Category Archives: Finance

October 10, 2021 · 22:19

Darkness through inaction

I had the weirdest dream, it was dark. When I woke up, the cat woke me up and I was slightly weirded out. Everything was pitch black. Was I dead? Was I blind? I looked at my watch, and the time was bright green, I was not blind. I looked around, it took a lot longer than usual. It was the darkest black. I slowly walked to the wall, I turned the lights off and on, nothing happened. Then I remembered my emergency flashlight (better safe than sorry) and it gave some light. I looked around, everything was black. I walked to the windows and looked out, outside was black too, yet this was London, close to Hyde Park, no light anywhere. I walked to the kitchen and got the emergency tea lights and the candleholders. Over a dozen were placed all over the apartment, all IKEA and all working. Three in the living room, one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen, all whilst checking what had happened to the stove, there was gas so I placed the filled kettle on the stove. I inspected the apartment and I got a decent insight in the damage. There was no heating, there was no light, but there was gas and there were candles. 

This is not imaginary, people in Lebanon know what I am talking about and when we consider the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/gas-prices-rise-electricity-bills-b1935122.html) and they give us ‘Gas price spike will add £29bn to UK electricity bills next year, analysis finds’ yet this is only half the story, you see there is a growing shortage of electricity and it is getting worse. I had hoped for 2-3 more years, but that is less and less likely. So even as my version will not apply to many, but some will face it, it is now becoming heating versus light versus food. Yet there is a workaround. I spoke about it in the past. Even as Elon Musk has an advantage with his car battery, he is not alone and for plenty of applications there are alternatives. Consider a battery, rechargeable batteries, the size of 4 D-type batteries in a row. A stage where you can have one, a harness of two of those beauties linked to charge systems. And there are several solutions. In WW2 people used bicycles. So your home trainer becomes a more powerful charger. There are of course the solar panels, but it is not a solution for all, some will put some version of a wind-vane on their roof. All options to charge the batteries. So when we see that, we also need a new light source. Emergency lighting based on LED systems will come more and more into play, some are more festive and there are several solutions there. It is however a solution I saw in Sweden that could be the larger station. 

Swedish plug

This plug is a lot smaller than others and there is the station, an additional power net in every home and the people with decent DIY skills can do it themselves. And in the beginning it will be merely light and chargers, but over time we will see more and more shift to the low power consumption curve. In the Netherlands electricity prices went up by 57%, so how long until that is a setting no one can afford? Some state (using ‘could’) that electricity prices in the UK will rise by 30%, do you think you have a lot of time? And then we need to consider both the US and Canada, they might not be in the same boat, but they will see the prices rise too. As such the ideas I am giving you now are not new and not unique and taking notice of these dangers sooner rather than later is also important. There are solutions now and some are not elegant, not the prettiest, but they work and that will always be better than sitting it out in complete darkness. And in the stage where you can have 10 4 Watt LED’s are the equivalent of 10 30 Watt lightbulbs, it  is not a lot, but it might be enough and as the batteries are stronger you can have 8 hours with 10 8 Watts that compare to 10 60 Watt bulbs. Even though the bedrooms will suffice with 4 Watt solutions. And this situation is not that far away. The price hikes will force people to take that stand soon enough. And the sooner you can start, the better off you are because when 20,000,000 start on the same day the only people who will end up with lights are those willing to pay the 450% markup, commerce taught us that lesson in a pretty harsh way in the past already.

Feel free to take no notice, but when you forgot your Tea lights at IKEA and you wake up in complete darkness, it will be too late, I hope you will never face that. Yes, I admit that this setting in London is remotely small, but at present it is no longer zero, which is a setting you did not face a year ago, neither did you face a 30% price hike and that is now (by some) a speculated setting a mere year away.

Consider what you have, what you face and what could be and arm yourself for that situation, your choice, your consequence. And also consider the optional savings you make especially in a 30% price hike when you have a solution that takes 75% less energy, even if the battery is the last  part you get, you will already be making a saving.

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October 10, 2021 · 19:46

Choices that some make

We all have this. We make choices and that is not against anyone (or anything for that matter). So I was a bit on the fence when I saw ‘Frances Haugen takes on Facebook: the making of a modern US hero’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/10/frances-haugen-takes-on-facebook-the-making-of-a-modern-us-hero). First off, let’s start by saying I have nothing against Frances Haugen or her point of view. I do find the setting ‘the making of a modern US hero’ debatable. I feel certain that it was not her setting to become a hero or to see heroism. It is the paint stage that the massively less than credible media is taking. If big tech was not under attack the media would most likely have been more moderate in their colours of painting brushes. 

We get told “The 37-year-old logged out of Facebook’s company network for the last time in May and last week was being publicly lauded a “21st-century American hero” on Washington’s Capitol Hill” yet where was the media these last three years? Collecting Facebook advertising money I reckon. So when we are given “I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy” I do not disagree, I have no data to disagree, but the media had that, they have had a clear picture for years, but for the media flaming creates emotion, it create click bitches and it generates digital advertisement income. But Facebook was an eager tool for a long time and you do not bite the hand that feeds you and the media has shown itself very protective of ANY hand that feeds them. If there is one part I disagree with (to some extent) then it is “She repeatedly referred to the company choosing growth and profit over safety and warned that Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms – which tailor the content that a user sees – were causing harm”, it is the “which tailor the content that a user sees – were causing harm” part I cannot completely agree with. I do believe that Frances Haugen is sincere in her approach, but ‘causing harm’ requires evidence, evidence that is a lot harder to obtain. Perhaps that was given, and I did not look at all the documents, but there is a stage, optionally two. The first is “choosing growth and profit over safety”, that seems clear, the entire emotional flames might be part of that, yet there is a stage of “choosing growth and profit over increased safety”, it seems like a small step, yet the stage is proving that it was all against “profit over decreased safety” that matters. We create safety, or we stop increased safety, none of that is on Facebook, only if a clear view of “profit over decreased safety” is shown Facebook will have a larger problem. You see, no matter how we point the fingers on ‘flaming’ in the end it is the view of the less than articulate person lacking a decent education and the US is so protective of its First Amendment, that nothing goes anywhere. The Media has been using that stick to slap donkeys, horses, dogs and people for decades. In this I have some issues with Democrat Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), when we are given   “Facebook is like big tobacco, enticing young kids with that first cigarette,” said Senator Markey at the hearing. “Congress will be taking action. We will not allow your company to harm our children and our families and our democracy, any longer.” I cannot completely disagree, yet in the 70’s and 80’s there was clear evidence on Big Tobacco, but the US government and corporations had no issues taxing and grabbing marketing dollars wherever they could. (Example at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vg_QVAEJtg) If Facebook is just as bad, you should have had years of evidence and I believe you had it but these political big wigs were unwilling to act. A model based on selling advertisements that brought in billions, what was there not to love and for the most the media loved it too. So I am not arguing with the views that Frances Haugen is bringing, it is the views of those heralding her now. And too many of them should be seriously afraid. When hackers and others start looking into data and the timeline of decisions a few people in the Senate, Congress and a few other players will sweat drops of death. 

And my view? Well CNBC did that work with ‘Facebook spent more on lobbying than any other Big Tech company in 2020’ (at https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/22/facebook-spent-more-on-lobbying-than-any-other-big-tech-company-in-2020.html) at the beginning of the year. So when someone grabs an abacus and digs on where the $19 million plus went, some politicians might not like the answers the people are given, and that is the part that is out in the open, the setting of Stakeholders and media for Facebook might optionally double or triple that amount. It is the highest of all the FAANG group and almost twice as much as Microsoft, so what do you think will happen next? 

It took 20 years for big tobacco to get into real trouble, as such if there is a parallel there is every chance that something is done by 2040, as such Facebook has plenty of time. But in all this, there is a part missing, which is not on anyone (and not on CNBC either). The stage where the people get to know the names the lobbyists and how these politicians voted on Facebook and other first amendment issues. That is the part no one gets to see and I very much doubt that this will change any day soon.

And my point of view is seen with Christopher Wylie when we get “Wylie said he had relived his own experience as a whistleblower by watching Haugen. But he also found the flashbacks frustrating – because nothing has changed.” The Cambridge Analytica is out there and even as the New York Times gives us 2 days ago “We’re Smarter About Facebook Now”, I personally am considering that they are full of it. They needed to be smarter about it close to 2 years ago, so weren’t they? Isn’t that equally a decent question to ask? So as Wylie gives us “The fact that we are still having a conversation about what is happening, not what are we going to do about it, I find slightly exasperating,” shows us clearly the inaction of politics, of policies and the lack of actions by the law, global law no less. Fir we look at the US, but the laws and the actions by the EU and the Commonwealth is equally lacking, so why is that? It is due to the choices some make and the consequences we all have to face and in a stage where every coffer is empty and every nation has a credit card that has a maximised debt, acting against a company bringing in millions in taxable dollars is often not considered.

We all make choices, that is not a sin, but after the Catholics, a second deal where the choosing parties are giving sanctum to those endangering kids is debatable on several levels, that being said, those opposing Facebook will need to prove it and that is not an easy matter to do, because as I state, it is not about “choosing growth and profit over safety”, it will be about “profit versus decreased safety” and that is a very different data stage and the evidence will not be easy to obtain, mainly because the users are often the problem too. Facebook gives us “Facebook’s policy is to delete accounts if there is proof that the account holder is under 13 – they won’t be able to take action if they can’t be sure of the child’s age.” And they try to adhere to that, yet there have been plenty of indications that some were younger, but the stage of “if there is proof that the account holder is under 13”, as such the account stays in place. And when we see several sources give us (unverified for honesty) “A friend has a 9-year-old son and they have allowed him to create his own Facebook account” how can Facebook be blamed and that setting will taint the evidence as well, as such it will take a long time for actual action to start, it is not a setting that Frances Haugen might have seen coming, but in a land of laws, evidence is key (unless political issues take precedence). 

There is a lot more on the Facebook front and it will take months for it all to surface and when it does there is more than likely several months of contemplation and inaction, all because those who could act would not. Who is to blame there? I will let you work that one out.

Have a great day!

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October 7, 2021 · 20:39

Reprising 39 steps

This is not about an alcoholic taking his 12 steps three times with 3 breaks. This is about a 1935 movie. An absolute masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock. It is also one if the first exposures by Tinseltown of the use of industrial espionage. Over time there would be more cases and more events, yet the stage I saw today ‘Twitch confirms massive data breach’ (source: BBC) made me think of the earliest steps in that direction. Even as we are given “it comes at a time when competitors such as YouTube Gaming are offering huge salaries to snap up gaming talent, so the fallout could be significant.” This does not mean that Google was behind it, yet the larger stage is that Industrial espionage is at the seat of many corporations and these corporations have absolutely no idea what they are in for. There are no checks, no balances and at this point Twitch is in a stage where they could lose the bulk of their value overnight. So as I read “Twitch confirmed the breach and said it was “working with urgency” to understand the extent of it” I see a stage where a company was clueless and now less of a clue where their money will go in November 2021. 

Even as I think back to the 39 steps and the momentous line “The 39 Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of…the design for a silent aircraft engine” but the one step they did not have in those days was the disgruntled employee. They can do in one hour more damage then Baker at MI-6 or Evans at MI-5 can do in a month, and companies are just not ready to take a larger setting of cyber and internal investigations serious. Fell free to doubt me and call +44 1242 221491 (GCHQ), they probably have a few leaflets and other information that will make any CTO cry like a little chihuahua. 

The problem how to go about it, as I see it it will be too late for Twitch, Microsoft was done for a long time ago and Google is one of the few who has a decent handle on cyber security. Yet the nightmare is actually a lot worse. To grasp this we merely need to take a look at ‘Industrial Espionage: Criminal or Civil Remedies’ by Gillian Dempsey (at https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tandi106.pdf) the quote “Australian companies should be mindful that competitors, and nations which might be hosts to Australian investment, may have a strong interest in Australian trade secrets and other economic intelligence. Although its incidence and prevalence are unknowable, industrial espionage by governments and private sector institutions is a fact of contemporary commercial life. Recent developments in the technology of intercepting communications make such activities easier to undertake and more difficult to detect than in the past.” There are a few issues and the biggest one is partnerships, find in that partnership two disgruntled employees on both sides of the fence and that company is pretty much doomed. Even if the law becomes adequate, the rules of evidence will get in the way because the bulk of ALL companies have a lovely disregard of non-repudiation, and the third party exploiting the two angry people will laugh all the way to his zero tax haven (Cayman Islands anyone?) And that stage will grow and grow, because there is a board room believe that their company will not get into that, all whilst they cannot see the pie chart as the chunky blubbernaut in the room ate it. And the game gets to go from bad to nasty, with cryptocurrency the appeal for many increases whilst the ability to find the people involved goes from tiny to a number approximating zero and the law is not ready, it hasn’t been ready for several years and as sources give us “One of the reasons why corporations engage in industrial espionage is to save time as well as huge sums of money. After all, it can take years to bring products and services to market and the costs can add up.” This is true but it is the setting that several people who were dismissed ended up with huge starting bonuses whilst being as productive as the janitors paperweight in that new company. So when did you get $675,000 a year with a startup bonus of $3,500,000 plus a piece of real estate in the Cayman Islands for surfing Facebook all day long? That is the setting that some companies face and until they adjust the safety in their firms, they are the companies with huge neon lights and the neon phrase ‘sucker’ right next to it. I was taught about non-repudiation at Uni 14 years ago and so far the amount of companies taking it serious is just as close to zero as the people getting convicted of it.

So whilst the media is flaming the $13,000,000 total twitch payments, we are all looking in the wrong direction. We see one side, and this might have been by disgruntled people (my speculation) but it was an attack of a side that Amazon had decently solidified, so what comes next and when will it impact something that YOU depend on? There was a lesson and it was handed to the people in 1935, so why did the decision makers not take the essential steps?

Perhaps they were done in some places but there is at present no evidence that any were done. 

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October 7, 2021 · 12:47

Two items

Yes, there are two items that are on the mind of may people. One is directly on the mind of many and as I stated in ‘Utter insanity’ on October 4th a lot of impact will be seen and the poor will get the brunt of that impact. As I see it, there is a lot that will be going wrong and even as the US Democrats are hiding behind the media slogans like ‘Biden: Republicans playing ‘Russian roulette’ with US economy over debt ceiling’, we better catch on quick. This issue is not now, it has been going on for over a decade, too much spending, no exit strategy and upping the debt every time and this has been going on since the Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were in office. From 2001 the debt want from $6 trillion until now as it is $28 trillion. I will agree that President Biden got a really bad hand and he inherited the debt, but so did Obama and Trump. George W Bush had Afghanistan and Iraq in consequence to what happened in New York which was not on him, but ALL these presidents had the option to overhaul the Tax system and NONE of them did so, this pox is on BOTH the Republican and the Democrat houses. A budget that was there to enable big business and media but none acted over well over 20 years, so this is on more. In this Bill Clinton was the one who left the budget was in surplus so his inaction has a decent acceptable excuse. And now the Republicans say enough is enough, I cannot fault them for that. As I showed the Defence department wasted $30-$45 billion on TWO PROJECTS, two projects that does not meet the bare minimum but we go on paying those wasting the funds. Why is that? And the lack of adjusting Tax laws, not to tax the rich, but the setting of justly tax ALL. An optional setting that as offered to them in 1998, but they were eager to state that it was too hard. Now consider the Google Ads system that properly (and decently) charges the advertiser and not greedy grab the advertiser like the advertisement  agencies did for decades. So it was not that hard, was it?

And as we now see the need to ‘overhaul’ the Senate rules to end the amendment of the ‘filibuster’, a stage that has been there for a long time is now regarded by the Democrats as too hard to handle. I am not the voice for against that decision, yet consider that THEY TOO would not overhaul the tax system when it was in their administration, so is it fair? And in all this Wall Street is giving whatever ‘free’ advice the media is willing to listen to, they are so scared now. 

What was issue two?
It cones from a different corner. When the BBC gave us ‘Princess Haya: Dubai ruler had ex-wife’s phone hacked – UK court’ 8 hours ago (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-58814978) I saw “The High Court has found that the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, interfered with British justice by ordering the hacking of the phone of his ex-wife, Princess Haya of Jordan. The phones of her solicitors, Baroness Fiona Shackleton QC and Nick Manners, were also targeted during their divorce custody case, according to the court”, it took a few second (approximately 7.1) and my mind raced. You see the media is a nice source to use given information against them. You see, The Verge gave us on July 23rd (at https://www.theverge.com/22589942/nso-group-pegasus-project-amnesty-investigation-journalists-activists-targeted) ‘NSO’s Pegasus spyware: here’s what we know’. In that article we get “NSO Group’s CEO and co-founder Shalev Hulio broadly denied the allegations, claiming that the list of numbers had nothing to do with Pegasus or NSO. He argued that a list of phone numbers targeted by Pegasus (which NSO says it doesn’t keep, as it has “no insight” into what investigations are being carried out by its clients) would be much shorter”, It is the setting of “has “no insight” into what investigations are being carried out by its clients” against the setting that the BBC gives us which is “referred to the hacking as “serial breaches of (UK) domestic criminal law”, “in violation of fundamental common law and ECHR rights”, “interference with the process of this court and the mother’s access to justice” and “abuse of power” by a head of government”, we can agree with the point of view, but where is the evidence? The NSO stated that it does not keep any, so what is the source and the foundation of the evidence? The link the BBC gives us the judgment (at https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/al-maktoum-judgments/) yet there I see in the reference for the Hacking fact finding part:

i. The mobile phones of the mother, two of her solicitors (Baroness Shackleton and Nicholas Manners), her Personal Assistant and two members of her security staff have been the subject of unlawful surveillance during the course of the present proceedings and at a time of significant events in those proceedings.

ii. The surveillance has been carried out by using software licensed to the Emirate of Dubai or the UAE by the NSO Group.

iit. The surveillance has been carried out by servants or agents of the father, the Emirate of Dubai or the UAE.

iv. The software used for this surveillance included the capacity to track the target’s location, the reading of SMS and email messages and other messaging apps, listening to telephone calls and accessing the target’s contact lists, passwords, calendars and photographs. It would also allow recording of live activity and taking of screenshots and pictures.

Yet in all this, how was this evidence obtained? The findings rely on the setting stated by Baroness Hale, which is fair enough and she stated “In this country we do not require documentary proof. We rely heavily on oral evidence, especially from those who were present when the alleged events took place. Day after day, up and down the country, on issues large and small, judges are making up their minds whom to believe. They are guided by many things, including the inherent probabilities, any contemporaneous documentation or records, any circumstantial evidence tending to support one account rather than the other, and their overall impression of the characters and motivations of the witnesses.” Here I have a problem. Not the setting that Baroness Hale states, it applies for many cases and I would support this, yet in this technology the problem is that even those deep into this technology do not completely understand what they face. When we look at sources all over, we see a former intelligence officer from Germany who cannot state that Huawei is a danger, because their technology people do not comprehend it. We see source after source flaming the NSO group issues but they are flaming and even those sources are debated as it refers to sources from 2016, long before the Pegasus group had the software it deploys now. If we accept the words by Baroness Hale “We rely heavily on oral evidence, especially from those who were present when the alleged events took place” yet what happens when that witness the average normal person, how can that person give credibility to neural surgery? It is the same, a stage where the media relied on flaming and keeping people off balance, how can a person who does not comprehend technology be given the credibility that this court has? And should the court disregard the influence the media has, they merely need to see connected contributory manslaughter Martin Bashir was a part of, as I personally see it, his actions resulted in the path that led to the death of Lady Diana Spencer. 

In this I support “the court’s findings were based on evidence that was not disclosed to him, and that they were “made in a manner which was unfair””, I will take it one step further, if the submitted evidence is held to the cold light of day, its value will be debatable on a few levels. So when we consider “Dr William Marczak, who is based in California and is a senior research fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance. He told the court he had no doubt the phones were hacked using NSO’s Pegasus software. He also concluded “with high confidence” that the phones were hacked by a single operator in a nation state. He concluded with medium confidence that it was most unlikely to be any state other than the UAE.” In this we saw the CIA with their “with high confidence” and I wonder hat it is based on. I am not attacking Dr William Marczak, there is no reason to, but when you consider “with medium confidence that it was most unlikely to be any state other than the UAE”, so he is not completely certain, he is decently certain that someone did it, but there is no evidence (aka he cannot swear) that it was the UAE, feel free to read the settings and the statements, it could have been anyone, if the evidence holds up to scrutiny and that pert is also a part I am not certain of. You see when we see “A senior member of NSO’s management team called Mrs Blair from Israel on 5 August 2020 to inform her that “it had come to their attention that their software may have been misused to monitor the mobile phones of Baroness Shackleton and HRH Princess Haya” and we hold it up to the interview in The Verge on July 23rd with Shalev Hulio we see conflicts, conflicts of optional evidence by the same source, why is that?

These are the two Items that were bugging me to some extent and as my mind is racing towards another TV series stage (it will be the third my mind designs) I wonder what the eager bored mind is able to contemplate. So as we wonder what drove the judgement (no negativity implied), I see too many strings going from one place to another and they might be just in my mind (the place between ones ears) but too much evidence does not make sense, in both stages offered and the media took centre stage to both, and the media is the weakest link of credibility, that has been personally proven a few times over.

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October 5, 2021 · 08:33

A waste of space

Yes, some people are that, I believe that the tool ICIJ director Gerard Ryle is such a person (he will clim it is me). Yet how did I get there? That is important too. Those who read the previous articles will remember that I stated that a top-line display would give us the parts we initially needed. But no, after all this time, with 600 journalists at his back, Ryle never walked the walk. However I see ABC, the Guardian, BBC and others all do the motion of jabs, to create flames, to create click bitches. In a dying light they want to grab any digital dollar they can. Even the useless leader of the Democratic Party (President Joe Biden) via his administration gives us today “The Biden administration said it would “crack down on the unfair schemes that give big corporations a leg up” in the wake of the Pandora disclosures.” It is a pointless exercise in a waste of time, it is merely the prequel to something much worse.

You see the top-line would give us a better look at the “130 billionaires from 45 countries, including 46 Russian oligarchs. Bollywood actors, soccer stars, corrupt sports officials, a king’s lover, feuding princesses, movie directors and stars, supermodels, acclaimed designers and world-famous singers, 330 politicians and high-level public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, including 35 current and former country leaders” and this is linked to the even less useful quote “By some estimates 10 per cent of the world’s total economic output is parked in offshore financial centres, costing governments billions of dollars in lost revenue” 

Why is this?
The top-line would give us where the impact is. The 130 billionaires? You see there are 165 in Dubai and they are in the 0% bracket. I stated the dangers two days ago. Then from all these numbers, how many are in which nation, ho many are governmental versus non-governmental. When we see those numbers, we will likely see a created a storm in a teacup. 

And this is linked to the first setting proving that Gerard Ryle is a useless and optionally corrupt tool. “The source of the documents hasn’t been revealed to media partners but made it clear to the ICIJ he wanted the public to see where dirty money is really flowing. Ryle says the source had two conditions for leaking the documents. “First of all the source wanted anonymity. I presume for safety reasons,” he says.” Presume my ass! When we investigate the sources we see that some have well above decent protection, in my view there are only two players involved here, the CIA and the NSA. Both Russian and Chinese investigations would stopping their local laundry, as such there would be nothing on oligarchs outside of Russia. 

I believe this all to be a well managed (speculative) ruse. When it all comes out, we will get a flame of ‘tax the rich’ and that is what that useless democratic leader needs, his land is BANKRUPT and when the default hits grabbing (not taxing) whatever the American billionaires have is on the short list, reparations come later and if it all goes to shit the politicians will run for cover in any nation that will put up with them (Australia and UK). 

And when you truly read the articles you will see statements like “the documents reportedly tied prime minister Andrej Babis to a $22 million estate near Cannes, France. Speaking in a television debate, Babis, who was a billionaire before he entered politics, denied any wrongdoing.” 600 journalists and not one has added evidence of wrongdoing, merely a billionaire doing what he is allowed to do, buy a house in the south of France and France is not even a 0% tax land, so where are the incriminating papers? 

All the flames I see are about people no one cares about (the King of Jordan), yes Jordanians care about him and that is OK, people in the UK less so. And the truckloads of articles are just that small jabs to keep the readers angry, but no one is taking too much notice of “ICIJ director Gerard Ryle says the Pandora Papers reveal that some international leaders who could tackle offshore tax avoidance have themselves secretly moved money and assets beyond the reach of tax and law enforcement authorities as their citizens struggle” as such I reply “Gerard you fuck, why did the press not do enough over 30 years to make politicians tackle tax laws?” And in HIS statement we see ‘could’ and ‘secret’, but if a person buys a house in Monaco or Dubai they can have money there, it would be legal and it would be tax exempt. You (as I personally see it intentionally) overlooked that part, there is also the Caymans and a few other places, but it does not match the need of the governmental hacker who got into 14 systems, 5 of them had good security, and you could have seen that from day one, but you need click bitches, you need digital revenue and you need to make sure you are not obsolete. So where is that part of the equation?

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October 4, 2021 · 15:14

Utter insanity

To get to this part, I need to grab back to another article which I wrote on May 6th 2020 called ‘New World Order’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/05/06/new-world-order/), yet that one also takes a step back and refers to an initial article I wrote in 2013 called ‘It hurts every time, but we love it’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/02/06/it-hurts-every-time-but-we-love-it/) . In 2013 the US debt was $17,000,000,000,000 (17 trillion), and over 8 years 8 trillion was added, a nice $8,000,000,000,000. This implies that the US government overspends a trillion a year with no exit strategy on how to cope with the debt and it is on both Republicans and Democrats. They raised debt ceiling again and again and this president might be the one who gets to live through the fallout of such stupidity. We (me too) might grab at the ludicrous waste of billions upon billions in only two defence contracts (F-35 and USS Zumwalt) but the problem is a lot larger. The decades wasted by not overhauling the tax system (I suggested changes in 1999, might have been 1998), it would not have solved everything but it could have optionally solved a few things. It is the relentless boasting government approach towards “My Credit Card is too big too refuse!” Yet that is at this point exactly what is going to happen next week Friday. Unless there is another ceiling raised and it merely pushes the problem forward. The larger problem is not merely the politicians, it is their favourite tool the media as well. 4 days ago the Financial Times gave us ‘The US debt ceiling needs to be raised’, and they do give us “The very regularity of fiscal cliff edges inures people to their seriousness. The markets expect Washington to fear default enough to do what is needed in the end.” However none of the media told in clear harsh language to politicians (and naming them) that they need to act and as it is soon too late, the US population will get one of the loudest and harshest wake up calls since December 7th 1941. It will hit them square in the face and there will be no escape. A setting of pensions gone (the US is bankrupt), for many their homes will be lost (the debt collectors will collect on EVERYTHING), infrastructures will collapse (the money is gone) and systems will stop functioning (the US credit card will be destroyed). A setting that continues on for decades, unless the US has any friends left, the US seizes to exist and on the side lines China and Russia will howl with laughter. 

Yet not all is lost, the US could become part of the Commonwealth again, although the US politicians will mostly be out for a job, Canada could oversee issues for London and the political seat of power will be in Ottawa, did anyone consider that there was more to my ‘We stand on guard for thee’ article? The article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/03/we-stand-on-guard-for-thee/) had a small reference to “CANZUK time, is Canada ready?” When drenched in “Canada has a chance to be a major player in CANZUK to usher in a more politically stable and mutually beneficial version of a modern Commonwealth”, it is the modern Commonwealth part. And in this there is every reason to trim a lot of fat, especially political fat. In 2013 I gave the reader “Those two, when a change is set might mean that the US could be bankrupted overnight” I never saw a pandemic coming, but that pandemic pushed the US straight over the edge into an abyss of debt. It also gave me shivers to sell my IP to an American player, my 5G and I left without anything? Screw that! I would rather take my chances with China. And that is the larger setting, when the brain drain starts and China pays for the IP the avalanche will be complete (not merely me, dozens of others too), the US will have a dwindling IP vault, manufacturing will go to Asia (optionally India too) and the US will be a container of lard, no bones or muscles holding it together. A body of mass with merely the strength of the barrel containing it all. 

So as Reuters gives us a day later ‘U.S. debt ceiling impasse warrants nuclear options’ (at https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/us-debt-ceiling-impasse-warrants-nuclear-options-2021-09-30/) with “That could spare the United States a default, but would force other cuts, possibly in areas like Social Security or military pay.” We see the beginning of a larger stage where the people would soon be left with nothing, it takes a whole new vibe out of “We the people” doesn’t it? And the “Unable to borrow more, the Treasury would have to cut some 40% of federal spending by mid-November”, it is the icing on the cake, a setting of larger dangers to a large chunk of 331,000,000 people in the US. Did you think I was kidding on the US stampede into Canada? The rich will prefer 30% more taxes against nothing and an angry mob at their doorstep. Up to $3.4 trillion in personal wealth will take any option against losing it all in the US. House prices in Monaco will soar (for the really rich) so if Jeff Bezos can offer me €150,000,000 for all my IP (payable in Monaco) I will seriously consider it. Google, Netflix and Amazon will take to the global skies and they will double register their IP to keep it safe and keep it out of governmental hands, because that will be the next stage, the US will need to find money wherever it can be found. A station the US has never faced before. There is one upside, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can get their required hardware for dimes on the dollar and optionally buy out a few factories and all their patents putting them on par for their 2030 promise of taking home based defence build projects to a whole new level. The US laughed and sniggered when Wall Street offered vulture solutions to Argentina in 1998, now the vultures are ready and set to rip the US carcass apart. Is it a fair view? That is not in question, yet the stage is now that it is becoming a likely view the only people treated fair are the hard workers who just tried to get by. 

Should there be an 11th hour solution of debt ceiling raising, the people will need to consider that the end is nigh and the US did this to themselves. Irresponsible spending for well over 2 decades and with no exit strategy the USA will enter a field it so desperately tried to avoid and with innovators moving to other shores their field of choice becomes ever more limited. 

And when you wonder why no one is writing about those dangers, consider that I opted for this day to come for 8 years, I never saw a pandemic, but when you realise that the US was overspending a trillion a year, 83.3 billion a month for 8 years. Did no one catch on that this clambake could come to a sudden stop? Wonder about that part of the equation. I reckon that a lot more people should have seen the dangers after the 2008 events. Now 14 years later the people of the US will face hardships that is 10 times worse than the events of 2008, not merely because of what is now, but it happens when it’s infrastructures, social security and healthcare are totally gutted. 

Mozart wrote Requiem 230 years ago, I doubt he ever envisioned it used on an entire nation, but that is life, or the lack thereof. 

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October 4, 2021 · 04:41

A disregarded shelter setting

The Guardian was at it again and they are not doing anything wrong (at least I think they aren’t) but the stage created is calling for a nice stage and it is getting close to immediate that we take a hard look at the meaning of hypocrisy. 

The article ‘Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-biggest-ever-leak-of-offshore-data-exposes-financial-secrets-of-rich-and-powerful) gives us a few items and before you think we are digging into the air, lets take a look at a few essential parts. It starts with “companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands” first, this is not an illegal act, then we need to look at Monaco and Dubai. Monaco gives us over two sources “You can apply for a Carte de Residence once you have an address in Monaco (either bought or rented a property for a minimum of a year). You must also agree to live there for more than three months of the year. Resident individuals are not subject to personal income tax in the Principality of Monaco”, now this is not the easiest setting as decent apartments tend to start at €3,000,000 going up to €387,000,000. As such I wish you good luck finding something you like. In Dubai we see “There is currently no personal income tax in the United Arab Emirates. As such, there are no individual tax registration or reporting obligations.” These are called tax havens and they are perfectly legal. It is the way THAT nation operates and it works for them, so when we see the Guardian give us “But the secrecy offered by tax havens has at times proven attractive to tax evaders, fraudsters and money launderers, some of whom are exposed in the files”, which is a debatable setting. You see someone who takes effort in buying an apartment in Monaco or Dubai, or most of these places is not a tax evader, that person is involved with tax avoidance and it is not the same. Black letter lawyers found a setting where the rules work FOR their clients and they are allowed to do this. Yet the Guardian inserts ‘tax evader’ whilst knowingly adding “some of whom are exposed in the files”, some implying not all and some is seemingly inserted hoping that the people are flamed to the list of “more than 100 billionaires, 30 world leaders and 300 public officials” hoping that they are all painted by the flamed audience. And in light of this, did anyone take a long hard look at “the cache includes 11.9m files from companies hired by” what is not looked at is the source of that information and how that source got the information. A setting not dissimilar from my article ‘The same gramophone’ on September 16th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/16/the-same-gramophone/) regarding Pegasus and in light of evidence given (lack thereof) to the people by the Washington Post an interesting repetition of flames lacking evidence. The article on tax issues does not once, NOT ONCE mention tax avoidance, or give the setting of tax evasion versus tax avoidance. One is illegal the other is not. In this the text “They also shine a light on the secret finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries” could be seen as “They also shine a light on the private finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries”, yet they chose to not use the word Private did they? Private and non evidence could be seen as intrusive and harassing, the media really does not like it when their actions are seen in that way. 

My view?
You see if there was clear ‘tax evasion’ we would be getting this, instead of “leaked data with select media partners including the Guardian, BBC Panorama, Le Monde and the Washington Post. More than 600 journalists have sifted through the files as part of a massive global investigation”, so are they incompetent or is there too little remaining? The price of 600 journalists cannot be cheap so the more they flame, the more they ‘earn’ back, but that part is not really given is it? There is no top-line, a flaw we have seen more than once before. If it was clear 300 people can be shown in a top-line like Nation, government, non government easily enough. That would take an hour, perhaps two, but we do not get to see that, do we? We also get all kinds of embossed examples, with the added text “This is the Panama papers on steroids, it’s broader, richer and has more detail”, my view would be, then give it Ryle you dumb fuck! Do not posture, present facts! The top-line, the setting of tax evasion versus tax avoidance and a few other facts, including the source of the data, but we do not get any of that, do we?

I see it as a mere approach to the upcoming US debt ceiling and someone flaming that if ‘they’ had paid their taxes, there would not be an issue. Well, my view “Well, you stupid fucks, if you had clearly focussed on the tax laws that needed an overhaul for THREE DECADES we might not be in this mess either!” So whilst we are given “The files include disclosures about major donors to the Conservative party, raising difficult questions for Boris Johnson as his party meets for its annual conference”, an anti-tory smear setting. No matter who donates and to what party, if these people are not proven criminals, there would be no issue and I wonder how far these 600 journalists got. So when we consider “Many use shell companies to hold luxury items such as property and yachts, as well as incognito bank accounts” we need to see whether laws were broken and let’s be clear, they stated that these are people in over 90 countries. So which have laws against these acts and if they have an address in Monaco or Dubai, are any laws broken? This took me 5 minutes and we see a lack of a lot in one article seemingly the source of 600 journalists. 

I personally see only one option for a person like Gerard Ryle. Either give us that top-line clearly or become an Uber driver. As I personally see it, someone posturing absent of evidence should be somewhere else, not be some director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, but that is merely my call on the matter we see here now.

Oh, and before I forget the meaning of Hypocrisy is “the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case”, a setting too many journalists fall into lately.

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October 3, 2021 · 18:48

We stand on guard for thee

This is a special edition, this is for my Canadian fans (there are a few). And there are a few items that concerns them. First off, we have a little funny go at their prime minister Justin Trudeau (for form sake). I see the too much negative stories about him.

I do wonder about that at times, but others have their right to a view too. In this side there are two images. And yes, I do have a reason, you see the home-front is part of him, he married Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, a lady of 27 springs, which is fine, but why does he insist on looking 10 years younger than her? All men know that looking younger than your wife will be our downfall in a few ways, so as I thought he had gained insight during the pandemic, we suddenly started to see him with a posh beard (a beard loaded with silver), so we thought someone whispered a few facts of life to him, but no, recently he has gone beardless again and I reckon there will be a fallout in Maison Trudeau soon enough, but that is enough about him. 

You see, Canada will be in a tough situation soon enough, I reckon in 4-6 weeks hell comes calling. And when we realise that Canada got through the pandemic a lot better than plenty of others. The NY Times reported that 1,639,169 had the disease, less than 28,000 died from the disease making them 26th on the mortality list. With 72% fully vaccinated and 78% at least one shot they are in a good place, the US has only 56% fully vaccinated and 65% with one doze. 

The Canadian setting is a lot better than many European nations and it comes to 0.7% of American casualties of a permanent nature. Canada has reason to be proud and it happened when Trudeau was at the helm. Here I distinguish ‘was at the helm’ versus ‘was steering the nation’, that difference requires me to know a lot more and I do not.

But the pandemic is merely one side, the larger problem will be the US, when the debt ceiling is reached the impact will be seen in many ways. Not merely in the stage of the debt, larger changes, dangerous changes are at foot. The IP Watchdogs might trivialise it with ‘Leahy Bill to ‘Restore the AIA’ is Too Unbalanced to Pass’ yet, I am not convinced. The senator from Vermont has a collection of powerful companies backing him, optionally merely to protect their own needs. A source gives us “Bernie Sanders supported some parts of the bill but had misgivings over the “no strings attached” emergency appropriations available to the semiconductor industry”, it is a fair call and both sides have merits, but the larger station is now, when the US decides to use ‘nationalised’ patents and IP to bank the second credit card, the US will give a larger chunk of the battle field to China and South Korea, who have a massive IP setting. That stage and the debt default gives rise to the dangers. Millions of Americans will choose larger taxation and safety over US exploitation, in the we end up seeing Canada in the same predicament that the US had with Mexico and there is no Rio Grande between the US and Canada, there are the Niagara Falls, but apparently you can cross it in a barrel. I wouldn’t know. The larger station for Canada is now 4-6 weeks away and it sets a awkward stage. How dangerous is this? It is not merely the US, there are plenty of people in the EU and Australia that see more options in Canada and the Pandemic is pushing for brain drains all over the field. One might argue that we have seen this before. In the era 400AD – 600AD change hit Europe “The Great Migration took place in the waning days of the Western Roman Empire. Hunted by the advancing Huns and lured by the riches of the politically weakened Western Roman Empire, from the fourth century onwards several mainly Germanic tribes invaded Western Roman territory.” We now see something similar as the US is crumbling as the powerhouse the once were and then pretended to be a bit longer. I do not think it is the blame of President Biden, the six presidents preceding them did close to nothing to stem the debt and as it is now surpassing $25,000,000,000,000 (25 trillion), all whilst we see arms deals cancelled, fiasco’s in naval and airforce construction, fiasco’s that wasted well over 10% of the entire US education spending, two projects the waste was THAT much and the people will see the numbers and realise that staying in the US is going to get less and less healthy, as such the problem for Canada, they will get a massive influx of people hoping that they might find happiness there. I would like to state that the Commonwealth nations stands with them, but to be honest, I have no idea where the G20 Commonwealth politicians from Australia, UK, South Africa and India stand. They are too much about enabling America and too little about holding them too account and I fear it might cost Canada at some point. What happens then? 

I honestly do not know.

Yet we need to return to the Prime Minister. We see several online settings of anti-Trudeau. One seen in the Conversation is “Accusations that Trudeau has betrayed Canada was a common theme as we began studying grassroots Facebook pages in 2019, another election year. We found no Trudeau meme pages celebrating the leader. Instead, we watched anti-Trudeau pages describe him as a traitor who deserved to be treated with contempt.” It seems to be that there is a flock of Trudeau trolls and the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) as well as the RCMP will need to look into this sooner rather than later, because trolls are like rats, they will leave the sinking ship at the second sign of trouble and they will become a Canadian problem soon thereafter. This gets us to one source (a debatable one) called the Hill Times. We see there (at https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/09/30/canzuk-time-is-canada-ready/319763) ‘CANZUK time, is Canada ready?’, there we see “Canada has a chance to be a major player in CANZUK to usher in a more politically stable and mutually beneficial version of a modern Commonwealth”, in this weirdly enough it is Canada and New Zealand that are the stable making elements, the other two are deep in the American pockets and that is about to backfire largely. This is not about submarines, it is not about local settings it is about them siding with the US against Chinese matters all whilst there is a failing level of evidence. No, China is not innocent, but it all got tainted through the Huawei stage and China (understandably) took offence. There is no way that China can absolve too many events, but some they can and the US in a failing IP grip, a failing debt grip and a failing power grip is trying whatever they can to seem important. New Zealand has been steering clear and Canada needs to make up what to do, they do have the US (aka South Canada) on their border so it is not an easy decision, yet should all talks in the US fail and the debt ceiling becomes cemented, the people harmed by it will desperately seek a way out and north is the one move that makes perfect sense to many American.

Canada, we stand on guard for thee, yet the clarion call can, and should only be made by Canada, we cannot do it for them.

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October 3, 2021 · 10:09

The balance of one and zero

I just woke up from the weirdest dream, so take my word on this, this is not about reality, this is entertainment (or the future). The dream was nice and ‘uplifting’ there is nothing not sexy about a dozen women in tight outfits defending a location killing anything in sight. I am sitting in a chair (I think), the women are patrolling the place, there are at least 4-5 women in my room and a lot more outside. But the difference between peace and the other thing is a mere switch. From one moment to another all the women change from tranquil to deadly, waves of attacks start and the women kill whatever comes in view and there is a lot coming their way, yet in the end it does not matter, nearly all are killed, the exercise is over. It was a training, but not one you would see. This was the training of a true AI. You see, AI’s lean differently. They had similar training a child has, but the AI becomes mature a lot faster, a thousand times faster and to teach an AI they get pointers. They literally get data points and point references. This is called aggregated evolution. 

This specific AI is owned by the CIA and the year is 21xx something. 

The evolution happens through what will call an Exabyte drive. The parsing of that data takes a little while and it is done in the background, and the AI takes in every aspect of the training. It makes the AI the dangerous thing it is, and it is truly dangerous. So at this time there are only a few true AI’s, some are economic, some are logistic, some are tactical, some are operational. And only the big players can afford them, a true AI is not some server, it is like making the 1984 comparison between an IBM model 36 mainframe to an IBM PCXT. There are other AI’s, they are not true AI’s, but are a lot similar. They are a lot smaller and they are evolved deeper learning systems. They bring the bacon but only to a degree and the world is in a stage to create stronger AI’s, and as people find cheap ways to evolve their AI, a hacker team is dedicated to finding and hacking streams with data from Exabyte drives. They cannot comprehend the data, but any AI can and the evolution of an AI is worth a lot of money, so as these hackers seek they find the wrong Aggregation file. They find the one that was highly secure, but still someone found a way and got the stream of the CIA and there the problem starts. At some point the wrong one is pushed into a zero (yes, it had to be a sexual reference). But here we get a new lesson, one that as out there, but not the one we envisioned. When you were young, you tried to play with matches and your parents stopped you, just like you were stopped playing with knifes. You were told danger, and evil, bad and dangerous. It was how we learn. An AI does not learn, it does not merely learn the game of chess, it gets handed the history of EVERY chess game ever played. It gets pointers and create the experience, free of morality, free of ‘burden’, so when it gets data it never had it learns in its own way and has no morality baggage, yet what it learns could be anything. The pointers the AI creates evolves it and it makes it worth a lot more. 

So as we turn a page to another time we see a young woman dressed in retro miniskirt (70’s) and tight tank-top, she is looking in a store for a 4K movie, she picks up the Notebook (off course she did) and walks to the counter to pay, but now the stage changes, the operational AI in that mall was fed the CIA drive and recognises the woman, it sees a danger and EVERY system in the mall is now out to kill her and her kind (basically all women overly nicely dressed). The woman has no problems dealing with any attack, the security guards were easily dispersed but it suddenly happens all over the mall, and the security guards and the police accept the alarms that AI’s give them, the AI locks down the mall to protect the people outside but the mall becomes a deathtrap and all the other nice women who have no idea what’s going on are killed almost instantly. Those women who were not alone are suddenly seen as group dangers and women, men and children are executed, the AI never understood foundational stages and disperses as it was taught that a transgressing danger must be killed. And it happens all over the place, not merely in one mall, in any mall that had the same operational AI. 

It becomes over time the dangers that short cuts, hackers and greedy overseers represent, it is not some avoidable setting, when we consider Solarwinds, Microsoft and a few other hacked places, they all gave the goods, but we need to understand that true AI’s have foundational differences. We have seen this in many movies, but did we learn anything? 

You see, we saw periodic tables of what one day might be an AI, we see ‘Knowledge refinement’, we see ‘Relationship learning’ but they are separated entities, and the AI is supposed to operate like this and it does not matter what you think or say, someone will come, someone will be stupid enough to enlarge any AI for a lot of cash and there lies the rub, once we give any true AI the exabyte drive it is out of our hands, we do not get to become ‘caring’ parents, we merely unleash what we have wrought and there is no cautionary tale, because the greed driven will not care. In this the news is already there. Bloomberg gave us a week ago ‘Trained in the American intelligence community, cyber-contractors are now making their expertise available to governments around the world’, and today the Financial Times give us ‘Hackers stole cryptocurrencies from at least 6,000 Coinbase customers’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/43ab875b-2e96-48b7-926d-be17e925f1c3) there we see “by exploiting a flaw in its two-factor authentication system. The news, first reported by Bleeping Computer, comes just a week after the company had to drop its plans to launch a new lending product following the threat of legal action from US securities regulators.” It is followed by a lot of yaba-yaba and with “Coinbase said it had “immediately” fixed the flaw, but it did not reveal when it had discovered the vulnerability or the hacking campaign” we see that whatever it fixed was AFTER the fact and the use of ‘immediately’ indicates that no one was cruising their system trying to find optional defects, so it could happen again. All this whilst there is a debatable situation on the timeline that was out there getting to 6000 clients, so now consider a CTO using hackers to make its system a lot more valuable. 

Are you catching on yet?

Yes, the story I started with was merely the setting for entertainment, a movie or a TV episode, but it is founded on the dangerous premise we see every day, we use servers, we are online and hackers are a danger, yet what happens when we see the adaptation from Bloomberg, who gave us “To meet the surging demand for their services, these firms recruited cyber-operatives and analysts from U.S. intelligence agencies, offering what one former Federal Bureau of Investigations agent described to me as “buy-yourself-a-Ferrari” salaries. For some, their job description evolved from playing defence against hackers to going on the offence, heading attackers off at the pass. Others were assigned to counterterrorism operations, doing for their new clients what they had previously done for their country, and often using the same tools.” These nations evolved their systems with the experts that they could afford. Were they wrong? We seem to forget that US greed allowed for this setting to evolve and everyone wants people with top notch cyber skills. As I see it they did nothing wrong, they merely went where the financial security takes them and when we see the US as bankrupt as it presently is, all those nations get to go on a shopping spree and start a digital brain-drain of the US (and Europe too). 

We are seeing the impact of billion in damage and an almost absent stage of stopping it from happening. Close to a dozen events in this year alone and how long until the damage ends at our desk, the insurance and banks can no longer foot the bill, and that is happening now. We are handed phrases like “Potential future lost profits. Loss of value due to theft of your intellectual property. Betterment: the cost to improve internal technology systems, including any software or security upgrades after a cyber event”, so consider the dangers we saw with solarwinds, at this point there is still debate whether the full extent of that damage is known and it has been more than 6 months. So change back to the AI story I had, when it is an exabyte of data (which is 1,000,000,000 gigabyte), how long until this is parsed? That is before you realise that there is almost no rolling back from that setting, the cost would be?

This is the balance of one and zero, we need a larger change in what people are allowed to do, not because we want to, but because we have to, a change that final needs to pushed to a larger station, and this is not merely against hackers, the greed driven need to be held to account, optionally doing double digits in a holiday location known as Rikers Island. We have entertained ‘fines’ for too long, it only fuelled what needs to be seen as a wave of enriching crime, but that might be merely my point of view on the matter.

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October 2, 2021 · 00:41

The waste of overrun

The BBC gave us news today, the news is open to interpretation. This is not their fault, but it calls for a larger setting. This is seen in “In solidarity with France, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has questioned whether the EU would be able to strike a trade deal with Australia”, now I never regarded Ursula to be a useful tool, in this my setting for that was seen in 2019 when we were given by Politico (and a few others) “Ursula von der Leyen is planning a new career as European Commission chief in Brussels, but the German defence minister still has questions to answer back home”, so she is like that physician running from location to location, to avoid a malpractice suit. The quote “Last November, she told the German parliament there had been “mistakes” in how external consultants were hired and said “this never should have happened.” But she defended the use of such consultants, saying they had been required to undertake a huge overhaul of the ministry.” Yes, there are always mistakes, there are always miscommunications, that happens, and in this we can have all kinds of directions on those consultants, even when they are tools or stakeholders for others. Yet when we return to the reason why France is angry “Australia cancelled a $37bn (£27bn) deal with a French company building diesel-powered submarines, and, what’s more, France – a traditional Western ally – found out about the new pact only a few hours before the public announcement” we need to consider another source. Business Insider and a few other sources gave us “France’s deal to build Australia’s new submarines was dogged by years of problems”, as well as “The project to replace Australia’s aging Collins-class submarines was supposed to cost $US36.5 ($AU50) billion, Politico reported, but the cost had nearly doubled by this year to an estimated $US66 ($AU91) billion”, so we see a cost overrun of nearly 100%, and so far the BBC and a few other sources are extremely willing not to mention that. If I go to my boss and tell him that something was 10% more expensive, I will get fired and I will not be able to get a job for years to come, the French double the cost and they are heralded as victims? By the way, the more advanced Los Angeles class a nuclear powered submarine is less than $2,000,000,000, as such the cost overrun will pay for 15 submarines, as such, did anyone in France (or Strasbourg for that matter) do the math? So cancelling the 12 French submarines at $66,000,000,000 will get us 15 at 50% of the price and in this is anyone surprised that the deal was cancelled? The fact that the BBC is also willing to overlook a few matters in this calls for a little vetting in the BBC. Now, should the BBC find debatable evidence of the ‘evidence’ that Business Insider and ABC gave us, that is fine, we can take that into consideration. Yet it is odd that such a large setting is overlooked by France and the BBC, not to mention some former excuse for a German defence minister. 

And in this, is anyone paying attention? Even as France has its idea’s and shakes on ‘Gaullist’ temperament and dreams of greatness, it does help if they can keep their builders in a stage of competitiveness, which does mean that cost overruns that approach 100% is totally out of bounds. In this the US is not absent of such settings either, but to get a diesel submarine at twice the price of a nuclear powered submarine, all whilst the diesel version lasts 18,000 miles and the nuclear one can travel non-stop for three decades is a bit of a stretch. Yet the cost overruns are left outside of plenty of newspapers. The ideology of non-nuclear is fine, but when it comes with a cost overrun of 100% we need to ask questions and the news seemingly is not.

This is a different stage, even as the USS Zumwalt failed all its objectives and reached the unique objective of being the ugliest dinghy in US naval history, the US nuclear submarines like the Los Angeles class has proven itself and is also a nice looking vessel. People go out to the shoreline to watch submerged submarine races hoping to see the shadow of an LA class vessel, it is a spectator sport.
As such the Naval builders got the job done and then some. Especially in an age where we look for cheaper solutions, the idea that any submarine needs to refuel thrice a century is a bit overlooked as well. 

So whilst we might show some level of understanding on the sentiments of French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who called this “a stab in the back” it needs to be state that le petit Jean-Yves needs to take a look at cost overruns and set the proper tone to that side of the sliding scale. In addition to this, the ideas of 12 submarines needing refuelling every 18,000 miles is also a setting for debate, which is not on France mind you. 

So as the clock passed midnight and I complete my 2,000th article I will do a small victory dance after which I will try to break my record of being the loudest snorer in the nation (we all have goals). We all have records to break and France might do the same by trying to limit their cost overrun.

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