Category Archives: Law

March 21, 2016 · 22:21

Is the truth out there?

That is the question that sprung to mind, when the article ‘Brexit could cost £100bn and nearly 1m jobs, CBI warns‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/21/brexit-could-cost-100bn-and-nearly-1m-jobs-cbi-warns) crossed my screen an hour ago. Of course it then continues with the subtitle ‘Report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the CBI‘, perhaps you remember that firm named PwC? The people behind the books kept for Tesco. The firm the press avoids like the plague (especially when digging into Tesco issues). A report for the CBI no less. When we look at wiki we get ‘Confederation of British Industry is a UK business organisation, which in total speaks for 190,000 businesses’, so basically, because businesses are afraid to export their articles, we get this level of scaremongering. And let’s be honest, when Lehman Brothers is not available, PwC is all that remains. The Wiki reference will be explained shortly.

The first paragraph states “Leaving the European Union would cause a serious shock to the UK economy that could lead to 950,000 job losses and leave the average household £3,700 worse off by 2020, a report commissioned by the CBI business lobby group has warned“, I personally consider this to be a blatant lie!

There is NO WAY that there is any clear data on this event. The reason is simple. This situation has never happened before so there are questions, that is a given, yet what they predict is that 2 times 100% of exports that the UK ships to the USA becomes lost revenue. This is just ludicrous. Leave it to the place that embellished 110 million in revenue for Tesco will be able to lose 1000 times that amount in goods and services for the CBI. I am merely speculating here. I wish I could give you more, but the press is very engaged into not confronting PricewaterhouseCoopers on their actions.

The second paragraph “an analysis conducted by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers for the CBI said that Brexit could cost the UK economy £100bn – the equivalent of 5% of GDP – by 2020 and would cause long-lasting economic damage from which it would never recover“, let take a look at the parts PwC (as I see it) hides behind ‘could cost‘ meaning that it might, it is not a given. the second part ‘would cause‘, means that if they lose 100 billion then it would impact the economy, which we can all agree with, but that level of loss is NOT a given. Lastly there is ‘long-lasting economic damage from which it would never recover’, ‘would never’ is also not a given, consider that thanks to British Labour, who caused a massive part of the fourteen hundred billion in debt, on that part 100 billion will have an impact, the economy will recover, yet in all fairness, at what speed? We all agree that this massive extra level of debt is not a good thing, but it all began with ‘could cost‘ so it is not a given! The CBI, like frightened little sissies are trying to sway voters through fear. You see, if these businesses have an actual product to share, people will buy it.

They then continue to push more fear that people would lose between £175 and £300 a month. I would be shocked, we all would be shocked. Yet again there is ‘could be lower‘, meaning it is not a given. When I read “Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI’s director general, said: “This analysis shows very clearly why leaving the European Union would be a real blow for living standards, jobs and growth“, my response would be ‘Carolyn Fairbairn, we know you are high and mighty with previous position at the  Competition and Markets Authority, Lloyds Banking Group and the UK Statistics Authority, so if you truly stand behind these analyses you will give us all (in open data) the raw data, the analyses and the conclusions with data connections‘.

I feel certain that we will see all kinds of weighting, forecasting and predictive modelling. As I see them, they will be utterly useless, for the mere reason I gave at the start of my blog “This situation has never happened before“, there will be turmoil, there will be a time of flux, but this forecast of utter blackness on non-given facts and shady forecasts is just completely out of bounds.

You see, I went to Wiki for a reason, when we go to their website we get a few issues (and initially their website was unreachable for about 15 minutes). The first one is from 15th of March (at http://news.cbi.org.uk/news/cbi-to-make-economic-case-to-remain-in-eu-after-reaffirming-strong-member-mandate/), here we get the quote “80% of CBI members think being in EU is best for their business – ComRes survey“, now, consider the following two elements, first is the ‘given’ fact on their site “CBI’s relationship with 190,000 businesses of all sizes across the UK“, now consider that survey where 80% wants to stay within had the following quote: “The survey had 773 responses among small, medium and large firms across the whole of the UK. It reveals 80% of CBI members, when weighted to reflect its membership – including 71% of small and mid-sized business members – believe that the UK remaining a member of the EU would be best for their business. Overall, 5% say it is in their firms’ best interests for the UK to leave the EU, with 15% unsure“, So out of 773 responses, 116 were not sure, so only 658 were certain one way or another, so the 80% comes from that group?

In addition, the fact that I, in 24 years have never seen ANY survey been answered for 100%, so how many answered it, how were the numbers given and how can any of the numbers have ANY level of reliability? That is even before we start looking into the questionnaires some people tend to make, which is often enough not that neutral to begin with.

All these thoughts took 45 seconds to form, after which I needed 30 minutes to look into some of the known givens whilst Graham Norton was playing in the background. The biggest fun I had was considering the part where the CBI is basically stating between the lines that “UK products are so shaite, that it can only be sold under EU membership“, is that not so Mrs Fairbairn? I believe that UK produce is high, high enough that there will always be a demand and high enough that people will go out of their way to get it. The gaming column last week that had a go at Brexit earlier was eager to ignore the fact that some of the better games developers are British, there is British Beef, British Lamb, the UK foundation in vegetables and fruits. The United Kingdom has always had a good stock and a proud tradition. I think that these traditional times can return the UK to better times.

That is also a speculation on my side. You see, this is the one time that the Telegraph has a fair point (yes, this rare occurrence happened on February 23rd 2016), There is the quote “The only appalling part is that we import so much poor quality foreign food at the expense of our own farmers“, I believe that there is a deeper truth. Obesity comes from junk food and from bad quality food. Yes, produce might rise a little in price, yet when you get the same quality ingredients from eating only 50% of the amount of junk goods you used to eat because it was cheaper, I believe that the overall health of the British population would also go up (read: lowering obesity). Mrs Fairbairn could have given that information too, you see the CBI site claimed to be connected to 190,000 businesses, so how many of them are farms?

This is no longer the age of Tesco (thanks to PwC to some extent), in addition, it stops being the place for Aldi and Lidl, it will slowly return to being the place of the neighbourhood grocery and butcher. I have nothing against Aldi and Lidl, yet their models do not run on the small local farms, their margins (low margins mind you) comes from bulk retail from big portion purchasers to deliver to all stores. It is a fair model, yet after Brexit there will be a change, their margins will fall, that is a reality, but if this opts for small business owners to rise from the ashes, the Brits in general will all win, we would see a need for jobs, not a loss of jobs. Again, this is speculative on my side, yet I do not go about scaring you readers like the CBI is doing through PricewaterhouseCoopers.

So, how about my own statement: “I personally consider this to be a blatant lie“?

As I see it, this report has issues, possibly a whole lot of them and if that is not the case, Carolyn Fairbairn would (read: should) have all the data ready for us all. When we see this level of incomplete information, giving rise to the possibility of misinformation the reference to ‘blatant lie’ is a fair given one, as I see it of course.

Now, mind you, the CBI page has the full report ready (at http://news.cbi.org.uk/news/leaving-eu-would-cause-a-serious-shock-to-uk-economy-new-pwc-analysis/leaving-the-eu-implications-for-the-uk-economy/), a 79 page document, so what does that give us and why was that not in the Guardian (as far as I could tell)?

We see the following under the key findings:

  • We have assessed the potential economic impacts of a UK exit from the EU under two possible scenarios
  • We estimate that total UK GDP in 2020 could be between around 3% and 5.5% lower under the FTA and WTO scenarios respectively than if the UK remains in the EU (interesting is how ‘we estimate that’ was not in bold)
  • The negative impact represents a reduction of around £55-100 billion in UK GDP, at 2015 values

And the final bullet point was “As with any economic modelling exercise, our estimates are subject to many uncertainties“, which is actually the core of it all, too many uncertainties, which gives additional weight to my statement.

Yet how were these numbers derived?

You see, when we see ‘Table 2.1: Exit scenario results – percentage difference in real UK GDP from levels in counterfactual scenario‘, we think we have something here, but on what core business is this founded? Is this on raw data sets? On aggregated data? You see, PwC have done all kinds of reports where they were overly optimistic, is the idea that they are intensely overly conservative on any of these numbers (by request of the CBI) and that the negative numbers are actually quite too negative? The fact that they are making predictions until 2030, whilst so far many firms resorting to analyses have been unable to make any decent prediction 3 years into the future, they ended to be overly optimistic again and again by more than one percent (try remembering Greece and Cyprus). Then there is: “A vote to leave the EU would create economic and political uncertainty that could last for several years while the UK Government negotiates the terms of its exit from the EU as well as new trade arrangements with non-EU countries“. Here is the kicker: the report did not once, I say again not once properly discuss the option of growing economies by promoting a growth interaction between Commonwealth nations. The UK stands not alone! Her siblings Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India et al, still need goods too. Whilst we see the ‘BS’ (Belonius Substance) from America regarding how the UK must stay within the EU, the UK can decide to collaborate with India on Generic medication. Now suddenly we get some individual in a white condo going on how friends should remain friends (that individual tends to be addressed as President of the United States), so here is one side of commerce that would ‘suddenly’ open doors for all kinds of trade.

The bibliography has a fair amount of theory references, and even though their existence, or their academic value is not in question, what is in question is the PDF we are looking at, especially when we see ‘Figure D.5: Working age population projections under the WTO and FTA scenarios and counterfactual‘, we see these numbers and graphs, but from what dataset? Where do we see any reference to the data population used, especially when we see a collection of graphs from various sources but with no clear reference to the numbers that these predictions are based on? In one example starting on page 47, we see ‘C.1 Economic context and key issues‘, with a reference to three graphs from two different suppliers. This gives me a few additional question marks (and it should leave you with even more questions). You see, if 80% wants to stay in Europe as stated by the CBI, whilst they had less than 800 responses, how does that hold any weight to the fact that they, on their own site state “the CBI’s relationship with 190,000 businesses of all sizes across the UK gives us a unique insight into what the result will mean for UK prosperity“, which means that 80% of the 0.4% of the businesses that decided to answer the call of the survey. I think I have raised enough questions for you the reader to be a lot less worried in this case!

Now, I am not stating that there will not be any issues, because the UK will face issues, but in equal measure the UK will stop making massive donations to a system that does not hold some of its members properly to account. It is like carrying buckets of water to the sea, an empty gesture that is a clear waste of time and money.

By the way, that report has a very interesting by-line which is shown at the very end (page 79): “This publication has been prepared for general guidance on matters of interest only, and does not constitute professional advice“, so if that is the moment of non-accountability than my final words are towards the writer of the article Julia Kollewe and especially her boss (or the boss of her boss, Katharine Viner): ‘How could you have been so stupid to go with this article. From my point of view, as a blogger tends to be a subjective one, it is a hack job, nothing more than mere anti Brexit material‘. As a newspaper you should have known a lot better! The fact that Julia writes “By taking a clear stance on Brexit, the CBI differs from the smaller business lobby group the British Chambers of Commerce, which is trying to be impartial. It recently suspended its director general, John Longworth, from his post after he suggested that Britain would be better off outside the EU“, yes, they might have done this, and they did it in what I regard a shady and shoddy way!

The article in the Guardian and the report leaves us with a few questions regarding Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI as well as a few questions regarding the editorial of the Guardian. I hope that at the very least that part has been brought to the surface by me writing this article.

To all a lovely evening and whether you believe in Brexit or Bremain, make sure that you go towards the referendum properly informed!

 

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March 19, 2016 · 23:57

Return of the Crusades?

You might laugh about all this, but I am not convinced. When I look back in time trying to seek that past I see a part that is different. I remember the stories as they come through the history of Richard I and especially his part in the Crusades, not as a Disney figure. There was the story of the Crusader in Jeans and a few more; stories that involve An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, a person many in the west will know as Saladin.

You see, the generation that followed will know him as a name in assassins Creed, or a man of Charisma in Kingdom of Heaven (masterfully played by Ghassan Massoud). We see the names of people as they are paraded in front of our eyes, but the reality is that they represent lessons we forgot and we are about to relive them in other ways, the more the world changes, the more it stays the same. Or in the quote of one of my personal favourite video games: ‘War never changes!‘

This started in part through a few article that I saw this evening. The first one is from Cal Thomas, he gives us (at http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/thomas-iran-s-missiles-and-the-nuclear-deal/article_50482e79-7496-5b29-b92c-ce7616f9f8c6.html) the following: “More sober thinkers, fearing Tehran would never comply with the agreement, envisioned Iran gaining access to $100 billion in frozen assets and using it to underwrite terrorism” as well as “Last week, as part of a military exercise, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched several medium- and short-range missiles capable of reaching Israel“, here he also quotes the Washington Post stating that these missiles can now reach Israel. The quote “exceed limits that the U.N. Security Council has imposed in connection to resolutions banning Iran from developing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads“. In my view any denial from Iran is empty for a few simple re-engineering reasons, a mere formality that could be achieved in as little as 2 days (when the elements are available). The quoted opposition from the Democratic Party being “an Obama administration spokesman claimed to be unaware of any missile launch“. Here is where the problem sits from my point of view. The American President was so eager to score any kind of points, he opened a door that should have been left alone. Not for those in charge of Iran now, but any extreme individual that follows. Perhaps the president remembers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or perhaps he is slightly too busy as he is trying to remember the waitresses working on 660 N Wells St, Chicago? I do not know, I am merely asking.

You see, many saw Iran as an option, but too many people in dire economic need were too willing to give away the farm in the process. These same group of people who are now in denial! For those in doubt who to believe, see the Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iran-vows-to-keep-firing-ballistic-missiles/2016/03/10/77a3edac-e708-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html). Whilst politically flaccid US is talking to flaccid counterpart the U.N. Security Council on what is another landmark screw up by those greedy for economic benefits.

The evidence?

This is a valid question! This blog cannot be a rant, not be some conjecture. Consider the quote “The resolution’s language allows Iran to argue its ballistic missiles are not “designed” to carry nuclear warheads“, so we see another case where ‘resolution language’ basically means, the failed attempt for proper governing, to be placed within ambiguous legislative agreements. Like the EU for example. The fact that Greece could not be removed, because there was no way out. Now we get voluntarily removal from nations themselves (UK likely in June), which is what I mean with flaccid legislation!

So when we see the Washington Post with the quotes “According to Hajizadeh, some of the missiles carried 24 warheads and one ton of TNT” and “the Revolutionary Guards fired two ballistic missiles, including one with graffiti saying “Israel should be wiped off the earth” written in Hebrew on it“, Consider 24 warheads and 1000Kg of TNT. This is the danger I warned for! I did so on July 8th 2015 in my article ‘In the lull of news‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/08/in-the-lull-of-news/). Now we have missiles with threats and whilst the Iranians contemplate to replace 1,000 Kg of TNT, with 724 Kg of Erythritol Tetranitrate and add 270Kg of Strontium 90 pellets, we get a new application of a shotgun, more important, a missile with claymore capabilities. You might think that this causes little harm. Think again, this would for all intent and purpose be a dirty bomb. Whilst these flaccid politicians debate ‘nuclear warheads‘ two Iranian missiles could irradiate Israel from Rishon LeTsiyon to Ramat Hasharon. Basically Tel Aviv and everything around it would be irradiated through metal pellets for decades and after 3-4 decades Iran claims that part in the name of Allah. That was the nightmare all along and a bankrupt America seems to be at present, to be in denial of too many events from Europe to Eastern China. I wonder who is actually minding the store over there.

Now you might also wonder how this material is obtained. You see strontium 90 is not a natural product. In this case Strontium 90 is just an example, even though it does not require military grade uranium, you see, it can be gotten from spend uranium fuel cells. Now consider that the USNRC gives us “There is no commercial reprocessing of nuclear power fuel in the United States at present; almost all existing commercial high-level waste is un-reprocessed spent fuel“, which is not the only nation that has it. So how guarded are these spent fuel cells? More important, who is checking the inventory and how easily can a few hundred Kg go missing? Now ask the additional question on how much fission (non-military grade) did Iran create from 2013 onwards (see the picture at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-installs-more-advanced-centrifuges-for-uranium-enrichment-amid-nuclear-standoff-diplomats-say/), where we see a 2008 picture stating ‘Natanz uranium enrichment facilities‘, so how much spend fuel is there and how much Strontium-90 could Iran have now?

It seems to me that these facts should have been known for a very long time. Do you still think that the debate on what constitutes a ‘nuclear warhead‘ is valid?

So, there is plenty of evidence, does it fit together?

That is the second question and an equally valid one. You see, there is only a 42% chance that a missile with 24 warheads will be intercepted 100%, more important, the delivery system will be over Israel, the pallets will still fall, but will not create a curtain. I reckon that 2 missiles fired will have around 29%-34% to be 100% intercepted. So no matter how this goes, we will have a massive amount of damage in Israel. Will we idly stand by to see Israel fall away, to see the Christian icons of history fall away? I think not. In that regard we would steer directly for a new age of Crusades, war never changes!

Now in all clarity and honesty. There is absolutely NO given information that this comes to pass. Yet, can we take that chance? Should US policy have been allowed to put Israel in such danger? So when we hear the words from President Obama on how hard we EU needs to stick together, consider how much credibility he has. Consider the legislation he never passed, corporate greed he never stopped, how Iran is moving to be nuclear capable, how his administration endangered the state of Israel, how he has done little to nothing regarding Syria and how our holy sites will be in direct danger. All massive failures!

The worst part in all this is that the next administration has little chance of cleaning up the mess this administration leaves behind, because when the Euro goes, so does the Dollar!

Should you think that Iran has no intentions here, consider their own words on the missile ‘Israel should be wiped off the earth‘, and was my initial consideration that the next elected president of Iran possibly to be a radical like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that far-fetched? You think that a commanding officer (read General) would have allowed any text on his missile without his agreement?

You cannot be that naive!

There is one light in all this, you see Iran has an opponent. As they have been clashing arms with the forces of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, they cannot make much headway on Israel. Yet in all this, as a war with Iran becomes a reality at that point, it seems to me that Russia will step back. No matter how Iran thinks it has Russia as a friend, it will not allow itself to be tainted by the fallout Iran would create. What will happen is that we all will be confronted with around a million angry Israelites, a nation that, at that point will no longer regard the US as a friend or ally. Whatever plays after that is too chaotic to make any clear projection on, I only know that it will get very ugly.

What is a given is that those who did fumble the ball will be confronted with nations angry and eager (through fear) to cast war on Iran on that point. No matter how much restraint requests we hear from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, he will be faced with a very angry world, because those who needed to step in decided to wage a ‘war of words’ with people who are basically deaf and will only seek the sound of actual war.

I wonder how this president sees his legacy and when things go south, which excuse he will offer. This is for the mere reason that any following successful missile launch will be the clearest signal to be seen as evidence that the USA is no longer a superpower and it can no longer actually act. I wonder how the world will act at that point, because someone would have to spearhead a direct assault on Iran, any direct attack on Israel from Iran makes that a given. If not, does this mean that Israel truly stands alone again?

It would be the most shameful and darkest day in history of the western world the moment the answer to that question becomes ‘Yes!’

 

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March 14, 2016 · 20:17

Corporate Cowardice

The Guardian had a very nice article online, in addition to that article there was a video. The article titled ‘The macabre truth of gun control in the US is that toddlers kill more people than terrorists do‘ was the eye catcher, an article by Lindy West (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/13/the-macabre-truth-of-gun-control-in-the-us-is-that-toddlers-kill-more-people-than-terrorists-do). For the most it was a straight forward article. What was the issue was seen in the video by Rupert Neate who went to Las Vegas to take a look at the fair (I am slightly jealous now). An interesting quote here was from Neil Hogue from Hogue Inc. who stated “fear drives sales in the firearms industry“, well-spoken Mr Hogue I say! This is a truth. I ‘love’ firearms because of the engineering. Consider a pellet (read: bullet) that can be delivered to a spot within half an inch over a distance of 800 metres. That ability, the skill needed from focus, the maintenance of your rifle and the balance of all these elements to deliver an outside hit in exactly that place with changing weather conditions is the skill I love. I believe it to be a gift. This does not make me nuts! If NATO needed me to shoot people, I would. If the challenge is to shoot a piece of carton I would and providing it is for food (not for sport) I would shoot Bambi in a heartbeat (for the Bambi burger mind you). I will not end the life of anything for mere sport, which I regard to be actually quite sick. Then at 2:27 in that video we get Smith & Wesson, Mr. Jan Mladek. I think that Mladek dealt wrongly with the issue from square one. I do not know whether he was the one who caused the change, yet there is clarity in the video that the organisers dealt poorly with the issue, although the approach they took, regarding the optional possibility of chaos was not incorrect, the entire matter had been badly dealt with. From the view given, it was Smith & Wesson who could be regarded as the party hiding via corporate cowardice. Within me I wonder how Heckler & Koch would have dealt with it. I saw a much better answer, a decently serious answer from Joe Gaicevic from Troy Industries. He states “blaming a spoon on making somebody fat”. Here is another person hitting the nail on the head. You see, guns do not kill people, people kill people. Do you think that any politician in a declining economy wants gun control? A valid branch bringing in billions in tax dollars every year. Politically speaking, it was ‘the Daily Signal‘ who gives us ‘NRA Head Wayne LaPierre Says Obama’s Knowledge on Guns ‘Wouldn’t Fill a Thimble’‘ (at http://dailysignal.com/2016/03/04/nra-head-wayne-lapierre-says-obamas-knowledge-on-guns-wouldnt-fill-a-thimble/), which is as direct as it gets. Wayne LaPierre stated “We know a liar when we see one. We also know a political coward when we see one”, yet in all this he also misses a more important point. It is corporate cowardice. You see, many in the arms industry want income but have no regard of any kind for critical questions, you see, in my book, if you cannot deal with those you have no business being in that business. Which is the part the interview with Rupert Neate uncovered. When we see that the smaller players (Neil Hogue and Joe Gaicevic) give perfectly rational response, we need to ask additional questions regarding Jan Mladek from Smith & Wesson. The fact that he is mentioned as ‘marketing’ makes me wonder whether Mr Mladek is in the right vocation, perhaps selling Philips Hairstylers is more his tune (and will lead towards much less confronting questions).

So where am I in this?

Yes, we can agree that Smith & Wesson will take a hit when one of their products is used in a shooting. In this case the Smith & Wesson M&P15. It was not the only weapon used, so other weapons were used too, like the DPMS Panther Arms A15. In equal measure we must acknowledge the following facts “they made a modification that defeated the ban on detachable magazines” as well as a failed attempt to make the firearm fully automatic. So we have here a valid firearm that was altered making it no longer a permissible firearm. So the weapon was a no longer standard sporting rifle (not my choice of sporting rifle). Smith & Wesson bungled here as the facts would have given them a positive view on the ways that their weapon was not meant for such use. When considering the words of Joe Gaicevic I would state: “if you want to complain about being fat because it was easier to eat the ice-cream with a serving spoon and not with a table spoon, you only have yourself to thank for transgressing beyond fat!”

In equal measure, we can look at the first instance that linked this article. It was regarding Jamie Gilt and how her 4 year old shot her in the back. The quote that I regarded as funny was “People are trying to make it into something it’s not, we are not criminals, we are the victims here” (source: Daily Mail). In my view, no, she is the criminal. Not only did she leave a loaded weapon within reach of her 4 year old. She neglected basic gun safety. You see, her 4 year old would not have been strong enough to cock the slider, meaning no bullet in the chamber, in the second, it would have been an option for her kid to play with it, look into the hole and accidentally pulling the trigger. She might look sexy as hell holding a 9mm and having a .223 rifle at her side. The text “the more I learn about my government, the more I love my guns!” completes the view. She would have scored more points advocating gun safety rules. Those 10 pesky points that keep other people from getting killed with the additional by-line ‘Oops!’, America is a gun nation, let’s just accept that and instead of rushing to blame every spoon in the land for obesity, how about holding the transgressors accountable for their actions? As a second point of scolding towards Wayne LaPierre I would raise the quote “His knowledge on that issue wouldn’t fill a thimble“, Wayne, please do not insult the thimble, you need a much smaller scale of measurement in this instance.

What does matter is the quote “LaPierre challenged Obama a week later to debate him on firearms with “no pre-screened questions and no gas bag answers”“, this is the issue. It is easy scoring political points shedding tears for dead people, yet the real issue is the one we see with: “another gun law isn’t going to prevent crimes committed with firearms” which is the truth and at the heart of the matter. His correct answer is “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun“, which is why they have police officers. Now, there is no denying that in the US police officers have made mistakes, some whoppers I might add. Yet the people should also realise that legislation has done (pardon my French) ‘fuck all’ to the safety and security of police officers at a pay of roughly $66K a year. This might sound nice, but in the larger cities $66K gets you a far below average apartment, even when moving towards the edge of the city you would be hard pressed to find decent accommodation. So explain to me how these people are regarded to take beyond reasonable risks? The problem here is that for well over two years it has been known that the data collection regarding fatal shootings is massively flawed, so there are levels of uncertainty here too.

The police shows that there is an overall stigma on a national level when we look at fatal shootings. The San Bernardino event is an extreme, just like Columbine is. In both events this was due to illegally acquired weapons. So weapon laws would not have made an impact. People kill people, guns do not! The fact that the US has no less than 1.13 weapons for every American citizen, so we can rule out any effective gun control law from the very beginning, any re-purchase  plan will make the US bankrupt overnight. By adjusting gun laws and making the owners of illegal firearms guilty of a capital crime would be a first step, but this democratic government is decently too cowardly to get such a plan in motion and at the end of the reign of Obama, in that view I personally reckon that the republicans will not show themselves to be a whole lot better. So the issue remains up in the sky.

There is however another side, the one that the government is in denial about. The fact that the Washington Post stated on October 5th 2015 that they were at that time looking at 2013 data. This means that the data, depending on when delivered is still 2 years late for any decent adjustment. This implies strongly that the ATF has issues it cannot deal with, which is nothing to say on the need of keeping a check on proper enforcement of gun rules. Weirdly enough, in all this, the bulk of gun owners have a clear established protocol in the proper handling of firearms. Rules that have been handed down from father to son and at times also from grandfather to grandson, a tradition still in play for several generations. I see this as a massive reason why people at large are so opposed to gun control laws to the extent President Obama is trying to push, which by the way, considering the amount of guns currently in circulation would not have any impact at all.

And this is not the only ’empty’ gesture he is making, he is about to make things worse by going to London in April to appeal to British voters to stay in the EU, that whilst he is unable to contain Wall Street greed and hold them accountable for plenty of these messes, as well as keeping a budget (like the bulk of the European nations). So good luck to that idea! The biggest over spender is trying to reason with voters regarding the economy and budgets. I reckon it will be entertaining to say the least, as every ill-conceived statement will drive people towards UKIP, Nigel will be so happy on Labour Day, it is likely to be a comedy of an entirely new level!

 

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March 12, 2016 · 12:53

A dangerous sense of humour

On one side, we need to laugh every so often, laughter is good for the soul they say, yet, when the press and the media get involved in this situation, there is a real danger where they can actually make things worse. This has been proven on several occasions in the past, in several nations. You see, I agree, Conan was funny, introducing Adolf Hitler (Sarah Silverman) was hilarious and it was comedy. Nobody denies this! The issue is that it is also dangerous. The people are angry and they are not in the mood to trust anyone. Now here comes the loudmouthing blunt Trump. We see the thoughts of the American public like it is a cartoon text balloon. ‘He, doesn’t need the money‘, ‘he is already a success‘, ‘perhaps he figured it out‘, ‘what do those wannabe’s know?’ It is the last thought in all of this. Libertarians who threw the people to the wolves for high moral plans no one could afford, at the same time Wall-Street keeps on doing what it is doing with no accountability in sight. There are racial issues, there are inequality issues. The people are very angry and people like Conan know that, they hope that with a laugh and a smile it will go away. It is too late for that, the comedians will need to get serious for a while, if not, they end up having to deal with 4-8 years of Donald, not the Duck, the Trump and the fallout that follows!

You see, as a comedy there is a moment in Mel Brook’s ‘History of the world, part 1’ where we see the Roman senate, they are offered a question their response ‘Fuck the poor!’. To which we hear. ‘Excellent, now let’s get back to business’. That is exactly where America, Greece and many European nations are. I remain a little in doubt as to the drive of Japan, because I know too little there. The people are seeing their futures evaporate, their pensions will soon be lost and those who have no rainy day solution will work until they die.

That has become the reality of today and the people are, as I said before very very angry.

In the Netherlands we see a repeat of a different nature. I remember this the first time around, as I was there. In those days, an ultra-right wing bigot called ‘Janmaat’ was the problem. In those days clever politicians decided to ignore him completely, which I thought was a mistake, even as he was a loon to say the least. And I was proven right at the following elections he actually got three seats in a place called Schiedam. He actually ended up with a seat at the table. Now, as he was too extreme and outspoken lacking constraint and thought. He was for all intent and purposes the Dutch version of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Geert Wilder is another matter, like Marine Le Pen he is a lot more intelligent, which now gives us another problem as we see the issues escalate. When we see the Irish Times (at http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/rhetoric-against-geert-wilders-ratchets-up-in-the-netherlands-1.2531503), you could see this as an open and shut case. But it is not. The quote “Right-wing politician Geert Wilders has been described as “a threat to democracy and the rule of law” in the Netherlands after calling for “resistance” to the establishment of refugee centres to house migrants from Iraq and Syria“, the issue is not the quote, it is the context. Even as we see “The condemnation by the chairman of the Labour Party, Hans Spekman, came as a new survey showed that hundreds of local councillors are considering giving up politics because of credible physical threats against themselves and their families“.

The context is not given. Elsevier gives us: “De PVV heeft volgens velen grote invloed. PVV-oprichter en partijleider Geert Wilders gooit, zoals premier Mark Rutte (VVD) zei, geregeld een stuk ‘rood vlees in de arena’, waarna iedereen daarop duikt. Meestal leiden zijn uitspraken over immigratie, de islam, de Europese Unie en de elites tot ophef. Afgezien van dat verbale theater zijn de resultaten van tien jaar PVV des­ondanks bescheiden“, “{translated} According to many, the PVV has a lot of influence, Prime Minister Rutte states: Geert Wilders throws a piece of red meat into the arena, and everyone is going for it. Often enough the quotes are related to immigration, Islam, the EEC and the elite. Beyond that the results of 10 years of PVV presence is modest“. Here is the issue and the context. It is trivialisation. Consider the quote “local councilors are considering giving up politics because of credible physical threats against themselves and their families“, you see Geert Wilders did not do that. He has been clearly quoted as the person stating the need for non-violent non-compliance. Which is pretty much what Ghandi did. The people of the Netherlands are angry because life in the Netherlands is less and less affordable, housing, food, the prices keep on going up. Let’s not forget that the Dutch National population density is pretty close to that of London. Just in case you did not fathom that. The NATIONAL density of that nation approaches the density of the city of London. The politicians are playing with funds they do not have, budgets they cannot keep and now, they add more and more refugees. It is a commendable approach, but elected officials are still only elected by the people and the people are less and less agreeable with the decision made. Geert Wilders sees this and is playing those cards intensely. So as we see places like ‘The Post’ (http://tpo.nl/) are trivialising him and stating how he missed the boat. They are in equal denial on how much support the current political parties have lost at present. We see other statements by the Post on how PVV members are lowly educated and how they do not comprehend statistics. Well, that might not be incorrect, but the Post or better stated the people there have very likely read ‘How to lie with statistics’ and the people are realising how the numbers are no longer reliable.

The Dutch version of the Financial Times (at http://fd.nl/economie-politiek/1134584/pvv-naar-41-zetels-in-peiling-maurice-de-hond) gives them a current ranking of 41 seats, the fourth party ever to surpass 40 seats. Two of his contenders, those who usually are much higher than the PVV was are now on 18 and 19 seats (which might have been a typo by the Financial Times), implying that the PVV is now larger than the both of them. An achievement that even I never considered to be realistically possible. Now we get additional news from POW Ned (at http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/politiek/2016/02/syrische_oorlogsmisdadigers_mo.html), now I cannot vouch for the quality and reliability of that news, but consider that they stated 2 weeks ago that Syrian war criminals are currently in the Netherlands. They are not the only source stating this, some more renowned papers are giving similar statements, that those criminals, if applying for refugee status could not be removed from the Netherlands (source: Elsevier), if so, the Dutch people are likely to show a lot more anger soon enough, this is part of the danger that Dutch trivialisation is giving them, because the angry people (the numbers are growing daily) are siding with Geert Wilders, even though they are not in full agreement of his agenda and his voice, but the other parties have ignored the voice of the people for so long that they have had enough, which is part of the reason why many local politicians feel threatened. You see, they were there to fight for their constituents, not to dance to big business and the needs of a community that deserted them. If we accept that Humour is a moderator of compassion fatigue (see: Carmen C. Moran), we can get to the side that the higher the fatigue, the more direct the humour needs to be (the Adolf Silverman sketch, or was that Adolf Trump?), Kuhlman in 1988 gave us the premise that humour can be a bonding agent amongst colleagues as an emotional language, yet this is an environment of like-minded persons. That is not the case with the American people, and as such Humour is the trivialisation that no longer seems to work, it actually becomes the accelerant fuelling the American anger (to some extent). The same path is what the Dutch parties face with the PVV, like Janmaat, it would be great for them if Geert Wilders unqualified himself through his voice, but Geert Wilders is intelligent enough, not to be that extreme.

The growth of far right wing parties is what makes humour a dangerous tool to use, because the voters are either not getting it, or they no longer care who comes into power, as long as it is not the ‘current’ party. That makes for an unbalanced and dangerous escalation. As we see that Marine Le Pen is still the party to observe in the upcoming elections, the growth of the PVV and now the headway that German AfD (Alternativ fur Deutchland) is making, gives all the players several worries, more than ever before. Even as Italian Matteo Salvini with Lega Nord is unlikely to be the growing favourite, a wrong sense of humour in Italy could change that to some extent, yet I reckon not enough, which might make some people rejoice. What is a given is that the European map will soon starts to get  a major overhaul, the extent of the overhaul will remain a mystery until the election dust settles, at which time an entirely new sense of humour will be required.

Will this affect the UK? That is actually an uncertainty, you see Brexit will make part of that determination, yet in equal measure how David Cameron now deals with Turkey is going to be centre in all this, especially the next elections. Nigel Farage has already spoken out against Turkey and in all honesty, I am not sure if he is wrong. The European players have been too lenient on Turkey and too lenient of the acts of Turkey as a whole, which implies that any soft catering towards Turkeys goals, especially as people start to realise that the Greek mess (regarding refugees) is largely DUE TO Turkey, any non-firm stance by Prime Minister David Cameron and The Right Honourable Philip Hammond regarding Turkey will hurt the Conservative numbers, of that I am utterly convinced. This poses an interesting place for UKIP, as they have not had such an advantage before. There is no clear way to tell how those dice will fall. Those elements will get an additional levy when we consider that Nigel Farage will be in the Netherlands 2 days (next month) before the referendum on the ‘EU’s treaty of association with Ukraine‘. By some this treaty is seen as a general feel on the EU as a whole, with one difference. Dutch News quoted Nigel Farage with “If you win in your referendum, my goodness me, that will help in Britain too“, which seems to be correct, the Ukrainian situation is an unstable one and Nigel can get votes no matter how that referendum goes. It is quite literal ‘damned if you do and damned if you do not’, these are easy points to pick up for Nigel and that impacts Geert Wilders too, although he would need a clear win here. The political map is shifting for a multitude of reasons, but let there be no mistake. The Greek economy started this, the power players desperate for their ‘Status Quo’ only added fuel to the fire and now they are for the most out of the game, making threats on how people are losing out and that story became stale and no one believes it any more (the voting population at large), the players relied on a dangerous sense of humour and they are about to lose in three nations no less.

Any opposition towards the far right needs to get serious and remain so, even at social events for some time to come.

 

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March 9, 2016 · 21:36

Outrage

I am angry and I need your help!

This is not some weak story about a person who is lost, this is a story about a person who is determined. You see, we have all had enough of the press to some extend and now the time is right to give them a little medicine of their own. This all started as I saw this article ‘Matrix director Lilly Wachowski comes out as a transgender woman’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/09/matrix-director-lilly-wachowski-comes-out-as-a-transgender-woman). This seemed not a biggie at first, people make choices, they make them of their own accord and initially I shrugged and thought nothing of it. It is the subtitle that got my blood boiling, almost in a literal way. It stated “she went public after Britain’s Daily Mail ‘threatened public outing’“, now add to this the quote “she referred to the incident as a “threatened public outing against my will”, drawing comparisons to a similar incident involving the paper“. Now add the following parts: “Lucy Meadows, took her life after the Daily Mail published a column by Richard Littlejohn titled “He’s not only in the wrong body … he’s in the wrong job”. Michael Singleton, coroner for Blackburn, Hyndburn and Rossendale, criticised the “sensational and salacious” coverage which he blamed for her death” and “I just wanted – needed – some time to get my head right, to feel comfortable. But apparently I don’t get to decide this“. Well, let’s see if we can change that. I think that change is inevitable, especially if we all unite. You see, from my point of view when ‘pussies’ like that prey on those in vulnerable positions, whilst at the same time ignore transgressions by places like Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) and a few other players, I feel it has become important to change the game that some Journo’s have been playing.

So, let’s turn the tables, especially for those in the UK. Let’s open our offensive on people like Paul Dacre, the Journo’s at the Daily Mail and DMG Media with Viscount Rothermere (for now). Let’s put them in the spotlight!

First up – Viscount Rothermere

Rothermere believes the Daily Mail has been “built on solid ground” and a unique place in the market (Leveson testimony). In my view, as seen in the Guardian as stated by Lilly Wachowsky: “a journalist from Britain’s Daily Mail attempted to coerce her“, so Harold, that unique place, is that coercing people? Why not show some balls and try that on Ian Powell and Gaenor Bagley and coerce some information regarding PwC’s alleged action with Tesco? Perhaps they will give you the goods or that coercing Journo and you will end up with a real scoop, you know, the kind of real ground-breaking stuff towards possible criminal indictment and so on. Or is that a little bit too much of a stretch? Or perhaps there is the ever so slight chance that they will strike back in different ways? Now consider “Rothermere says: “built on a fundamental belief in a trust in journalism as opposed to technology. That’s what makes me proud“, yes, coercing laptops is a little hard, unless you hack them, which might be not all on the up and up legally seen. Finally we get the quote (from the Leveson part) “he is confident the Daily Mail has acted ethically. ‘And I am willing to stand up for us’“, which can be clearly thrown out of the window regarding Lilly Wachowsky. I wonder if we see shrugs, excuses (by stating: ‘It’s on the desk of Paul Dacre’) and other modes of a trans-neglecting mindset.

Second up – Paul Dacre

In December 2015 he proclaimed that he is all about Freedom of Information. He stated: “In the main, I suspect, dislike of FoI is driven by Whitehall’s belief that civil servants should be exempt from public scrutiny. This is in my view counter-productive, and perceived by the public simply as a compulsion to cover backsides“, so is that FoI under any option? Like coercion, blackmail, hacking? Whilst Paul was nice enough to have the quote: “an elitist political class protecting its own interests“, which is like the Journo calling the Politician selfish. That is not the idea we get when their profit is numbers of circulation and now includes Coercion, we can hope it is ONLY coercion (meaning the least offensive way) you get to feed your papers circulation with.

Now let’s get back to 2013 (at http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/03/miliband-daily-mail-inquiry_n_4038824.html), where we see: “The chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust has apologised to Ed Miliband after a reporter turned up uninvited at a family memorial service, but insisted the incident did not reflect the “culture and practices” of his papers“, which we can of course set as fictional when we see the ordeal of Lilly Wachowski just faced.

So until the Daily Mail starts their front-page with ‘alleged trans gender’s Harold Jonathan Harmsworth and Paul Dacre surprised their staff by growing some balls‘, they have now promised to actively dig into the involvement of PwC regarding Tesco. I very much doubt that it will ever happen, so until that moment comes, why don’t we make sure that the public at large gets to see every act from these Daily Mail journalists and their family members? I reckon that the public has a right to know, let’s see how many articles and photographs it takes for these revelations until we get:

  1. Some fake apology
  2. Threats that there is oppression against the freedom of the press
  3. Demands from Whitehall against acts that endangers the independence of journalists.

In all this, it seems utterly unlikely that the Daily Mail will hold itself up to any scrutiny and any level of Ethics and/or Integrity.

 

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March 6, 2016 · 20:47

Murder or simply killing it

Europe remains on our minds from several directions. The fact that the start of Brexit is 13 weeks away, so basically we have now entered the final quarter of a union that basically never was. A union that did little good for too many people and a setting that well over tripled the cost of infrastructure. All elements that are shifted around, as they aren’t clearly in budgets on reports and more important, a place of spending that is not being properly monitored or controlled.

We might all think that the EEC was so good for us, but was it really? When you are not in a high position in a large corporation, how did you really benefit? The last 15 years have been a mere exercise in exploitation by big business and short cut seekers. In all this after Brexit, the situation will remain. When goods are needed, people will buy them, which is why I oppose certain articles from the Guardian. One of them (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/28/brexit-would-affect-lives-of-millions-official-uk-report-says) states: ‘Brexit would negatively affect lives of millions, official UK report says‘, yet is this altogether true? let’s take a look at some of the quotes “The 10 years cited in the report includes the time it would take for Britain to exit the EU, to set up a new trade and related agreements as well as negotiate fresh trade deals with the US and other countries“, I regard this to be untrue. You see, everyone wants to sell, if the UK wants to buy, than those nations will oblige. More important, HM Revenue and Customs (at https://www.uktradeinfo.com) shows that UK imports is a lot higher than exports, which means that the UK is spending between 10 and 20 billion a year more than it receives in exports. Do you believe for one second that those nations will not find an immediate solution here? The damage of the UK getting its goods from a secondary source is too scary for THEIR economies, so you can bet the house on a solution being found almost immediately after the changeover comes. The second quote which is important here is “It says the only legal way to withdraw from the EU is through article 50 of the treaty of the European Union. But it argues that there is no precedent for this and that Britain would be unlikely to achieve a successful negotiation in the two-year time period it sets out“, here I also disagree. The paper Withdrawal and expulsion from the EU and EMU (at https://lawlordtobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ecblwp10.pdf) sheds light on this. On page 11 we see “One is that a right of unilateral withdrawal existed even in the absence of any explicit reference to it in the treaties, since sovereign States were, in any case, free to exercise their sovereign right18 to withdraw from their international commitments19”

The references there are:

18. ‘Sovereign power’ has been defined as ‘power not subject to limitation by higher or coordinate power held over some territory’ (MacCormick (1999), p. 127).

19. See Zeh, p. 209. This proposition is in line with the decision in Maastricht Urteil (BVerfGE 89, 155 of 12 October 1993) where the German Constitutional Court stated that the States are still ‘the Masters of the Treaties’ and can always decide to abandon the EU, revoking their acts of accession by a contrary unilateral denunciation; and more recently in its decision in Lisbon Urteil (BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08 of 30 June 2009) the German Constitutional Court found that the EU, as designed by the Lisbon Treaty, is not a federal state and that constitutional safeguards of national identity clearly exist under EU law.

Which gives us actually two issues. The first is that from the descriptions we see, that the EEC could be seen as a tontine. Here we see the following concept “Each investor pays a sum into the tontine. Each investor then receives annual dividends on the capital invested. As each investor dies, his or her share is reallocated among the surviving investors. This process continues until only one investor survives. Each subscriber receives only dividends; the capital is never paid back“, how is that any different? In addition, the EEC does not give dividend, it costs more and more money, in addition, the nations involved aren’t adding capital, they are adding debt and the last surviving nation ends up with all the debt. From that version Brexit makes perfect sense and getting out first seems to be an imperative need (the second one is further down the article for a reason).

There is one element the Guardian did get right “It also warns that the rights of 2 million British expats to work and access pensions and healthcare in EU countries may no longer be guaranteed“, I am on the fence here. I personally believe that if expats want to live their pensions away in Spain or Greece, than this should remain a possibility. I agree that there might be initial issues, yet those people might be permanent residents as such it should not affect them other than the pensions being a problem and that should not be the case. In addition, if the government does do a 180 on this part, it will be directly responsible to get affordable housing for those 2 million people. There is no way that this would work and it should not be an issue. A pensioner gets their money, it is deposited in whatever account is specified and that is pretty much the end of it in my book. Do you think that Spain, in its current economy would walk away from hundreds of thousands of paying Britons? I think not!

These are some of the oppositional issues I have with the article of Anushka Asthana, Heather Stewart and Nicholas Watt. It is however not the only article, because there are a few sides to the EEC at present, a pressing issue of refugees is an element and it is partially driving Brexit too. The article of a debatable level here is ‘EU acting like ‘human trafficker’ of refugees, says Austrian minister‘, the core of this is “Sebastian Kurz said that “in Greece refugees are being waved through to the heart of Europe. That is simply unacceptable in the long run. The European Union cannot act like a human trafficker.” Restoring the Dublin and Schengen agreements, he said, had to be a priority at the meeting between the EU leaders and Turkey“, as I stated before, it is like listening to someone who lost touch with reality (to some extent). In the first, the EU are not trafficking in refugees. Greece is completely overwhelmed by those refugees arriving via Turkish smugglers. Greece has no infrastructure to deal with the issue and the bulk of all the refugees do not want to stay in Greece, they want to go to a German or English speaking nation, in a pinch a French speaking nation would suffice. That is a clear fact as we have seen it for a long time, in addition, the part “had to be a priority at the meeting between the EU leaders and Turkey” here he seems completely intent of not calling the kettle black, because Turkey is massively responsible for the mess at his borders, as well as the Greek borders. Allowing free passes to smugglers and looking the other way as thousands of refugees are making for Greece. It seems that this short-sightedness is also fuel for both Brexit and Frexit. Now, I will immediately accept that Austria and Germany are getting swamped too. There is an issue, no one denies that, but taking Greece out of the solution was a really bad idea, especially as Turkey is part of the mess, not part of any solution. As the borders in Germany are back up, as borders close, we see another quote. When we read “Yet there will be little sympathy for Berlin from Hungary, Italy or Greece, which are bearing the brunt of the mass arrivals of people from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Afghanistan“, which is fair enough. Yet, as stated earlier: “This proposition is in line with the decision in Maastricht Urteil (BVerfGE 89, 155 of 12 October 1993) where the German Constitutional Court stated that the States are still ‘the Masters of the Treaties’ and can always decide to abandon the EU, revoking their acts of accession by a contrary unilateral denunciation“, the intersections of the two situations is found in the works of Juli Zeh.

This now reflects also on the second issue, the first I described earlier, the second issue I skipped until now. This all comes from an article titled ‘Union Membership: Accession, Suspension of membership rights and unilateral withdrawal. Some reflections‘ by Jean-Victor Louis, an honorary Professor from the Free University of Brussels. In his reflections on Page 11, we see: “The future will say if the prevision of unilateral withdrawal will be a “source of pressures and blackmailing against the general interest” or prove to be a useful way out of undesirable changes in the working and orientation of the European Union. Juli Zeh concludes her in-depth analyses of the right of withdrawal by quoting an Estonian member who expressed “hope that this clause will never be used” and indeed she is right. We would like to suggest that the Union should conceive and put in practice an accession policy for the future in order to avoid unilateral withdrawals“.

The interesting part is that at no time any consideration is given to the accountability of national needs and national acts. Consider the overspending of the budget by 12 trillion euro’s (total EEC debt including UK), or the fact that the bulk of the European nations remain incapable of keeping a budget. One could argue that not unlike a contract, the presence of unfair terms are not binding on consumers and the trader may not rely on them. Is the European Union any difference?

The last one is not really that sellable, but the premise is, in addition, should certain parties be investigated for neglecting ‘their’ national need? That question arises from the initial PDF mentioned. Here we see: “As one author has written, there are three main reasons why the treaties were silent on withdrawal: first, it was in order to avoid putting question marks to the Member States’ commitment to the achievement of their shared objectives; second, it was because providing for the possibility of withdrawal might have increased its likelihood; and third, because to provide for this possibility would entail the daunting task of spelling out the procedure and consequences of withdrawal“, this now implies that the creating parties set up an unbalanced situation and in addition the elected politicians at the time did not do their homework and created a dangerous situation to their national need. Am I the only one asking the right question here?

So will Brexit turn out to be murder, or will the British be killing it? Where will the economy go? These are questions that many sources are answering in their view, emphasising their need to be in-EEC, or out-EEC. I have my own view, but I do not have any useful answers. You see, there are issues on both sides, yet as I see it, the scales that are in favour of the UK seem to lean towards out-EEC at present. This view will be interfered with, especially by the USA, as it will topple a massive economic minefield which will blow up in all our faces, especially the value of the Dollar. Yet, the status for the UK would remain strongest if they leave first, especially if the Commonwealth unites with the UK in a strong economic bond. If we find a way to keep import low by utilising the Commonwealth bonds that Commonwealth nations have, the UK coffers would grow better, faster and higher. In the end, Brexit or not, a solution for the refugees must still be found, closing the borders to them completely is as unacceptable as it was for Austria to keep Greece out of the debate. How these parties will be resolved is a question that remains without answer as the involved parties have a hard time agreeing on the resolution, which is fair enough, there are no easy answers, as there is an equal concern that a solution is not forthcoming any day soon. For that Greece would have been needed to create locations, an option Austria decided to take it out of consideration, something that will haunt us for a little longer than we are all comfortable with.

 

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February 26, 2016 · 21:52

Within the Entitlement of Relevance

Very early this morning an article made it into the Guardian. The title ‘David Cameron boasts of ‘brilliant’ UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia‘, (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/25/david-cameron-brilliant-uk-arms-exports-saudi-arabia-bae), which is fair enough. The UK is one of those nations that actually has an arms export option. It is nowhere near the size of the US, but that is not the point here.

When we read: “on the day the European parliament voted for an arms embargo on the country over its bombardment of Yemen“, we should be asking: ‘and why do we care about that?‘, yet this is not the case. We see both “At almost the same time, the European parliament voted in favour of an EU-wide ban on arms being sold to Saudi Arabia in protest at its heavy aerial bombing of Yemen, which has been condemned by the UN” as well as “The vote does not force EU member states to comply but it increases pressure on national governments to re-examine their relationships with Riyadh“. Which is a joke of sizeable proportions (reasoning will follow). Finally we see: “The Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been extremely critical of Cameron’s relationship with Saudi Arabia because of its human rights record, prompting an angry response from Riyadh“, which could be seen as a humorous climax in labour less form.

We need to deal with the quotes so that it all makes sense to you, but there is one more element in that story. That we see from: “Oliver Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s arms controls director, said: “The ‘brilliant things’ that David Cameron says BAE sells include massive amounts of weaponry for the Saudi Arabia military, despite Saudi Arabia’s dreadful record in Yemen“. I needed to add this to all this, because there is the start.

You see, I am on the fence here. I will happily support Amnesty International, because for the most it is a force of good. When I see the title ‘UK’s arms controls director‘ I wonder if AI lost the plot a little. Let’s be clear here. It makes sense that AI has people on the payroll who understand weapons, understands mines, chemical ordnance. That makes perfect sense. AI is in need of knowledge on many levels and plenty of their work is in places where people tend to passionately not like each other (as in: with clubs, machetes and automatic weapons). Yet, when AI is wasting time on a valid business deal, we should ask a few additional questions. Now, we should quickly mention another side. At https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/amnesty-expert-barred-london-arms-fair, we see ‘Amnesty expert barred from London arms fair‘ as well as his quote “They’ve kept me out, but the question is: what has DSEi got to hide?” Let me answer that instead of the DSEi. You see, I could with my own expertise attend that event, and like him, I will equally hear “alas sir, you didn’t meet the criteria for registration“, even though there should be a few around in that field who know my skill levels in that regard. It is not skill or expertise, you see, it is about CLEARANCE LEVELS. These events are frequented by a massive who’s who of unregistered events, with a decent amount of government employees who need to talk shop, having non-cleared people on that fair tends to be a little unsettling for several reasons. In part because this world has its own rules, you obey those rules or you stop functioning in that world. There is every chance that I could accidently make the mistake whilst Oliver Sprague would intentionally do these things. Most of these people shy away from cameras (apart from those special social functions), they are there to talk shop!

You see, I have every respect for Amnesty International, they have done many good things in the past and will continue this in the future. For example stop torture makes perfect sense. There is also a questionable part from AI, it is nice to talk about the Human Rights Act, yet in the decades they have never succeeded in championing the need to add Spousal Abuse to article 3 of that HRA. Is spousal abuse not torture in its own rights? In that regard AI likes to be very visible, but in some way the big fights are never really fought (or better stated have not been fought for a long time). They have shown success stories every year, but landmark achievements have been absent for some time. Let’s get back to the initial story, but do not forget this part as it has bearing.

You see, the next part is slightly more entertaining. That tends to be the case whenever the honourable Jeremy Corbyn gets involved. Apart from the fashion comments we have seen in the last two days. The actual issue is his choice to get to the CND-rally, which is not a bad thing, but in light of timing, he decides to walk away from the national Labour campaign day, where he would be persuading voters to back Britain’s membership of the EU. This leaves to mind, is this a first inkling that even labour expects Brexit to become a reality? Whether that is true or not, this event has a direct bearing on the British population within this year, the CND rally has been going on for decades, so there would be another one next year. There is no other story beyond that. When you lead the labour party, it must be about the party, not about temporary ideology, because the CND is temporary at best and all ideological. I state that because there is no doubt that the UK would never instigate it, it would however respond if need be. Jeremy knows this (or he should not run the labour party). In all this I accept and understand that this is an option to rub elbows with people like SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party. Yes, those meetings make perfect sense, yet that means that none of them are really there for a CND rally. That is not an accusation, it is not wrong, but it leads to questions; questions that can slow down any election for a massive amount.

Two events all with issues of relevance, relevance from within those people from their point of view.

Now we take another gander, a gander towards the path of Saudi Arabia. Most people refuse to understand (read: accept) two elements. The first is that Saudi Arabia is a sovereign nation, a nation founded in 1932 by the House of Saud. The most important part here is that this is a Muslim nation, it is a nation of laws, in their case it was the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia in 1924 when King Abdul-Aziz made Shura a foundation of his government in order to fulfil the divine order by applying Shariah (Islamic Jurisprudence) and Shura as parts of it. So, we have a clear given, a monarchy that lives by Muslim rule of law, Shariah law. We might not comprehend, understand it or even accept it. But in the Nation of Saudi Arabia it has forever been law. I still do not understand how people go about trying to enforce their rules upon others. You see, when I hear these ‘moralists’ speak on how Sharia Law is so ‘barbaric’, they in equal measure forget that their own governments abandoned them as markets collapsed twice since 2004, no decent part of the involved parties went to prison and absolutely no laws were properly instigated and enforced against greed and in that regard, the least said about flawed corporate tax laws the better. In light of all this consider another fact that applies to the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia, the previous assembly had 70% of its members with a PhD, 49% got their degree in the US and 20% from a University in Europe. So this is a group highly educated. Initially, going back to the beginning, the council was entrusted with drafting the basic laws for the administration of the country. Which is interesting as the US started in a similar way, a nation of laws under god (their Christian version). When we see the Shura council, we see in Article one “and following His Messenger Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH) in consulting his Companions, and urging the (Muslim) Nation to engage in consultation. The Shura council shall be established to exercise the tasks entrusted to it, according to this Law and the Basic Law of Governance while adhering to Quran and the Path (Sunnah) of his Messenger (PBUH), maintaining brotherly ties and cooperating unto righteousness and piety“, so as others judge the actions of Saudi Arabia, ask yourself, in the last 5 years alone, how many instances from large corporations and government have we seen, where ‘maintaining brotherly ties and cooperating unto righteousness and piety‘ were never part of any consideration? You only have to look at your pension plan, healthcare or deficits to see that ‘brotherly‘ is nowhere to be found.

This too is relevant to the entirety of the situation when we return to the honourable Jeremy Corbyn. Several sources stated “Jeremy Corbyn has called on David Cameron to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia after a United Nations report found the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen had “conducted airstrikes targeting civilians”“, based on what evidence would be my first question (not stating the validity of the UN), apart from that, Corbyn has a direct responsibility, you see, the UK had coffers that need to be filled, the UK has product that can be sold. We have seen how UK Labour was willing to spend money they never had, leaving the UK in massive debt. The last thing he should do is call for a suspension. Let me explain that part.

  1. This arms deal is not with some organisation like Hezbollah, it is a legitimate sovereign government of an established nation. The UK has every right to sell products to this nation.
  2. Whenever the west gets directly involved in any Middle Eastern event, it becomes a massive mess, in all this after half a decade, the west has done next to nothing regarding Syria, Europe has to deal with massive waves of refugees and there is no end in sight. Amnesty International knows this. They also know that Sharia Law is another matter, it is not for them to judge; it is for them to accept that the sovereign nation of Saudi Arabia has every right to keep their own set of laws.
  3. Hezbollah and other players in Yemen are not part of an established government, they overthrew governments and the mess that followed has been ongoing ever since. In that light, there are too many question marks in too many places.

I believe that any Middle Eastern issue should be resolved by the Middle Eastern nations themselves. With escalation on the south border and firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia, they have every rights to protect themselves in any way they need to. That is also part of the equation. In that regard Islam 101 gives us two parts “Fight against those who fight against you in the way of Allah, but do not transgress, for Allah does not love transgressors” as well as “Kill them whenever you confront them and drive them out from where they drove you out. (For though killing is sinful) wrongful persecution is even worse than killing. Do not fight against them near the Holy Mosque unless they fight against you; but if they fight against you kill them, for that is the reward of such unbelievers“. The next part is also from the Quran, but I am not sure whether this is Sharia: “The Quran sanctions violence to counter violence. If one studies history of Arab tribes before Islam and fierce fighting they indulged in one would be convinced that the philosophy of passive resistance would not have worked in that environment“. This is the kicker, we see that passive resistance was not a solution, because of the mess that Arab spring left the Middle East. In that Saudi Arabia has a right to counter its attacks, which means that we do not get to say too much on how a sovereign state defends itself. In addition, with the amount of ‘additional’ groups in Yemen, can we be certain who is who there?

But do not fear, Smith is here!

You see, I am very willing to join BAE and become ‘the’ sales person there (I know a person who would join me, so a team of 2 could be achieved), I will take a decent sales income and of course the 3.75% bonus on surplus sales and 3.25% bonus on sales targets reached. I reckon that I can sell the Eurofighter Typhoon military planes, with consultancy, training and guidance. In addition, I will be happy to provide for ammunition and ordnance. As stated, we Commonwealth nations need to stick together and I am happy to aid in the support and consultancy of those jets.

This now gets us to the final part ‘an arms embargo on the country over its bombardment of Yemen‘. What data is there? What evidence is there? We know for a fact that Hezbollah is there, that the Iranians are all over this, which is interesting as they are supporting the party overthrowing the legitimate government. So is there more? Is this perhaps an organised annexing of Yemen for Iran? The elements that gives value to that are indeed in play, whether this is a factual interpretation is not clear, too much data is not available to me, as well as too much time has passed from the start of all this.

And the final part in all this is “The vote does not force EU member states to comply“, which makes the EU a lame duck organisation. All that time and all these events for something that holds no real value. Now let’s take the headcount for a second. Oliver Sprague, a civilian with no political power, a person who leads by instigating those who have power and only in events where it is beneficial to those people could something possibly happen (not in this case though). Jeremy Corbyn, a political headpiece, but not one that is currently in office, he is merely in opposition and as such he is about visibility and branding himself (politically plugging is also a term that applies in this case). These two non-deciders are opposing a nation that needs commerce that needs to export as many of their products as possible.

In the defence of the two non-deciders I must add, from our values, we might have issues and it is nice that the UN is also about values, yet in all this, apart from condemnation there has been very little against terrorist elements. Of all the condemnations we have seen since Syria has a little issue in 2011, how much actions have been taken and for how many millions of Syrians has it been too late? Too many speakers for inactions, too little actions on economy and actual actions on the HRA (like the little addendum to article three I mentioned earlier).

So within the title of relevance seems to apply to too many people, it includes me as well, for the mere reason that my blog has no effect on the actions of the UK Foreign Office. It is just my view on the matter, like it was the view of Oliver Sprague, Jeremy Corbyn and the EU parliament. We are all simply non-deciders. The deciders are the currently elected UK government headed by David Cameron as well as the Monarchy of Saudi Arabia, under King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. They both get to look at the ‘toothless’ response from the EU parliament, who might be entering their final sitting soon enough.

Our voices might sound nice, our words might read nice, but neither bring food to the table, which is the concern of the Conservative Party, one that they are actually addressing.

 

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February 25, 2016 · 20:26

Family of my enemy

There are all these expressions, like for example: ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend‘. In this day and age, in the one place, the one moment when Marine Le Pen has a growing chance of becoming President of France, her father, for whatever reason is now trying to thwart her chances. This is the one clear evidence that ‘Family of my enemy is my friend‘. The quote “threatened his daughter and sent her an ultimatum, to ensure the “unity of her movement and of the national movement“, must make François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy howl with laughter. Euro Disney could not come up with this plot! In addition, the quote “We must not lose part of our political capital in the hope to conquer others. You have to be yourself”, which reads like: ‘be the ultimate extremist of yourself, as outspoken as possible‘. The reality is that some will listen to the very old man, giving rise to internal opposition towards Front National. I still believe that an actual Brexit will give a massive sway towards Marine Le Pen. There are two factors that will change it. The first one is either Hollande or Sarkozy to get on the Frexit horse, this would be the most powerful deflator for Front National and here is the kicker. If Hollande does this before the Brexit vote they will actually expedite that what neither wants. We have seen in the previous round that they will combine powers just to prevent Marine Le Pen from winning, which could be seen as betraying ones constituency on one side and in my book there is no other side. The entire approach reeks towards the fact that Sarkozy and Hollande will do anything to stay in the Euro and keep Front National out of Élysée Palace. Is that truly representing ones constituency? We can argue for either side. Yet it could all be moot if Mademoiselle’s Le Pen’s daddy goes extreme. Her victory could turn instantly from definite into possibly, maybe. This is not a solution for her side, which the other players definitely love. So the problem for her side is now starting to grow. Her chances are growing fast, but only if she can get a handle on daddy dearest. For her opposition this is great, should their dreams come true, if they escape defeat by Le Pen, the speculation would become whether the gilded tombstone will read ‘Jean-Marie Le Pen, deceased, as is Front National, I killed my own party and we never got to govern because I would not trust my children‘, which could end up becoming a tourist attraction, which is also good for France.

Yet, the issue does not stop in France, recently we have seen issues rise in both the Netherlands and Italy. First the Netherlands. For this I will use the Irish times as a source, so you won’t need to learn the complications of Google Translate. For example ‘schijt lijster’ does not mean ‘shit thrush’, but ‘coward’. So let’s take a look at a decent version of reporting, where (at http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/02/geert-wilders-is-a-threat-to-democracy-says-labour-chairman/), we saw earlier this month “Wilders told a gathering of far right parties in Milan 10 days ago: ‘If I am the biggest and the other politicians won’t work with me, then the people will not accept that. Then there will be a revolt. We won’t let that happen“, which is a fair enough statement to make. The statement “Wilders has ‘let the genie out of the bottle’ with his calls for ‘resistance’ to the establishment of refugee centres and warnings that his supporters will ‘revolt’ if the PVV is not part of the next government, Spekman said” is in that context not correct, what Geert Wilders has stated that if he becomes the biggest (which is statistical likelihood at present) the other parties would need to work with him. This is at the core of the Dutch issue. In the past, not entirely unjustified did parties turn their back and all support away from the PVV, which in light of Dutch liberalism, if THEY think it is too extreme, there should be an issue. What becomes partially the issue is “The threats being made against local politicians are an attack on democratic decision-forming, the Labour party chairman said. Wilders, Spekman said, should take back his words. ‘The genie has to be put back in the bottle and Wilders has a role in doing that.’“, this is not correct. You see, for a long time there has been a growing aversion against more refugees. The Netherlands, pretty much the smallest nation in Europe is 7th on the GDP list, largely through transport and processing services. It has a comparable GDP with Turkey but is only 5% in size. It has a population size that is only 3 million less than Romania, yet 16% it’s size. So a population pressure that is 5 times higher. In addition, the local population have for a long time made the argument that the value of houses would decrease when a refugee centre would be added in near proximity. However, that last fact has never been proven with factual data, partially as the Dutch house market has had many fluctuations.

In light given another part is also ignored. When we see “threats being made against local politicians are an attack on democratic decision-forming“, there is a clear side that is ignored. The fact that the population is more and more agitated by these events is also a clear sign that political parties are about international visibility. The voter has been ignored too many times, this is exactly why the PVV had grown too much. Local politicians proclaiming to be international players all in the interest of ‘self’ is why this shift is happening. In addition, to some extent I still believe that a coalition government should be seen as the most corrupt form of democracy (not just a personal view). We see on how politicians will advocate ‘a little water added to the wine‘, this has been happening in the Netherlands since the 80’s, which means the politicians all get what they need, but the population gets a mix, no longer having the ability to differentiate water from wine. What they are left with won’t kill them, but it should be regarded as undrinkable. The people at large have had enough. The fact that the PVV is now regarded in the Netherlands as the largest party is a blemish on the political shield. The true political titans that the Netherlands had like Joop den Uyl, Hans Wiegel, Dries van Agt and Hans van Mierlo. These titans were true politicians, when den Uyl fought van Agt on the political battlefield it was a sight to behold, there was a true fight for their constituents. I believe that this fight is gone, as a majority is no longer an option it became about compromise and from the 90’s onwards there was too much compromise where parties gave in to big business and certain scandals (there will always be scandals in every nation) were almost a cornerstone of political office.

It is not really that much of a wonder that Geert Wilders grew to the extent he has. This now reflects back to France. As France is now making more and more compromises (Team Hollande/Sarkozy), we see a local population that has had enough. A united Europe has brought them too little, or nothing at all. In that regard many European nations are now more and more pushing the ‘nationalism’ button, after too much hardship the people are accepting that story, even though in the back of their mind they know it will not bring any ease to their hardship. After a harsh decade where large corporations gave millions to their top dozen, these people will now try ‘anything else’. It is the ‘else’ part that is bringing the problems known as Brexit and Frexit.

So in countering the statement by the Dutch Chairman of the Labour party, I would state “Mr Spekman, your party lost close to 50% of its power, because of self-serving bias. The pension plan is perhaps the most visible one. A long fight that had no option of getting won. Instead of fighting a useless battle, accepting the reality of a sliding age of retirement and presenting the demand for reinforcements and growth of the total pensions, giving way to a more secure future would have been the real solution. Your party never sold it correctly and did not terms of preparations which would have made all the difference. You lost the faith of your constituents!” which would have been my response to that disaster. In that light people are now listening to someone else, it is not up to me to decide whether he is the wrong person.

In light of that, as he stated in a Dutch Newspaper “Het optreden van Geert Wilders brengt democratie en rechtsstaat in gevaar“, “The acts of Geert pose a threat to democracy and the rule of law“, is that truly the case? If he is a threat to the rule of law, he would be breaking the law and he can be prosecuted, he cannot be a threat to democracy, in that light, you and your posse (your coalition partners) are that threat. The threat is there because the people have been ignored for too long and they (well over 25% have had enough), in that light, how often will a Dutch politician state ‘it is a complex situation‘ to avoid giving a clear answer? How many of the clear answers given turned out to be ‘half-truths’ or ‘incomplete answers’? In that light, who is the threat to democracy? In that light, Mr Spekman should realise (fast) that should the PVV win, he has no option, but to either find a way to work or to create a minority coalition. Should that happen, than perhaps Mr Spekman might want to try to remember what happened on August 20th 1672 and especially WHY it happened.

Even as the mood in France is not that grim, the issues are now quickly evolving. The investigation into the Nicolas Sarkozy 2012 election charges, which according to the French population is not a good thing. According to the poll 77% regard Mr Sarkozy ‘a handicap’ to his party’s ambitions, within his party, it is Alain Juppe who has 55% of the votes within the party (at http://www.connexionfrance.com/france-politics-les-republicains-nicolas-sarkozy-president-francois-hollande-alain-juppe-survey-17738-view-article.html), in that light, as Sarkozy designed a coalition with Francois Hollande, who is dealing with disastrously low ratings. So as the two French parties are in turmoil, there is a clear path for Front National to get national gains beyond the two areas where they had an advantage. An option for Marine Le Pen that is now in danger as her daddy seems to have a failing level of logic and even less faith in his youthful young daughter.

Even in this light, there is still an issue with Greece, as their economy created the dangers of Brexit and Frexit in the first place. However, in this case it is NOT Greece that has the blame here. In this case, the refugee issues that are fuelling election, we see a Greece that is in the middle of a scenario they did NOT create. In that light we need to look at the issue of Austrian short-sightedness. Greece is the first port of call, not by choice, by mere geography. Austria seems to forget that Turkey (stupid is as stupid does) is doing what it can to get the people away from their turf into the next one (Greece). So the quote “Sebastian Kurz says that Greece has “clearly expressed no interest in reducing the (migrant) influx and in contrast wants to continue waving them through” ” is already a first issue, because the refugees DO NOT want to be in Greece, they want the juicy places like Germany and the UK. Which means that they will end up getting through Austria. In my view, how was Sebastian Kurz elected for office as he has such a failing view of geography and logic? Greece should have been the guest of honour at that event!

You see, people (read: refugees) need to be processed, they need to be identified and assessed on optional issues of security. That system would bring jobs and possible economic support to Greece, whilst the EEC gets the data it desperately needs. So as we see (at http://www.ekathimerini.com/206291/article/ekathimerini/news/austria-defends-excluding-greece-from-migrant-conference), so as we look at the quote “the conference is set up in a “regular format” that does not include Athens“, to which I reply: “such a conference requires intelligence and clear thinking, so Minister Kurz, will you therefor be equally absent?”

That for the mere reason that the intelligence required would be the data your neighbours desperately needs (which includes Germany and Italy). I wonder if that conference will lead to anything truly productive, or will it just be good food, hookers and a few days away from their offices? I’ll let you readers contemplate that part.

All these events are interconnected, and it is not even the complete story as Italy is missing in all this, but that is for another day.

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February 22, 2016 · 19:44

Within the realm of privacy

We all have an inherent need for privacy, we want things to be at our leisure of contemplated sharing. Yet, what is privacy? On one side we want privacy, but the next moment ladies will share whether their carpet is a landing strip or a martini glass, I for one do not care. If they want to share certain parts that’s fine with me. I am not too much about sharing. On the other side, apart from a few MP3 files, there is nothing interesting on my mobile. I reckon that my mobile is one of the dullest ones around.

So when I initially heard about the FBI wanting to access the iPhone of Syed Farook, I shrugged my shoulders and went ‘whatever!’ meaning that I was not opposed and I did not care. It was the techdirt site that has an interesting fact from the court case.

“Footnote 7, on page 18 details four possible ways that Apple and the FBI had previously discussed accessing the content on the device without having to undermine the basic security system of the iPhone, and one of them only failed because Farook’s employers reset the password after the attacks, in an attempt to get into the device“, so the boss went into ‘auto-moronic’ mode and did not check? He acted without knowing? So when we see “The ‘owner’ of course, being the San Bernardino Health Department, who employed Farook and gave him the phone. Basically, what this is saying is that if the password hadn’t been reset, it would have been possible to try to connect the phone to a ‘trusted’ network, and force an automatic backup to iCloud — which (as has been previously noted) was available to the FBI. But by ‘changing’ the password, apparently that option went away“, should we consider that his boss was stupid, or that his boss was scared he had done something wrong and this was his/her way of covering the mess up? (at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160219/17463033656/footnote-reveals-that-san-bernardino-health-dept-reset-syed-farooks-password-which-is-why-were-now-this-mess.shtml).

For the record, that was clear speculation on my side!

What happened was that Apple, the firm that initially ‘screwed over’ its customer base with error 53. A few days ago, the Guardian reported ‘Apple ordered to decrypt iPhone of San Bernardino shooter for FBI‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/apple-ordered-to-hack-iphone-of-san-bernardino-shooter-for-fbi). In there we see the important quote: “In 2014, Apple began making iPhones with additional encryption software that they said they could not unlock, even if faced with a court order. Apple said this was done in the name of consumer privacy and cybersecurity, but the company has been locked in a public feud with the FBI since“. I understand that there is a need for privacy. My issue is why THIS level of privacy is needed. One could speculate that this is to keep the financial adviser’s customer base happy. I reckon that those people look for other means the moment their actions could be monitored, or investigated afterwards. Again, speculation from my side.

You see, I do not comprehend why law abiding citizens are so in fear, of what the government finds out. Most people can’t stop selfie themselves, their fashion and body parts to social media on a global scale. They tend to Facebook all details, especially when they are far away from home to ‘all’ their friends, so that the department of discreet entry and removal operations can empty their homestead in the meantime. With so much sharing, what privacy do you think you still have?

So back to the Granny Smith of automation, the next article (again the Guardian) gives us ‘FBI escalates war with Apple: ‘marketing’ bigger concern than terror‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/fbi-apple-san-bernardino-shooter-court-order-iphone), here we see the subtitle ‘Court filing from Department of Justice says Apple is more concerned with ‘its marketing strategy’ than helping FBI unlock San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone‘, which is fair enough when we consider that a failed marketing equals an alleged death in those houses. The quote “Cook called for public debate and has been backed in his fight by some of tech’s biggest names, including Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, WhatsApp and whistle-blower Edward Snowden“. I think that this is less about Americans and more about the 7 billion non-Americans that have this false fear of the CIA and the NSA. Yet in all this, the only true group to fear this is the 0.0001% of the population, I do not even register and in that regard most do not even register. Like the previous mass surveillance marketing ploy, simple fear mongering.

Now, let it be said that I have nothing against a person’s privacy and there is nothing wrong with wanting privacy, yet when we consider the 1.5 billion on Facebook, the 100 million on Instagram, the 307 million on Twitter and over 100 million users on Pinterest, we have well over 80% of the iPhone users on social media all sharing from mere events attended up to the grooming of the most private of parts, Which makes the shout for privacy a little too hilarious.

So how does this fit legally?

Well first there is the part that the DoJ is now relying on. It is the All Writs Act of 1789, which states “The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law“, which sounds rather nice,

Yet the fact that the DoJ needs to rely on an act that has, according to several press sources, only been used thrice is a little too novel.

When we consider that the ‘self-destruct’ was enable by Farook’s boss (making the device useless to thieves), only leaves the DoJ without options. What is interesting is when the last cloud backup has happened, had it happened at all? Too many question that are all in the realm of speculation and none of it gives way to legislation. The question becomes should it be? I am not opposing the FBI, CIA or NSA. Yet these alphabet groups do know that they are fishing in murky waters. You cannot expect a corporation to set a product meant for 1,000 million to have options for the internally build exemption of 5,000-7,000 users. The math just does not add up!

I was talking about the legality, so let’s continue there.

In McCabe v British American Tobacco Australia Services Ltd,’ and the appeal, British American Tobacco Australia Services Ltd v Cowell (Representing the Estate of McCabe (deceased)), exposed some of the difficulties that plaintiffs who sue large corporations may face in litigation involving access to documentation. The Victorian Court of Appeal reversed the first instance decision which had struck out the defence of a tobacco company (‘BAT’). The basis for the first instance decision was that BAT had systematically destroyed documents that might have been relevant to the plaintiff’s case. It important to state WHO destroyed documents. You see, in case of Farook it was the boss who ‘destroyed’ the options for information retrieval. The important issue is that INTENT becomes near impossible to prove. In addition that case gives us: “The High Court declined the opportunity to clarify the law in this important area by refusing leave to appeal. The effect of this case, absent statutory reform, is that corporations may destroy potential evidence provided that their actions do not constitute an attempt to pervert the course of justice or a contempt of court. These are notoriously difficult to establish” (source: Playing for keeps? Tobacco litigation, document retention, corporate culture and legal ethics by Matthew Harvey and Suzanne Lemire. The reason for going towards this case is that the entire approach to mobile architecture and auto-backup could instigate updates where the mirror is encrypted extern from Apple. Which means that any phone would have an XML set-up and data object, but the object would be irretrievable. The ‘responsibility’ for proper password maintenance would be kept with the ‘client’ or end user. Taking Apple out of the equation leaving the DoJ with the apple pie made from the famous Granny Smith (AKA Janet Abigail Doe).

This takes the entire cyber conversation towards Spoliated Evidence, where we see “a party is faced with the fact that certain key evidence has been destroyed, altered, or simply lost“, destroyed implies intent, but proving that is next to impossible (which got us the tobacco case. Altered is basically what the DoJ faces as the boss decided to reset the password, again malicious intent becomes next to impossible to prove, whilst lost is not in play in this case but could clearly complicate the issue if that was the case, as the DoJ would have no implied evidence at all.

This entire endeavour goes even further south when we consider Federal Insurance Co. v. Allister, 622 So. 2d 1348, 1351 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993), where the Fourth District decided to set forth five factors to consider before imposing sanctions for spoliation of evidence. They were:

  • whether there is prejudice;
  • whether the prejudice can be cured;
  • the practical importance of the evidence;
  • the good faith or bad faith surrounding the loss of evidence;
  • Possible abuse if the evidence is not excluded.

As bad faith is now linked to the degree of wilfulness, we get back to intent. If mere ‘negligent loss’ does not cut the cake and the cake cannot be devoured without the essential evidence, the entire issue goes nowhere really fast. Basically, it boils down to the boss of Farook having one set of glasses on with the limiting mindset of cost if his mobile was ‘abused in usage’, leaving Apple in the clear shrugging their shoulders going ‘not my problem now’, whilst in all this we are left with no evidence linking to intent or malice. That small scope that was available will in all expectations to be diminished further. It basically solves all of Apple’s problems.

In the need for privacy we have gone from exceptionally rare to just hilariously ridiculous. The Guardian article (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/20/apple-fbi-iphone-explainer-san-bernardino) shows in equal measure another side. Which comes from Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon. Here we read “Some are calling for the United States to weaken Americans’ cybersecurity by undermining strong encryption with backdoors for the government,” he wrote on Medium on Friday afternoon. “But security experts have shown again and again that weakening encryption will make it easier for foreign hackers, criminals and spies to break into Americans’ bank accounts, health records and phones, without preventing terrorists from ‘going dark’“, as such correctly implying that the medication will end up being a lot worse than the disease they face. In addition to that, should Farook have relied on another path, for example receive orders and message a ‘guild’ within a Facebook RPG game, the wasted time on the iPhone becomes nothing more than an iconic episode of the Comedy Capers. With these games receiving billions of messages a day, parsing though 1 of a dozen games would take years. The fact that none of this required any encrypted android or IOS system, just a mere desktop like millions of students use makes for the case against the Alphabet teams. When looking at Extremetech, we see a quote that is important in all this, the quote: “how terrorist organization uses social media to spread its message and radicalize curious readers. GWU’s research found that while ISIS uses a wide range of services, including Facebook, Google Plus, Kik, WhatsApp, and Tumblr, Twitter is the social media site of choice. Twitter already patrols and bans the accounts of ISIS supporters“, it casually forgets the 3-4 dozen accounts that do not raise any flags, the accounts that ACTUALLY bring details of the attacks to the transgressors.

 

 

 

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February 20, 2016 · 12:25

Omphalos and its syndrome

This syndrome comes from the references of Delphi and the ‘navel of the world’, which is what Delphi was regarded as. Nowadays, we see Omphalos syndrome as the misguided belief that a place of geopolitical power and currency is the most important place in the world.

I believe that to be no longer correct, I believe that it has been ‘converted’ into something slightly more generic. I believe that it should be seen as ‘the misguided believe that its choice of management and achievement of profit are the most important in the world’. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

 

A is for Apple

‘Apple apologises over Error 53 and issues fix for bricked iPhones’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/error-53-apple-issues-fix-bricked-iphones) shows the first example. The entire error53 mess is a direct example. It goes on to the core that we now see “Apple has released a fix for users affected by “Error 53”, a software issue that rendered useless iPhones that had had their home buttons replaced by third parties“, The initial response “At the time Apple said that Error 53 was a security feature to protect customers” reads like a joke. The mere alternative that was open was that any non-Apple certified method meant the wiping of data would have been enough. It took me 5 minutes to come up with that solution. A mere auto wipe of all data. No we have to read quotes like “Apple has apologised for Error 53 and said customers who paid for an out-of-warranty replacement for their phone should contact AppleCare about reimbursement” as well as “Solving Error 53 does not re-enable Touch ID, as a third-party replacement of the home button could potentially allow unauthorised access to a locked phone by modifying the fingerprint sensor“. It would have been the simplest of solutions to go through the re-enabling system again. All these simple solutions, all because apple wanted to enforce the repairs of their phones to what they consider to be THEIR allowed service repair shops. An application of greed, to maximise profits, not the openness of what was once the Apple OS X through a Unix open source system, but the mere stranglehold of a greed driven corporation. It was brought to light by several articles in the Guardian and an initial customer service based solution comes “after widespread publicity and the Californian tech giant being served with a class action lawsuit over in the US and attention from a competition watchdog in Australia“, I wonder how many IOS people will start considering Android now.

 

E is for Eisai

This event is taking us back a fair bit, around 2000 Eisai came with its Alzheimer’s drug Aricept (donepezil). The fact that profits grow by 100% might not be the biggest thing on the planet. Yes when the LA Times (at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/22/health/la-he-aricept-fda-20120323) reported “FDA officials should not have allowed it, the authors said, because the clinical studies Eisai offered in support of its application did not meet standards the agency itself had laid out“, in addition we see “it failed to yield the improvements that the FDA had set as a condition of approval“, in all this a clear investigation did not take place. It is still allowed, mainly because it is FDA approved. We see in other sources the claims like “Further, the higher dose was not superior on either of the pre-specified secondary outcome measures, which, as the FDA medical reviewer pointed out, argues that the cognitive difference was not meaningful“, which we get from the FDA Center for Drug Evauation and Research. Application number 022568: medical review. Aricept 23 mg tablets. (at www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2010/022568Orig1s000MedR.pdf), when we consider the source http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/10October/Pages/Cheap-Alzheimers-drug-may-help-keep-people-out-of-care-homes.aspx, where we get the quote “a year’s worth of donepezil costs around £21 a year, compared with a year’s worth of care home costs – estimated to be between £30,732 and £34,424 a year. If the results of the study were replicated at a population level, this could save the NHS a considerable sum of money“.

This is where we see another version of Omphalos syndrome, “the misguided believe that my version of cost cutting is the best in the world“, at this point, we should investigate the players and consider whether a case for criminal endangerment exists. The fact that sources have shown ‘evidence’ as per 2007 gives rise to a failed system, not just the NHS, but the leeway for pharmaceuticals as, from the given reports failed to yield the improvements that the FDA had set as a condition of approval, making the question why on earth was it approved at all and why are certain diseases used for marketing a cash cow, more important why is the NHS not loudly and outspoken dealing with this? Especially as www.NHS.UK is involved in promoting articles in favour of Aricept (donepezil).

 

I is for Insight Enterprises

This is a side that rests with Omphalos, yet in all this it is in equal measure a situation we must accept. Insight Enterprises did nothing wrong, it made a choice, it’s governing body stated ‘this is the best path, this is the golden solution’, we must accept that any governing body, being it corporate or governmental will be ‘smitten’ with Omphalos Syndrome. So as Microsoft changed the partner program in 2014, Insight Enterprises saw the filling of its corporate coffers trickle down to zero. (at http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/300079674/insight-enterprises-absorbs-another-hit-after-microsoft-partner-program-changes.htm). We can debate the mess Insight Enterprises received, the near simple answer is that Microsoft had to change programs, any large corporations will do that. Any program they offer and device tends to be ‘fluidic’ over time. Yet when we see the quote “The changes also affected Microsoft’s Licensing Solution Providers, like Tempe, Ariz.-based Insight, which are the only partners Microsoft allows to sell licensing agreements to large corporations“, which is now showing another side. Does this make Microsoft narcissistically selfish or just plain sociopathic? You see all narcissists are selfish, but not all selfish corporations are narcissistically in nature (which is proven as greed we put the greedy in front of a mirrors), yet in all this, is this a sociopathic side in Microsoft? Well, that is a debate for another day as the entire Omphalos topic would soon get too murky.

 

O is for Omphalos

As shown in the last example, we tend to see Omphalos in a bad light. Which is not all correct either. On the other side we can take Bill Gates and his Omphalosian approach to IT. This got us DOS and later Windows. On the far side of the scale of limiting, there is the view of the truly visionary, but that view needs a start. Here the Omphalos syndrome works in another way. As I see it, we can accuse Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison on that list. Yet, we only did that AFTER they became successful, the not so successful are usually never heard of again.

In this world today, the foundation of ‘the most important place in the world’ is less and less applicable, it becomes a world of solutions, an amalgamation of aggregated values (the European Economic Community being a nice example). Yet the foundation of how to go about it was done in a very Omphalosian way. Especially when we consider the past blogs on how only self-proclaimed departures were the option. Which is exactly where Brexit is now. As Brexit gains momentum we see that the Omphalosian solution was the most dangerous here, it took one of the smallest nations (Greece) to push their non-accountability for the entire EEC to be in turmoil, with now a decent chance of collapsing the EEC as well as the Euro as a coin. Even as the United Kingdom is not on the Euro, France is and a Brexit will soon push for an additional Frexit. In that regard, the Financial Times quoted Florian Philippot who stated “the idea of challenging greater EU integration had become “taboo” in Europe. “The more we talk about it, the more people will vote against it,” he said” (at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/58f9cc98-ce51-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html#axzz40fDAW3BL). This is yet another side of Omphalos, actually two sides. The foundation of Omphalos is based on one view, if that view does not evolve or alters as time goes by, that view becomes less and less actual. The view becomes an act of obstruction at best and debilitating at worst.

In the second part, we have forever seen the Omphalos syndrome in its power core on the scope of government (read: Communistic), in that view we forgot that it is corporations with their view on the ‘only’ solution that is now impacting the lives of people in several (read: many) nations. In that same view we see that the old approach to currency is no longer the same. Most values are too dependent on independent views of static organisations and their push for changed industrialisations. How come that the value of a coin is now directly impacted by places like Dow Jones index, Nasdaq, Standards and Poor, the IMF, the ECB and so on? Governments allowed themselves to be directly be valued from what is perceived to be an ‘independent’ side. This is the other part that drives Brexit and other plans to no longer be part of anything. There is a near global consensus that these sources can no longer be trusted. That their view is to some extent ‘Greed Incarnate’.

As I see it, there is no true independence anymore. When we read that Eagle Capital Management Invests $293000 and that J. W. Burns & Company Has $533000 invested in in SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA). When the index itself is invested on, the expectations of improved value must be met, where does that leave us?

 

U is for You!

Even when we see the old and the new versions of the Omphalos syndrome, we need to realise that what once seen as short-sighted and limited is now not so limiting. It remains (as I personally see it) as short-sighted as it ever was (only in the rarest of occasions is it visionary), but now, the impact is no longer limited to one government, now its short-sighted impact is nearly global. It hits parties in many nations and it does not stop there. You see in a governmental approach it is ‘set’ to be what is best for its citizens and in case of the EEC it is what a group of nations see. Now consider the application from corporations that impacts governments on a global scale, offices of standards that impact the dangers to lives on a global scale as it does not enforce its own given values. How can we be aligned to a limiting view that could cost us our lives and our choice of living?

So as you consider ‘the misguided believe that its choice of management and achievement of profit are the most important in the world’ also strongly consider what it will cost you, not now, but down the track.

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