, masculinist national security expertise tends to be privileged as the only rational and objective way of explaining the world; other perspectives, including feminist security analysis, are dismissed as nave, idealistic, and out of touch with reality. As Putins speech hints, however, Russias invasion of Ukraineand its security policies more broadlycannot be understood in isolation from the politics of gender and sexuality. The reality is that the Kremlin has constructed a pernicious ideology of homophobia as geopolitics, and in official Russian rhetoric the war in Ukraine is framed as the continuation of this politics by other means.

It is not necessary to dig deep or read between the lines to make the argument that national security in Putins Russia is a gender and sexuality issue. The Kremlin, for one, explicitly defines national security in gendered terms. The federal national security strategy, published in July 2021, makes at least 20 references to traditional values in its 43 pages. Under the heading Achieving National Security, the strategy document says that:

Special attention is devoted to supporting the family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood . . . childrens upbringing and their overall spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical development. . . . Higher birthrates are necessary in order to increase the population of Russia.

With its full embrace of traditional values in the early 2010s, the Putin regime instrumentalized a nationalist, authoritarian form of gender conservatism that had gradually grown stronger in Russian political life since the late 1990spromoted by the Russian Orthodox Church, intellectuals such as Natalia Narochnitskaya and Aleksandr Dugin and, increasingly, establishment politicians. As traditional family and gender ideals were framed as matters of national survival, adherence to hetero- and cis-normativity became qualifying conditions not just of respectability, but of national belonging. As Masha Gessen describes in The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2018), false accusations of pedophilia became a way to demonize political opponents, and LGBT movements and feminists increasingly became targets of scapegoating. The 2013 law banning propaganda for non-traditional sexual relationships among minors not only restricted possibilities to speak and inform about sexuality and gender issues in publicsomething similar is now unfolding in the United States, it should be notedbut also designated homosexuality as a danger to children and to society.

The legal enshrinement of compulsory heterosexuality and vilification of queer and trans people have continued since then. In 2020 a ban on same-sex marriage was added to the Russian Constitution. In late 2021 a number of LGBT organizations, including the umbrella NGO Russian LGBT Network (whose work to evacuate queer people from Chechnya in 2017 was documented in the recent film Welcome to Chechnya), were added to the federal list of foreign agents. LGBT organizations are not the only ones targeted. Critical journalists and researchers, oppositional politicians, and human rights activists are also harassed, silenced, jailed, or killed by the increasingly authoritarian regime. At the same time, queer and trans people often face specific and aggravated forms of exclusion and violence due to societal hostilities, lack of family networks, and discrimination in housing, work and healthcare. According to research conducted by Alexander Kondakov and the Center for Independent Sociological Research in Saint Petersburg, hate crimes against LGBT people increased significantly after the propaganda law was passed in 2013.

The narrative that LGBT rights are a weapon used by the West to weaken and destabilize Russia has been a recurring grievance.

Russias turn to traditional values also has external dimensions, as indicated by Putins speech on the eve of war. The narrative that LGBT rights are a weapon used by the West to weaken and destabilize Russia has been a recurring grievance. Speaking to students in Belarus in 2018, Russias foreign minister Sergey Lavrov spoke of the need to protect Christian values from same-sex values that are being imposed . . . coarsely and openly. According to this logic, the facts that NATO expands into territories Russia considers part of its sphere of influence and that European and American leaders talk of gay rights as universal human rights are two sides of the same coin.

In this way, traditional values and sexual politics become linked to geopolitics and, in effect, to the status of Ukraine and other post-Soviet states. In 2013 the Russian newspaper Izvestiya warned that West-sponsored LGBT activism could spark a gay revolution risking to throw Russia back to the societal chaos of the 1990s. This must be seen against Putins repeated warnings about a possible color revolution in Russia, similar to those that had taken place in Ukraine in 20045 and in Georgia in 2003. As the Maidan protests against the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych began in Ukraine in late 2013, Russias largest newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that the protests were co-organized by nationalists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and homosexuals. Understanding this explicit link that is made between sexuality, gender, and geopolitical confrontation is necessary for making sense of the statements made by Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who spoke out in support of the war earlier this month:

For eight years there have been attempts to destroy what exists in Donbas. Donbas has fundamentally refused to accept the so-called values that are being offered by those aspiring for worldwide power. There is a specific test of loyalty to these powers, a requirement for being permitted into the happy world of excessive consuming and apparent freedom. This test is very straightforward and at the same time horrifyingthe gay parade. The demand to organize a gay-parade is a test of loyalty to this powerful world. And we know that if a people or a country refuses this test, they are not considered part of that world, they are considered as aliens to it. . . . Therefore, what is happening today in international relations does not only have political meaning. It is about something different and much more important than politics. It is about human salvation, about on which side of God the Savior humankind will end up.

War, aggression, and colonization are supported by what political scientist Michael J. Shapiro calls violent cartographies, imaginary moral maps depicting the homeland as innocent and good and the territories of Others as dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. All ambiguity and complexity not fitting this Manichean model must be ignored, denied, or constructed as foreign. In the geopolitical worldview of the Kremlin, Russia is standing up for traditional values in the face of a morally corrupt West weakened by sexual liberalism. In numerous speeches, Putin has positioned Russia as an international leader in the defense of traditional values. In this way, gender conservatism contributes to carving out a meaningful geopolitical role for Russia in a world order where LGBT rights have become international politics and increasingly framed as a question of civilization and modernityan indicator of who, in the words of Hillary Clinton in her speech to the UN Office in Geneva on Human Rights Day in 2011, is on the right side of history and who is not.

The Kremlin and other actors actively promote this narrative beyond Russias borders. The rhetoric of traditional values and its concomitant geopolitical worldview are circulated in Kremlin-loyal Russian media and consumed by many Russian-speakers in nearby countries. As historian Bethany Moreton just noted in these pages, in transnational organizations promoting family values such as the World Congress of Families, Russian pro-Putin oligarchs fraternize with U.S. evangelicals, ultra-conservative Catholic organizations, and parts of the European radical right, seeking common strategies to combat gender ideologya catch-all term of derision used to describe everything from abortion and sex-ed in schools to trans rights and same-sex marriage. In the United Nations, meanwhile, Russia has worked together with some states in the Islamic world and Sub-Saharan Africa, and more recently, nationalist populist regimes such as Poland and Brazil, to roll back sexual and reproductive rights.

Fear-mongering over gender dissolution comes straight out of a nationalist and fascist playbook.

This is not to suggest that Putin is a puppet-master directing attacks on womens and LGBT rights elsewhere. But it is indisputable that the current Russian regime has articulated a powerful and influential counternarrative to the liberal idea that LGBT rights are an inevitable element of modernityone that has been received appreciatively by some Christian conservatives and far-right figures in the West, who see Putins Russia as a bulwark against wokeism and political correctness.

In the narrative of Russia standing up for traditional values against Western gender indoctrination, the figure of the innocent child has a key position, as media studies researcher Maria Brock argues. Protecting Russian childrenembodying the nations futurefrom predatory homosexuals as well as from harmful LGBT ideology has been a recurring argument, used to motivate both the 2013 gay propaganda law and the 2013 Dima Yakovlev law, which banned U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children. Recently, transgender people and trans rights have become the perhaps most potent symbol of how progressive ideas of gender supposedly endanger children. For example, pro-Kremlin media have reported about bathrooms for the third sex being introduced in Scandinavia. In a speech at the Valdai club in 2021, Putin called the idea that a boy can become a girl and reversely a monstrosity and a crime against humanity. In an interview with the Financial Times in 2019, clearly targeting an international audience, Putin painted a dystopian picture of Europe, using gendered and racialized tropes, as he argued that the liberal idea has created a society where children are told they can play five or six gender roles and migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity.

Putins words clearly echo Western far-right and conservative movements, reiterating their tropes of children being indoctrinated by transgender ideology and immigrant men raping white womenthe former president of the United States, after all, launched his candidacy with a promise to build a wall to keep out Mexican rapists. However, this obvious mimicking and discursive borrowing should not lead us to view Russian authoritarianism and geopolitics through a U.S.-centric culture wars lens. Indeed, while sharing some tropes of gender and race with right-wing nationalists in Europe and the United States, the narrative of Russia standing up for traditional values against a degenerated West has long-standing roots in Russian intellectual history.

The myth that Russia has a divine mission in carrying the torch of true Christian civilization after the Wests plunge into ungodly materialism, secularism, and individualism dates back to at least sixteenth-century thinking of Moscow as the Third Rome and is prominent in the works of nineteenth-century novelists such as Dostoevsky. The contrasting of a supposedly godless, atomistic, mechanistic, and immoral West to a deeply religious, communitarian, spiritual, and moral Russia characterized nineteenth-century Slavophile thinking and was picked up by late-Soviet and post-Soviet religious nationalist writers.

Much has been written about Russian nationalism and its complex relationship to Europeand to the form of modernity represented by the West. One important aspect with repercussions for sexual politics is an ambivalent relation to imperialism. One the one hand, Russia has pursued an imperial, civilizing mission against peoples seen as culturally and racially inferior, for example in the Caucasus and Central Asia. On the other hand, Russia is perceived as historically suffering under Western cultural, economic, military, and epistemological hegemony. This peculiar colonizer/colonized identity, characterized by decolonial and feminist scholar Madina Tlostanova as a subaltern empire narrative, has important repercussions for sexual politics.

These are not harmless skirmishes in the culture wars of late-stage capitalism: they are grave matters of life and death.

According to historian Dan Healey, discourses on gender and sexuality in Russia have been shaped by a tripartite geography of perversion where Russia is imagined as an in-between space of sexual morality and innocence, neither part of the decadent West or the primitive Orient. Such a moral mapping influenced the conservative gender politics of the 1930s Stalin regime, when the Communists reintroduced the ban on sodomy (which had been lifted after the 1917 revolution) and explicitly depicted homosexuality as a security threat in the form of underground, pro-Hitler networks of homosexualsHealey calls the conservative turn under Stalin the birth of modern Russian political homophobia. In this way, Putins and Kirills framing of the war as tied to Russias brave resistance to Western sexual promiscuity and gender indoctrination of children draws on well-established narratives, familiar to most Russians.

Important as this historical genealogy is, there is nothing uniquely Russian about imagining collective identity or national security in gendered terms. Associating the geopolitical foe with sexual or gender perversity is part of a queer-phobic state repertoire known from many contexts. The 1950s gay panic in the United States, when accusations of homosexuality became a smear tactic in Joseph McCarthys anti-Communist crusade and homosexuals were barred from serving in the federal administration as they were seen as potential Soviet spies, has obvious similarities to how LGBT movements in todays Russia are described as a fifth column planted by the West. In several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Uganda and Zimbabwe, political and religious leaders talk of homosexuality and LGBT activism as pawns of Western attempts to re-colonize Africa. A somewhat similar pattern can be noted in the Chinese governments recent regulation banning sissy men, referring mainly to male celebrities inspired by South Korean and Japanese androgynous fashion trends, from appearing on television and streaming sites.

Fear-mongering over gender dissolution, the feminization of men, and sexual and racial degeneration as signs of a nations or civilizations decay comes straight out of a nationalist and fascist playbook. In these ideological schemes, national rejuvenation and the recovery of collective greatness requires a return to a mythical time when men were supposedly manlier and women womanlier and white hetero-patriarchal hierarchies went unchallenged. German Nazism and Italian fascism both celebrated traditional femininity and equated national strength with male virility. Similarly, contemporary far-right movements in Europe and North America see the weakening of mens authority in family and society, feminism, LGBT rights, multiculturalism as signs of the Wests fading in the world.

Feminists have shown how European colonial expansion and imperial domination historically has been imagined in sexualized terms, as penetration and subjugation of feminized peoples and territories, described as virgin lands, terra incognita, or dark continents. In contemporary Russian discourse, especially in online commentary, Internet satire, and memes circulated in social media, sexual and gendered metaphors of the war in Ukraine and Russia-West relations abound. Half-jokingly and half-seriously, Europe is sometimes referred to as Gayropa. Comparisons between Ukraine and a prostitute selling herself to NATO and Western leaders are one example of how feminizing tropes work to strip the Other of agency and the capacity of self-determination. Pictures of Putin or a Russian bear fucking NATO or a Western male leader from behind draw on both sexism and homophobia to depict the war in Ukraine as a masculinity contest between Russia and the West.

We must resist the glib dismissal of gender and sexuality as having nothing to do with military and security matters.

On a more general level, also beyond overtly aggressive and imperialist rhetoric, gender and sexuality are important building-blocks when nations define a collective us and identify what must be protected from whom. Russias geopoliticization of gender is mirrored by homonationalist and femonationalist discourses in the West, when gay rights and gender equality are portrayed as evidence of our national superiority vis--vis backward Others, whether Muslim immigrants or homophobic Russians.

In the contemporary world, the identification of outsiders within who allegedly threaten the domestic gender order and the promise to save and rehabilitate sexual morality and respectability from disintegrating forces have become an important part of an authoritarian toolkit. Variants of this logic are evident in Christian conservatives and nationalists attempts to ban gender indoctrination in schools and higher education across the West, in Hungarys recent ban on information that promotes homosexuality to children, and in Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaros repeated attacks on feminists and LGBT advocates.

The consequences, it must be recognized, are dire and deadly. These are not harmless skirmishes in the culture wars of late-stage capitalism: they are grave matters of life and death. Gender normstropes of masculine protection, women-and-children in need of saving, and sexual and gender deviance as a threat to the body politicfuel and perpetuate authoritarianism, militarism, and, as Russias war on Ukraine now makes all too plain, state aggression. Without addressing the former, there is little hope of changing the latter. One step must be to resist the glib dismissal of gender and sexuality as having nothing to do with military and security matters. To womens rights defenders, LGBT activists, and other groups fighting for democracy and social justice in both Russia and Ukraine, the links between militarist authoritarianism and the policing of gender and sexuality are already well known. They have been among the first targets of the authoritarian crusade for traditional values and now stand in the frontlines protesting Putins aggression. Their expertise should be widely acknowledged and their work supported in every possible way.

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Putin's Anti-Gay War on Ukraine - Boston Review

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The Uncensored Alice Cooper The Aquarian – Aquarian Weekly

Posted: at 2:49 am

Rock legend talks cancel culture, an artists mission statement, bizarre pre-show rituals, becoming Alice, and all his favorite stuff.

Alice Cooper has been at this shock-rock thing for over half a century, and he has lost nothing off his fastball. I once described The Coops aura as the godfather of a spiteful, sloppy, defiant, obscene, deafening burlesque freak show that cared less for anything healthy and decent than anyone or anything imaginable, and that unhinged cocktail continues to serve as a glaring beacon for fringe kids from six to 60. At this point in his unlikely success story, Alice has become something of a reliable measuring device to see how much the majesty of performance art can challenge the vague parameters of popular music. Ok, maybe thats too much pressure to put on him, but he can take it, just ask him.

I did.

Below is my fifth (or is it sixth?) discussion with Alice, a fun exercise I first experienced in 2009. Unfortunately, due to circumstances hard to fathom now (did anyone say a once-in-a-century pandemic), we have not spoken since 2018. What? That is way too long. There is a nourishing quality to speaking with Cooper that is not available in most rock star chats. When he starts to muse on whatever subject I toss at him, it is still hard to believe that this person/character that first rocked my world at 11 years old, is speaking withme. But there is also comfort in knowing that there is no pretense in Alice Cooper; except, yknow, the character thing. He shoots from the hip about alcoholism, God, vaudeville, horror films, as well as regrets, family, love, and life as easy as he might offer insights into his golf game or the weather.

He is back on the road with a kick-ass band and his sword and hisguillotine and his snake and his songs aboutnecrophilia, spiders, madhouses, thumbing his nose at teachers, damning false preachers, and hammering those parts of our daily construct that need to be taken down a peg or two.

And thank goodness for all of that, and for another few minutes getting inside the mind of Alice Cooper, who does not disappoint again.

Happy belated birthday.

Oh, thank you. 74 never looked so good.

I have always seen you as a cultural barometer both on the fringe and in the mainstream. Considering the high tensions in our culture with political correctness and safe zones on college campuses and the general tone that no one anywhere should be offended,where does Alice come down on this?

You know, its very unusual right now. I think that weve kind of forgotten freedom of speech. I mean, if you dont agree with what is proper now, then you are absolutely blackballed. Youre not allowed to have an opinion anymore. I saw a movie the other day and it was called,No Safe Place, where they were talking to college students and some were saying, If he doesnt agree with what we believe, then he cant speak at our school. And thats missing the point! You have this freedom of speech to affectotherspeech. You can choose to not show up, or dont listen to him, and if you disagree, then you can let him know by booing. But hedoeshave that freedom, thats an American freedom. All of a sudden, we have this faction yelling No! Total intolerance to the point where if he doesnt believe what we believe, he doesnt get to speak, and Im going, What?

At this rate, there wont be any comedy after a while. In the seventies and Ive never had anybody disagree with this, by the way when Mel Brooks was making movies,everybodywas insulted. He didnt leave anybody out, and as a result,everybodywas laughing. We were less racial then than we are now, because now we pinpoint every single word that we say as possibly offensive. It doesnt matter what you say. You can say, Its a nice day, and its an issue. Oh yeah, its a nice day for you, maybe, but not for me! Im offended! What has happened to us? Weve become so politically correct that were almost robots. I believe in being politically correct, but at the same time, I think weve taken it to an extreme now, to the point where were bending so far over that you cant really say anything. Everybodys afraid to talk.

Now that you mentioned Mel Brooks films, there has been, for me, and you helped me get there in my youth, as did George Carlin, Richard Prior, orAll in the FamilyorLaugh-In, this idea that art never need apologize. Art is the way to puncture through social barriers, especially in music, because you do see, even now, in any kind of pop music, performers get away with pushing the envelope more than comedians or filmmakers. So, do you think what you do as a musical artist has more of an impact in this sense?

I think it used to be that way, but, again, I think artists now are afraid to say anything. Honestly, were getting to a point now where everybodys terrified that if you say one thing that sounds a little bit wrong, it hits the papers, and you are blackballed or you are a pariah. So, I think that youre getting to a point now where its getting dangerously close to1984orTHX-1138orFahrenheit 451, where were terrified to say anything. I mean, thats just not America.

I think a lot of people forget what stuff was thrown at you in the seventies. Its great that these days youre performing year after year as a tribute to the fact that you survived all that. But there was a time, and I remember because I was there, where people were genuinely threatened, society at large, was threatened by you, as it was previously with Elvis. I specifically love the Alice character because you encapsulated all the great deviant art forms, rock music, horror, satire, the drag scene, surrealism, you made this vessel that was almost, I want to say, Teflon. You somehow were able to survive all that. How?

You know, I think its just because I dont think I ever meant to hurt anybody. I always kind of saw the absurdity in everything. The same way, I see the absurdity in whats going on now in our society theres an absurdity to it. Its funny. And most people I talk to are actually making fun of this whole thing. You know, again, I truly believe nobody should be bullied. I never did that in my songs or my shows. I just said, Wouldnt it be funny if or Wouldnt it be scary if or Wouldnt it be dramatic if As an artist, youre supposed to challenge the person looking at your art. If not, then its just Hallmark cards. I mean, what artist hasnt challenged the system? Warhol, Dali, even, at the time, Shakespeare challenged the system. He was getting banned all over the place. Artists are supposed to act as a weird balance in society. And yeah, when we do, the audience wants us to speak out and be off center, because were the only ones that will. The audience will tell you, I wish I would have said that! Were allowed to say it because were artists! Were no different than anybody else. Except that we are. We are artists. And I, in my case, if I think about it, as you say, everybody was very wary of Elvis Presley, and then The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, all the time society was going, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! I dont know if I could buy into this. Like you said,All in the Family, and then later,The Simpsons,Family Guy, all the stuff that challenges norms poke fun at it. And yet there was a lot of truths going on in there. This is what we tried to do.

Yeah, the one thing I always loved about the Alice Cooper group and your later work as a solo artist, is you were extremely self-aware of what you were doing. The revolution was built in. I recently read something you posted on Twitter on the anniversary ofBillion Dollar Babies(the Alice Cooper bands 1973 mega hit album) and how its title and theme came from everyone in the group looking at each other and saying, This is crazy. We somehow made it and now were the biggest band in America! This was the kind of irony that was always built into Alice Cooper. You understood the humor from the very beginning of what you were doing.

Well, yeah, if you can substitute that for ego [Laughs]. When we would go on stage, and I still do this with my band, I say, When you go on stage, I want you to be ridiculously egotistical and over the top! Because the audience wants you to be that for them. They want you to be from some other place. They want you to be an Avenger. Because youre on stage with a guitar and an amp and youre singing these songs out here and theyrenot. Theyre listening to it. But I also remind them that when you get off stage, leave all that on stage. So, when they meet you, and they talk to you, they understand the fact that Oh, yeah, well, this ishim. But on stage, Alice is this other thing, you know, he speaks for us, and he makes fun of us, and he brings up things that were afraid to say, but Alice said it. None of this makes the artists any smarter, it just makes us artists. We have a different kind of license.

That reminds me, do you have a pre-show ritual? Do you have something that youve done from the very beginning, when you were in the band, even as far back as the sixties, all the way through your solo career? Because I know youre a sports guy. I could see you having something thats, I dont want to say idiosyncratic, but is there something you always do before you go on stage?

Well, you know, its changed because a lot of situations have changed. The early days, there was no dressing room. [Laughs] You were back behind the stage, just getting ready, and you showed up in your costume and just went on stage! And then it got a little bit more progressive, where, all of a sudden, now that youve made it a little bit, you have a dressing room. So then, it was like, Well, theres actually food back here! And now theres this this whole thing with your rider, you know? Nowadays I have definite idiosyncrasies. When I first get to the venue, I watch nothing but Kung Fu movies.Reallybad ones, though. Im talking about ones made in 1973 and then theres other ones that are just total fantasy ones that are so insane. Ill sit and watch them until Im numb. Then, and only then, do I start getting ready at half an hour, exactly, one half hour before show time. Thats when I start putting the makeup on. Then I start getting dressed, the whole thing. And as soon as I get dressed, I throw knives.

Wait what?

I am an expert knife thrower. In fact, I am in the Knife Throwing Hall of Fame.

Thats fantastic. I did not know this tidbit.

Oh, yeah. The guys that run the Knife Throwing Hall of Fame watched me throw and they put me in there right away. Because I could put 20 knives within a twelve-inch area, easily, with no problem and thats kind of fun. Heres the great thing I put different photos of people in magazines up on the throwing board especially if its a full picture ofanybody, it doesnt matter who it is, they get up on the throwing board. People walk in they go, Wow, why do you hate this person so much? And I have to tell them, Oh, no, no, no, its an honor to be on my throwing board. So, there might be Tom Cruise one night, and then the next night, it might be Betty White, you know, it doesnt really matter. Its just whos ever got the best full-legs picture in a magazine is gonna get up there.

That should be its own Instagram post: The Alice Cooper Knife Board.

Im telling you, its now become like a total pre-show idiosyncrasy, and when Im done with the knives, then I can get ready to go on. I wait for about ten minutes before I finally go on, go into the bathroom, and pray. Thats very essential for me. And at that point, I walk on stage, but Im still not Alice yet. As soon as I hit the stage and I make the appearance, then IbecomeAlice.

You can feel that change?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Its visceral.

Its this absolute difference in my posture. Theres a difference in my attitude. Theres a difference in justeverything. I take on the Alice Cooper character the same way if I were playing in any Broadway play, you know, youre this guy off stage, but the people want to see Alice Cooper. So, okay, Im the only one that knows how to play that guy, so I will assume all of the Alice Cooper characters, and he will be Alice for two hours and then as soon as I walk off stage, I leave him on stage.

I know you have to get going, so I have a couple of more for you.

Okay. Shoot.

Favorite TV show of all time? I know youre a TV buff, if I had to press you, your favorite TV show is

I loveDexterif youre talking about, you know, Netflix or anything like that. Regular network TV? Wow, I havent really been watching a lot of network TV at all, but probablyGhost Adventures. I watch it because I always believeknow your enemy, so I watch it and kind of take notes [Laughs]. But at the same time I know all those guys, and I tell them, Guys, be careful, I dont think youre dealing with ghosts at all, I think youre dealing with demons. At the same time then if I want to watch something really entertaining, I loveKilling Eve. Also, I started watchingReacher, which is really good, actually, because I read all the books and theyre keeping it accurate to the book. They even finally got a guy that actually looks like Reacher. In the book hes 260 pounds and 67. Tom Cruise didnt quite fit that bill.

Last one, I know youre a car guy. Is there a favorite car youre driving right now? What is Alice Coopers car of choice to tool around on a Sunday afternoon?

Right now, I am driving a DB11 Aston Martin that when you open the door theres a little plaque on the bottom, that says, Built in England for Mr. James Bond.

No shit.

Its the same kind of deal that they were using in the movieSpectre, remember the moveSpectre?

Sure.

I think this is one of the cars that they were using inSpectre. So, the license plate is Spectre 3.

That is the perfect ending to our latest chat. I could talk all night, but instead I thank you, as always, for a little time.

Always great to talk to you because youre creative with this whole thing. Its always fun. Its certainly a lot more fun than answering thenormalquestions [Laughs].

I really appreciate that. Youre my hero. You keep it up.

All right, man. I will.

ALICE COOPER TAKES THE NJPAC STAGE ON TUESDAY, MARCH 22! FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION ON THE SHOW AND THIS TOUR, VISIT HIS WEBSITE!

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The Uncensored Alice Cooper The Aquarian - Aquarian Weekly

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Homage in rock to Bodhisattva – Sunday Observer

Posted: at 2:47 am

Having visited Rumassala, which we featured last week, we headed towards the coastal fishing town of Weligama, through delightful seaside resorts. The placid bay of Weligama is 30 kilometres from Galle. The seascape is filled with ubiquitous stilt fishermens single poles with a cross bar to catch small fish in chest-deep water on the beach. This is a visual treat and perhaps, one of the most photoworthy sceneries in the world.

Though Weligama is a drowsy small sea town today, in the colonial period it was a highly prosperous centre for foreign trade. The 16th century lace-making craft which was introduced by the Portuguese still remains in some parts of the coastal area of Weligama. We spotted a few old buildings here and there with columns with lattice work as the only remnants of the colonial period in Weligama.

The magnificent ancient Kustarajagala archaeological site is within the hustle and bustle of the Weligama town close to the Aggrabodhi Vihara off the old Colombo road. Urbanisation has engulfed the surrounding of Kustarajagala which is confined to cramped small plot of land today.

The houses are on every side. The Matara-Colombo railway track is behind the site. A playground lies in front of this sacred site where children play cricket and stray cows graze here and there. Although the peace of time has overtaken the sacred place, it still retains its character as a place of peace and tranquility.

Statue of Bodhisattva

The Kustarajagala rock cut statue about 15 feet in height stands on an isolated rock. An intricately carved and elaborately dressed splendid statue of Bodhisattva is set deep into the rock. It lies in the shade of overhanging Bo-tree. When we stepped in to the site, the morning rays of the sunlight were flickering through the branches of the Bo-tree.

Perhaps, a huge rock boulder has been sliced in two to create this work. The other half lies just opposite side, wrapped within the roots of an ancient Bo-tree. Since the statue was carved out into the rock at a higher elevation, we can view it above the eye level about eight feet from the ground. After climbing the opposite rock, we came up to eye level with the statue. From this point, the whole statue seems different and every detail becomes clear. Then, we realised the massive scale of the statue.

Known as Kustaraja, the statue was created between 7-8th century according to the notice board erected by the Department of Archaeology. There are various legends associated with the name and the construction of the statue. An ancient chronicle records that King Aggrabodhi IV (667-683 AD), suffered from an incurable skin disease and had got this sculpture made under his patronage. Since Aggrabodhi IV lived in Ruhuna for a long time he may have constructed this statue.

Looking closely at the details of this rock hewn statue, we came across several features.

The statue is heavily draped in elaborate ornaments and cloths. The head dress too is elaborately designed with four figures of the Buddha carved on three sides of it. Many necklaces adorn the neck.

Parts of the head dress touch the shoulders. Perhaps this, one of the most beautiful and intricately carved statues in Sri Lanka suggests the influence of Mahayana Buddhism in the Country in the 7-8th centuries.

Tragically, someone has attempted to dig out an area between the chest and the waist of the statue removing a piece of rock which contained an elaborately carved ornamental design across the statue.

Several similar marks are found in the head-dress of the Kustarajagala statue which is also believed to represent a Bodhosattva. Avalokitesvara is assigned a higher status than Maitreya by the Mahayanists.

He is identified as Natha Deviyao and is said to represent the influence of Hindu pantheism in Sri Lanka.

The left hand of the statues ring finger and middle finger are bent to touch the palm of the hand. This Mudra (pose) is believed to signify a beckoning to devotees for a blessing.

Nearby, the Aggrabodhi Rajamaha Vihara is the place where one of the first 32 saplings of the Sri Maha Bodhiya at Anuradhapura was planted.

It is also speculated that this Vihara was called Aggrabodhi since it was constructed under the patronage of King Aggrabodhi IV.

Kustarajagala statue

The Kustarajagala statue is said to have been part of this temple at the time, though according to some archaeologists, it was part of an old Avalokitesvara-Natha temple that used to stand on this site.

This tallies with the doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, as the Avalokitesvara was the saviour of man-kind and the healer of the sick. Kustarajagala may belong to the Mahayana sect, long since defunct here and considered heretic.

In Ruhuna, we found several other Mahayana sites where similar Avalokitesvara Bodhisatva statues exist Situlpahuwa, deep in the Yala National Park, Maligawila at Okkampitiya and Buduruwagala rock carvings at Wellawaya are examples.

The Kustarajagala statue is the most outstanding relic today of a period during which Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism held sway in Sri Lanka. When the statue was completed is not known.

This lack of any detailed history may be due to the statues Mahayana origins.

Veritable war

The competition between Mahayana and Theravada became a veritable war at one point in Sri Lankas history. Finally, the original sect of Theravada prevailed. With time, memories of Mahayanism faded away completely.

Most Sri Lankans today consider Mahayanism is an exclusively foreign sect. However, devotees still come to the Kustarajagala statue to worship and pray for relief from diseases they regard the statue as a Mahayanist Bodhisattva who is considered a healing deity.

In front of the Kustarajagala statue just a few feet away, lays a tomb of a European. Some believe it may belong to an engineer who came to build the railway track. Why this tomb is erected here is not known and mysterious, but its details carved out on a granite plaque are still readable. It says In loving memory of Thomas H.D. Gadder, Born 25 August 1825, Died 10 August 1907, Jesus is our Peace.

If you find some extra time on your hands on a trip to Weligama, do not forget to see the statue.

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Homage in rock to Bodhisattva - Sunday Observer

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How can God be everywhere? – Journal Review

Posted: at 2:47 am

I think God can be everywhere because he can look at everybody from the sky, says Kate.

God has angels everywhere to help him be everywhere, says Emilee, 8.

Friends, I believe youre trying to confine God to the space of his creation. Instead, imagine dipping a cup in the ocean. Let the water in the cup represent the entire universe. Now, compare the water inside the cup to all the water in the ocean. In a feeble way, this illustrates how small the universe is compared to how big God is.

Some people believe they are expressing the immensity or hugeness of God by saying what Chad, 10, says: God is everywhere because he is everything.

Philosophers call this pantheism. Some see pantheism as a polite form of atheism because it sacrifices the idea of a personal God. Pantheism is a fancy way of limiting God because it reduces God to the space of this universe.

Chad, you would be wise to talk to Shelby, 7: God can be everywhere because he is bigger than the world. Katy, 8, says, God is spirit. Kudos to Shelby and Katy! You may be only 7 and 8, but youve expressed Gods immensity more eloquently than many theologians.

Nevertheless, heres a theologian who had some insight. All the spaces in the world do not exhaust the immensity of God, wrote theologian Leonardus Riissenius.

Although God transcends time and space in that hes over and above his creation, hes able to act within the created universe to accomplish his purposes. Similarly, authors are above and beyond their books, yet they reach into their stories to shape plots and characters.

Because were confined to time and space, its hard for us to imagine someone who isnt. As Owen, 9, says, God can be everywhere because, well, hes God. Or as Jake puts it, God can be everywhere because he is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and big!

Jake, I dont know if any of the first-century apostles would express it that way, but I think youre making the same point as Owen: God is God. Hes different from us just as wood and metal are different. Refining metal will not produce wood, nor will amplifying the best qualities in people produce God.

Its a good thing God is everywhere because God knows everyone needs him, says Morgan, 10. He is powerful, and he loves us, so he always wants to be around us all the time, says Katherine, 10.

God loves you and watches over you, adds Colton, 7. Also, he wants to be close to us, says Bethany, 7.

Gods desire to be close to us went so far that he entered the world in the form of a man. For 33 years, Jesus Christ experienced the limitations of time and space so that he could die for the sins of the world and rise again to conquer death. Transcendent God was manifest in a human body. The Apostle Paul calls the incarnation the mystery of godliness.

Though we dont fully understand this mystery, its plain that its astonishing news. God can be everywhere because he is a wonderful God! concludes Brooke, 9. And who could disagree with that?

Think about this: Wherever you are, God is always present.

Memorize this truth: I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved (Psalm 16:8).

Ask this question: Are you aware of Gods presence?

Kids Talk About God is designed for families to study the Bible together. Research shows that parents who study the Bible with their children give their character, faith and spiritual life a powerful boost. To receive Kids Talk About God three times a week in a free, email subscription, visit http://www.KidsTalkAboutGod.org/email.

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Bitcoin (BTC) Jumps as Much as 5.7% to $41,691 – Bloomberg

Posted: at 2:45 am

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Bitcoin (BTC) Jumps as Much as 5.7% to $41,691 - Bloomberg

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3 Unstoppable Cryptos That Have Left Bitcoin in the Dust in March – The Motley Fool

Posted: at 2:45 am

Image source: Getty Images

Bitcoin is down nearly 3% this past week, while these three projects have blazed past it with big double-digit gains.

For a decade, the oldest crypto -- Bitcoin -- has delivered outpaced gains of 220% on a yearly basis to its holders. According to CoinMarketCap as of this writing, Bitcoin is down nearly 3% on the week and about 41% off its all-time high of nearly $69,000 a few months back.

While Bitcoin is my top holding as a percentage of my personal portfolio, there are three cryptos that are outperforming it in the short-term by double digits that may be worth a look.

While writing this, CoinMarketCap shows that THORChain has spiked an impressive 52.45% during the past seven days. THORChain is a decentralized liquidity network that allows users to easily swap and trade digital assets across a range of systems. Its technology allows traders to blockchain hop without losing custody of the coins or tokens being exchanged until the transaction is complete.

The trades are automatically fulfilled with liquidity that's directed by smart contracts and not a centralized market maker. The native utility token of the THORChain platform is RUNE. This is used as the base currency in the THORChain ecosystem. It is also used for platform governance and security.

At the time of writing, The Graph token price had jumped 20.22% over the past week according to CoinMarketCap data. The Graph is an open-sourced software project that gathers, processes, and stores large amounts of information from various blockchain applications for easy access and retrieval later -- almost like a superfast digital librarian on a global scale.

This enables near real-time data transfers in response to a query from any compatible application, of which there are hundreds. The official Graph blog posted that its query volume surged to more than 20 billion by April 2021, and the official Graph Reddit forum posted in December that volume surpassed 1.8 billion queries per day.

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According to CoinMarketCap, Basic Attention Token has popped a healthy 18.18% during the past seven-day stretch. BAT is a unique project within the crypto space because it's a blockchain-based advertising platform. What it does is reward users for their attention who choose to watch and interact with various ads, while providing advertisers with a more robust return on their advertising buy.

What happens is that advertisers pay for their advertising campaigns in BAT tokens and from that BAT budget a small portion is distributed to advertisers, while 70% is distributed to the ad watchers. The BAT platform runs on the Brave Browser so viewer privacy is preserved when users watch ads. This ensures they're not bombarded with similar follow-up advertisements as they would be on Google or Bing.

Keep in mind, these are only observations about the current crypto market and should not serve as financial advice. Every potential investor in any asset class should do their own research and invest only what they can comfortably afford to lose. While Bitcoin is a solid long-term option, there are other projects that may have more potential upside in the short term.

There are hundreds of platforms around the world that are waiting to give you access to thousands of cryptocurrencies. And to find the one that's right for you, you'll need to decide what features that matter most to you.

To help you get started, our independent experts have sifted through the options to bring you some ofour best cryptocurrency exchanges for 2022. Check out the list here and get started on your crypto journey, today.

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3 Unstoppable Cryptos That Have Left Bitcoin in the Dust in March - The Motley Fool

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Six months in, El Salvador’s bitcoin gamble is crumbling – Rest of World

Posted: at 2:45 am

When El Salvador officially made Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021, Jos Bonilla was one of the first citizens to sign up for a government-backed digital wallet that lets anyone use the cryptocurrency. The 23-year-old Salvadoran, who runs a shoe store with his family in the tourist town of Concepcin de Ataco, was looking forward to trying out the technology. Hed heard that it would reduce costs and speed up payments.

After a few days of overcoming technical glitches, Bonilla was up and running and accepting payments in Bitcoin from customers.

But the shine soon wore off. By February 2022, Bonillas list of complaints about Bitcoin was long: the only available Bitcoin ATM was too far away, the government helpline was slow, and the price was too volatile. One day, he lost a $25 transaction from a customer to technical issues and never heard back from the digital wallets customer service team. I decided not to use it any more, he said.

Hes not the only one. Six months since El Salvadors Bitcoin Law came into effect, adoption of the cryptocurrency remains patchy. Even onBitcoin Beach, a rugged strip of Salvadoran coastline that has become a mecca for crypto disciples, the transition has been challenging. When Rest of World visited shortly after the law came into force, some were still unsure about Bitcoin. Coconut vendor Dina Ponce said she was able to make more sales by expanding to accept digital payments for the first time, but she didnt fully understand the technology, and the value of Bitcoin hadnt risen enough to give her the savings shed hoped for.

Other businesses around Bitcoin Beach said theyd given up on Bitcoin and reverted to accepting only cash. We were losing money because of the way the currency loses value, said 21-year-old Axel Medina, who helps his family run a surf school and restaurant. It was difficult to maintain our business like that.

When President Nayib Bukele first announced the Bitcoin law in June 2021, he made a grand promise to his citizens. Adopting Bitcoin, he said, would digitize the economy, decrease dependence on the U.S. dollar, lower remittance fees which account for about 20% of the countrys gross domestic product and drive investment. El Salvador could become the first country to prove the transformative power of cryptocurrency on a national scale.

It is difficult to get a full picture of the scope of Bitcoin adoption in the country. In January, the government endorsed a report that at least 4 million users nearly the countrys entire population had been verified as authentic users of the governments wallet over the past several weeks. But in March, a survey released by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of El Salvador reported that 86% of the businesses contacted said they had never conducted a transaction using Bitcoin.

Interviews with dozens of Salvadoran citizens, economists, and technology developers reveal cracks in the project. Since launching, the initiative has been plagued with technical glitches, while tensions have arisen from the mismatch between Bitcoins decentralized ethos and El Salvadors authoritarian government.

As Bukele continues to double down on Bitcoin, his interest now appears to be less about getting everyday Salvadorans to adopt the cryptocurrency and more about addressing his administrations economic troubles and boosting his own image.

Why did he do this? said Alex Gladstein, the chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation and an advocate for global Bitcoin adoption. To me its kind of obvious. He did it for self-interest and to get famous.

El Salvadors association with Bitcoin began in 2019 on Bitcoin Beach, in the town of El Zonte. Thats where an evangelical surfer named Mike Peterson teamed up with a local resident, Jorge Valenzuela, to transform the small coastal town into a circular economy built around the cryptocurrency.

Seeing potential for a nationwide application, President Bukele announced his Bitcoin Law at a cryptocurrency conference in Miami in June 2021. The law made El Salvador the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender and required businesses to accept it as payment.

In El Salvador, we are trying to start the design of a country for the future, Bukele proclaimed during his video message to the conference.

To lay the groundwork for the transition, the government spearheaded development of technology that would make it possible for citizens to buy and sell using Bitcoin, including a digital wallet called Chivo. (Chivo literally means goat in Spanish but is also Salvadoran slang for cool.) Users could use the Chivo Wallet to receive or send cryptocurrency funds think Venmo or Paypal, but for Bitcoin. The government has refused to provide many details about the corporation that developed and owns this technology, but Rest of World has interviewed some of the private firms involved with the rollout. A U.S.-based cryptocurrency company, Athena Bitcoin, plays the largest role.

Rest of World met with Athena Bitcoin CEO Eric Gravengaard in the Insigne skyscraper, a towering hunk of glass and steel in the upscale neighborhood of San Benito, where he described how the company first got involved with El Salvadors ambitious experiment.

Athena Bitcoin was originally focused on building Bitcoin ATMs, which let users exchange fiat currency for cryptocurrency or vice versa, in the U.S. In 2019, Gravengaard, who knew Bitcoin Beach founder Peterson through a mutual friend, offered to provide one for the project. He visited El Salvador in February 2020 to help install the machine, which was El Zontes first ATM of any description. Over the following months, he fielded calls from people in El Salvador who told him that they were driving to El Zonte from San Salvador, 50 kilometers away, to use the ATM. He decided to send a couple more.

The new ATMs were being processed in customs when Bukele announced the Bitcoin Law. Gravengaard said the administration asked if the company wanted to do a ribbon-cutting ceremony and install more than 200 ATMs across El Salvador. These would later become Chivo-branded machines.

We came to El Salvador without a political agenda, said Matias Goldenhrn, Athenas director of Latin America. We came to El Salvador because we are Bitcoiners.

We came to El Salvador because we are Bitcoiners.

Soon, Athena also took on a bigger project: designing the front end software for the Chivo Wallet, as well as a point-of-sale system, called Athena Pay, that would allow stores to accept Bitcoin. Actually sending Bitcoin back and forth can be expensive and slow, and requires a certain level of technical know-how. Athenas ATMs would be useless if the average Salvadoran did not have a digital wallet they could use to buy and sell Bitcoin in a fast and cost-effective manner. By December, 950 Athena Pay terminals had been installed and were in use across the country.

The amount paid to each company involved in the Chivo rollout is unknown. Reporting from Salvadoran and US outlets estimates the government has spent upwards of millions of dollars. In September, when the Bitcoin Law came into effect, Athenas stock price briefly shot up over 600%.

Gravengaard describes himself as a libertarian and sees no contradiction in El Salvadors Bitcoin ecosystem being controlled by the Bukele administration. Money is social, he told Rest of World. At some point, as a participant in the economy, you have to cede some control and trust someone else, whether it is the developer of an app, a bank, or a government. I dont particularly want to live in a world where I dont trust anyone, he told Rest of World. Its not a happy world.

Bitcoin adoption over the last six months has not gone smoothly.

For one, El Salvador is a country where cash is still king; almost 70% of the population is unbanked. Critics say the countrys Bitcoin transition leaves behind those who dont have a smartphone mainly older Salvadorans and those without internet access. In 2019, about 50% of the population was not online.

Furthermore, many Salvadorans were clueless about Bitcoin when they found out their country planned to make it legal tender; one poll of around 1,300 Salvadorans by the Central American University leading up to the rollout showed only about 10% of respondents fully understood cryptocurrency. Alejandro Molins, who works at Athena Bitcoin and whose job it is to get merchants in El Salvador to download and use the Chivo Wallet, told Rest of World that his own mother has yet to sign up for her Chivo Wallet.

Some of those who have signed up have complained of technical issues with the Chivo app, including accounts created through identity fraud, lost transactions, and receiving error codes when trying to make payments.

In September 2021, Eunice Melara, a 22-year-old medical student, waited in line behind dozens of people at a Chivo ATM in San Salvador, shortly after launch. She was excited to try out the app, but saw an erroneous balance on her account. When she contacted the government call center, it couldnt resolve the issue and told her they would open a case. It hasnt worked all day, and I had to call the call center and they told me they had opened a case, she told Rest of World. She hoped to have more luck resolving the issue in person.

Others have more ideological complaints about the technology. Mario Gmez, a software developer in his mid-30s, learned about El Salvadors Bitcoin project along with the rest of the world, when Bukele announced it in June 2021. It took us all by surprise, he said.

Chivo is a promise to pay Bitcoin or dollars. It is no different from a bank account.

Gmez took an interest in the digital infrastructure the Salvadoran government was building for its transition to Bitcoin, including the Chivo Wallet, which is what is known as a custodial wallet. Custodial wallets address a common problem for cryptocurrency users. Bitcoin payments employ the blockchain, a process by which every financial transaction is logged in a digital ledger and then verified through a computational process. Users hold a public key, which assigns them to their Bitcoin holdings, and a private key, which allows them to access their funds. But this can cause problems. Users who lose their private key, for instance, can never recover their Bitcoin. With a custodial wallet, a third party holds the keys so that users dont have to worry about losing them.

It made sense that the Chivo Wallet would be custodial the administration had to build a wallet that would be functional for everyday people, the majority of whom had never even had a bank account. But it didnt sit right with Gmez. Many Bitcoin purists criticize custodial wallets as contradictory to what they see as cryptocurrencys fundamental ethos of decentralization. A famous adage in the crypto world goes, Not your keys, not your coins. In other words, if another entity has access to your private key, you dont actually own your Bitcoin. Even though Chivo is technically a private company, it is 99% owned by a state-owned company and funded by a $150 million public trust. In effect, the government would control its citizens keys.

Gmez drafted long Twitter threads about his findings. The next day, a few days before the Chivo Wallet was set to launch, the police pulled him over for what they said was a problem with his car, took him to two stations, and confiscated his phones. Authorities announced that he was being investigated for financial fraud, but Gmez was never formally arrested or charged with a crime. Two organizations have filed a complaint with the countrys attorney general alleging Gmezs detention was arbitrary. He suspects that he was targeted for speaking out about Chivo. Rest of World has reached out to the authorities but has yet to hear back.

The Chivo Wallet isnt mandatory for Salvadorans they can choose to use a different Bitcoin wallet but users were incentivized with a $30 sign-up bonus, equivalent to almost three days minimum wage.

Some boosters of crypto adoption insist on distancing the wallet from Bitcoins decentralized ethos. Chivo is not Bitcoin, Gladstein from the Human Rights Foundation told Rest of World. Chivo is a promise to pay Bitcoin or dollars. It is no different from a bank account.

In November 2021, two months after the Bitcoin Law came into effect, hundreds of visitors poured into San Salvadors small international airport from across the world. They were waived past the immigration check without paying the usual $12 fee to enter the country (although, if they wanted to pay, the officers accepted Bitcoin.)

It was Bitcoin Week in El Salvador, a week of conferences and events that attracted an international crowd of cryptocurrency believers and an opportunity for Bukeles administration to convince the global Bitcoin community of what the cryptocurrency could do for El Salvador and what El Salvador could do for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Beach had transformed itself for the occasion. The streets were littered with food stands with big plastic signs emblazoned with the Bitcoin symbol. A DJ played techno and pop songs, including a cryptocurrency-themed version of Despacito, the lyrics Tengo que bailar contigo hoy (I have to dance with you today) replaced with Tengo que comprar un bitcoin hoy (I have to buy a bitcoin today).

Dagart Allison, who told Rest of World he is a property manager from Los Angeles who dabbles in cryptocurrency as a hobby, had been at Bukeles initial announcement at the Miami Bitcoin conference. He was so enthusiastic about the Bitcoin Law that he knew he had to visit El Salvador, but he was concerned about safety issues in the country. Bitcoin Week was the perfect excuse to come, knowing that he would be surrounded by a wave of like-minded people.

Then you come here, and you realize that on the ground, its a different ordeal. Its a struggle.

But the Bitcoin mecca didnt quite live up to his expectations. He had tried to rent a surfboard from a stand in El Tunco with Bitcoin, and they told him they didnt accept it. He asked if they had Chivo. They said yes, but they didnt know how to use it with other wallets the functionality was hidden behind a confusing array of buttons.

From a Bitcoin perspective, its amazing its so groundbreaking and beautiful and, in my mind, looks like perfection, he said about El Salvador. And then you come here, and you realize that on the ground, its a different ordeal. Its a struggle.

Craig Toennies, a cheerful migr from the United States who ran a hostel in El Zonte before leaving during the pandemic, said that the Bitcoin Week preparations made it seem much more catered around the cryptocurrency than it actually was. It had a very Potemkin village vibe, he said. Since he returned in November, he said, the only people hes seen carry out transactions with Bitcoin have been tourists.

The highlight of Bitcoin Week was announced with just a days notice, after all the conference panels had ended and many attendees had already flown home. Swigging from bottles of Suprema and Regia beer, the remaining crowd faced a stage overlooking the Pacific coast, just down the road from El Zonte. Late in the evening, they raised their smartphones, ready to record, as fireworks exploded overhead. A man walked casually onstage, wearing a white shirt, slacks, and a backward baseball cap and carrying a microphone. Words on the screen introduced him as El Presidente: Bukele had come to speak to the crowd.

As the music died down, he addressed his audience in English: So, hows Bitcoin Week going?

Bukele spoke the Bitcoin communitys language, referencing Satoshi (Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator or creators of Bitcoin) and sprinkling his speech with insider jargon like orange pilled (an ideology that posits Bitcoin as a champion of freedom and monetary sovereignty).

Then, he made the announcement hed been leading up to: the creation of a new city called Bitcoin City, in the southern region of La Unin.

Its not just an idea, but it would actually be a legal municipality, with a mayor and everything, he said.

Bitcoin City, he continued, would include residential and commercial areas, museums, an airport everything, devoted to Bitcoin. It would feature volcano-powered Bitcoin mining and a central plaza shaped like the B symbol of Bitcoin.

Naturally, as in the rest of El Salvador, Bitcoin would be legal tender. But the crowd roared loudest when Bukele outlined further incentives. Residents, he said, would pay no income tax, no capital gains tax (Invest here, make all the money you want, he said), no property tax, no payroll tax, and no municipal tax.

Bukele invited up Samson Mow, then chief strategy officer of a cryptocurrency company called Blockstream, to the stage. The city, Mow explained, would be funded with a $1 billion Bitcoin bond, initially backed by the cryptocurrency. Half of the money raised would go to helping build the energy and mining infrastructure. The other half would go to buying more Bitcoin the theory, according to Mow, being that if Bitcoin continued to appreciate in value, El Salvador would reap the benefits and pay back the bondholders with interest.

If you want to invest in El Salvador, this is the easiest way to do it, Mow told the crowd. He imagined a future in which other countries would also issue Bitcoin bonds. This is the beginning of nation-state Bitcoin FOMO, he said.

For Bitcoiners like Allison, the nature of the announcement was off-putting. A lot of times in Bitcoin, the more people are doing showy stuff, the more we become skeptical, he told Rest of World. If its such a good thing, it should speak for itself. He was, however, excited about the idea of a city built around Bitcoin.

Some economists Rest of World spoke with suspect a link between the Bitcoin bonds and El Salvadors debt crisis, which has been growing under Bukele and his two predecessors, putting him in a tough position, particularly if he wants to keep funding his populist policies. El Salvador will have to pay $800 million on its traditional dollar bonds by January 2023.

With most economies, if their situation is normal, they have access to international capital markets, said lvaro Trigueros Argello, an economist at the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development. What happened in El Salvador is that sovereign risk has been going up, especially at the beginning of the pandemic.

As a result, the Bukele administration has been shut out of international capital markets. The usual way out of this debt would be through a multilateral loan. But, thanks to the Bitcoin Law, Bukele has been chided by the International Monetary Fund. In late January, the organization warned him to remove Bitcoin as legal tender. Bukele responded on Twitter with a meme from The Simpsons.

This is where the Bitcoiners could come in. The first bond is supposedly going to be spent on infrastructure in Bitcoin City and buying more Bitcoin. But, should it prove successful, the government could potentially consider issuing similar bonds in the hopes of raising capital to offset the debt, without turning to the IMF. That first bond is not going to solve the financial problem of the government, Trigueros told Rest of World. What we believe they have in mind is that if this first bond is successful, then they can issue new, similar bonds to solve the financing gap of the budget.

In January, when asked in a press conference if the Bitcoin bonds would be used to cover El Salvadors impending loan payment, as well as plug a budget gap, Bukeles finance minister, Alejandro Zelaya, responded, When they are issued, we will see if they are successful in that strategy, which I think they are. Zelaya has not responded to a request from Rest of World for comment.

The characteristic of this government has been improvisation when it comes to economics.

Salvadoran economist Rommel Rodrguez said he doubts that Bukele planned all along to appeal to Bitcoiners to help solve El Salvadors economic troubles. Rather, he believes the solution appeared to him along the way. The characteristic of this government has been improvisation when it comes to economics, he said.

Rodrguez predicts Bukele could bring in a large sum from the Bitcoin fans he has courted by gambling the countrys future on Bitcoin but doubts that he would raise the full $1 billion. The problem is as we say in the very Salvadoran way a man has his way of being, said Rodrguez. Going back now and taking the recommendation of the IMF would be a harsh blow to his international image.

Bukele originally said the Bitcoin bonds would be available by early 2022. On March 11, Zelaya, the finance minister, said they might be issued in mid-March. At the time of publication, they had not yet been made available.

Meanwhile, Bukele is no less bullish on Bitcoin. He regularly takes to Twitter to boast about purchasing Bitcoin using government funds to date, the government has acquired over 1,000 bitcoins. But since reaching a high of nearly $69,000 in early November, the price of a single bitcoin has fallen, dropping almost 50% at one point toward the end of January and reducing the value of the countrys Bitcoin holdings by potentially tens of millions of dollars. Bukele may well fall victim to one of the central reasons governments tend to shy away from Bitcoin: its volatility.

Before [Bukele] did the Bitcoin Law, he was not well-known. Today, hes easily the most famous Central American leader, said Gladstein. Hes staking his whole reputation on this.

Back in Concepcin de Ataco, four months after the crypto conference, Bonilla, the shoe store owner, hadnt heard of Bitcoin City or the Bitcoin bonds. He remained unconvinced by the cryptocurrency. The survey released by the countrys chamber of commerce in March found that only 3.6% of business owners said Bitcoin had helped with their sales.

Its basically just the big companies that are using it, Bonilla said. Between bitcoin and cash, I prefer that [customers] pay me in cash.

Read the rest here:
Six months in, El Salvador's bitcoin gamble is crumbling - Rest of World

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The U.S. Treasury Confirms That We Can Remove Illicit Activity From The Bitcoin FUD Dice – Bitcoin Magazine

Posted: at 2:45 am

Its time to take illicit activity off the FUD dice. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of the Treasury published reports that indicated that the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for illicit activity is far outstripped by the use of traditional assets. Critics can no longer credibly present the specter of illicit activity to beat back bitcoin; now the foremost experts in the world say it is not a major threat.

The Treasury Department published three reports that identified key concerns for money laundering, terrorist financing and weapons proliferation financing. Heres what each said about the use of cryptocurrencies:

(T)he use of virtual assets for money laundering remains far below that of fiat currency and more traditional methods.

The 2022 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment, page 41

(T)errorist use of virtual assets appears to remain limited when compared to other financial products and services.

The 2022 National Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment, page 23

There is no evidence that a proliferation network has used a virtual asset to procure a specific proliferation-sensitive good or technology

The 2022 National Proliferation Financing Risk Assessment, page 29

Case closed! Staff of the U.S. Treasury, the authors of the report, are the most knowledgeable and best-equipped investigators and enforcers against illicit financing in the world. Moreover, the reports were reviewed by other U.S. government partners, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. There could not be a more authoritative source to convey these findings.

Of course, the treasurys reports confirm what industry participants have demonstrated for years. The most recent edition of the Crypto Crime Trends report published by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, for instance, found that just 0.15% of cryptocurrency transaction volume in 2021 involved illicit addresses. The recent arrest of the alleged Bitfinex hackers and the seizure of nearly 100,000 bitcoin also demonstrates that moving large sums of money on a public network that can be monitored from a Raspberry Pi isnt as easy as, well, pie.

But the reports also confirm what we know from common experience: that we use bitcoin far, far, far more frequently for storing wealth and sending money to family members and reducing emissions and making micropayments and fleeing the freaking Taliban than for illicit finance.

After the publication of these reports, if you are a journalist, or a policymaker, or a pundit, or even an anon on Twitter, it is now irresponsible and flat out wrong to say that crypto is a major vector for money laundering or terrorist financing. The top experts in the world disagree.

Not that some wont try to continue making this claim anyway. The United States sanctions on Russia have seemingly generated copious opportunities for cryptocurrency haters to claim that it will be used to evade sanctions. All of this despite the release of the Treasury reports and live rebuttals from Treasury and White House officials that say everything is fine.

Take this recent Politico article, Russia's Hidden Tool To undermine Sanctions, for instance. The sixth paragraph should lead the piece: Treasury officials say they arent overly worried about crypto. And really, the story could end there. But the piece accepts speculation from a pundit that crypto assets like bitcoin could be used for sanctions evasion if they manage to bypass KYC processes. And if my mother had wheels she would have been a bike.

Fortunately, when the facts are on your side, you can put up a pretty good defense. Coin Centers Twitter account has been ground zero for fighting illicit finance FUD recently, with its staff pointing out that officials at FinCEN, the Treasury Department, the National Security Council and the White House have all said that theres no evidence that bitcoin is a threat to U.S. sanctions.

Their defense is a good example of how to counter speculation and fear mongering: return to the facts about bitcoins use and point out the real world examples of how bitcoin is empowering and protecting some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

The three Treasury reports released this month also discuss the future risk that crypto assets like bitcoin could pose to the U.S. illicit finance regime. Examining risk is not a bad thing I want my government to be aware of any risks posed by the proliferation of public blockchains, provided they also maintain a sober assessment of the benefits.

For the U.S. Treasury, that certainly seems to be the case. U.S. legislators recognize the same thing; Representative Ritchie Torres said earlier this week that, You should never define any technology by its worst uses there's more to crypto than ransomware, just like there's more to money than money laundering.

Bitcoin is a global, neutral and open monetary network. Anyone can use it, and that means sometimes parties we despise may use Bitcoin alongside us. When that happens, the protection and promotion of the network which is premised on freedom, equality and self-agency will still be worthwhile. The U.S. Bill of Rights shows that extending freedoms to everyone is far better than constraining freedoms for everyone. Bitcoins growth will prove the same; I think it already does.

But the truth right now is that the parties we despise do not use bitcoin, at least as compared to traditional networks. The Treasury reports released earlier this month state this unequivocally. As we continue to fight for this internet freedom money, it will be essential to cite these highly credible sources as proof.

These are my independent thoughts and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.

This is a guest post by Gyges Lydias. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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The U.S. Treasury Confirms That We Can Remove Illicit Activity From The Bitcoin FUD Dice - Bitcoin Magazine

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Craig Wright at IEEE UAE Blockchain Symposium: Bitcoin and IPv6 will create security and wealth for everyone – CoinGeek

Posted: at 2:45 am

Bitcoin creator Dr. Craig S. Wright has given another explanation of how Bitcoin could work with IPv6 to create a more secure internet. This model would see hundreds of billions of connected devices, with users knowing their data is safe from hacks or snooping.

Dr. Wright re-presented the IPv6/Bitcoin recommendations he recently made to the IEEE standards committee, at the University of Dubai recently. IPv6 has been central to his model for Bitcoin for a long time. For some more background on why its important, take a look at CoinGeeks The Bitcoin Bridge interview on IPv6 here.

Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and underlying value

He opened his presentation by explaining how he had some knowledge of Islamic Finance before he created Bitcoin. While some have a shallow understanding of IF as being all about its prohibition of interest rates and usury, theres more to it than thatits about a system that doesnt create wealth underlying capital.

Adding that Bitcoins not a cryptocurrency, he said the network was IPv6 enabled in its first version in 2009but that this capability was turned off after he left the development team. He also noted that Bitcoin technology is not peer-to-peer in the way most people describe it (like Napster or BitTorrent) but rather end-to-end, between individuals.

Rejecting the Silicon Valley model

And thats where IPv6 comes in. 100 billion machines will be connected to the internet over the next couple of years, and they will need to communicate in a secure way with unique addresses. Leaving all data to large corporations, with centralized databases that can be hacked, is the wrong way to do it.

Youre always going to have big Silicon Valley companies sitting there in the middle, sucking your data. I dont like that model, Dr. Wright said.

These 100 billion devices include products with RFID tags, disposable communications tablets, smart home devices everything. This proliferation of connections would actually make the internet more secure, because of the impossible time it would take to brute-force scan the entire network looking for vulnerabilities.

A well-defined cloud-and-IPv6 system will be far more secure than the existing shell-firewall model, Dr. Wright said.

Bitcoin provides the base layer to this network. For it to work, you cant have multiple ledgers (i.e., blockchains). To maintain security and prevent fraud you must have a single ledger, a single set of records that everyone trusts. VISA is expensive; BTCs Lightning Network is unreliable and off-chain.

Silicon Valley companies may resist Bitcoins model, but If the Americans dont want to do it, I dont care. Its a big world, Dr. Wright said.

How IPv6 and Bitcoin create a secure internet

With IPv6 we will have the ability to connect every device and user directly. IPv6 has its expanded address space, extended routing, improved scalability, simplified headers and faster processing, support for authentication and privacy, support for source routes, and quality of service capabilities.

IPv6 will see the death of the current internets SSL (secure sockets layer) and its application-based security through host-identification and authorization schemes. It uses CGA (cryptographically-generated addresses) instead. Cryptography is hard, but if we use it once in the OS rather than at each later, we all win.

That only happens if we do it right, Dr. Wright added. Using Bitcoins key structure is that way. It can be linked to real-world identities, but in a secure wayusing different keys for every transaction, generated from a single source. You therefore have a provable audit trail linking that identity to all its communications (or transactions) but not in a way where the data can be mined.

He gave the examples of Paymail and HandCash as using Domain Name System Security Extension (DNSSEC). This can be extended into CGA by having an IPv6 address that is cryptographically derived from/linked to a public-private key pair.

This takes us back to a more distributed model of the internet, as it was originally intended to berather than the current network of centralized services run by large oligarchies more interested in data mining and control.

Freeing the market, freeing the world

The freedom to transact and perform unlimited commercial activities at almost no cost (for payments) is what will truly create wealth for all people, Dr. Wright said. This includes people in wealthy countries, and those from less-wealthy ones working for lower amounts, or overseas.

I want to push down the prices of transactions so low that Amazon cries. If they dont deal with this, theyll be out of business, he said.

Some in the University of Dubai audience were slightly skeptical that Dr. Wrights model could find acceptance in the real world, saying it sounds too good to be true. This is pertinent given the current worlds pursuit of equality and oligarchical control. Dr. Wright vehemently disagreed with these so-called principles, referring back to the Islamic Golden Age where opportunity was held in higher regard, and wealth came from the creation of real value.

Most long-time Bitcoiners have always known their system could produce better outcomes for humanitybut also wondered if it could fit into the current worlds political paradigms. That is still uncertain. But if the current worlds political goals set it on a path to failure, there will need to be alternatives. The best alternative that exists today is Bitcoin, working in tandem with the internet on which it operates.

Watch: Dr. Craig Wright tackles IPv6, blockchain integration on The Bitcoin Bridge

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Craig Wright at IEEE UAE Blockchain Symposium: Bitcoin and IPv6 will create security and wealth for everyone - CoinGeek

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Bitcoin runs the world: Traveling to 40 countries in 400 days with BTC – Cointelegraph

Posted: at 2:45 am

A fast-moving Bitcoiner has run through seven of 40 countries on his Bitcoin-powered marathon around the world.

Paco the Runner, also known as Paco de la India, set off on Sept. 17, 2021, paying for his entire running trip thanks to all the Bitcoiners around the world. Hes showing that Bitcoin gives everyone freedom in the way they desire it.

Paco went from living a lie on the fiat standard to traveling the world living off Bitcoin (BTC) only when a dear friend gifted him the book, The Bitcoin Standard. The reading and subsequent conversations with friends about money and the nature of the world led him down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

He told Cointelegraph that once you see it, you cant unsee it. Hed been orange-pilled:

From that moment onward, Pacos travel plans morphed into a Bitcoin awareness, mass adoption, and showing the kindness of humans campaign. He documents the journey and every Bitcoin transaction via travel vlogs and social media updates.

He is keen to share Bitcoin with people from different walks of life is a blessing. To be able to share the importance of Bitcoin compared to shit coins with everyone is like one of the best works.

So far, he has successfully lived off BTC through the first seven countries of his travels. He only uses cash for public transport. Nonetheless, the Bitcoin-only journey has not gone without a hitch.

While visiting Sri Lanka, he lost his room keys and the hotel owner was upset.

He also recalls the moment he arrived at the Koh Samui in Thailand, an island known for its anti-Bitcoin sentiment. He was scared, as it was a new island, 100 kilometers big. Panic set in as Paco thought to himself, How I am going to live on such a large island with no money?

Fortunately, he started walking the island, and In 200 meters, I saw a sign that said the place accepts Bitcoin. Like, the universe conspired for this to happen.

He also recounted:

The list goes on and on: a banana bread baker in Cambodia, haircuts, burgers, Tuk-tuk, dentists, even a silver coin paid for with BTC.

Its not easy, but Paco recommends that for other aspirational Bitcoin travelers, its best to start small:

In the meantime, Paco will continue his runs around the world, meeting Bitcoiners and pre-coiners while spending sats. He concluded, Every step you take now will shape your future.

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Bitcoin runs the world: Traveling to 40 countries in 400 days with BTC - Cointelegraph

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Monthly Archives: March 2022

Putin’s Anti-Gay War on Ukraine – Boston Review

The Uncensored Alice Cooper The Aquarian – Aquarian Weekly

Homage in rock to Bodhisattva – Sunday Observer

How can God be everywhere? – Journal Review

Bitcoin (BTC) Jumps as Much as 5.7% to $41,691 – Bloomberg

3 Unstoppable Cryptos That Have Left Bitcoin in the Dust in March – The Motley Fool

Six months in, El Salvador’s bitcoin gamble is crumbling – Rest of World

The U.S. Treasury Confirms That We Can Remove Illicit Activity From The Bitcoin FUD Dice – Bitcoin Magazine

Craig Wright at IEEE UAE Blockchain Symposium: Bitcoin and IPv6 will create security and wealth for everyone – CoinGeek

Bitcoin runs the world: Traveling to 40 countries in 400 days with BTC – Cointelegraph

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