Category Archives: Law

January 3, 2019 · 12:41

Creativity overboard

Yesterday was about the heralding of creativity, yet there is a setting where creativity goes overboad and the Washington Post gives us ‘Scarlett Johansson on fake AI-generated sex videos: ‘Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image’‘ (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/31/scarlett-johansson-fake-ai-generated-sex-videos-nothing-can-stop-someone-cutting-pasting-my-image).

It is a lot worse than you think and even some might trivialise it by merely hanging onto the idea of women, mostly celebrities being inserted into porn, the problem is actually huge, not merely because of that application. The issue is that whatever I can creatively dream up, I can make a reality if I have enough images. The problem is that most of this software is free (for now), and the problem is growing on two fields.

In the first field we see not merely exploitation of any woman into porn, nudities or weird situations. The technology is close to perfect enough that it is harder and harder to distinguish the fake from the real, the deep fake is overwhelmingly convincing that the Washington Post comment “what your eyes can see and your ears can hear can no longer be taken for granted in the digital field“, that problem is a lot bigger than you think. Even as this example (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU9YAHigNx8) is easy enough to spot, the overall quality is very much on the high side. Here money gives authenticity, the better the computer, the smoother the result and the shorter the timespan to make that result. The average laptop will not get you far, yet a high end gaming PC gets you an optional 1080 HD deepfake version that is increasingly hard to distinguish from the real deal.

In the second field we see a failing, a failing to investigate and legalise the optional prosecution of deepfake video. Not merely the porn side of it, in its heart the opportunity to crate identity fraud and give rise to interfering with political, social and private lives will go further and will be the foundation of a lot more hardship. 5G will merely send these high end videos faster and wider on a global domain. How long until we get the videos of random politician (Emmanuel Macron) and random Celebrity (Anna Kendrick), whilst places like the Daily Mirror will give the innuendo “European Politician accused of hot Hollywood encounter” with a deep fake? The issue is not that a place like the Daily Mirror would or would not use that image intentionally maliciously, the issue will soon be that their trained professionals can no longer tell the difference between real and deepfake and there is more than one indicator that that moment could optionally be reached this year.

The third part is that not only is this technological field charging ahead, the legal field that should protect the people can no longer keep up, in addition the freedom of expression that allows for ‘creative alteration’ is actually assisting in what should be regarded as criminal activities. In addition there is a larger failing in the law, McMillan (at https://mcmillan.ca/What-Can-The-Law-Do-About-Deepfake). The working allows for a failing that no one is able to deal with. We see this in: “The tort of appropriation of personality arises where a person attempts to gain an economic advantage by using some aspect of another person’s name, likeness, or personality without that person’s consent. To be successful, the plaintiff must establish that the defendant appropriated his or her persona for economic gain. This is also enshrined in legislation such as the BC Privacy Act, which states that it is a tort to use a likeness, still or moving, including a likeness deliberately disguised to resemble a person “for the purpose of advertising or promoting the sale of, or other trading in, property or services.”” You see, the failing is not seen in what must be established, it is found in what is negated. We think of lone wolves as terrorists, yet there is another one, the political lone wolf. A person not recognised by anyone, but does the bidding to promote the political field (or alternative field like product field) of others.

When that person goes after the next political contender we see no ‘gain an economic advantage‘, we alternatively see no ‘trading in, property or services‘, yet the damage will have been achieved. Even when we look in the US regarding: “Malice in law is the intent, without justification excuse or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another. Malice means the wrongful intention and includes all types of intent that law deems to be wrongful“, to enter in court on the premise of malice and intent versus ‘creativity and freedom of expression‘ becomes a first amendment court case where the political player loses no matter what and if the transgressor is young enough the damages will never ever cover the impact. In this day and age of viral video and social media, one or two of these videos could end any political career within a day and that is merely the top of the iceberg. Larger players can lay waste to all kinds of opposition with a much greater ease by giving rise to confusion and relying on the gullible population to spread the damage.

McMillan gives one part that could give the smallest of coverage in British Columbia. As we are introduced to: “The BCHRT has the authority to provide a compensation order for any lost wages or expenses incurred as a result of the contravention, and to provide a compensation award for “injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect.”“, how could any unemployed individual compensate for damages inflicted? The problem would not be the act, the issue would be to a much larger degree the setting of ‘injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect‘ when it is a public figure, especially when we consider the last 10 years where: ‘less than 20% of the orders made are over $10,000‘, in a setting where so far $75,000 has been the highest award. So tell me, who would not fork over $75,000 in some way to win a high end election? Even as the Canadian system is seemingly a little better than most out there, what they have is nowhere near ready to deal with the larger impact the deepfakes optionally have and that is merely outside of the porn application field. The experts that gathered in the SIGGRAPH 2018 annual conference on computer graphics in Vancouver from August 12th to 16th 2018 already agree that this is going to be an issue in the 2020 US elections, the question is will the law be ready and there is no clear indications that it is.

Even as we see that DARPA has been taking an active interest in finding forensic solutions, the department by Dr. Matt Turek, I also see the flawed impact as we see the optional miss that a high resolution result projected deepfake, then captured by a low res camera will create a version that is either negated completely of will be flagged amongst hundreds of thousands of others and still ends up having a 60/40 chance of passing through. Those numbers are not encouraging and this forensic field is for now in its early infancy giving the deepfake players close of half a decade of free reign on every social media with 5G merely impacting a much larger population, much faster. The overwhelming part is that computing power and high resolution recording equipment is becoming more and more affordable so the pool of non-malicious offender is growing close to exponentially for now. Let’s face it which horny teenager has not dreamt of replacing his prom date with the image of Amber Heard, Bailey Noble or Laura Vandervoort as his desired prom date?

It is for the most the absence of intent and malice that is driving the technology. America has 42 million teenagers, close to 22 million are male, most dreaming of the dream date they can never have, so when there is a software company keying in on close to 50% of those offering a $49.95 solution making their dream come true, that is a market surpassing $1 billion, do you think that this is not happening right now? It is a massive driving force, apart from the sex sells part; it is within us to be a pranker/prankster, to replace ourselves with an edited Batman/Batgirl making ourselves the superhero, others want to be seen with their idols (Frances McDermott/Zack Effron or Bailey Noble/Heidi Klum) depending on our age and spreading that imagined tale on Facebook. At heart it is deceiving (read: pranking) their friends intentionally yet completely absent of malice and for every 50 people that do it for the innocent reason, there will be 1-2 malicious people, yet the overwhelming drive for that software is there and the more that want it, the cheaper the solution and for now that this trial software is often free and it is becoming highly perfect in the result, after which it will soon be sold at an affordable price. The problem is that anything innocent can be perverted and the deepfake technology that made yours truly look like Batman (actually Batman was real, Bruce Wayne looks a lot more like me and a lot less like Ben Affleck) can do the same for any exploiter to look the political target look like an arrested person on the street, two of these viral events can totally impact the next elections. Even as the politician itself is the likely target, making the members of his team (like the spokesperson, the strategist and the writer) targets would be a lot more effective, we will dismiss the political person often out of hand, the people they work with less so, it will create doubt and stop their political engine overnight giving the election away to the other person and with the deepfake field evolving at the speed it does, every political party will need a high end reputation management firm in their corner watching out for these attacks and in addition spend too many resources dealing with these attacks, making the small players no longer a consideration and making the larger players spend a whole chunk of money in different areas impacting their visibility. The lack of law, or more correctly stated the lack of impact that the law currently has, will drag elections and public profiles along in very different directions soon enough.

That part is seen (at https://www.ubermetrics-technologies.com/blog/reputation-management-what-to-do-about-deepfakes/) where we see how Jordan Peele is doing the speech for former President Obama and more important, the fact that this looks authentic enough to fool most republicans into an emotional frenzy, game over and the next democratic president starts in 2020, that is the game now and it is frighteningly indistinguishable from the real deal. Even as we see here the stage of ethics, the issue is not merely consent (it only partially is), we see: “the person whose face is superimposed on deepfakes did not give their consent“, in the batman example, my image is the one superimposed and I am giving permission, it is the other part that is owned by DC Comics, or is that Zack Snyder, or perhaps Ben Affleck. Do you think that their engine is ready for millions of trivial cases, often limited to a ‘cease and desist’ order? Their workforce would not be able to deal with 1% of that workload and in the initial race that viral propulsion was optionally used to their advantage. The issue is more loaded than we think and when the court case comes and I would state in my defence: ‘I was merely expressing myself, fantasising on being the next Batman. I made no commercial gain, merely social visibility for my desired optional career in acting‘, do you think that I will get anything more than an optional slap on the wrist as I was pursuing my dream? With the right lawyer it could optionally be thrown out of court as there would be no visible harm or hardship to Ben Affleck, the case ends soon thereafter.

Even as law firms give us the stage of: “must typically prove that the defendant—the person who uploaded the deepfake, for example—published something that gives a false or misleading impression of the plaintiff in such a way to damage the plaintiff’s reputation or cause them great offense, in such a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person“, now consider Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), there we learn that the first and fourteenth amendment is prohibiting public figures from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), if the emotional distress was caused by a caricature, parody, or satire of the public figure that a reasonable person would not have interpreted as factual. In that setting the deepfake field is wide open to be used against political figured to a much larger extent, that case was never ready for deepfake and by setting the stage to ‘a caricature, parody, or satire of the public figure‘ we see that the reasonable person becomes malleable to the greater extent making the deepfake field a much more effective political swaying tool than we imagined. I reckon that under this setting Larry Flynt will be laughing on the public stage that his case opened up for till the day he dies.

 

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December 24, 2018 · 11:10

Shutdown to death

Time for the last article of the year.

In America the news is all about the shutdown, the government is in a stage of what some call ‘democratic’ application of force, some will call it a serious hoax against the American people and many think it is an atrocity, merely in play because of a wall someone wants. In that regards, it worked in China, not many Chinese left the country via the wall route, did they?

The Washington Post gives us that it is now probable that the shutdown will continue until January 3rd, when the new congress convenes. Some might consider the issue of “deny Trump any new wall money, keeping the Department of Homeland Security’s border-security funding at the current level of $1.3 billion“, yet the issue is a lot larger. It is transgressing borders (quite literally). I see it as the impact of a nation now bankrupt. As they approach a debt of twenty two trillion, or $22,000,000,000,000 we need to realise that even at a mere 0.1%, the US government has to hand over $22,000,000,000 in interest every year. Now we see the impact of the non-taxation of the FAANG group, not to mention all those Wall Street individuals and corporations that are able to have a career plan in tax avoidance (which is actually legal), tax evasion is not. So consider that no one pays a mere 0.1%, so the interest is a lot higher than that. Now consider the 22 billion and the fact that there are 325 million Americans. This would imply $67 for every American. Now consider that 12.3% is in poverty, so lucky for them no taxation and it amounts to 40 million people, this gives us an initial $2.7 billion short. Then we get the 10% group. It gets to be worse when we consider the 2016 numbers. There we see: “An estimated 45.3% of American households — roughly 77.5 million — will pay no federal individual income tax“, in addition those in the lowest 20% paid -$620, which implies no taxation and money from the government, and the picture does not get to be any better beyond that. So the US has a massive budget problem and as I see it, it is bankrupt. In this economist Laurence Kotlikoff actually agrees with me, he came to this conclusion in October, whilst I predicted the setting 3 years ago, the world economies have been in denial for that long. These people might hide behind some fictive ‘wealth of America‘, yet that group of people represents less than 1 million people, and they cannot fork over what the government needs and the picture is merely sliding from bad to worse and this is part of the entire shutdown issue, there is simply no money left.

And those behind “There is frankly no path towards him getting $5 billion in American taxpayer money to meet his campaign promise of a big, beautiful wall with Mexico,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) said Sunday on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’“, you see, how strong will this wall be? How long until that wall gets ‘punctured’ with a few shots from a M72 LAW or RPG7? Perhaps more efficient is drilling a few holes and fill it with Dynamite. So, how long until that wall is nothing more than a leaky billboard supporter? How much costs will there be in repairing that damage, a wall 2,400 miles long? How much concrete, how many holes, how many troopers will be required? One could argue that the cure is a lot more expensive than the disease ever was. All that in an economy where a government could never ever correctly deal with a minus 22 trillion invoice? That is before we consider the damage to nature, Big Bend National park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife refuge, Kino Springs, Organ Pipe Cactus national Monument, the impact on Yuma looks disastrous, the outskirts of Mexicali, and the space between San Diego and Tijuana is a foregone conclusion as lost forever. All elements that can be presented around, but there is the real impact of a dozen complications, none with a solution that does anything but drive the price of the wall sky high, merely leaving the US to ridicule (by China) with the notion that their wall was nine times longer, completed and functional 375 years earlier. Yes, these are matters that you will see in the news soon enough. I have no doubt that there is some benefit of having a wall, yet at $5 billion and a lot more afterwards, is that really the way you want to squander cash when you are bankrupt?

A wall that will prove to be detrimental to the funding option of 2019, that and the fact that federal workers are now either growing hungry or mandatory taking vacation days, so that impact will be seen all over 2019 as well. And this is not the first, as the Washington Post tells us: “making this the third partial government shutdown of 2018“. Who signed off on this? So when I see: “Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) dismissed it as “really much ado about very little.”“, I wonder how many people on minimum wage were affected and would he be so kind to pay these people out of his own pocket? I wonder how trivial the matter remains at that point. And even as Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska gives us: “The votes are clearly not present in the Senate to provide $5 billion for the border wall“, I wonder if that is the full truth, I wonder if the actuality of the opposition is: “There are no funds left for such an outrageous symbol of discrimination“. I get there as terrorists and criminals will find a way around that wall, or under it, so there is that notion and that will happen, it happened, in Berlin, it happened in Colditz, it is still happening in Gaza, and as such it will also happen at the Mexican border.

It gets to be worse, especially in light of the earliest promise that this wall would be on the Mexican dime (never realistic), we see: “There is no mechanism for direct payments from Mexico’s government to the U.S. government for a wall in the trade agreement. And a number of Republicans have been greatly frustrated by Trump’s intransigence“. In light of that, why was $5 billion pushed for in American budgets? Although in this setting, the application was never made so artistically poetic by replacing ‘stubborn mule attitude‘ with intransigence, the Washington Post gets bonus points on that one.

An additional short update

I made mention of it in my article ‘That did not take long‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/22/that-did-not-take-long-2/). there I stated: “because AT&T is going to start pretending its most advanced 4G LTE tech is 5G” and even as we were exposed to: “T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray wrote that AT&T was “duping customers into thinking they’re getting something they’re not.” The “E” is easy to miss, too, judging by a mockup AT&T sent out“, and it was the Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/21/was-year-g-hype-g-reality-is-yet-come/) who gave us pretty much at the very same time: “We’ll make sure America wins the global 5G race,” John Legere vowed. “5G will unlock capabilities that will fuel job creation and innovation well beyond what we have seen so far“, as well as “AT&T said it too had switched on its 5G service, announcing it is the “first and only company in the U.S. to offer a mobile 5G device over a commercial, standards-based mobile 5G network” the catch? Access is limited for now to a select group of businesses and consumers in a dozen cities, and it requires the use of a mobile hotspot“, so is this real 5G, or is that the mentioned 5G evolution? In light of this article in the Washington Post, does this constitute deceptive conduct, or merely a missed communication between the WP editor and AT&T executives? And as we are treated to “As for when we will see the first 5G-capable smartphone? Industry analysts say the consensus appears to be the first quarter of 2019“, we see the completion of a stage of intransigence, I merely wonder who is not clear enough to see the sea of disagreement here. the fact that whatever comes is to be with an estimated price of US$1800 for the complete edition should also consider that this one item could max out the average credit card on the spot and that is without additional warranty and protection. So as 5G goes, it is seemingly merely for the rich (for now), so as such, is it truly an American first, or even a stage where America ends in a fictive first place? Perhaps it is perception on steroids, you can be the first in space, even if you send a monkey, it is in that light we get to see 5G soon enough. You merely have to contemplate who is remembered to be first in space, Yuri Gagarin on the 12th April 1961 or the monkey?

I wonder how soon we see the update on how trivial the difference is between 5GE and 5G, and how soon people realise that they are merely getting a new double priced contract whilst true 5G is not delivered, it might end up being a lovely day for contract lawyers in the US.

 

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December 21, 2018 · 12:01

Three privacies walked into a bar

It is not merely the beginning of a bad joke; it has become a distasteful one. Now, for the most I have never really been against social media like Facebook, as it was free and nothing comes for free. Yet in this, I have always advocated and expected certain levels of decency. The Guardian revealed two days ago that large levels of decency have been trampled on to a much larger degree than ever contemplated, and the people remain silent. The people are so uppity uppity on possible transgressions by governments seeking criminals and terrorists, yet they will allow for any transgression towards greed and exploitation, how can we accept any of it?

  1. Show us your tits

It is an old expression, and I heard it first somewhere in the early 80’s. It broadly represents: ‘What have you got to offer?‘ Mostly used by people with absolutely no adherence to either diplomacy or good manners (unless a guy makes the joke to a good male friend). It is the first part in the stage that the Guardian offers in an article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/19/facebook-shared-user-data-private-messages-netflix-spotify-amazon-microsoft-sony) where we see not merely ‘bending’ the rules; it is the breaking of basic rights towards privacy that is now out in the open. Even as we accept to the smaller degree: “making user data available through loopholes to companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Sony“, can we even contemplate the impact that we would have to face through: “Facebook gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read and even delete users’ private messages“, the fact that these two were allowed to ‘delete’ messages is crossing a line the width of the grand canyon and the fact that those fruits and nuts on Capitol Hill (aka Senators and Congressmen) are clueless in their interviews, showing one stupidity tainted example after another and questions like ‘giving away rights to delete private messages‘ remained largely undisclosed shows just how useless the elected officials have become towards the larger fields of technology.

  1. Merely the tip, or can I shove my whole penis in there?

A small reference to the comedian Jimmy Carr, who once stated: “I can’t get a word in there, let alone my cock“, and that setting gives us the New York Times view of: “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages” (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html#click=https://t.co/p565d1TX5L). As we contemplate: “Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it had instituted stricter privacy protections long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook“, we see a much larger field opening up. We can think on one side that Mark Zuckerberg had become clueless on what is going on, or he remains intentionally silent on what he believes are personal rights of privacy, the mere realisation that Facebook acknowledges that not one user on Facebook has any rights to privacy is at the core of this stage. It goes further with: “the deals described in the documents benefited more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Their applications sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017. Some were still in effect this year” there is a clear transgression going on, and it is merely speculative on my side when we considered the impact of Bing and Microsoft. They have become so afraid of what Google has become that they are willing to stage new settings of alliances against whatever fictive war they face, the innovations that Google has brought and the innovations that Chinese player Huawei is bringing is scaring these large players beyond belief. If they cannot get up to their imaginative version what it means to be ‘on par’ they feel that they will be considered as derelict and considered as merely trivial in the 5G field. That is a much larger realisation and people need to be aware that as they contemplate of what it means to be a major player in the 5G field, the mere perception that they are not that, that they have lost the trust of the people is a much larger hurdle.

The NY Times shows that part in their article with: “Mr. Zuckerberg was determined to weave Facebook’s services into other sites and platforms, believing it would stave off obsolescence and insulate Facebook from competition. Every corporate partner that integrated Facebook data into its online products helped drive the platform’s expansion, bringing in new users, spurring them to spend more time on Facebook and driving up advertising revenue. At the same time, Facebook got critical data back from its partners“. We could contemplate that this is optionally the Ponzi version of a data scheme, but it is as I personally see it more sinister than that. You see, the lower levels would never advance to a higher level and the data would merely flow up to the tip of the pyramid, leaving the rest as mere exploitable facilitators in all this.

  1. Supply Filofax’s to the Russians, it is very organised crime

There is one additional part in all this that could be the beginning of the end for Facebook, as the NY Times gives us: “Facebook, in turn, used contact lists from the partners, including Amazon, Yahoo and the Chinese company Huawei — which has been flagged as a security threat by American intelligence officials — to gain deeper insight into people’s relationships and suggest more connections, the records show“, we are introduced to a much larger issue. Not only has the US been unable to prove the lie (read: non-truth) that Huawei is a National Security danger. We see the makings of the fact that American Corporation (read: Facebook) has been handing over the data voluntarily. As a business solution, Huawei had been able to see where the interactions were the largest and also predict where hardware and software would make it a much better regarded update for consumers, the fact that this data became available gives the first rise (after shown levels of non-comprehension) that technology firms are replacing politicians, politics and policy making them useless as these technology firms have been setting the beat of who gets what data and at which price, yet the US government is not allowed access, not when it can be sold at $14.99 per kilobyte of raw data.

This remains an evolving field and it is not until we get to the part “Apple devices also had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to disable all sharing, the records show. Apple officials said they were not aware that Facebook had granted its devices any special access. They added that any shared data remained on the devices and was not available to anyone other than the users“, so not only does the new iPad pro bend under the smallest pressure, which Apple claims is normal (something the consumer was not informed about), we see that the ignorance of their own technology is now a much larger issue all over the playing field. the mere fact that disabled sharing of data still allowed for sharing is an architectural failure of much larger proportions than ever contemplated. In all this data sharing in Huawei devices remains unproven and in all this it seems that Google is not the black sheep some proclaim it is, all whilst Facebook is showing to be without ethics, without regards and without morals, so at what point will we relabel Facebook to Faecesbook?

So as the article ends with: “How closely Facebook monitored its data partners is uncertain. Most of Facebook’s partners declined to discuss what kind of reviews or audits Facebook subjected them to. Two former Facebook partners, whose deals with the social network dated to 2010, said they could find no evidence that Facebook had ever audited them. One was BlackBerry. The other was Yandex” gives a much larger rise to the lack of privacy that up to two billion users have not had for the longest of times. We could argue that it is in the interest of Google, to fix Google+ and allow people to port away from Facebook. When we look at the two players, it seems that Google+ is not nearly as dangerous as Facebook is more and more showing to be. Even as we are considering that Washington DC is suing Facebook, the realisation we get from: “Washington DC has sued Facebook for allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to gain access to the personal data of tens of millions of the site’s users without their permission“, when we set it against the stage that the guardian, the Times and the New York Times have shown the people. We merely have to print the log of all data shared and number all instances of data transgression will optionally show Facebook to be the most reckless and unethical corporation in the history of technology, that is quite the achievement, and it works for Microsoft as they might proclaim themselves to be saints in a tar pit.

When we consider the quote: “According to a letter that Facebook sent this fall to Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, PricewaterhouseCoopers reviewed at least some of Facebook’s data partnerships“, we see a massive failure by Facebook to police and protect the data of others, and as we already know, those who have the latest mobile phone, we need to realise that this is no longer a mobile phone, the latest phones and the ones for 5G are no longer merely mobile phones, they have become personal data servers and as we are seeing the impact where Facebook has made most of all that data shareable, with people you never agreed on having access, in how much anger will you be from January 1st 2019 and onwards? For me it works out nicely, it merely increases the value of my new IP, which is currently on the rise to a much larger degree than even I contemplated. 2019 might be finally be the year where my life turns largely to the better and at present I feel a lot safer handing that IP to Huawei than to anyone else, that is one reality that Washington DC has shown to the largest of degrees (Mountain View remains a strong contender for now).

The only part in all this is why large parts of all this was not shown clearly in the senate hearing of September 2018. Just contemplate this weekend, what else did that so called Senate hearing not figure out, and how unsafe would you like your personal data end up being in 2019?

 

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December 18, 2018 · 13:12

How Americans lose wars

There is a clear setting of war; the Americans have their articles of war in this. Yet is that enough?

Some stare at Article 10 of this, which gives us:

Every non-commissioned officer or soldier, who shall himself in the service of the United States, shall, at the time of his so enlisting, or within six days afterward have the Articles for the government of the armies of the United States read to him, and shall, by the officer who enlisted him, or by the commanding officer of the troop or company into which he was enlisted, be taken before the next justice of the peace, or chief magistrate of any city or town corporate, not being an officer of the army or where recourse cannot be had to the civil magistrate, before the judge advocate, and in his presence shall take the following oath or affirmation: “I, A.B., do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the Rules and Articles for the government of the armies of the United States.” Which justice, magistrate or judge advocate is to give to the officer a certificate, signifying that the man enlisted did take the said oath or affirmation. (* By Section 111 of Chapter 42 August 3, 1861, the oath of enlistment and re-enlistment may be administered by any commissioned officer of the army.)

Yet is that enough?

You see, this article was the first one that came to mind when I was confronted with the Washington Post who gives us (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/former-special-forces-soldier-once-lauded-as-a-hero-faces-murder-charge/2018/12/13/bb4a11ee-ff10-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html) the headline ‘Former Special Forces soldier, once lauded as a hero, faces murder charge‘. Here we see the mention of U.S Army Capt. Mathew Golsteyn. The article gives us in several cases “the suspected bomb maker“. The question is not merely regarding that captain, it is regarding the political cloud over a theatre of war. When we are confronted with: “The suspected bomb maker was not on a list of targets that U.S. forces had been cleared to kill, according to Army documents” when we place this next to “found materials needed to make bombs like the one that had killed the Marines. Golsteyn said that they brought the suspected bomb maker back to their base“. When we see the clear state where US troops are in a stage with an enemy of their nation and forces, we get to go to the articles of war “I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever“, from my point of view, a point of view shared by many, we get the condition that a bomb maker is that, we also get that this was a clear enemy, even if there is a setting of “was not on a list of targets that U.S. forces had been cleared to kill“, we have the clear setting of an enemy and when the strategical status changes where the existence of the bomb maker can upset a much larger territorial field, it is my personal belief that killing the target is not merely warranted, it had become essential. One would expect that an Army Captain has the rank to clearly set that field. We might argue that optionally that those who managed the “list of targets” could have been inadvertently asleep at the wheel.

It also makes me oppose the state of “demonstrating conduct unbecoming of an officer“, if anything he showed the balls (an element most flaccid US politicians are lacking) to do something essential. In this war, we have been confronted with a shifting of values by the enemies attacking America and as such, other considerations should be made in all this.

It becomes merely an administrative exercise when we were offered “found materials needed to make bombs like the one that had killed the Marines”, which alone would have been sufficient to take actions that might have resulted in enemy fatalities, optionally disregarding the circumstance.

When we are confronted with this stage we see the setting on why American forces might end up losing. I do not argue that there has been a clear path of transgressions by others as we are exposed to: “another officer, former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 for ordering his soldiers to open fire on village elders in Afghanistan who were approaching his unit while they were on patrol. Several member of Lorance’s platoon testified against him after being offered immunity.” In the case of Army Captain Mathew L. Golsteyn we see a very different stage and here we see a failing; a failing by the army, a failing by the American politicians and the quote by Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee giving us: “Matt Golsteyn is an American hero. Matt Golsteyn does for the American people what we ask him to do, and the Army is screwing him again, and they ought to be embarrassed“, which seems to fit the bill in all this.

We also see another part; at the end of the linked article we are given: “A senior Army official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said a request for information on the Army’s handling of the case has been filed with the Defense Department Inspector General. Until that is resolved, the official said, the case is on hold“. I can only partially accept that. From my point of view a clear documented path should be presented to the people showing what the soldiers fighting for America have to go through. When I see “the Army’s handling of the case“, I see the need that there needs to be more clarity for these people in war time conditions and whilst in a stage where they can be part of a live fire exercise at any given moment. As I have the ability to kill anything within 800 meters (with the proper rifle), considering the damage I could do, knowing that there were plenty of people in Afghanistan imparting such damage on American troops, does the Pentagon or the political engine have any clue that any holier than though stage is not merely dangerous, it has the danger of losing an enormous amount of additional troops killed by leaving them in such a dangerous stage of uncertainty?

There is every case for the prosecution of former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, yet is there any clear stage of transgression against then Army Captain Mathew L. Golsteyn? The fact that this entire matter has been going on for 5 years gives clear voice that some people are seeking something else; that conclusion comes to me when I see that the finding in 2014 was that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. Yet that too leaves us with questions. Because we need to recognise the difference between ‘insufficient evidence to prosecute‘ versus ‘cleared as no wrongdoing was found‘.

We might be able to agree that the stage of Army Captain Mathew L. Golsteyn is one that required scrutiny, yet the fact that the finding of 2014 should have been accepted (even though I have an optional issue regarding the stripping of his Silver Star, however as I am unaware of the findings or the reasons on exactly why he was stripped, we need to keep that part in the air. If we consider the phrase ‘conduct unbecoming an officer’ we need to consider that “He launched an 80-man mission to hunt the shooter down, slogging through a muddy field under fire to help a wounded Afghan soldier“. One case is not another and in this the uncertainty that American troops are implied to be exposed to is also a much more dangerous setting, not merely in morale, but in the dangerous stage that until clear documented orders are given to soldiers on a battlefield, they might not act in fear of prosecution and that is deadly dangerous, which is a clear setting of defeat!

When we see in the official document: “CPT GOLSTEYN related he trusted Mr. [REDACTED]’s intelligence and had always given him credible information which saved lives and prevented attacks“, my mind would have been made up and clear. So whoever has been stretching and reactivating this investigation for 5 years needs to (in my most diplomatic posture and voice): “Fuck off and become a barber, hairdresser or taxi driver“, so there!

I admit that I might spend a day checking the validity of the report, yet it took 10 seconds to make up my mind in all this. War is war, it does not change; it does not compromise or play nice. For a lot of people the contemplation of wars changed. It was initially on the 9th of August 2001 at a place called Sbarro in Jerusalem. A month later we got two buildings in New York on September 11th (you might remember that) as well as the earlier bombings on four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk between September 4th and September 16th 1999. It changed the stage of war. It was an intentional war against civilians, a war that should have been made unacceptable from day one.

From my personal point of view, the direct killing of a terrorist should be unconditional and non-prosecutable. We might argue that not all those wearing explosive vests do so of their own accord, yet at that point we need to avoid optional additional deaths a kill shot might be required. Yes, at that point we need to investigate if avoiding collateral damage can be proven to have been avoided and that is exactly what then Captain Golsteyn did.

I think that the US (as well as other nations) has ventured too much towards the facilitation of terrorists with the visible exception of France who knows just what to do with those unpleasant individuals (aka ‘fuckers’).

I also found the additional information (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/05/19/see-document-excerpts-in-the-armys-war-crimes-case-against-a-green-beret-war-hero/) interesting here is the additional: “In December 2011, a special agent contacted Bing West, a bestselling author who spent time with Golsteyn’s unit around the time of the alleged killing. He said he wouldn’t assist investigators unless he was subpoenaed, and had never seen them do anything inappropriate.” This too is interesting for a few reasons. There is ample evidence that the media and the news steered around the events to the largest degree, those without knowledge, voices and with degrees in journalism have millions of words on Jamal Khashoggi, even if there is no evidence, yet when it comes to the work and dedication of Golsteyn, they all remain silent, this too is a level of hypocrisy I find hard to swallow. I do not run away from the issue and my findings on what I have been able to ascertain. So when I see ‘leaked report’ I have questions, questions that those leakers will not like (like the need for their identity) and the need to hold these people to account or their actions. So when I am treated to “Golsteyn “was not remorseful as he had solid intelligence and his actions protected the safety of his fellow teammates,” it said“, I merely see it as the required consequence of war. I also feel the need to make clear to feel my urge to make the not entirely proven claim that most likely someone at the CIA leaked it, to state to Director Gina Haspel (who was not in charge at that point): “Gina clean up your house, or I will do it for you and I won’t be nice about it!”

OK, that was a little over the top, yet am I wrong? We see all kinds of leaked reports left right and centre, yet when it comes to Jamal Khashoggi we get no leaked tapes, we get no leaked reports or photographs, we merely get 57,000,000 search results, most of them misinformation, repeated unsubstantiated rumours and debatable facts that are anything but confirmed facts. When we look for Matt Golsteyn, we merely see less than 190,000 results and most repeat each other and also hiding behind “suspected Taliban bomb maker” (which is not completely unacceptable) , so how much effort did Sam’s uncle show to check the validity of that part and the parts found? It seems to me that a mere confirmation of that would have resulted in a dismissal of all charges, or am I making the challenge too simple for the Pentagon (and/or) the CIA?

Before you all consider that it was a complex issue, I can give you the rough estimated 98.43356% certainty that it was not rocket science. We now see that President Trump is looking into the matter and that is a good thing, although in opposition, I personally believe that it should never have reached his desk, it should have been solved within the Pentagon walls in 2014, and it did (the outcome remaining partially debatable as I personally see it).

In the end, this is merely one case and there have been plenty, I will also admit that in many cases the US did not show to have its finest hour or that the actions of a few have been acceptable, yet in the case of then Captain Golsteyn, I would have done the same thing again, and again and again, no matter how the aftermath outcome was. The now Major Golsteyn response: “he couldn’t have lived with himself if [the suspected bomb maker] killed another Soldier or Marine“, he had the proper mindset to keep himself and his brothers in arms away from harm. So let us all hope that the House Armed Services Committee has more people like Duncan D. Hunter and less people who go ‘miaow’ day and night, because as I see it the people of a feline distinction will cower when it comes to the light of day and plead for a compromising solution with whomever achieves victory over America and in light of certain events that is not an unrealistic future that America is moving towards.

When we see people like Maria Butina having (via the NRA) sway over politicians and attempting to set an alleged Russian agenda, allegedly advocating the needs of Alexander Torshin, how much more important is it now to set the stage for a strong and committed defence force (and optional a strong intelligence force). Do you really think that the events surrounding Matt Golsteyn will get America there?

I very much doubt it!

 

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December 15, 2018 · 11:00

The danger of not learning

When do we stop enabling a dangerous setting? That is at the foundation of all this. And the cause of it is not Facebook; it is LinkedIn that makes the error. First of all, when we consider the entire mess, LinkedIn did not break any law, they did nothing incorrect on an academic level, yet they were wrong to allowing this to happen.

The subject here is Zendesk. First of all, there is nothing wrong with Zendesk; they seem to be on the roll to get a service software solution sold. They have a proper website (www.zendesk.com), they have all the checks and marks in place. From my personal view, I do not believe that they have a proper designed website, but that might just be me. I personally do not believe in a web page that scrolls for almost a mile and has a dozen images replacing each other. It is what I would call a bad mobile site, and as the bulk of the decision makers are on mobile, this was not a good step. It has good parts too; their Career page has an original approach (post stamp view) which is very artsy. Their way to bring it is great, yet the execution is not great, so what gives?

It started when I started to get the promoted ads from Zendesk, now there is nothing wrong with that, I have been in customer service for well over a decade on an international level, so that I get this ad makes total sense. The issue starts that EVERY promoted part, demo, white papers and whatever else they are trying to bring, you cannot get them without filling in a form, and there is the first issue, the ‘Zendesk Capture’; Full Name, Work Email and Phone Number. Now, to be fair, their visibility is clear and as I said, they didn’t break any laws. Yet in this age, after all the hassle of Cambridge Analytica, after all the screw ups that Facebook has been tainted with, LinkedIn should not have allowed for this. I think that Zendesk made a massive mistake taking this marketing path in a day and age where details are captured all over the place. We might wonder if someone hacks that Zendesk computer, how many details would be captured.

Yet, when you look at their offering, they have a suite of arrangements, where the cheapest option is an annual plan from ‘Free – $9, per agent, per month‘, so they have the pricing right, they have the options and the seemingly have set it all in perfect motion, so why capture the data? True service minded corporations should be walking down the door.

And as I said, this is not about Zendesk, this is about LinkedIn. I consider the allowance of this path a massive mistake. It was only last week when we were alerted to another Facebook mishap with: “Approximately 15 million of the victims had their name and contact details disclosed. While the hackers were able to see personal information, including education and employment background and location check-ins, of a further 14 million.“, this was only last week and we see additional news a mere 8 hours ago, so when it comes to personal data, LinkedIn should not allow for ANY kind of data collection if someone wants to show how good they are and not allow any promoted material to be linked to data capture.

Is there an exemption?

Yes, I think it is not wrong that someone would merely hand out their email (not necessarily their work email) to receive the link to a white paper, although we can equally argue that the link could have been in the story they promoted. Optionally that paper could have been uploaded to LinkedIn and distribution went via LinkedIn, as this is a promoted ad, so we can assume that it had to be paid for and LinkedIn had a service minded need to complete the (optional) distribution. None of that was done.

All optional solutions to keep their user base data safe and LinkedIn did none of these.

And when we do get to LinkedIn, we get more (at https://www.linkedin.com/legal/ads-policy). Here we see:

Phishing. Do not use an ad to promote a website that tricks a user into providing personal or other information that can be used to exploit or cause harm to the users.

Well, clearly Zendesk is not into Phishing, and they never tricked anyone, yet the words “providing personal or other information that can be used to exploit or cause harm to the users“, you see, in the end Zendesk cannot guarantee the part of ‘exploit or cause harm to the users‘. If they get hacked that part becomes an issue and again, Zendesk had never done anything incorrect.

In the end, the policies of LinkedIn are flawed as I see them. LinkedIn should never have allowed for these steps to happen, if trust and data is their trademark, then they lost a container load of value just there. The capture of personal data is becoming more and more an issue and as such using advertisement to capture data (I admit that it must be freely given), we see a larger issue. People have shown to be not too bright at times, carelessly handing over their personal and work details.

So the actions of LinkedIn in this matter are regarded as highly questionable by me.

As for Zendesk? They might have made the wrong call to pursue a certain path, yet it seems that they are driven to visibility and growth, with a directors board that is 50% female (I think that this is a first for me to see one that is actually 50/50) and a global drive that could make them a serious player down the track. They have the suite, they seemingly have all the software elements (optionally missing a dashboard element) and they offer nearly all with free trials, so they have a serious A-game in place. I partially wonder why they even bothered trying to capture details in the first place. Ah, and they also have something called Zendesk Sunshine (at https://www.zendesk.com/blog/relate-announce-sunshine-sell-explore/), so as it seems, they have the makings of a dashboard solution too.

They could have gone with: “We have the best customer service software solutions. Prove us wrong!”

So this is about the danger of not learning and LinkedIn is in the stage where they aren’t learning and optionally endangering the data (and profiles) of their customers. You see, in the end they might have a policy in place, yet data can end up going somewhere else and as such, in that shown danger a dozen times over, LinkedIn should never allowed for this step to happen in the first place, it does not matter who wanted to capture the data, or what for, it should not have been allowed for.

In this age where data details go somewhere else by the size of millions of users per transgression, not allowing this to happen would have been a first need and that was not done.

Bad LinkedIn, bad doggie!

 

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December 13, 2018 · 11:27

This was actual news, how?

OK, I have slammed many of the large corporations, members of the FAANG group, Microsoft (on the mere principle of joy), IBM, because we have to and a whole range of other technology providers. We could work on the conundrum that a UK comedian once gave us:

“How long must we bash Microsoft, not merely for the joy, but because it is our civic duty to do so?”

Apparently his equation also applies to UKIP, Nigel Farage, the LibDems and Nick Clegg. At times, I have hit out at Google decisions as well, because at times, in critical points of exposure we need to do that. Not merely because of a $340 million payout they would owe me for bringing them a patented solution worth $3.4 billion, but you get the package deal. If you cannot say where it is at when it matters, whatever happens will never matter, and I prefer not to work for anyone who does not matter, or whatever they bring matters to no one, it is a stage of work that is self-destructive in the end, and who wants that?

My bosses have always known that, they always knew where they stood with me, no exceptions. I hate bosses who are too scared to give me the bad news. You know those bosses who over the course of the week go from. ‘We would like this to get done’, then we get ‘It would be best if we can manage this to be completed, optionally at the end of the week’ and on the Friday afternoon we get ‘If we do not present it on Monday morning, jobs will be on the line’, so we work throughout the weekend, whilst the previous Monday we could have been given the reality of ‘This has to be presented next Monday morning, so we need to put in the hours to get it done’ There we would have known what we were in for. Not to overly stressed stage of a weekend to resolve issues (whether realistic or not).

These bosses are still around, they are the epiphany of cowardice, they cannot relay bad news, no matter what is ahead.

Why are we getting this?

The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/11/google-tvc-full-time-employees-training-document) gave us less than 9 hours ago: ‘Revealed: Google’s ‘two-tier’ workforce training document‘, we get “Google staff are instructed not to reward certain workers with perks like T-shirts, invite them to all-hands meetings, or allow them to engage in professional development training, an internal training document seen by the Guardian reveals“, and my answer is: ‘So what?‘

I was one of those people, I was assigned exclusively to Google and I did not get that stuff, we got some of that stuff via our own office. I NEVER took offense, because I was hired and employed by someone else, I was merely exclusively assigned to Google. There was no lack of clarity; there was no lack of information and no lack of assistance. Google is a world by itself, it opens EVERY door within Google and those employed there have access to pretty much EVERYTHING. So it is in all kinds of manners an IP nightmare in the making, as such it is important to know what you can do, what you can access and where you can be. They never denied us food, coffee, snacks, or access to the materials we needed to do our jobs, we merely did not get everything and I get it, I always understood that this is a nightmare for the actual Googlers as well.

So there is an actual harsh truth in: “Working with TVCs and Googlers is different,” the training documentation, titled the The ABCs of TVCs, explains. “Our policies exist because TVC working arrangements can carry significant risks.” I do not believe I ever did anything inappropriate there, I never betrayed the trust of Google; I never short changed their customers on service. Apparently 2 years later there are still agencies that look back on my service very positive, that is my reward, I did a good job and that is what I always wanted to do, a good job. I also always wanted to be a Googler, because of the access to so many bright minds, it is intoxicating. For 20 years I was the only light in a company (because of my function), pushed into a cubicle with the books , manuals and data sets, the guru on a lonely mountain. To walk into the room with similar bright minds and knowing that I am not even close to the brightest mind is awesome, for me trying to keep up with them was a challenge, one anyone would miss. It is like training with Braden Holtby and Martin Jones for next week line-up as a goalie (in realistic terms, I would end up in 4th position there), but I will fight for it, no matter what, so Braden better bring his flaming A-game to that practice round.

I also did not take offense to: “According to a current employee with access to the figures, of approximately 170,000 people around the world who now work at Google, 50.05% are FTEs. The rest, 49.95%, are TVCs“, perhaps I should, or perhaps I should not. Well, I am no longer a TVC, so it does not matter, you see, that is corporate policy. It is what some would call: ‘Above my pay grade’. For the most I want to do a good job, have a decent place to live in and do it just like I did many decades, I am a workaholic at heart, I feel no denial or shame.

So when I see: “The letter detailed some of the material concerns that TVCs face due to Google’s differential treatment, including lower wages and “minimal benefits”“, I wonder what that is about, because I never had any income complaints and the lunches I had there were awesome (and a nice plus). The work was well staged, the equipment was there and working (they have an excellent IT department), which in light of some other places was a nice step forward. Perhaps it was lower wages, I do not know, I was hired on a clear premise and they fulfilled it 100% (110% is you consider one or two extras). Yes, I did notice that the Googlers had all kinds of extras. They have a job to do, a target to make and whether they did or not, I do not know. I did what I had to do and there was no negativity. Perhaps it is different in other nations, perhaps a place like Mountain View has other parts, I cannot tell. Yet when I personally see: “Google routinely denies TVCs access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives,” the letter states. “When the tragic shooting occurred at YouTube in April of this year, the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire. TVCs were then excluded from a town hall discussion the following day.” I see an issue, one that he article does not give.

  1. I never was denied information that was relevant to my job, I got at times a whole lot more information than I bargained for.
  2. ‘Leaving TVC’s defenseless in the line of fire‘, I cannot tell, I was not there, was that actually the case, or was that perception? That is an important distinction, and I feel certain (to a small degree) that the writer Julia Carrie Wong cannot tell that for certain either.
  3. Excluded from a town hall discussion, makes sense because as a TVC I would not be an employee of Google, my boss if I was exposed to that would inform me and then make sure I got all the support I needed, because my boss was great in that regard.

So we have one part with three elements where two parts could be wiped form the ledger immediately leaving one optional discussion.

Bloomberg gives an additional part. there we get: “One contractor, who works 50 to 60 hours a week in Google’s marketing division, said TVCs are treated as “collateral damage” who can be hired and fired on short notice to help the company achieve business goals quickly and cheaply.” that is the nature of the beast, that is the impact of being a temp, I have been a temp for many years and I preferred being an actual employee, but it was work and at some point I became an employee of a large software firm, sitting on the other side of that equation. And even today I would not shy away from being a Google TVC. I was never treated wrongly. For the most I was never treated wrongly at any firm hiring me as a temp, oh and on the side, those 50 hours were all paid for, as an employee I did not get that overtime. We all have moments that suck, we all feel a little down when we are the employee that is not invited to the corporate party, no free booze and food (mostly food mind you).

I understand that there are plenty of temps that feel unhappy about being a temp versus being an employee and that is to be expected, most of us have been there one day or another. Yet in this stage of so many people without a job, any job will do, that includes temps. As for the quote “Another TVC described full-time staff asking her to move from an office desk or cutting ahead of her in line for coffee because she was a contractor and therefore not as important“, I have NEVER experienced that or seen that in any of the three Google offices I have been in. In the end, we should realise that any company will hire its own variation of jerk, or douche bag, it happens, want to blame the company for that? Good luck trying to work for the CIA at some point.

Bu the way, I had to do some of those training modules and you should all see that this is done so that there is clarity, so that you do not accidentally set yourself up for a harsh fall, because someone will cry with the claim of false promises, or the statement that someone got bought (or hundreds of other dangers). Google is pretty good that way (likely merely for self-defence purposes), making sure that the person knows what they need to know.

And perhaps it is ‘all about saving money‘. Let’s face it google has a few hundred courses running, do you want to lose time and resources training 10,000 contractors on skills they do not even need? I always had access to all the trainings I needed and they made sure that there was work time available to do these courses, which in opposition from bosses making me go to some of them in a weekend setting is a great plus. I would happily walk up to Duncan Lewis requesting access to the long range training with the .338 Accuracy International AWM. You never know when a dingo comes for your baby, and that apparently happened for real (and in an Oscar setting), we must be ready and vigilant and it is not like Duncan has anything better to do with his time, but to approve for my needs, right?

We need to see what is required and what a person was hired to do, it is not kind or friendly or accommodating, but that is not why people get hired, hired as either temps or employees. We seem to forget that in places like Google, Microsoft and IBM, employees get for the most their full access as it is a return on investment for the firm to give them the knowledge, to keep staff versatile, that line does not apply to temp staff. We seemingly forget that part at times.

So when we see: “In 2000, Microsoft agreed to pay a $97m settlement over a massive class-action lawsuit brought by permatemps“, it is optionally not because Microsoft did anything wrong (I honestly do not know that part). There is an unwritten part and a clear part and sometimes that field is jurisprudentially too grey too fathom and settling would be much cheaper in the end. Yet when I was at Google, there was no non clarity; the actual Googlers were happy, friendly and kind all the time. That year was one of the best ones in my entire working career and that is saying something. So when I see: “We are legally in the clear to treat people like garbage.” I can tell you right now that I never experienced or perceived such treatment by anyone at Google ever, which leaves us with a lot more question regarding this article and as such I wonder how these sources were vetted. It might all be on the up and up and I will say sorry, accepting that my personal experience is merely one of 49.95% of 170,000 staff.

So I might be the positive outlier and I will happily admit to that is that is the case, yet I see here merely one view of an American side of a corporation that operates in 219 countries, and as far as I can tell 70 offices in 50 countries (3 in Sydney), from that point of view I wonder how accurate or acceptable this article actually is.

 

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December 10, 2018 · 13:06

That Grrrrrrr moment

I have had my issues with the large corporations for the longest of times. I am not against their existence, I have nothing against corporations making wealth and having a great run of revenue, being against that is just lame and idiotic. Yet corporations should be held to account, properly taxed. So whilst politicians hide behind the coattails of economists like Thomas Piketty for all the most idiotic and self centrered reasons, how about we change a few other things first?

The article ‘Group led by Thomas Piketty presents plan for ‘a fairer Europe’‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/09/eu-brexit-piketty-tax-google-facebook-apple-manifesto), needs to get a clue, and fast. In addition buying a few vowels from Susie Dent is not the worst idea either. this is a personal joke towards Chrononhotonthologos (a Scrabble hit) and the mention of “As you both behave to Night, You shall be paid to Morrow“, a different stroke towards consultancy for shaping ones economy. As I see: “A group of progressive Europeans led by the economist and author Thomas Piketty has drawn up a bold new blueprint for a fairer Europe to address the division, disenchantment, inequality and right-wing populism sweeping the continent“, my blood goes slightly on the boil. How about properly taxing the members of the FAANG group? (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google), or How about stopping the EU gravy train by at least 85%?

Two elements optionally bringing in billions and you know this! These people are given leeway in ways most people cannot fathom. ‘The Rotten Apple: Tax Avoidance in Ireland‘ gives us: “The European Commission found that Ireland gave Apple preferential tax treatment which amounted to $14.5 billion in unpaid taxes between 2003 and 2014. Due to Apple’s tax havens in Ireland, they have taken advantage of U.S. and Irish tax regulations” and that is merely the top of the iceberg. When we see the angering part with: “In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014” (source: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm), we see that the EU has failed itself and now we see the unacceptable quote: ‘€800bn of levies‘, whilst we get it set into some ‘tax the rich’ status, we need to be weary of the delusional setting of these “more than 50 economists, historians and former politicians from half a dozen countries“. So when we see: “by taxing corporate profits more effectively, as well as income and wealth“. In the foundation that step is not wrong, I am all for properly taxing corporations, yet the EU is part of the problem, it has given away the keys to banks and corporations to so as they like. I do believe that ‘0.005 per cent of profit‘ is ample evidence of that. It is the ‘tax the wealth that is an issue’, because that is where the problem starts. The wealth tax is 5000 times higher than Apple apparently pays. the first sign where we see: “an extra 15% levy on corporate profits, tax increases on individuals earning more than €100,000, a wealth tax on personal fortunes above €1m, and a tax on carbon emissions“, is the problem. These high paid wankers (pardon my French) is not about getting to the corporations, it is the ‘personal fortune‘ that they seem to be after. Now, before you think that you are safe, think again. Your house is part of that making many people considered to be multimillionaires; they now all get a levy on what these gravy train wannabes call ‘fairness’. How about holding all the economic advisors of all governments to account, for any wrongful advice that impacted the government and European coffers negatively for over €250,000, we fine these advisors with €25,000 euro, all of them. This is likely to impact all those economists that hid behind ‘it was a complex situation‘, or ‘carefully phrased denial of corporate facilitation‘. This is the easiest to see with the Dutch fiasco called Fyra (a high speed train) that impacted tax payers by €11 billion. When we see “The Fyra-story also demonstrates that powerful corporate interests (in this case Dutch Railways’ desire to remain the sole rail service provider in The Netherlands) can abuse their position and waste an unbelievable amount of taxpayers’ money“, on a short sighted and narrow-minded view of what the ego wants, whilst the coffers cannot ever afford a scheme that will never be cost effective, we see: “Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad reported in January that the HSA never had the intention to operate a “true” high speed rail service; a strong piece of investigative journalism stated that a speed of 220 kilometers per hour had been deemed sufficient for the Dutch portion of the route from the git-go by the HSA executives (by comparison, high speed rail service in Germany and France exceeds 300 kilometers per hour)“, the setting of simple definitions where the different nations in the EU could not agree on that mere setting. So how about giving a fine to all decision makers costing the Dutch government 11 billion? How about making the bulk of tax deductibles no longer applicable? Any corporation can make a profit when corporate tax is one percent or less, it is time to set the proper stage of corporation tax and that part they imply to get right, but they cannot, so these individuals add ‘a wealth tax on personal fortunes above €1m‘. You see, they do not set it on personal fortunes over €15 million, and hit the truly wealthy, no they need a lot more, because properly taxing the FAANG group (and several others) is just too dangerous. I would in my least diplomatic setting offer that the entire economic fiasco could have been avoided. If their fathers had jerked off over the radiator, instead of impregnating their wives, the entire economic danger to all of us would have died with a sizzle, how wrong am I now? (OK, admitted I am totally lacking diplomacy here)

So when we see: “From a tax on personal wealth and assets: an additional 1% on estates valued at above €1m and 2% on those above €5m” accounting for over 25%, we see a dang3er to too many people all over the EU. Try to find ANY apartment or house for less than €700K in most European metropolitan area’s; it will hit too many people, whilst the truly rich will avoid disaster. This entire matter is as I personally see it a joke.

I suggest:

Any government not being able to hold its budget within 2% over budget, its elected politicians will have to return 25% of their income, those who are unable to do so are removed from office and in addition will have to be incarcerated for no less than the full term +2 years of that government. Regardless, of this, in addition, the entire Gravy train comes to a standstill (and right quick). For these people travel and housing expenses are reduced by 60%, they should be ab le to find a cheaper solution. The Guardian gave us in 2016: “According to a European Union financial transparency system, commission staff spent €22,193 (£17,610) staying at the five-star Shangri-La hotel in Singapore and €54,677 at the five-star Stamford hotel in Brisbane in 2014. Other expenses listed that year include €439,341 on Abelag/Luxaviation, a luxury private jet provider, and €23,696 on chauffeur taxi services“, that needs to stop as well. It is my personal view that Thomas Piketty and his 50 economists (an optional new version of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves) should have stayed in their cave, and not come out at all. Now we have the setting to go over these 50 economists and seek all the things that they helped hide from their senior peers and that is essential now. You see as we are introduced to “a bold new blueprint for a fairer Europe“, is also the optional setting to hold these people who cased all of this by facilitating to corporations and banks to account through prosecution. I find it tasteless and unacceptable that just like Greece, those who caused the mess get to walk away with a pretty penny in their pocket as well.

And this mess is not nearly over. When we look at a few parts, we get to start with: ‘The 1999 Santer Commission Scandal‘, you would think that in 1999, when we get “a devastating report on fraud and nepotism attacked the EU’s executive body for serious management failings. All 20 members of the Commission stepped down, in what was described at the time as the biggest crisis in the European Commission’s history” (source: Brussels Times), you would think that this is the end of it. No no, (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-santer-idUKTRE80N1UG20120124) Reuters reported in 2012 ‘EU draws fire over Santer return to EU post‘ “Prompted to defend Santer at a late night press conference on Monday, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner in charge of economic and monetary affairs, tried to make light of it, saying journalists only became critical of Santer after Commission officials beat them in a football match in late 1998“, politicians making light of the situation in a farce involving nepotism, and as such we can make certain levels of claim towards corruption. Forms of corruption vary, yet they do include: bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, and embezzlement. So as such, the fact that we allow European politicians to re-enter the EU commission after being found guilty here is just too unacceptable. That by itself could also be a cost saving exercise, so does our Thomas Rickety Piketty warlock have a spell on all of us, by merely setting a facade to make thing better for all of us, or merely not worse for some of them? I think that the escalations in France are making people, people in power worried; they are facing the straw that is breaking the camel’s back. This is not something that they are making on the spot. This has been coming for the longest of times and even as I am not against taxing the rich a little more, we need to realise that the entire exercise is merely seen (by me) as a way to paste labels to mere traffic diversions for opening avenues of collecting others.

‘The primary objective of this survey is to understand the level of corruption perceived by businesses employing one or more persons‘ (at http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/flash/fl_374_sum_en.pdf), there we see that 38% does not regard nepotism a problem, 40% think that tax rates are a problem (in all fairness, that is a valid point of view to have for any business), and 45% considers corruption not to be a problem. In that setting, changes are not easy, correct changes are near impossible, as we see the setting where corporations and politicians can work together on a ‘compromise’ that will hit the lowly paid taxpayers a lot more than anyone else.

I actually presented a taxed solution in 2015, there I wrote in regards to the UK budget: “So, helping those on low pay is fine, but only if we change Basic rate to 21% and higher rate to 42%, which means that above the £10,600, the basic income goes up by a maximum of £318 and in addition, high income get an additional maximum of £836. This allows us a balanced budget, and if you wonder why not the highest toll bracket? Well, they also get the 1% of the base and the 2% of high anyway, that group is dwindling down and to seek even more to that smaller group seems a little unfair (the non-bankers that is). The second premise here is that this extra collected fee can ONLY be used to balance out the lost revenue from the basic rate group that had their annual income between £10,000 and £13,000 per annum“. The premise was to give the lowest incomes a little extra cash, so we raise the 0% tax maximum point a little; in that case these people will have a little more and we all profit there. As the non-taxable part goes up by a rough £100 a month, the second bracket gets an additional 1%, so they pay £318 more each year, and the second group (the much larger group) pays an additional £836 above that. It leaves the extra £100 without impact on the treasury, giving them extra and still having a stage to reduce debt (as long as Labour is kept out of the treasury coffers). In this case there was no additional impact of the wealthy, their houses not at risk and we would all be a little more social, no, not according to Thomas, the Rickety Piketty warlock. He wants an additional €800 billion, from what I can tell, because they cannot get their tax rules in order, getting the proper taxation in place and with the FAANG group paying as reported a mere 0.005 per cent of profit taxed, how can we ever get a staged setting of corporations in a fair playing field?

In ‘In fear of the future‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/03/16/in-fear-of-the-future/) I addressed the stage of the annual £43 billion interest bill, interest is cash lost and the economy that has to pay that much every years is running to keep in the same place, so adding the minimal hardship to reduce that amount, hopefully by reducing the debt to the degree that the interest goes down £1-£3 billion a year would be great, yet not entirely realistic. focussing on reducing the interest by £1 billion a year for the first 10 years is possible, yet it comes at a price and properly taxing corporations at a level that allows them continuance and growth (yet optionally not at opening a new super shop every year) is an option to seek. And even as we see ‘taxing the rich’ in the UK, the true rich is a group of no more than 6000 people, how are they coming up with these billions? So as I stated (in 2015): “If we can believe the 2014 article by the Guardian, this will hit 6000 people, which means that it only raise a few millions, so taxing the rich has always seemed like and always remains a hilarious act of pointlessness. It is the 1% from the basic rate that will truly make a difference. It will drive the debt down faster, it will lower the interest bill which will help lower the debt even more.” It is perfectly valid to disagree with me on this one. Yet Rickety Pickety hedges his bets by giving us: “a tax on personal wealth and assets“, this includes your house and car. Now consider the amount of houses and apartments close to €1 million, in addition, we cannot see if retirement funds are seen as ‘wealth’, in that case, of that happens, the entire calculation will change drastically. Whatever we are trying to create for a rainy day will be overly taxed because politicians and economists could not do their job properly in the first place. In that economists have been tools for politicians for the longest of times as I personally see it and they need to be taxed (read: fined) for all their failures between 2003 and 2017. Let’s make those losses part of the requirement to address, shall we?

I wonder how many of these 50 autographs will suddenly vanish (read: get retracted) when we see them held to account for certain projects in real estate, energy and transportation endeavours, I am merely speculating here.

A ‘hidden’ statement at the top!

In the current setting of budget and taxation, please explain to me how ‘Quadrupling the current EU budget to 4% of GDP would raise about €800bn‘, how does upping the budget 4 times over (including the gravy train I reckon) help raising cash? Is he hiding behind ‘spend a little to get a lot‘? Is the $3 trillion QE bond buying fiasco not enough of a train wreck at present?

In the article we are also given a gem. It is Guntram Wolff who questioned the need for a continent-wide project. “If the cross-border transfer element is only 0.1%, why do the whole thing at EU level?” he asked. That is indeed a very good question. I personally see this as some EU fuelled stage where we suddenly see the report being used as a QE prolongation project. We can see part of this point of view in the Economist where we see (at https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/12/08/quantitative-easing-draws-to-a-close-despite-a-faltering-economy): “an extension to its targeted long-term repo operations, which offer banks cheap funding in return for lending to households and firms. That would benefit Italian banks most. They are heavy users of the scheme and the stand-off with Brussels has pushed up their borrowing costs. But to help them would be to ease the market pressure on Italy that might otherwise encourage fiscal rectitude. The agony of setting monetary policy only gets worse when politics comes into play.” In addition there was Seeking Alpha, who gave us last week: “Forward Guidance and Reinvestment Policy will then take QE’s place“, you say potato, and I say tomato. From my point of view it is not merely the application to move coins from the trouser pocket to the vest pocket, it is (as I personally see it), to move coins on their suits, in whatever pocket the can to present some level of status quo, a status that has been non-realistic for the longest of times.

So my simple solution, to merely add 1% and 2% to the middle class (and thus the upper class getting both as well optionally with a mere 1% added, gives us the option on national levels to finally do something about these crushing debts. the entire Thomas Piketty and his 50 abacus users report is not merely over the top, it is (as I personally see it) some under the waterline agenda to make certain changes that will facilitate for corporations to a larger degree in the end, because if they pay 15% on one end, you better believe that they get 20% from somewhere else (it is the trouser and vest pocket strategy). In all this, the people having a decent house merely get an invoice with the ‘Pay within the next 30 days’ routine in the end which I find offensive here. In the same manner where I stated a decade ago (it could have been 15 years) that from the very beginning, making ecommerce businesses tax accountable at the place of delivery (the buying consumer) would have been fair to all shops and merchants, none of that happened and in the end shops can no longer compete and close down. Crushed between cheap online competition and ego tripping landlords (the second most of all), we see that continuance is not an option and this links to the EU, as it is trying to prolong a system that is not merely unfair, it cannot be maintained in its current form. More taxation is not the option, it never was, holding politicians accountable to the expenditure and unbalanced tax laws that they allow for is a much larger weight on one side of the seesaw and that is drowning the economic status of all.

And consider merely one side, a mere example from the recent past. Bloomberg gave us “Apple is leasing about 500,000 square feet (46,451 square meters) of office space at the new headquarters, and plans to move 1,400 employees there. Bloomberg News reported last year that the building’s developers were on course to achieve less than half of their original return target as costs rose and wider economic uncertainty damps demand for the most expensive homes.” I do not mind that Apple moves, that they look good and prestigious, it is their right. Yet now consider the part: “Apple’s new UK headquarters will be part of a £14 billion redevelopment at Battersea Power Station“, as well as “it will take up around 40% of the office space in the old power station“. So 40% of the office space of a £14 billion project? How much tax exemption will they get there? Looking good through non taxability is nice, but that is all it is, nice, it should not allow for tax exemption. And if that makes them decide to move somewhere else, that is fine too. Consider that social housing got cut in that building so in 2017 we went from: “Battersea Power Station is determined to deliver 15% affordable homes, equating to 636 homes“, to “they slashed the number of affordable flats to just 386, a 40% reduction from original plans“, by taxing these options, we will ensure in many places that these so called milking investors take a step back and consider what should be allowed. This example is in the UK, yet there are examples all over Europe, interesting how that part is not highlighted, even as it is optionally part of the ‘taxing corporations’ event, what they lose on one side, they gain in the other. It is seemingly in opposition with Germany where we see ‘Hamburg to seize commercial property to house migrants‘, I use the word seemingly as I have not seen enough data to see whether I merely saw one side of the coin, that part is important too, yet I have seen in Sweden that there are tensions as well as a much better situation than the UK had, so there is space for improvement all over the EU (and the UK mind you), this all adds to the tensions as housing is the number one requirement and keeping that cost down, as well as that value down gives rise to the decrease of hogging and hoarding rental apartments, giving a playing field that is much more level and gives a release of economic tension to the largest European population and as that tension goes down, it will decrease other tensions as well. It does not solve the entire non-budgeting ability to 27 EU nations and as such it is not really part of this, but it is a strong covariant towards economic living of the entire EU population, that is very much a factor here. It does take care of division, disenchantment, and inequality to some degree. That we consider right-wing populism is pushed though the vision of an unfair and unacceptable gravy train and can be addressed by taking that train out of commission (well at least 85% that is). In the end I think that the mention of ‘the EU’s so-called democratic deficit‘, we could consider making nepotism prosecutable with an added lifelong ban on ever returning to any political post, EU or national. Did I oversimplify the problem for Thomas Piketty?

You tell me, and when you think I am wrong, that is perfectly fine, consider Alain Juppé, and Jacques Santer. Consider how people have been made redundant and end up not having any options, yet these people have a shielding umbrella that allows for the return to high yielding governmental incomes.

There is a lot wrong in several ways in all this and it makes me growl (in a rabid way mind you), even as we realise when we try to tackle inequality, we need to take heed from the entire FIFA matter in more than one way and these failings have been ignored (as far as I can tell) by this so called ‘bold new blueprint‘, the stage of mismanagement issues, non-transparency (especially in the ECB) and a whole range of options not cleared before they all start looking for ways to tax more and keep one of the most inefficient logistic systems in the history of the world (as I personally see it) in place. You cannot win more by charging more, not until you fixed your internal accountancy department, should you doubt that, look at Tesco and the Danske Bank and Deutsche Bank, with the acclaimed €200bn dirty money scandal, especially as this is commented on with: “it remains to be seen if any individuals will face justice for the biggest money-laundering scandal in EU history” by the EU Observer (November 29th).

Taxing the rich? Rickety Pickety, you have much larger issues to address before you should be allowed to make a play for those who worked hard towards their homes and retirement, as in the end, that is wwhere this invoice ends up as I personally see it.

Have a great Monday!

 

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December 4, 2018 · 11:23

Those we needlessly fear

All others pay cash! Yes, that was direct, was it not? We have seen millions of articles fly by, all given the very same announcement: ‘Fear Saudi Arabia‘, as well as ‘MBS is a monster‘. Yet, what evidence was given? What actual evidence did we get?

Turkey played its innuendo game, we can also accept that the US is playing a protective game for Saudi Arabia and that too should be highlighted, yet NO ONE has taken an academic look at those so called tapes as have given the audience the rundown, what was there, what was proven. Is there even enough evidence that Jamal Khashoggi is on the tapes? Journalists are in their own corrupt little world of satisfying the shareholders, the stake holders and the advertisers and they all want Saudi Arabia to look like they are all guilty, all to the very top. In addition we see the G20 Argentina game that France played with their ‘confrontation’, conveniently enough staged to be caught on CNN. He was not that amateur like when he had to have a few words with someone high up at Crédit Agricole, was he? Where have they got that leaked conversation?

I see it as a simple operational premise to counter the fear that they have. It gets worse, at present the vultures are circling and we get to see more fallout. News dot com dot au are giving us (at https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/saudi-friend-of-jamal-khashoggi-sues-israeli-surveillance-firm/news-story/b0bf9d501332df9ad31bede7de904b6c) ‘Saudi friend of Jamal Khashoggi sues Israeli surveillance firm‘ gives us ‘A Saudi dissident‘, as well as ‘Omar Abdulaziz, said he was friends with Khashoggi‘. Now people make all kinds of claims, I can make the claim that I am the lover of Scarlett Johansson; she just does not know it yet. Anyone in the media can contact frukan Johansson and verify that fact (or prove it to be wrong), we can’t in the case of Khashoggi, can we? Was there corroborating evidence that they were actual friends? If so, why was that not added? The news site makes no real effort to substantiate that friendship and that is not what this is about. You see, it is the claim ‘a lawsuit against an Israeli surveillance company, claiming its sophisticated spyware targeted him and helped lead to the killing of his friend‘. We have two problems here. In the first, is there any evidence to back that up? In the second, Jamal Khashoggi was an unknown person to 93% of the planet, yet he was a journalist for the Washington Post, and as such he was a lot more visible than most others. Also, the entire filing matter in Istanbul gave rise that plenty of people knew where he was, so the spyware seems redundant. If there was quality spyware in place he could have been killed anywhere and leave the optional involvement of Saudi Arabia almost completely out of it. Does that not make sense?

The last paragraph is the killer here: “citing news reports and other sources claiming that NSO Group sold Saudi Arabia the technology in 2017 for $US55 million ($A75 million)“. The first thing here is to look at those news reports; I wonder how much innuendo is in there. Then we get the stage that technology worth $55 million was bought when JK was very much alone, giving rise to the reason of purchase, last by not least is the investigation on the NSO group and their software and that is what I believe was the foundation, it does not matter where and how the NSO group software was used. I believe that Omar Abdulaziz got wind of a 2016 article not unlike those on Vice (at https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3da5qj/government-hackers-iphone-hacking-jailbreak-nso-group), and saw ‘Government Hackers Caught Using Unprecedented iPhone Spy Tool‘. so when we see (or saw) “Ahmed Mansoor, a 46-year-old human rights activist from the United Arab Emirates, received a strange text message from a number he did not recognize on his iPhone“, the brain of Omar Abdulaziz  optionally went ‘ka-chink‘ and his pupils turned to dollar signs, It was optionally his opportunity of a lifetime.

So who is right?

I am telling you right now that all I am writing from my opposition is pure speculation, yet is it less of more believable? Is the NSO group real? Yes they are and they have something that every nation on the planet with a decent technology level requires. Any government have people they want to keep tabs on, and that is what this solution optionally provides for. It is not a killing tool, and at $55 million it is not some tool you use for simply ending someone’s life, there are more convenient and more elegant ways to facilitate to punch out someone time clock of life. When you stage a $55 million solution when $50K in an account does it, that solution does not make sense.

Still, we cannot ignore the NSO group software and it might have been used to keep tabs on JK, that is optionally a reality we face, yet we all face that optional for a number of reasons and there we have the crux, knowing where a person is does not mean that their life has to be ended, the fact that we have tools, does not imply that we have to use other tools. The audience factor is trying to give us that idea, an emotional driven premise of events to set the stage of intentional international execution. There has been, and unlikely will be any evidence showing that. Not by some eager frog (an unnamed France governmental executive) stating to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘I am really worried!‘ worried about what? Conversations eagerly and ‘unintentionally’ leaked right in full view of the CNN camera, are people truly stupid enough to go for that bait?

Then we get claims in papers like the Sydney Morning Herald trying to up their game, yet at present I am not certain if the Saudi government would lose if a defamation case was brought to court and that is me merely contemplating two of the JK articles that I have read in the last two days.

In addition, the article has the claim ‘and helped lead to the killing of his friend‘, which is actually very clever as in this way stated we have a problem, or do we? Is there any evidence that the solution was or was not used? If there is a way to check the usage of that software then Omar Abdulaziz opened an interesting door. You see at that point, under the US freedom of information act, close to two dozen claims can be made regarding the NSA (the San Antonio location) on how they have been keeping tabs on people. In the January case of Sherretta Shaunte Washington, her attorney might optionally (with properly applied intelligence) be able to overturn any given sentence against her. There has been the rumour that the NSA assisted in keeping tabs on a dozen burner phones. You see, it is not the sim card; it is the mobile imei number on EVERY phone that is the issue. The NSO group seemingly figured out the algorithm to take this to the races and that advantage is worth well over $55 million. That is exactly why the Mexicans wanted the solution too. Most Mexicans are still believing that without the sim it is nothing, yet one call gave away the imei number and that number is a lot more useful than most consider.

And in the end it is Forbes who gives us the missing diamond going all the way back to August 2016. Here we are treated to: “looking at the domains registered by NSO, they determined Pegasus could have been used across Turkey, Israel, Thailand, Qatar, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Mozambique, Morocco, Yemen, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Bahrain, though there was no clear evidence“, in all this the one logical step, the one thought that no one has been willing to voice for a number of reasons. Turkey is on that list. So what if this was Turkey all along from beginning to end? Turkey, who had the solution to keep tabs on thousands of journalists, reporters and bloggers, and jailing hundreds of journalists, do you actually think that they are beyond killing a journalist? I mentioned a few yesterday, so you there is evidence all over the field and so far no actual and factual evidence has been given on any involvement of the Saudi Royal family, yet everyone is playing that card as often as possible.

I am not in denial, I am not stating that they are innocent, I am merely looking and hoping to see real evidence, and so far the absence of that investigation has been astounding. There is enough evidence on the involvement of Saudi’s in all this, yet the proper vetting of Turkish evidence by the media has seemingly been lacking. The press (and the media as a whole) merely pushed that same button again and again and it makes me wonder on the premise in which other ways we are (seemingly) being deceived. That is the clear consequence of orchestration, it makes us all doubt all the other evidence, and in light of the USA playing their silver briefcase WMD game in regards to Iraq, that has made us distrust a lot of other evidence, evidence that might have been valid, but we are in a stage where we no longer trust the messengers in all that and as the media and newspapers lose more and more credibility, we have started to treat most news as fake news.

That is the price of orchestration and the players remain in denial that it is happening. That is the part we see form a source called Foreign Policy dot com. The article (at https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/how-an-internet-impostor-exposed-the-underbelly-of-the-czech-media/), gives us: ‘How an Internet Impostor Exposed the Underbelly of the Czech Media. When politicians own the press, trolls have the last laugh‘, the article by Tim Gosling gives us: “Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis—and expose just how easily disinformation can slip into the mainstream press, especially when politicians control it.” It is a mere introduction to: “In September, the Czech broadsheet Lidove Noviny published an op-ed by Horakova expressing support for Babis’s refusal to offer asylum to 50 Syrian orphans, as was proposed by an opposition member of parliament. Playing up to his populist pledge not to allow “a single refugee” into the Czech Republic, the prime minister said the country had its own orphans to care for“. It merely gives us parts to ponder, the amount of pondering increases with: “In tapes released by unknown sources onto the internet last year, for instance, he was heard discussing stories damaging to his political rivals with a reporter from Mlada fronta Dnes, which alongside Lidove Noviny is controlled by Agrofert—the agrochemicals conglomerate that is the centerpiece of Babis’s business empire.”

I have written again and again against the media facilitation for the shareholders, the stakeholders and the advertisers, here we see the impact when the media and the shareholder are one and the same. That article from a freelance reporter who seemingly contributed to Foreign Policy, The Telegraph, Politico Europe, Deutsche Welle, World Politics et al. He shows that there is a much larger issue and that the difference between those bringing the news and fake news bringers is almost indistinguishable. We might give passage to the LA Times, the Washington Post, New York Times, the Times, the Guardian and several others, yet after that the mess becomes no longer trusted, mostly because the source is too unknown to us. The media did this to themselves through facilitation and until that changes fake news will have too many options to gain traction with the people influencing a populist political nation on a near global scale.

It is one of the reasons why I refuse to merely accept the view of people blaming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for it all. There are too many intelligence gaps, too many parts of merely insinuated conjecture whilst the intelligence was not properly vetted and it happened for the most in Turkey (the consulate is Saudi ground). We might never ever get the answer of what truly happened, and to a very large extent it is because of the games that the media played from the very beginning. A game staged in innuendo, unnamed sources and people talking on the promise of anonymity. It is not the fact that these elements exist, it is because to a much larger extent too many of them were used at the same time, pressing the same directional button, most of it not scrutinised to the degree that was essential, and when contra dictionary evidence was found, those issues were ignored by the largest extent by all the media, that too is the foundation of fake news, we merely chose to ignore it, it is our emotional side and that is the bigger issue. People are no longer adhering to innocent until guilty, the media has become a ‘guilty until proven innocent machine‘ and that drives the populist agenda more than anything else, so I oppose them all by stating: ‘The Saudi government is one we needlessly fear, until we have conclusive evidence of their action that is the only way we should be‘. We have become puppets in a world where tyrants (Robert Mugabe), alleged mass murderers (Slobodan Milošević), criminals (shooters who were granted indemnity from prosecution) and paedophiles (Catholic clergy) get more consideration than any Muslim ever had, how sad has our world become?

 

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November 25, 2018 · 13:31

The promised example

In light of all the outsourcing we saw yesterday, it is time to show you just how lucrative it can be to set the outsourcing stage. In this example I will go with a software example, as I have seen this myself. You see, sometimes a place is profitable for the mother company no matter how you slice it and with this example we see this in action.

Let’s take a software vendor, selling some software solution. Normally that entire path will set you back $7,000. The software, training, installation and personalising the solution. At this point you might think, well, it is all tax deductible for the company, so what gives?

Well, some of these players still have budgets to adhere to (unless you are in Italy), and when we look at that the procurement department will state that it is too expensive. So, the sales team has an idea. They say: ‘You know what! We can (if you take all three) the entire as a package for $5250, and that is a nice discount‘. So the company takes all this and accepts the deal. So the software is bought, there was a trainer on the spot educating the staff for 2 days and they set up whatever needed to be set up and the entire delivery is complete.

It all seems straight forward. Yet, it is not to be. You see that outsourcers often have a main office outside of that country and they want their franchise fee, which could be 70% of the software, yet they will always get FULL PRICE. So they will get 70% of $3,000, no matter what the discounted invoice was. Now that company has to make due with $3,150 for training, training materials, travel expenses, training hardware and staff. And for every deal they make the cost remain high, yet the revenue has been siphoned off and the cream went somewhere else. Now we get the stage where there was still a profit, yet the staff members are still costing thousands of dollars, as is the office and all other goods. There is not taxation as the revenue was too low and this is where we see the problems for a lot of these companies. They are now in debt, governments having to make deals and I cannot vouch for Interserve, Carillion, Serco Group Plc and Capita Plc, because where I know it was happening was not one of these. Yet I feel certain that others have been playing similar games and it has been going on for over 20 years that I am aware of that tactic.

So does the entire Interserve part now make sense? A debt of well over half a billion and its board members are still up for millions in bonus? I cannot tell what the reason is for the entire Interserve issue, yet what I have seen in the past, we should take a long hard look at what some consider to be debt and what some consider to be an optional approach to deferred invoicing.

We might see partial support when we see the article in the Morningstar (at http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/AN_1542962437936788100/interserve-expects-higher-operating-profit-despite-construction-loss.aspx). Here we see: “Interserve posted a pre-tax loss of GBP244.4 million on revenue of GBP3.25 billion in 2017. It then recorded a pre-tax loss of GBP6.0 million on GBP1.67 billion in revenue in the first half of 2018“, others sources had a similar setting, yet here we also see the headline ‘News Interserve Expects Higher Operating Profit Despite Construction Loss‘, now we see operating profits versus construction loss? Does it now seem more and more that we are given a half a billion birdie, whilst some are showing to be receiving massive bonus payments? How is this not tackled? How come that for 20 years we have seen the impact of creative bookkeeping, whilst the European governments have been unable to fix anything?

When we see the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/b2c9fdd2-eeed-11e8-8180-9cf212677a57) giving us: “Interserve employs 80,000 people worldwide — 25,000 in the UK — in jobs that range from cleaning the London Underground to maintaining army bases and building a shopping centre in Dubai.” Giving me the speculative thought ‘How long until we see the Dubai part sold off (including equipment) at roughly 5 pennies to the pound? How would that screw over the 25,000 staff in the UK when Interserve folds? We will not know until the Interserve lawyers and accountants finalise they optimised plan in 2019, but I fear that the impact of outsourcing is going to be felt on a very large area. You see, outsourcing growth is through the roof and it is growing in a sphere of influence that has not been seen before. Fintech, Meditech, Pharmaceutics. It seems like the golden calf, yet it is a treacherous field. It might be a temporary field at best. I think that the construction companies have good weather now, yet the crash of the 80’s is still with them, Communications is all about outsourcing, yet when those outsourcers do not finance the training of staff, their usefulness will decline in 3-4 years as the companies are focussing on 5G. In that same light, we see a pharmaceutical growth, yet the setting is that many patents will fall over in the next 5 years. At that point these companies outsourcing can discontinue the renewal of contracts and the staff issue will not be their problem, it will be the problem of the outsourced company and that is starting to push a wave to a much larger degree than we have seen before.

So as we return to the Financial Times article we get “Interserve said profit growth for the year so far had been as expected, and it anticipated “a significant operating profit improvement” for the full year. The group, which swung to a loss in the half-year, did not provide figures“, we knew that, many sources had it. Yet we also get “It has revenues of £3.25bn but is valued by the stock market at just £75m and is already under close watch by the British government in case of collapse“, when a 3 billion revenue company is merely valued at merely 2% of that, there is a lot more going on than mere sneaky keeping of books and that needs to be seen as well. So when we consider: “Interserve’s update attempted to “sugar coat” the increase in net debt and “to deflect from the news” that the Cabinet Office is making sure it has alternative suppliers to take the place of Interserve should it fail. “The operational developments are not good reading either,” he added“, a part given to us by the independent analyst Stephen Rawlinson, we need to look deeper. You see, if the UK does get confronted with: “alternative suppliers“, we need to accept that for a chunk of those 25,000 British workers it will not spell good news, even more so, there is every chance that it gives a larger level of turmoil to those people whilst some board members end up going home with a payout that is between £380K and £2.25M, making sure that they can live in a sea of porn and Netflix for the longest of times, possibly even until the day they die.

Is it that bad?

Well, that is not certain, yet the issue that the UK accounting watchdog had to quit over criticism regarding Carillion (source: the Guardian), they give us the quote: “Stephen Haddrill will depart after nine years in charge of the Financial Reporting Council, which is subject to multiple inquiries into its effectiveness and independence” we get one thought, yet in light of “a committee of MPs described the FRC as “chronically passive” in an excoriating report into the construction group’s failure, condemning the regulator as “too timid to make effective use of the powers they have”” we should consider that there is every chance that Interserve might have been on that same side of the page making the issue larger and more critical. Is it not interesting that too often we see terms like ‘too timid‘ when it comes to dealing with the rich? The entire Sir Philip Green’s £1 sale of BHS is a nice example to keep in mind. The setting where the people behind BHS are apparently not in prison in a stage where “the settlement will not fully restore the retirement income they had been promised by BHS” (source: Financial Times). One of many failings where we see the creativity of applied accountancy and the improper use of non-committal prison sentences to those employing these fast and loose solutions. At present there is a speculative chance that Interserve might be on a similar track, but that is pure speculation, we will not know until the solution is offered, which according to the papers will not happen until somewhere in 2019, until that point arrives thousands of employees at Interserve will likely be in a state of stress. It is one hell of a way to approach Christmas.

Humbug!

 

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November 20, 2018 · 14:54

Two Issues in play

There is a larger issue in all this, part of it is Wall Street, the gig is up (to some extent) yet no calls are being made to investigate the Analyst game by aspiring new Wall Street kings, and moreover no one is asking questions.

We start with the impact that Apple has had and the Financial Post is giving us (at https://business.financialpost.com/investing/us-stocks-wall-st-pulled-lower-by-apple-trade-worries) “Shares of Apple Inc fell 3.5 per cent after the Wall Street Journal reported the company had cut production orders in recent weeks for all three iPhone models launched in September“, as well as “Other market leaders — including the ‘FANG’ stocks — also fell sharply, underscoring the view that their leadership was on shaky ground. Shares of Facebook were down 5.1 per cent, Amazon.com was down 4.3 per cent, Netflix was down 4.9 per cent and Alphabet (Google) fell 3.4 per cent“. Now, we can go two ways in this, yet I am concentrating on the mere logical view. It is not the part of loss that is concerning me, it is as I said in ‘Annual medical bill $864,685‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/11/17/annual-medical-bill-864685/) “Consider the $2365, whilst their opponent is offering a decently close solution for $1499 (Google) and $1599 (Huawei) all top end phones and the next model is 33% cheaper, in an economy where most people are turning around pennies (just look at Debenhams). It was a really bad market moment; one could argue that Apple believed their marketing whilst it was nowhere near realistic“, when we consider this part, which is the basis application of common sense in a day and age of hardly being able to get by and we see such drops in stock levels, is that because there is underperformance, or a more clear image of overestimation by certain analysts clearing an optional path of short selling? When we consider the definition of short selling as: “The trader sells to open the position and expects to buy it back later at a lower price and will keep the difference as a gain“, is my speculation on a market set to implode that far from the actual truth? Has the entire FAANG group resorted to hiring mentally challenged Business Intelligence enabled accountants, or is someone spiking the Wall Street environment?  Is my thought on this that far out or synch with reality? When we see SBS reporting with ‘Nissan chairman arrested in Japan for financial misconduct‘, and we are given: “Besides being chairman of Nissan, the 64-year-old is also CEO of Renault and leads the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance“, “Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa expressed “despair,” but also suggested that Ghosn had accrued too much power and eluded proper oversight“, as well as “Saikawa gave few details about the nature of the improprieties, including refusing to confirm reports that Ghosn under-reported his income by 5 billion yen, or around $60 million (AUD), over five years from 2011. He said an ongoing investigation limited what details could be shared, and refused to be drawn on whether other people were involved, saying only: “These two gentlemen are the masterminds, that is definite.”“. As we consider the impact of Representative Director Greg Kelly and Carlos Ghosn, we might think that the entire matter is contained, yet is it? The fact that Automotive is a clear element on Wall Street, when we see this and we do not see another part, how wrong have the analysts been getting it? The fact that numbers on Wall Street would not fluctuate to the degree needed as the numbers were spiked by a major players is interesting to consider yesterday’s news (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/nuance-spins-off-automotive-segment-into-new-publicly-traded-company/). You see, just like I found the issue in the Harbour or Rotterdam two decades ago, I looked into another direction. When we consider “Other automotive brands such as Honda, Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai, Audi, Porsche, Nissan, Kia, Chevrolet, Harley Davidson, Ferrari are ranked by their brand value among the top 100 brands in the world!“, so if we see the SBS part with: “years of financial misconduct including under-reporting of income and inappropriate personal use of company assets“, which looks weird as this is merely an internal part (criminal or not), is there a decent chance that the entire matter is larger and as such, would a provider like Nuance not be hit as they are a component in the Nissan (and Renault, and Mitsubishi)?

In all this, when we consider The actions of one, and the impact on another, yet we see that expectations were ‘firmly’ in the wrong place, at what point will we start asking the damaging questions to analysts who were ‘overly’ positive? So when we see: “Wall Street was looking for earnings of 32 cents a share on revenue of $525 million. Shares of Nuance were down slightly after hours“, were we shown a realistic stage? This gets us to the Sydney Morning Herald, where we see: “Since the FANG outperformance run peaked on August 30, the group has underperformed the S&P 500 by 16.25 per cent. That is their worst underperformance since the first half of 2014 when they underperformed by around 20 per cent“, is it truly an underperformance, or is it set towards unrealistic overestimation and as such, is the foundation of short selling not done on the word of analyts? So in that light, would it not become more and more prudent to ask the analysts certain questions? The fact that certain Nissan events were not on their radar, what else did they not see and as such, would that not have impacted the numbers at Nuance in a similar, yet there unfairly?

What else is there?

Well, that can be seen in one way as these players all need power to be available and energy is becoming an issue in the US. What happens when we put the (big) mouth of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to the test? As he was ‘kind’ enough to use Bloomberg to state that the current crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was “unstable and unreliable”, would it be an idea to ask his royal highness to kindly consider that Oil is a sellers’ market and that it is important to consider the long term future of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as such, it is important to consider the value of oil and I personally believe that it should be raised to $73 per barrel, in light of this cutting oil production by 12% would be essential.

So when Lindsey gets the news that his lack of diplomacy is cutting oil and raising prices, at what point will he ever feel safe again as the American people will react to the mere stage of commerce, it is a sellers’ market plain and simple. It is a sellers’ market because the buyer is always open to get it somewhere else, and in all that there is merely Iran left. How does it all flow now? Let’s not forget that these are not my rules, they are the consequences of Wall Street. At what point will people wake up?

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, it is one where the monarch of that nation makes decisions that decide what would be the best track for the people of THEIR nation (which is Saudi Arabia). In a time where the life of a journalist does not matter, Turkey showed that and both the EU and America remained largely quiet, so let’s face it, we do not care about Jamal Khashoggi, yet that person has received more pushed and powered visibility than for example Matteo Messina Denaro (I chose him as I grew up being a huge Diabolik comic fan), so when we see his actions and his absence from the press for the longest time, why would we care about Jamal Khashoggi? Because a knave speaking for Iran direted others to do so? We keep on getting the news, the media, the mention of tapes, yet how clearly has the evidence been investigated? The media stays silent, mostly playing on innuendo as much as possible.

You see, it the Crown Prince succeeds in getting the stage of Neom Started, Saudi Arabia will have started and aspired to something never seen before in the history of this world, all the things that America claimed to have done will be seen active in Saudi Arabia, it is optionally the biggest blow to American ego and optionally their economy too and they are finally scared, like the UK was when the 70’s peace accords had a chance, they pushed Egypt in another direction. Now we see the stage where there is so much anti-Saudi news, that it is sickening to me, especially as the acts of Turkey and Iran are smothered. How much news have you see on the 214 journalist jailed in Turkey? most of them all convicted, the last one a week ago, we were given “A court sentenced Turkish journalist Ali Unal to 19 years in jail on Wednesday on a charge of being a leader in the network accused of carrying out a failed coup in July 2016“, Jamal Khashoggi got 60 million hits in Google Search this morning, it is that far whacked out of balance and the industrial next generation all technological marvel that could be Neom, including the Bridge that links the Sinai (Sharm-El-Sheik) to Saudi Arabia, opening even more options to commerce and growth for Egypt and the Sudan? A mere 2.8 million, a project that is well over $500 billion in investments for technological and financial opportunities; that got less than 3 million hits. I reckon that Saudi Arabia also needs additional PR and digital PR on a much larger scale.

I think that America (as well as the European Union) needs to wake up and smell the coffee and they need to do it fast. As they whinge like little children, they are optionally giving additional fields of economy to India, China and Russia to move into a market where the oil revenues will be pressed for a different directions, so as these people are merely trying to bait infighting within the Saudi Royal family, they should start to realise that one of them wakes up and decides to close the tap by 20% and merely adjust the vision towards 2035, at that point whatever comes next will no longer have any America and even less Wall Street, at what point will the American administration have to forfeit on 21 trillion of debts they can no longer pay? Let’s not forget that the entire FAANG group can vacate and move anywhere globally, at what point will we see the news: ‘NASDAQ shuts down!‘  leaves us with the question: ‘is my speculation so outlandish?’ You see, the needs for the next technology is no longer in America and the difference between global and global minus America is not that big, at that point the politicians of the European Union will fold like little bitches and accept whatever deal will keep them employed and on their gravy train; they are that predictable.

The nice part is that there is every chance that I will be around when that happens, getting to tell the economic and financial editors of all the major newspapers: ‘I told you so!‘ and the blatant attacks, the media toolkit against the current crown prince of Saudi Arabia makes my speculation more and more likely. You see, it was merely a week ago, when CNBC gave us (at https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/trump-duped-saudis-into-tanking-oil-prices-analysts-say.html) ‘Oil analysts say Trump fooled Saudis into tanking crude prices‘, with the quote: “Oil market analysts say it now appears that Trump hoodwinked Saudi Arabia, fooling the U.S. ally into pushing the oil market into oversupply and sparking a roughly 25 percent drop in crude prices. That accomplished Trump’s goal of driving down energy costs for Americans“, it is optionally a decent tactic, but at present it can backfire, the KSA can take a step back and let it all fall to pieces as the Saudi government can survive a few years in the up scaled oil prices, yet the US and European economies will start to collapse as they have no infrastructure left, so when we see Bloomberg giving us ‘The Oil Price Is Now Controlled By Just Three Men‘, whilst we know that America has pissed of the other two to the largest degree; if truly three man control the price, the names are given to us as Presidents Donald Trump, President Vladimir Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. That whilst America needs to import to survive making them actually pretty weak. So at what point do the people in Wall Street wake up and realise that the oil morning special is served at $91+, whilst there are 3-4 months of extreme cold ahead? At what point will they realise that oil is a sellers’ market, not a buyers one and the oil companies can wait, they can watch it all collapse and pick up cheap labour for a mere apple and an egg (quite literally so).

In the end, America can start making a deal with Iran and Russia for oil, yet at what cost will that come? Which concession will the American people have to agree to? I am pretty sure that this moment will become the nightmare scenario for Israel as well as the others get to cater to Iran, and the oil setting makes that an optional reality; the amount of concessions Turkey will get will give the EU something to cry about to a much larger extent; apart from the nightmare that the Italian budget is becoming at present.

There were a few games on everyone’s desk and at least three of them have been handled so badly that the impact needs to be felt in the US, even if it was for the mere reason to get them to wake up and smell the coffee that they spilled and the cost of living that they helped raise soon enough.

Oh, and when the Italian economy stops stagnating and turns to recession again, the mere impact of a 5% oil price rise would be enough to stop Italian traffic in its track, how much will be possible there when that happens? Consider that Italy has the highest fuel prices costing €1.65 per litre. When that goes up by 10%, how many people would be able to afford a car? More importantly, the Italian economy has misjudged this super high price for taxation, so when that falls away, how much of the Italian infrastructure is also likely to collapse?

It is a mere side thought, because France and Spain will be in similar distress on a few stages there too, not to mention the impact in Greece. It would decimate the Mediterranean economy to a much larger degree, yet Wall Street will trivialise it and when there is no more trivialisation left, who will they blame?

Saudi Arabia, President Trump or themselves?

I will let you figure that part out.

 

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