Category Archives: Politics

The political winds

It all started nice and slow this morning. I had one task that is due in 4 hours and 34.3 minutes (roughly), so the unnatural act (for me) of sleeping in commenced and it was nice. So there I was morning ritual all shot to smithereens and it was 2 hours until zero hour. My ritual of checking breaking news gives me the BBC and the Saudi Tankers, an interesting part, but the intelligence on the events are missing, even in open source intelligence it is too much on ‘decent confidence’ and ‘statistical probability of certain parties’. One source gives an implied presence of Hezbollah in Shinas (Oman), yet there is zero reliability as well as the fact that any attack would have required different tools as well as location does not add up, as it is at that point that Israel Hayom gives me ‘Saudi Arabia retaliates hours after Houthis attack oil facilities‘, the fact that we see “Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival Iran, claim attack on Saudi oil pipelines“, this is indeed a different status and I will dig into this when i get more data, this event could escalate matters fast. As such the defence needs of Saudi Arabia will explode (pardon the pun) soon enough.

Yet this is about UK politics and the issues will relate soon enough. The Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-hunt-conservative-party-wall-street-journal-london-a8914171.html) gives us ‘Jeremy Hunt appears to struggle for an answer when asked why people should vote Tory‘, you see as a conservative (yes, I am a Tory) I struggle too. There is no shame in this, we need to walk a tightrope and keeping balance is actually a lot harder than you might imagine. So when we see Jeremy Hunt give us: “Because we are not going to solve this problem by retreating to populist extremes” he has a point, it is clear and he is correct, yet the problem is that we are looking at the wrong extreme. Nigel Farage is not the populist extreme, the European Central Bank is the populist extreme, just not a populist extreme for the people, they are the populist solution for the IMF, Wall Street and American commerce, three that they were never supposed to cater for and the European ignorance is just amazing. Also, the view that the media remains silent on many issues involving the ECB, Mario Draghi and their acts of non-accountability have become too staggering. And as the media is in denial in one side and then bashes Nigel Farage at every opportunity gives additional light to the fact that the media botched plenty of issues.

The people have been misled to a much larger degree and now they are willing to try Farage and the Brexit party, not because they like him, but because they largely mistrust all other parties including my own conservative party. That is the realistic stage, so why vote Tory?

The problem is not easy but the biggest issue is the debt, both sides (mainly the Labor party) have pushed again and again and left the British nation with 2 trillion pounds of debt. Even in the most optimal stage it will take well over a generation, it is passed in two parts. The first is no less than £20 billion in interest payment and an optimal £20-£50 billion in annual debt decline; if this is not done soon it will be too late for everyone. The benefit is that the UK without the Euro can steer shallow and deep waters, all having their own risk (and rewards), all having options, but the drag of the Euro 27 nations and their bad choices as well as the ECB and their unacceptable acts will no longer be part of it. It will be the first clear stage of resolving the issues that politicians are too hard to solve. Still, it will take a generation, perhaps two to resolve it and when there is momentum in the first 5 years that will signal economic improvements as well as economic opportunities.

Immigration

If that was not the case, do you think that the refugees would be racing and running to make it to the UK as fast as they possibly can? No, the people in the lower tier are actually seeing the lack of progress for the people all over Europe, and for now the UK is in a similar stage, but it could improve, the UK is in a stage where it could improve faster and better than anywhere else in Europe. Do you think I would sit on billions of IP if any official in the EU27 could be trusted? The EU27 and America are all in the stage to fill their pockets as much as possible before it is too late, I would rather make all my IP public domain and watch them all fight each other on claims that they were first and not giving actual evidence. That is why Google, Huawei and optional Saudi Arabia are seemingly the few parties worth talking to at present.

Google and Huawei have shown to be pushing innovation, not iteration. In addition, the acts we see in Saudi Arabia on renewal and Neom City are showing a push for larger changes, changes that the US and the European Economic Union is no longer able to make, they are stuck with a mountain of debt making everything a discussion, and no resolutions. The fact that for the most tax laws have NEVER been properly been adjusted so that the large corporations (FAANG group) make proper payment has never been addressed, it is a failing on both sides of the Isle, both Tories and Labour have fault at that. the BBC news in March 2018 gave us ‘Google’s tax bill rises to £50m‘, and we get two parts in addition: “The technology giant’s annual accounts show that the company will pay corporation taxes of £49.3m on UK profits of £202.4m” and “The total value of Google’s sales in the UK is about £5.7bn a year“, now I have nothing against google, as a matter of fact, I love Google (platonically mind you). Yet the numbers do not add up. When we consider that google is making 202 million out of 5,700 million, it amounts to a profit margin of 3.54%, considering that the Google Pixel 3 is well over £700 makes me wonder. Yet let’s not forget that Google is not alone here, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Facebook, Amazon all have profits that go into the billions (well the FAANG group players at least). So the tax image is wrong and the people get to pay for the cost of commerce, not exactly fair, is it?

This is the realisation that has been sweeping through the lower tiers of the population and they have had enough, and I get it. We see all these utter BS approaches on what we can sell to the government of Saudi Arabia and we cannot even sort out proper taxation to big business? Small businesses have been driven out of shops through large corporations working from abroad, the Britons have been dealt a raw deal and it bites, the Tories did way too little to deal with it (opposing the Labour party who did nothing at all when they were in charge). So the people have gotten to the point where they will try anything, especially give Nigel Farage and his Brexit party a chance.

Yes, how would I vote? Well, I am all for Brexit, yet I remain a Conservative. The issue is not Brexit, it will happen (read: it should), the issue will be about what happens after that, it will be a mess for close to two years and issues need to be resolved and it will take time and it will take serious discussions, Nigel Farage has charisma, he has knowledge yet what about his team? The players like David Coburn, Julia Reid, Nathan Gill, or Raymond Finch? I am not sure any of those people can hold proper seats like Home office, Foreign office, Defence, or Treasury. That is the problem the UK faces. Getting a proper government in place, Labor was never trustworthy and even as Tony Blair did a lot of good, he bungled plenty too. In that regard whatever came after Harold Wilson (1976) was pretty bollocks by the view of some (a view I only partially support).

These parts matter, the failings form the past are now part of the current battlefield and the failings are important to consider with a debt of 2 trillion, that is why the Brexit party is likely to be the biggest player, yet I remain a conservative, the mess needs to be cleaned up and whilst labour will indiscriminately spend money that they do not have, the Nigel Farage side lacks the true experience that the people need to clean the overall mess up, Brexit is an essential first, but the Brexit party is in my humble opinion not ready to properly deal with the 20 steps that follow.

Was there not a Saudi side?

Yup and we are getting to that now. You see the economy is only one side. Military hardware is only one part of optional commerce, the national growth of 5G will benefit the UK, yet these parts can also be sold to Saudi Arabia, there is more than Huawei and even as the UK needs to catch up, and catch up fast, the sorted problem is not merely military hardware, that part needs services and whilst the UK can be a push forward there, they are up against American Giants and it is a fight worth fighting. The infrastructure for Neom City and even beyond that all the way to Riyadh represents an initial £350 billion, with more on the horizon. When I set the stage for my £2,000,000,000 IP, one part was that I did look beyond one side and since then found four more avenues where people merely accepted certain solutions and never looked at what else was possible. From Marketing, Awareness creation, communication, applied applications on the setting of streaming (yes, that was a pun and a puzzle all at once). And the biggest parts are not big business, it is a small business approach with global ramifications, and the nice part is that Huawei was nice enough to implement part of it in their 5G prospective and not look further, so happy, happy me (for now that is).

This is not merely one part, all the players (and the FAANG group) all want access to Saudi Arabia, so who do you think they will hand options too? These hypocrites who decided to suddenly revoke export to Saudi Arabia whilst ignoring the activities of Hezbollah and Iran, or those who stood by Saudi Arabia and their right for defence? Let’s not forget that the aid of Saudi Arabia was called on by the legitimate government of Yemen, a part most seem to ignore again and again.

Saudi Arabia is trailing in technology on several ides and they are trying to address this and those who facilitate for the progress of that will find themselves with the sweetest deals. More importantly, the UK will need proper trade partners to a larger degree. The US is all about export and the fact that export needs to exceed import, several nations are in that stage. The list that place true value to import to goods and services is small, so having the proper foreign office in place is going to be essential in the next 5 years, the Brexit party cannot deliver on that and that will make matters much worse down the Brexit trail. The Conservative need is easily shown when you look a few degrees beyond the current point of exposure. It is when you look towards the applied stage of the long game, that is where you see that the bulk of all politicians fall short. They will merely tell you: ‘We will solve it when we get there‘, or ‘We have a plan and we will present it at the proper time‘ and it is way too late to take that approach, it is well over a decade too late for that.

If they cannot clearly show you a plan, they are extremely unlikely to have one, which is not a stage the UK (and many other nations) can survive on at present. As such the political winds are blowing, top some degree those who we are willing to trust lack the power and know-how to make it work long term, most of the others are no longer trusted to the degree that they need to. I remain conservative inclined, yet they too need to realise that not only is the party over, facilitating in that direction is no longer an option, making that heard loud and clear is essential.

 

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Is it really Russia?

The independent was making us aware a mere 11 hours ago that ‘Russia and far right spreading disinformation ahead of EU elections, investigators say‘ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-elections-latest-russia-far-right-interference-fake-news-meddling-a8910311.html), now it might be that Russia is trying to make waves, yet the reality is that politicians and their allegiance to big business are already spreading enough misinformation (read: one sided information) to make the people distrust these politicians. I partially discussed this yesterday in ‘The Mental delay‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/05/12/the-mental-delay/). So when I see: “It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself“, my response would be: “Do not worry, Tony Blair is already achieving that, he does not need the Russians to achieve that goal.” So, when we consider that, what is my angle? It is a fair and important question. The matter involving the Brexit party and Nigel Farage have escalated because of inaction and attempts to sway against a referendum that had already been decided. The Business Insider (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/remain-wars-britain-anti-brexit-parties-tearing-each-other-apart-change-uk-liberal-democrats-2019-5) is giving us: “the prospects for remaining in the EU appear on the surface to be better than ever before, bickering between the country’s anti-Brexit parties now risks throwing that advantage away“, which is odd as the referendum for Brexit was won, so it seems that the voice of the people is openly ignored, and it angers half the nation, so they are willing to let Nigel Farage sort it out for them. Yet the Business Insider also shows another side. With “Change UK instead decided to go its own way, writing off the Lib Dems as spent force and calling on its members to quit and jump ship to Change UK, with the mission of quickly becoming the premier anti-Brexit party“, we see different groups, all wanting to be the captain, so that they can reap the rewards from large corporations, I’ll admit that the last part is my own speculation. You see big business is never about rewarding the group, merely the one keeping them all in check, that is what big business needs and it makes the Bremainers infighters, all wanting a taste of that sweet pie of victory, as well as a taste of the gravy train, the two elements why most people inside and outside the EU want the EU to stop. It cannot keep proper checks and balances and the less said about that monumental failure currently called the ECB the better.

So is Russia Innocent?

I do not think so (better stated, I do not know), and if we are to believe former FBI analyst Daniel Jones (there is currently no evidence that he is not to be believed) we see the act “Senate investigator whose non-profit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities” is not to be ignored, yet as I see the group that I would personally label ‘stupid political people‘ are doing a fine job by themselves, there is enough distrust to go around for decades at present. Yet there is another part in this. The quote “It is nearly impossible to quantify the scale and resonance of the misinformation. Researchers say millions of people see the material.” the problem is not that it is merely them; the media itself is the problem. The media who is setting the stage by offering one sided stories whilst the bulk of all the people know that there is another side, they are adding fuel to the fire and that is not recognised in the entire data setup at present. The Yemeni war is the clearest example. The bulk of all papers handing blame to Saudi Arabia, whilst they openly ignored the actions from Iran and Hezbollah attacking Saudi Arabia via Yemen, as well as arming the Houthis in all this. Not once, not twice, but consistently, in addition in several events the actions of Turkey was set aside because it was inconvenient towards Turkish talks, that alone should wake you up regarding the one sided exposure and therefor handing out more distrust. So at present I had to giggle regarding Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, as he stated roughly two months ago “Suspecting someone of an event that has not yet happened is a bunch of paranoid nonsense“. He is of course correct, but that does not make him innocent does it? A man is innocent of hoping to screw the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi, and walking around with a condom does not make him guilty, neither is his desire to get lucky, but we can call him out on having the condom on him as he enters the restaurant meeting Svetlana Zakharova for dinner, we can call him out through envy (she is truly amazingly gorgeous), we can call him out on desire (making us wrathful on missing out on the opportunity to be him) the list goes on, yet he is right nothing happened at present. In the end the best thing we have after the event might be the evidence of intent, yet intent after the fact towards something that might never be proven in court is still a huge miss.

And when we make the tally, we can to some degree clearly see that the current politicians made us more distrustful than any Russian action at present, and the media aided in this, they all have their own political agenda side, the media has not been neutral for the longest of times.

Then I notice something that does impact. When I see: “Distinguishing Russian interference from clickbait or sincere political outrage is difficult, even for intelligence services“, that is not entirely true. The analysts are (often) looking in the wrong direction. You see, the stage is not the news; it is the line of forwarding. I noticed that over the last three weeks there were ladies wanting to connect to me, and it came with ‘tit shots‘ and ‘prominent ass poses‘, so they were either cheap ladies hoping to strike an hourly bargain, or they were honey traps (they tend to be the second), so there is piece number one (pun intended), the forwarding started from that point forward and more important, the presence of that account is also a data point to consider. The forwarding news has an origin and Facebook has that original post as well as the originator, so there we see two pieces ready for mining. Even as troll farms have a larger set of systems, they still start at a limited amount of routers, an element ignored. There are not too much masking options in mass spreading, even if it changes per message pushed, the list is decently exhaustive and it is the analysing of the hop path that shows the fake router, and as such we see that a path is now optionally established. That did not take long did it? I did my CCNA 8 years ago, yet that point is there. It is how I designed the cloud intrusion stage. It is a Router_n + 1 approach; it is not the originating router, the two routers after those optionally downscale paths towards the point of origin.

You see, even as we are given: “The digital trail often winds up in one of the internet’s anonymised dead ends“, we see no anonymity in the normal spreading of social media or even sharing of posts, the anonymity gives us the initial red flag; the router path can give us a lot more. The simplest of all solutions has been ignored by the lot of them. When I share news (usually because it is funny, or a nice indecent or Monday morning pun (example added). In all this a clear path can be established, so why is all the other not flagged and optionally removed? There is a right of expression from your own account, should hidden shares not all be auto removed? Was that example perhaps a little too simple for them?

We are all so intent on blaming Facebook for being too big, blaming them for not policing what was never supposed to be policed, it is also time to hold a light to those abusing the options available, in all this there is a lack of truly investigating not social media, but the usage of digital media and digital advertising. And that is where the problem starts, the moment that voice goes to town suddenly we see politicians starting to shout on the infringement of the people, the politicians are part of the problem and seeing that is the first step in recognising that the problem is a lot larger. When we start investigating election fraud versus voter fraud, we see a stage where it is not unlikely that the true mountain is not the voter fraud. And that is not all, when is it voter fraud, when is it logistical error and incompetence? You merely have to Google ‘election fraud‘ you will find issues in Texas and South Africa, but what was exactly the case and when was action taken? What actions were taken and was it in time? All that and when we focus on the European election and the ‘instigations’ by the Russians, I wonder how much an impact they are having, or basically the EU elections has bigger problems to sort out and the media is one of those problems to a much larger degree than anyone is willing to admit to.

This is a clear case where the premise of Oliver Hazard Perry, an American naval commander: ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours‘ (1812), which was freely translated into ‘We have met the enemy and they are us‘, as we agree that we tend to be our own worst enemy, did anyone consider that social media could emphasize this no less than tenfold?

So is it really Russia, or do we need to take a look at what we enable ourselves and facilitate for? Acknowledging that we have a social media usage problem will be the first step in scaling the dangers down.

 

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The aid package

People on a global scale, no matter what religion they preach, they have an inherent need for humanitarian action. It shows that people remain people, they have feelings and emotion. Especially now, in the Muslim month of Ramadan, which according to the Britannica is “a time for Muslims to practice self-restraint, in keeping with ṣawm (Arabic: “to refrain”), one of the pillars of Islam (the five basic tenets of the Muslim religion). Although ṣawm is most commonly understood as the obligation to fast during Ramadan, it is more broadly interpreted as the obligation to refrain between dawn and dusk from food, drink, sexual activity, and all forms of immoral behaviour, including impure or unkind thoughts.” Yet Time.com (as well as other sources give us: “Muslims believe that following these practices during Ramadan will lead to self-purification, self-control and bring them closer to Allah. Many Muslims also attend special prayer services, read verses of the Quran and engage in charity“, these are words I read before in other places. Yet it is here that we see the questions rise. First is Qatar with ‘Qatar to send $480m to help Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/07/qatar-send-480m-help-palestinians-west-bank-gaza-israel-ceasefire), this sounds all on the up and up, and I have no reason to give doubt here, and with “Qatar’s foreign ministry said $300m would go towards supporting health and education programmes of the Palestinian Authority, while $180m would go toward urgent humanitarian relief, UN programmes and providing electricity” we see this reinforced. Yet the article also gives us: “Although Qatar does not give money directly to Hamas, its support since 2012, totalling $755m, has been a vital lifeline for the cash-strapped group, relieving it from having to fund civilian and infrastructure projects“, which now brings to bare the issue of other funding as Hamas was able to afford missile barrage after missile barrage. I am not placing blame on Qatar, or other Islamic charities, but I am left with the thought. If you give any junkie money for food, and he then uses his other funds to buy drugs because the junkie knows that he will get the charity for food, are we as a people inflicting harm and additional hardship on the junkie? It makes me reflect on the act through ‘refrain from all forms of immoral behaviour, including impure or unkind thoughts‘. It also gives rise to the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48147066) where we see: ‘Taliban rejects calls for Ramadan truce in Afghanistan‘, and as we are given: “President Ashraf Ghani agreed to a truce provided it was not “one-sided”. But the Taliban rejected the call and accused members of being government allies.” does the month of Ramadan allow for this? If not, does that make them bad Muslims? I am not stating it, I am asking this.

Why is this so important?

To comprehend certain parts of Islam we need to dive deeper in what we do not know and even if there is no direct requirement to know what the Taliban does (most of us do not care), the news has been giving us other versions. The Express (at https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1122649/isis-news-latest-terror-france-jihadist-police-elysee-palace) gives us that the French stopped an ISIS attack. With ‘ISIS planned ‘violent’ attack on French palace say police‘ we see “According to AFP, the suspects had several targets, the unnamed source said, but their overall objective was to launch an attack on security forces, namely those “standing guard outside the Elysée Palace”. The men, arrested last Friday on suspicion of acquiring weapons “with a view to committing a terrorist act” are currently in provisional detention and awaiting trial. The would-be terrorists, who had been under police surveillance since early February, were spotted outside the Elysée Palace in central Paris on a reconnaissance mission shortly before their arrest“, whilst the Malayan version of the Daily Express (at http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news/134811/no-hate-speech-during-ramadan-mosques-told/) gives us ‘No hate speech during Ramadan, mosques told‘, as well as “We will act firmly the actions of labelling a person as deviant and calling others infidels because mosques must be free from political party ideologies. “We must guard our mouths from uttering slander during Ramadan because it can create numerous problems which can break up families,’’ he told a media conference after launching a Let’s Celebrate Ramadan programme in the compound of the Kerian district mosque, here, Saturday.” An American might trivialise it as seeing someone from ISIS as a fake Muslim, I merely wonder on the application to Islam and Muslim faith in this case.

It is also increased pressure on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We read (at http://www.arabnews.com/node/1494481/saudi-arabia) ‘Saudi Civil Defense announces Ramadan security measures‘, these people under the guidance of Brig. Abdullah Al-Qurashi, director of Civil Defence in Makkah are prepared through 38 fixed civil defence centres, supported by 24 seasonal centres, in addition to 27 intervention points and 30 civil defence posts stationed in The Grand Mosque in Makkah to provide aid and assistance to pilgrims. And when you think that this is a lot, consider that the mataf area would accommodate more than 107,000 people per hour, there will be 500,000 headsets for worshippers getting access to 10 languages of the 679 lessons and lectures that are to be delivered during Ramadan. I have seen a few Christian places, I have been to Lourdes, yet I have a problem trying to comprehend the concept of 100,000 people an hour. It amounts to the entire population of Adelaide (Australia), Birmingham (UK), Dallas (US) or Calgary (CA) EVERY day for a month. For the pilgrims this has not gone unnoticed, as there was high praise for the king, government and local authorities from pilgrims from as far away as Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan, with many thousands of Muslims traveling from across the world to Saudi Arabia to attend prayers at the mosque during Ramadan. Yet a lot of this is merely seen in the Arab News and Gulf News, even as plenty of respectable papers give light to this, we see a movement as the number of respectable papers is winding down, so is the amount of information given to non-Muslims. The Sydney Morning Herald also gives us: “just as Christian holy seasons such as Christmas and Easter have become commercialised, Ramadan is increasingly associated with night-time festivities and binge eating. While, traditionally, the fasting day ends with a feast, in modern times people often attend Ramadan events at hotels and restaurants and, combined with the lower activity of fasting days, can even find themselves gaining weight during the holy month“, which is fair enough and not to be seen in a negative light, I found the images from the Four Seasons hotel lightly overwhelming, almost like a Victorian Christmas diner setup. For me, the entire issue is not an issue, although I see (read: expect additional) danger of not drinking water during the day a health issue (from my non-medical view), the Sydney Morning Herald reinforced that with: “In the Gulf states, a spike in attendances at hospitals has been reported, with problems ranging from dehydration to uncontrolled diabetes, as well as injuries from traffic accidents attributed to drowsiness“.

Errors in thinking

The first thing I accept is that I am looking at Muslim matters with a Christian eye, that is my background and I know that if I wonder about things plenty of others got at that point long before me, it is the educational part that remains lagging for me, I am not a Muslim, yet at the same moment, the image and message from one, whilst we see issues handed to us in opposition. One such view was given to me from Kuwait by Al Waqyan, in a nation that is 99% Muslim. There I was given ‘Kuwaiti journalist criticizes ban on ‘public eating’ during Ramadan‘. Now, from a Christian point I would agree, yet knowing that 99% of that nation is either fasting or trying to fast, would his view not allow for a larger pressure on those fasting? Perhaps the old movie example where a prisoner in the age of the crusades are watching the jailer just outside of reach have a large feast whilst the prisoners are begging for food. Would it not be cruel and unusual punishment to be faced with a large meal when a person should be fasting? I understand that there are conditions when a person cannot fast, yet is it too much to ask for that person to do it in private or not in view of other people?

I found the fact that there is a level of polarisation interesting, not because of what I believe, but the fact that it is in a stage where all the contestants are seemingly Muslim. I would personally be on the side of: “some believe it’s appropriate to apply it in Muslim majority countries“, there are plenty of moments when no one can see anything and having a quick sip of water then would be acceptable. It is perhaps the only part that I see happen, there is absolutely no situation where a person should be able to eat in public view anywhere, not when a person could be at home to have a bite to eat.

The opportunity

This is where we see the opportunity, when we are given ‘Saudi Arabia’s Hajj Ministry launches new interactive portal‘, we see the place that gives us (at present) “The new portal will provide more than 30 services for pilgrims, available in Arabic, English and French, with an average of 55 pages per language. Four more languages will be added in the near future.” Most people, especially 100% of the pilgrims will see this as an excellent idea and it is. What it allows for is a much larger option; it could become a start for non-Muslims to learn more about Islam, to learn more on what is unknown. When we consider that optionally in western languages there are ‘the 679 lessons and lectures‘ that shows the spirit of Islam in the stage where it is all about the season of inner reflection, forgiveness and spiritual renewal. As such the sacred month of Ramadan might open a moment to introduce to those unaware of Islam the resources that allow us to oppose Islamophobia as well as diminish the options that anti Islamist groups like pagida and others are growing all over Western Europe, the US and the Commonwealth nations. I personally believe that education is a first step in diminishing the powers that they have. It does not requires us to become Muslim, it does not require us to agree, but at least we will be properly educated and informed and history has shown that this is a first step in slowing down and stopping the haters, and that is never ever a bad thing. Knowledge can be an exemplary aid package, it is time we all used that option to the fullest.

 

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Too grim a reality

It is not a new concept, it is not even original. My first introduction to the concept of mass executions was in a Star Trek Episode of 1966, ‘The Conscience of the King‘, the story about Kodos “the Executioner”. The backstory was: “In 2246, an exotic fungus destroyed most of the colony’s food supply, and its inhabitants, of which there were eight thousand, faced starvation. Kodos, implementing his own theories of eugenics, selected four thousand of the colony’s residents to be put to death, so that the remaining four thousand might survive on the limited food supplies available“, so when we were introduced to Infinity War and Thanos, the scope changed but the premise did not. This is not an attack on Marvel in any way, the idea existed and that is not an issue. Yet the reality we face is actually a lot grimmer. It is a lot more dangerous, because in my view Thanos was an optimist. At this point we (due to political inaction), we might have to cull 97% of the human race.

Scary is it not?

To see this, we need to take a look at the guardian. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/08/un-environment-report-how-australias-political-parties-plan-to-respond-to-the-crisis) gives us: ‘experts rate Australian political response to extinction crisis‘ and that is where the problem starts, politicians are there to cater to big business (for the most) and this is not in the interest of big business. Politicians have a long standing history of not doing the right thing and not putting their foot down, so inaction remains for now the best we can hope for.

So where is the problem?

The responses give a much larger issue that they have been ignoring. When we see: “review but keep existing environment laws; a $100m environment restoration fund to clean up coasts and waterways, protect threatened species and reduce waste; $189m over four years for the “direct action” climate solutions fund, in part for revegetation of degraded land” reads like an absolute joke.

For this we merely need to look at the Adani Carmichael mine. ABC reported: “The CSIRO and Geoscience Australia said the modelling used by Adani was “not suitable”, and also cast doubt over the company’s plans to protect important environments. “A number of limitations were also identified in the proposed monitoring and management approaches, indicating they are not sufficiently robust to monitor and minimise impacts to protected environments,” the agencies’ report said.” Even when we consider “Boost early warning monitoring systems between the mine and the nearby Doongmabulla Springs wetland“, as well as “Respond immediately to any unexpected groundwater impact“, when it happens it will be too late and the impact damage will have been done and finish it for generations. There is more; I wrote about it in January 2018, in the article ‘Vision or imagination‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/01/13/vision-or-imagination/) I looked at the Guardian, as well as the Cairns Post where we see “During a recent patrol blitz during the Christmas-New Year period, GBRMPA and partner agencies detected 41 instances of people fishing in the wrong zones, including no-take areas“, unless we change the rules where ANY transgressor gets their boat impounded and auctioned off for repairs of the Great Barrier Reef, this degradation will continue. In a setting where there is coral bleaching to any degree in 93% of the reef is a stage where we need to act differently, or we impose draconian laws to protect the reef, or we cull 97% of the population, I will let you decide, yet remember, politicians are all about promises and discussion, but they lack the balls to act or enforce. It makes for a better case to reduce the population (and resolve affordable housing at the same time).

It is even worse than you think

For that we need to see the words of Melissa Price, the environment minister. Her idea of: “investing in the protection of our native species and their habitats. We are investing billions of dollars to deliver a cleaner environment“, I have no idea what drugs she is on, but I would love to sample them as they are truly psychedelic in nature. You merely need to look at the impact of Cyclone Debbie and “Adani has been fighting to hide details of what it told the Queensland Government about the risk of pollution to the Great Barrier Reef ahead of Cyclone Debbie in 2017” (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-10/adani-spent-a-year-trying-to-hide-reef-spill-details/10090632). So when we see: ““Just give me a little detail and we can include and update [the temporary emissions licence],” a department staff member replied“, as well as “Adani admitted to breaching its licence, spilling polluted water into the Marine Park that was 800 per cent dirtier than was allowed” my case is pretty much made. With the apology if I sound too sexist, listening to Melissa Price and reflecting on ‘the protection of our native species and their habitats‘, I feel like I am reading a debate where a vibrator is defining the need of income for the service of any huhu where that owner shows it owns the vibrator it bought (a real graphic an none personal analogy).

So when I read in the article the response from Adani giving us: “We have elected to have the matter heard by a magistrate rather than pay a $12,000 fine, which should not have been issued in 2017 following Cyclone Debbie, and we look forward to resolution of the matter.”

A $12,000 fine? Are you out of your fucking minds (I apologise; emotions got the better of me at this point)? In the end, we see that last month Adani paid the $13,055 (according to various sources) and the laughable failure of this shows just how massively the environment department failed Queensland, failed the Australian people and how it failed the environment. In light of such transgressions, in light of the utter failure what is laughingly referred to as: ‘The Environment Department‘ a clear case could be made to cull the population by 97%, CEO’s, CFO’s and politicians get to be at the front of that line.

Oh, and before you think this is me against Adani, you are wrong, Adani is merely one of the more visible examples from a list that includes hundreds of transgressors and the Australian Environment department is merely one of many that has been unable to protect the environment and truly pressure fines that start in the high millions and optionally demand and exercise a right of closure of plants who make these kinds of errors, yet that was not what this was about, merely a symptom of a much larger problem.

It is not much better on the other side of the isle. Even as we see what I regard to be labor party puppets giving us the blame game (like Tony Burke), we see “It is now clear we are on the pathway to a million extinctions, we are potentially facing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet [and] Australia remains the extinction capital of the world. This reinforces the need for Labor’s comprehensive policy agenda to fight extinction“, just like other Labor party sided members (like Jeremy Corbyn). We see part of this in “The Greens were “deeply concerned that Labor has taken a weaker climate policy in 2019 than what they proposed in 2016, which was weaker still than what they took to the 2013 election”“, it is not all a given, but the facts are there. Even as this is more a tug between Di Natale and Bill Shorten, the issue is that they are all weak on the environment, because there is too much debt, too little work and for the most politicians have a track record of letting big business walk all over them, so a billionaire family like Adani and several others do not consider Australian politicians to be any more of the loud windbags than the politicians in America and they made an equal disastrous mess of it all.

If we go by the Conversation (at http://theconversation.com/shorten-distances-himself-from-green-overtures-on-climate-policy-116360) we see: “The decision for Bill Shorten is whether he follows the take-it-or-leave-it approach of Kevin Rudd in 2009, or negotiates with the Greens, just like Julia Gillard did in 2011, to deliver a climate policy that gives future generations a chance“, yet what we should see is: “Whomever gets elected has only this term to act, or the final approaching certainty that there will not be any future generations will become a slow but certain given“.

They all talk some talk, not the talks and NONE are willing to start increase fines by no less than 15,000% as well as mandatory closing of no less than 15 months of whatever plant makes the transgressions. In addition, the entire response of ““Just give me a little detail and we can include and update [the temporary emissions licence],” a department staff member replied” need to be met with draconian changes to the employment of whomever made that ‘little’ short-sighted consideration. The time to be nice has been over for well over a generation and the political players need to openly acknowledge that, as well as underwrite whatever law changes are required.

Any response of ‘but Adani will walk away‘ should be regarded as null and void, in the end if there is money, they will come, we need to stop facilitating to large corporations and truly change the way we do business and change the way that they are allowed to do business. The failure is seen when we look at Apple (perhaps the clearest example), when we see: “Revenue was up nearly 13 percent hitting $9.1 billion, compared to $8 billion in 2017“, yet we also get: “With bigger revenue comes a bigger tax bill. Apple incurred a tax bill of $164.1 million for the year, comprised of $127 million in income tax, a $30 million tax adjustment related to prior years and another deferred tax income expense of $7.3 million“, this implies that Apple pays a mere 1%, how will you fund any program for any environment when large corporations vulture entire nations? And when we see the Australian Financial Review (at https://www.afr.com/news/politics/national/uber-in-labor-s-sights-in-multinational-tax-crackdown-20190505-p51k9n) with the smug response “the Tax Institute of Australia warned about extra regulation for multinationals, saying it could discourage companies from setting up operations here“, my clear (and slightly less diplomatic) response would be: “Oh, please let them fuck off! When they lose 20 million customers in Australia and an optional 68 million customers in the UK they will lose more and more, more market share and all the momentum they had!”

Facilitating to big business is one of the main reasons we see a loss of environment and biodiversity in the first place. That evidence is shown to some degree by American documentary maker Sue Williams. She gives us (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-09/environmental-impact-of-the-iphone/7825360) in 2016: “more than 50 million tonnes of e-waste will be generated this year alone“, with the added: “this ends up in China, India and Africa, the devices were then broken down in unsafe ways where toxic chemicals end up in the water and air.” It shows a much larger issue and even as Australia might not be the place of the largest transgressions, we see that Australia has failed its people and environment in the most total way possible at present.

I wonder if the people will ever vote for the parties that truly are out there trying to set up proper laws to protect the environment, when that happens we will see a rush of panic from anyone riding some sort of gravy train, I merely expect it will be too late at that point.

So, even as we wonder on Marvel and its success, we should also consider that Thanos was an optimist; removing 50% of the population will no longer get it done. When you realise that actual truth, will you ignore it or actually demand change before you have to sacrifice the life of one or more of your children? You might laugh at this as it is not realistic, and it might not be in this generation, but that setting is not a given for THEIR children, not merely because the population will surpass 8 billion within the year, but the fact that when their children are born our population will surpass 9.5 billion, it will be too late at that point. Oh, and when we all accept the compromise to put in place the Chinese one child policy on a global scale, what excuses will nations offer when that policy is breached? Humanitarian reasons perhaps?

Should you think that this is some new revelation, think again! Especially when you consider the dangers that the movie Koyaanisqatsi (life out of balance) showed in 1982, almost 37 years ago. The mere realisation of what the city of New York needed to feed its masses (overfeed its masses more accurately), and we see that the matter got worse, the inaction of politicians globally makes even less sense.

I merely wonder what excuse the politicians give, and who they blame when the collapse biodiversity is at our front door awaiting the label ‘extinct now‘. As we get reports upon reports and denials from its opposition, we need to take heed of the inaction on acts like overfishing and poaching, clear criminal acts that have little or no punishment, when truth comes to bare, remember that any elected politician after 1983 is directly responsible for the mess we see today. The entire push it forward is not to be regarded as a defence, or as an optional response. In my view there is no ‘I was not involved in that decision‘ it will be on their names and the names of their prodigy. If you doubt that, look into history on what the people did in anger to those called: ‘German Girls‘, Women from the Netherlands, France, Norway, Spain, Italy, Greece and a few other places; women who fell in love, had a flirt or for mere survival reasons got attached by a German soldier. They were according to records: “Women who married German soldiers and their children were stripped of their citizenship, interned and deported to Germany. Many of the offspring who remained were abused, attacked and confined to mental institutions because of their parentage. As well as the French part where about 20,000 women accused of sleeping with the enemy had their heads shaved; others were covered in tar, physically assaulted, stoned, spat upon and shunned. As many as 6,000 people considered collaborators, including many women, were killed“, when you read that part, will these people proclaim innocence, state some defence that ‘we’ are better than that now and demand safety for their children? I don’t think you comprehend the masses when it is enraged, these people will all be out of options, and let’s face it, when the big environmental disasters start hitting, the groups of soldiers and police and fire brigades will all be hit with other first casualties, and they will not be much of any protection for these exulted high earners. WW2 was perhaps the foulest example in history, yet it will be nothing when the biodiversity collapses under the pressure of pollution and too large a population, the political inaction will enrage billions on a global scale.

So even as we laugh at the silver screen and Thanos snapping its finger, we are getting to a place where we get to see the infrastructure and resources collapsing, and there will be someone pointing a finger at the politicians, at that point what will that person do? Will he (or she) become a version of 1966 Kodos the destroyer? Will he/she (too late) invoke draconian laws to undo the presented damage, whilst they know it was already too late?

I cannot tell, but I can tell that we are at the end of our ropes to instigate a solution, too many species have become extinct, we did allow our natural biodiversity be permanently affected to that degree.

I am however also aware that there is opposition to my view, one blogger gives a really good setting (at https://conservationbytes.com/2014/03/17/if-biodiversity-is-so-important-why-is-europe-not-languishing/), the blogger is  CJA Bradshaw and he gives another version, a less pessimistic version (in 2014 mind you), I do not agree, but I will not dismiss this view as it is well phrased, well written and gives good examples. He gives at this point a realistic view, yet at the end of this, we will be growing towards a population of 10 billion and there is a limit to what we can get from an acre of agrarian land, knowing that the planet is 30% land and the stage that the population that land supports went from 6.6 to 7.9 billion in a decade gives us a 19% growth in a stage where the growth of land is set to 0%, actually, that is wrong, some scientist claim (I use claim as I never delved into that data) that land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops (arable land) decreased by almost 30% due to erosion and pollution, so not only are there more people, there is less place to grow their food, and that is actually really important. So as we create more land for crops, the ‘wild lands’ where the animals roam decreases more and more. To see additional dangers, we need to look towards places like Borneo lost in the time between 1985 and 2005 an average of 850,000 hectares of forest every year. If this trend continues, forest cover will drop to less than a third by 2020, so by next year Borneo and all the oxygen producing forests is merely a third of what it was, whilst the population grows and grows, is anyone worried about breathing yet? The same is happening in the Amazon region, the two largest oxygen producing areas gone to the largest degree. At what point will anyone realise that oxygen tends to be an essential need?

All unattended issues and we are actually running out of time, so who is willing in the end to snap their fingers Thanos style?

 

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Education off the grid

We have been watching all the impacts (250 from the west bank) and a few impacts (by the Israeli air force, but when we look outside the things the media wants you to notice and the side that they want to give to you for emotional impact. We see that there is a side that we are not made aware off, or being made aware of a little as possible. In light of all we see this is a much larger issue than you think. If you are to go beyond the sides you need to go, if you want to grow in any way, you need to reach out and start looking at things that are not usually seen.

It is a form of ‘off the grid’ education. Now, this can be done with almost every subject. There are millions of eager students when it is about biology (reproduction and fornication), and there are plenty of people when it comes to science experiments that are cool, and actually give additional respect to the creator of the golf ball. In this first example let’s look at SmarterEveryDay (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT0wx27J9xs), I will not tell you too much, because what you see is pretty amazing and in this episode he gets assistance from Mark Rober, an engineer, who is as daft as a door nail (in a good way), which is probably why he ended up being the perfect fit for NASA. And as the video shows that manpower did not do the trick, they decided to let Mark make them a rocket powered golf club (for real), it is like watching roadrunner come to life and whilst there was no obvious Wile. E. Coyote swinging the club, the results are there to be seen. We see the engineer (Overconfidentii vulgaris) take a swing at records and watch the movie to see how they go at that in test 3, it will stay with you for a long time. Long before the end of the movie, I ended up having massive respect for the golf ball and the person who invented it. The YouTube video is playful and still extremely informative and educational in an area where I had a little knowledge.

Yet is it not about Mark Rober or SmarterEveryDay (even though you should check them out). It is about learning and in this specific case learning more about culture. I have been learning more about Islam and Saudi Arabia, mostly because the large 5G opportunities will be there over the next few years and I never shy away from a challenge. Yet, as a Christian in a Muslim nation you have little options and more important, there is every risk of a person unintentional insulting the wrong person, it is a danger not unlike someone from western Europe going into Japan and thinking he can present his PowerPoint at a CEO thinking that his sense of humour get him the deal. Even in Europe, I once witnessed a large deal going sour because the person slipped up and accidentally said ‘pour toi‘ instead of ‘pour vouz‘, it translates exactly the same, but mixing up the formal and informal is a dangerous step to do in any condition.

So I started to become a lot more Islam aware. This gets us to the entire issue at hand that Gulf News gave me (at https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-arabia-has-most-beautiful-ramadan-experience-1.63611502). Most people know about Ramadan, we hear it around us in Muslim areas that observe it. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad. I also learned that Ramadan is a lot more strict in Saudi Arabia and if caught in public eating and or drinking during the day there are indeed harsh punishments, including flogging, imprisonment and, for foreigners, deportation. So there is your step to get a chance at great fortune and you get put on the next plane to London because you had a drink in public when the sun was up.

A lot of that was unknown to me; I have had almost no exposure to that knowledge. I was amazed how little exposure to Muslim culture I seemingly had as a Christian. From my point of view, accepting that there are Muslims around me is one thing, to remain ignorant of any of the cultural issues is just stupid. Australia is not a Muslim nation, the United Kingdom is not a Muslim nation and neither is the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Sweden and so on, does that mean we need to remain ignorant of other cultures?

So as I took in ‘Saudi Arabia has most beautiful Ramadan experience‘, I became curious as I knew that Muslims have a month of fasting, but that fasting was a ‘beautiful experience’ was a new label to see. The reality is that I am almost a real seal (I have a coat of blubber to protect me from the arctic cold). The quote “Gulf News spoke with expatriates who have experienced Ramadan in the kingdom and are now missing the infectious festive spirit in their home country” was interesting as I never saw fasting as a moment to rejoice, or as something beautiful. So as I was introduced to “The Ramadan vibe is almost non-existent in London. It’s so difficult to maintain the spiritual mindset that one usually tries to adapt during the holy month because of the busy hustle of London life. The fasting hours are long and coupled with the regular school routine, it’s also draining. There’s a rush to finish work, to finish eating, to reach night prayers and then get up again at the crack of dawn to resume work,” that did not make sense to me. You see there are close to 700,000 Muslims in London, it boils down to roughly 13.1% of the London population, as such there should be a decent Ramadan population, if we believe is freedom of religion, should that not matter? If we see that places in Burwood Australia (decent sized Muslim group) banks on the Ramadan event in their shop, it makes no sense that London is so largely absent of it. And let’s face it, should we feel threatened by such an event?

In the Netherlands the newspapers are full of extra protection of Mosques, yet almost nothing on the religious impact and reason for Ramadan, merely “extra attention and vigil is kept at the Mosques after the events in Christchurch“. Even as we see that acts are claimed by Pegida, we see little action to aid in lowering fear and tension to the Muslims visiting mosques. So as the reach of Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident) is now clearly in the Netherlands as well, we see an absence of cultural education to the people at large via media and newspapers. As we see the party created by Lutz Bachmann giving us: “Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicized and defines itself in opposition to Islamic extremism.” we see too large a lack of countering anti-Muslim events. I believe that educating the people is a first. As a Catholic, I need not be anti-Muslim; we do not need to be anti-Muslim culture driven people. I find it hypocrite in the extreme of those claiming to be Christians, being nothing more than hooligans and criminals, people that often not having seen the inside of a church more than 4 times a year feeling threatened by a Muslim holding a Quran. In my personal view that speaks more about their lack of faith than the implied intention of a Muslim. I believe that fear is negated by information and education, when the ignorant are seeing that culture and cultural knowledge is a positive thing, they will learn more and see that there is no fear but the fear that grows within the part of you that does not know.

In the end it is up to you what you do, I am not telling you do read it all and follow it all, I am merely asking you to consider not to turn away when the information and knowledge is offered to you. We all accept that people like Mark Rober and the people behind SmarterEveryDay make knowledge (read: science) more fun to watch, it is at times harder to find that motivation when it is cultural or sometimes even religiously based, yet that does not make for an event that is less informative. Consider that Saudi Arabia is in a stage where $1.2 trillion is spend on construction and infrastructure, would it hurt to know more so that you have an option to make some serious cash? And it is not just Saudi Arabia (they are the biggest though), together with the UAE and Qatar they represent opportunities that are well over 600% of what the US and the UK combined are doing over the next decade. Cultural ignorance is but one, yet optionally the largest hindrance to connect to these opportunities. I am not stating that acquiring knowledge needs to be profit based; I have however seen over the decades that this motivates a lot more people, so should I avoid such an obvious selling technique? To be honest, I should not take that step, yet as anti-Muslim sentiments are flaring up on a global scale, upping the ante in all this is a valid point with the hopeful result to lower tensions (I might be up for the Nobel peace prize if I achieve the impossible here).

To get the smallest view, we (non-Muslims) will appreciate the evening meal that is enjoyed by the people during Ramadan (after sunset). The movie (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ev1OLMgrbo) gives a mere glimpse not only on the preparation of the meal; the end shows how thousands are enjoying a meal seemingly in silence together. In this case it is the Iftar in the UAE. I had hoped to add one from Riyadh, however I could not find an English version (or one with English subtitles). And consider the other side of all it, if our creativity is awakened by learning new things, what could we consider when we start looking into a direction that most people have never looked?

Education off the grid can be amazing, when you feel the internal motivation to learn more you tend to learn more easily, optionally not better, but there is a lot to be said for the enthusiasm factor when acquiring knowledge, you merely need to connect to the best information source you can.

 

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When it is with us

Larry Elliott raises an interesting question regarding Huawei, it is an issue I raised a few times over the last months, even last year. I made a reference going back to December 2018 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/06/tic-toc-ruination/) where in ‘Tic Toc Ruination‘ I said had “In a statement, the UK telecoms group has confirmed it is in the process of removing Huawei equipment from the key parts of its 3G and 4G networks to meet an existing internal policy not to have the Chinese firm at the centre of its infrastructure“, all at the behest of spymaster incredibili Alex Younger. Yet actual evidence of Chinese activities was never given in evidence. Alex does something else and in retrospect to his French, American and Canadian peers something that is actually intelligent. He gives us: “the UK needed to decide if it was “comfortable” with Chinese ownership of the technology being used.”” This is at the foundation of “We can agree with Alex Younger that any nation needs to negate technological risk, we could consider that he seemingly had the only valid opposition against Huawei, as it was not directed at Huawei, but at the fact that the tech is not British, the others did not work that path, and as we see that technology is cornered by the big 7, those in the White House with an absent person from both Apple and Huawei. We have accepted the changed stage of technology and that might not have been a good thing (especially in light of all the cyber-crimes out there), also a larger diverse supplier group might have addressed other weak spot via their own internal policies, another path optionally not averted.” The issue is that ‘the tech is not British‘, so finding a temporary solution for British technology to catch up is an essential move. Whilst Larry gives us: “why a country that emerged from the second world war with a technological edge in computers and electronics should require the assistance of what is still classified as an emerging economy to construct a crucial piece of national infrastructure” is a very correct stance. The issue is that some got lazy and others got managed by excel users, getting it somewhere else is just cheaper. The combination has now created a technology gap that spans part of 4G and pretty much the entire 5G stage, that is before my IP comes into play, I found the niche that others forgot, in commerce and cyber security, as the gap is about to increase and for me the limitation is that only Huawei and Google have the optional stage where the problem can be solved (read: properly addressed). I am certain that there is more, I have not gone deep enough with what I found, implying that my window of opportunity is not that big. Larry Elliott goes on in his article taking to bat a few issues from 1967 onwards that gives rise to the UK loss, you should read it as it is a really good article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/05/the-huawei-incident-points-to-a-deeper-lesson-for-great-britain). There is one element that was missing, it was the stage of the 90’s where the computer market moved from innovative to iterative, it is perhaps the larger (read: largest) failure. The advantage that places like IBM had were equaled within 3 years by makers like ASUS, A market of Printed Circuit Boards moved from US/UK held companies went to places like ASUS pretty much overnight, the people jumped to the competitive player that produced high end main boards. A company that started in 1989 owned the gamers and PC builders within 10 years at that point ASUS was the number one choice. It was not merely the high quality, the fact that architectures that were set in motion in one year were offered in upgraded form within a year. It is seen in “Intel itself had a problem with its own 486 motherboard. Asus solved Intel’s problem and it turned out that Asus’ own motherboard worked correctly without the need for further modification. Since then, Asus was receiving Intel engineering samples ahead of its competitors” (David Llewelyn, ‘Invisible Gold in Asia: Creating Wealth Through Intellectual Property‘, p143.), by the time the people were ready Asus had its Pentium II boards with one interesting nuance, unlike IBM, the board supported more processors, so the P2-350 also supported the P2-450, by spending an additional $35 on a better board, you could start with the P2-350 and upgrade to the P2-450 a year later, a person would save $525 and extend the life of their PC by 2 years.

It was an innovation that saved the people money, an issue that IBM never cared for. The iterative market got overwhelmed by Taiwan titan ASUS and the market in the UK and US started to slide. As I personally see it, the market was handed to executives measured by revenue and they were unwilling to take the big fight and decided to settle for $100K less income and zero risk and after 2-3 years they would move on degrading the market as a whole; that is how I see it. Now that the newest market requires actual knowledge and know how, we see a lack of non-Asian players. Yet Larry focusses on the part that matters most for the UK, there is no manufacturing vision (read: a lack of vision), a vision that would be essential for 5G, it is the one exponential growing market for the next decade and as such not having a game to play will make you miss out on it all. So there are two options, one forfeit the game or find a partner to build that market with, in that we see the Huawei would be the best fit, they are the most advanced. The alternative is finding an Ericsson or Nokia alternative, they are both chasing Huawei, so finding a solution with Huawei implies that Huawei creates another competitor for Ericsson and Nokia, which would suit them best, at that point the UK solution will be fighting over the same pie as Sweden and Finland are. Sybase did that trick with the MS SQL server and it did them a lot of good (for a while), the biggest part is that the UK needs to take a long term strategic stand on manufacturing and that is where the floor tends to fall from under your feet. The UK has shown to lack that vision for too often and now it will come at a much greater cost.

In the end the problem is not merely catching up with Huawei, it will be about remaining innovative with the products, optionally surpassing them. That has been a problem for almost 20 years and fending off bad habits is a time consuming, as well as an energy consuming effort. For most the problem is not merely remaining innovative, it is identifying it when it is offered and there we see that the UK has had its own moments of Titanic proportions when it came to missing out. If we look into history, we see that British innovation was an annual event at the very least; this has been diminished to thrice a decade at present. With 5G in coming, the idea of having enthusiasts with a Raspberry Pi and adding a 5G kit would be stellar, consider 19 million enthusiasts and if only 0.1% has an innovative idea, that still adds up to 19,000 with the chance of 190 patents. That is a multi-billion market right there, and it is not a man-made world either, you merely need to look at how JK Rowling and Joy Mangano got their boots on the floor to realise that this is a stage that is up for everyone to rule. Our problem is that every money maker seems to rely on 100% success at minimum (read: zero) investment, it might seem good business, but that is exactly how we lost the markets to indie developers in Asia and India.

In the end the tools we create is what enables a person to advocate and test: ‘What if I did it this way?‘ that is the one that makes for the innovation worth an easy 7 figure number and in that field no dream is too wild, because the need of people not realising that it made their lives easier is not that hard, you only need to see that they lacked merely one element, or another part to make it a better solution. That alone is worth a bundle and that is where the UK and several nations lost out, we forgot that this element requires creative thinking and actual creativity, as the schools cut those classes in favour of science and business, that is when we saw the change of leaders into sheep, following the work of others so that perhaps we might get a new idea does not work, not without a clear link to creativity and art. We lost 50% of the equation and started to think that this part would fill itself in (automatically) is where we lost, the solution was with us, and we forgot about the us part.

In that light I always remember Jeff Minter, some laugh and make a reference to the mutant camels, but the truth is that he was all about creativity and the list of his achievements is long, very very long. He has been around from the earliest Sinclair ZX to the PS4, if some Britons have one percent of his creativity the UK economic hardship would be over, it is that simple and even as we focus on the 5G needs and how the UK needs its own 5G solution (which is true), the UK can only do that by focusing on harnessing creativity that will lead to optional solutions, whilst that part remains missing the UK can merely hope to replicate what exists, not create what others forgot, seeing that is an essential first for those trying to sell you the story of a new technology.

And there is a second part, it is not what does it innovate, it is the second part: ‘What else could it be used for?‘ that is the larger part in all this. I always go back to the example from 1991, there was a company called WordPerfect and it had an excellent word processor. There was a secretary who found herself in a place where the budgets were not there, so they were confined to cheaper non-postscript laser printers (an issue in those days) as the postscript version was often thousands more expensive. So she did what no one had considered, she used the WP Equation editor to type the company name and a few other things, and added them in the letter, now (because of WP innovation) the letters suddenly looked like they came from high end expensive laser printers. Her work looked 200% better than anyone else in the company. The mere application of ‘What else could it be used for?‘, that is exactly the stage that some walked when they forgot what 5G also enables and more important, what it will allow for and there is the innovation worth billions, that is where creativity gets us, the lack of it leaves us with too little, or with gained advantage by pure chance. The chances lost were with us, or basically with the decision makers who did not comprehend the impact and cut it too far from education, and whoever followed in their footsteps are now required to clean up that mess.

Good luck with the attempt!

 

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The trivial and the not so

First the trivial, although $1.66 billion is no trivial matter, it is now one week that Avengers Endgame is in play (for a few countries 8 days) and it has made a staggering $1,664,151,786 so far, and it is now in 5th position on the list of biggest box office successes in the world right behind Avengers: Infinity War, It will not surpass that before the end of the weekend I reckon, yet by Sunday evening it will surpass both its older brother as well as Star Wars, the Force Awakens, less than two weeks and it will be nipping at the heels of the 20 year standing record of Titanic, the movie is going that fast and there is no stopping it, people want to see it more than once (I would really like to see the 3D version) which was not available to me on opening night. At this point 50% of the top 10 most successful box office titles are all Marvel titles. It made me think back to a conversation I had with some director on how he thought that Fantasy movies had no place to go in the 80’s at the Rotterdam ‘Lantaren Venster’ film festival. That conversation is currently making me giggle, the man was sincere in his belief and that is fine, and just like the Deer hunter is not for everyone, neither is Monster Inc.; we all have different takes on what we call entertainment and what we want to see on the big screen, yet I never forgot his view and me being the eternal diplomat remarking at that point to him on how amazing the movie Krull was (I had a mean streak in those days), and with actors like Liam Neeson (Kegan) how could it not be? He was not stricken with a sense of humour, let me assure you of that.

I never had any doubt that Endgame was going to get where it was now, yet the speed at which it did blew me away, it still does. The fact that during the week, in what is usually regarded as the lull of movie incomes, Avengers: Endgame added half a billion like it was a casual shower moment for Scrooge McDuck inside the United States Mint.

As for the not so trivial we need to take a look at Tesla. The Guardian gave us yesterday (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/02/tesla-elon-musk-raise-money-stocks-bonds) ‘Tesla seeks to raise $2.3bn after concerns it is running out of money‘, even as the newspaper is giving us: “Company announced last week it had lost $702m in the first three months of the year and sold 31% fewer vehicles in the first quarter“, that does not mean that we should go all negative on Tesla. Yet the part that does give rise to concern is: “Founder Elon Musk has previously dismissed the idea of raising more money but in the last earnings call said: “Tesla today is a far more efficiently operating organization than it was a year ago. We’ve made dramatic improvements across the board. And so I think there’s merit to the idea of raising capital at this point.”” When I see ‘a far more efficiently operating organization than it was a year ago‘ I wonder what that is based upon. Consider the cost of being somewhere, why is Tesla in two locations in Sydney, have Sydney sales given rise to a second store? They did the same thing for Melbourne, Amsterdam the Netherlands and we could go on, but when you realise that these are premium locations no matter where you are in the city, having an American approach to locations in Europe, your logistical cost will go through the roof and that is what is happening. The same for Sweden, yet there the cost setting might differ considerably and having part in Täby might make sense, although there are alternatives near Solna as well, perhaps it was a good deal. Now there is a second part, are these Tesla ‘owned’ places or are they independent dealers? No matter what, there are larger costs to consider like displays, parts to show and other items, and many of these places are in expensive areas, now we can agree that there might need to be one, but two?

It goes further that; it is not merely about the stores, it is about awareness to a much larger degree. You see charging the car is still an issue and yes there are solutions. Some look at the home charging solution. Yet consider the amount of energy required, your electricity bill will skyrocket. Now, there are alternatives, first there are solar panels and there we see: “This is why pairing a charging station with a solar panel system is a great solution for EV owners and solar panel owners alike“, I am less optimistic. Depending on several factors you could need up to 70 panels (low end 1kWh a day panel), and when we start looking at the options, when we go for a generic 7kWh solution, we get an annual average of anywhere between the numbers of 20 – 29 kWh daily created. Now this is merely one third of your battery, the question becomes, so you need a 100% every day? When we go commercial sized (30 kWh) we see that the production get to be between 86-133 kWh a day, so basically that takes you off the grid and give you a daily 100% charge, yet the price is also there. At prices that go up to roughly $30,000 – $40,000, now this is not to scare you. Consider that the car ‘fuel’ is free from thereon after, also your house electricity bill is reduced to almost zero, even better you can sell your excess energy to the energy provider, so there is that, but is that what you were after?

Why does this all matter?

It matters as I went to see a Tesla a few weeks ago, merely because I was curious and the Black Men’s Corp Jacket looked appealing for the upcoming winter ($120, which I did not get), and the Models looked pretty cool too (so did the Roadster), yet when I looked into charging, there was a little vagueness (unintentional mind you) they showed the charging unit, and it got me to think things through. I got from more than one source relative the same results “the average petrol car in Australia uses 11.1 litres of fuel to travel 100km (Australian Bureau of Statistics). That’s a cost of $16.65 to travel 100km at $1.50 per litre2. Even a very efficient diesel vehicle (5 litres per 100km) will cost $7.50“, most sites were all about how much cheaper the electricity was, not how much it would cost, so I got one result giving me “the average price for electricity per kilowatt hour (kWh) in Australia is about $0.25 and it takes around 18 kWh to travel 100km in an average EV. So, it will cost approximately $4.50 in electricity charges to travel 100km“, now we have something to work with. If you take the average annual driver distance (20K and divide that by 100) we now see that you are facing an optional saving of $900, not something you can ignore, but we all forget the infrastructure and now my panel viewing becomes important. If we see the brownouts that are going on all over, the switch to Tesla means that the price of electricity goes through the roof at some point, a shortage will do that for you, when everyone needs more electricity, prices go up, and that initial 30 kWh solution now becomes a more interesting money maker, but overall it is not the only path or method to rely on. You see, when the price changes we suddenly see that the $900 savings become a mere $420 savings, yet on the other side your electricity bill rises steadily and with the panels you avoid that 100%, optionally adding income to your household. I do believe that for now the 30 kWh is overkill and as we might not need a full battery every day, we could start with the 10 kWh solution, or even better if they have the plus package (double paneling). The initial $10,000 will earn itself back over 3-4 years and more important it will aid in lowering the electricity bill as the panels can do more than just reload the car battery. More important the larger issue will be the 40 panels, so apartment owners are almost directly out of the race for now, more important, when you have a solution that sets the stage for a doubling down the road with minimum extra you would be looking at reducing the bulk of your electricity bill which is not the worst idea in summer (AC’s swallow electricity like sponges) and that is where we need to look at with Tesla, as we can use Tesla battery power in other ways, the solution becomes an actual larger solution.

They are all about the car and rightfully so, but when did you look around for a battery charge point? That matters, because when there are no options and it must be done at home, you need to have the proper electricity contract, even if that is not the case now, it will be in the future. In Australia, we see Energy Australia giving us: ‘first 10.9589 kWh of peak usage per day‘, then we see ‘Next 10.9589 kWh of peak usage per day‘ and ‘Balance of Peak usage > 21.9178 kWh‘, the prices are all the same for now, but when that changes, which it always does over time? When we see that those in the highest range are charged an additional 5-15 cents per kWh? That will change the cost of living picture real fast and real direct. Now the electrical car is another matter and there is no way that these fears are not with every consumer looking at an electrical car the day after they receive their energy bill, fuel is still more expensive for now; yet when we see it against the Tesla that starts at $112,000 and the highest performance model at $137,000, the math does not work for the largest extent of people. I got here the long way round because it is not the buying of a Maserati that breaks the bank account (for those who can afford it), it is the annual insurance and fuel cost that grab you by the tender spot and makes you regret the choice. Now that we see that and we see that a new 2019 Infiniti Q70 is a mere $48,712 and that is not even close to the cheapest solution, so there is a saving of no less than $63K, if you put that in your super and use the interest to pay for the insurance and fuel you’ll end up paying the cost and growing your fortune, and that by merely banking the additional cost for a Tesla. So no matter how ‘environmentally aware’ you are, the entire saving part becomes a myth and when we see that and we consider that Musk is running out of cash in a myth based created car need that shows that there is a market, yet not with the hardworking population that makes up for a little over 65% of all workers, Elon Musk has a car that is supposed to be for those who prefer high end cars, all whilst we see that the new 2019 Jaguar XF Starts at $50,960, we see that there is a market for people, but is it with Tesla? Consider the question ‘when was the last time you could afford to handover $60K for keeping environmental principles?‘ I met two last year, one was driving a Lamborghini, the other has a black Mercedes-AMG, I reckon they will not join the Tesla community any day soon.

So as I took you on the scenic route towards the drive that Elon Musk requires us all to take and the fact that he seeks $2.3bn, implying he might pressingly need $1.5B by quarter end is a matter for concern, not because of the innovation he created, that is clear and down the track he will be the first; where would Henry Ford be if he never created the Model T? Elon Musk might be the next Henry Ford down the line, yet when we see certain steps taken, we need to see that ‘a far more efficiently operating organization‘ sounds as nice as seeing an organisation grow by 100%, yet when the reality is that they grew from 4 members to 8, we need to seriously consider where we are at and that is where I see Tesla at present. It looks great, yet it is for the bulk of all of us too unaffordable and the bulk of those who can afford it can get the luxury Nissan (Infiniti) or a new Jaguar at half the price and that is where Elon Musk is stationed, in a small niche and in all this.

I do not see the market going his way and that remains to be the sad part, because if he pulls it off and creates a large enough market it will be a historic day for him and for America, they need a win like this in the United States of America where they are in a technology drought. They currently lack of true innovation in too many fields and they show a lack of true new technologies, not amendments or mere iterative steps from the old models that exist. Elon Musk has that one true new technology and I hope that the US can stage it to an actual large enough market, I truly do.

 

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Waking up 6,897 miles away

I admit that at times I do not understand the motive of those who embrace extreme actions. The LA Times gave us yesterday (at https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-terror-plot-20190429-story.html) the issue of continued action after an attack. In this case it is the attack on the Al Noor Mosque on the 15th of March 2019. There Brenton Tarrant decided to murder 50 innocent people, and almost succeeded in murdering 39 additional people. The event drove Mark Steven Domingo (26) to make an IED, and he had planned to detonate it at a rally scheduled to take place in Long Beach this past weekend. The man who only recently had converted to Islam seems to have converted with too much anger in his heart, or perhaps he was always too sociopathic and psychopathic to begin with and he hoped that Islam would give him more support in his violent needs. It is anybody’s guess; so this “U.S. Army veteran who wanted revenge for attacks on Muslims around the globe was planning to detonate a bomb at a Long Beach rally this past weekend before he was intercepted by law enforcement officials, authorities said Monday“. According to papers, he was planning “various attacks — including targeting Jews, churches and police officers“, in all this targeting the police makes even less sense, that is, unless you consider that his sociopathic nature came into play and he merely wanted to target people in uniform. And when I read: “Prosecutors said Domingo sought retribution for the March 15 attacks on New Zealand mosques and was willing to die a martyr“. I wonder if he actually wanted to do that at all. You see, it dawns on me (optionally a completely inaccurate view) that he is one of these people that fear taking their own life, and as the numbers of ‘suicide by cop‘ have dwindled, these people have sought out another path to get it done, because a clear ‘suicide by cop’ tends to become a conversation with the police being able to talk people like that away from such an edge pretty efficiently, yet a terrorist is a target that is to be killed on the spot to safeguard as many people as possible. The fact that he got arrested before his plan came together is merely a nice coincidence for all parties concerned (optionally with the exception of Mark Steven Domingo). In support there is the case of Suicide by Cop: A Psychiatric Phenomenon. It is a work from 2017 by Ralph H. de Similien and Adamma Okorafor. There is one part that came up to debate in light of this optional case. The paper gives us: “It is reported, for example, to be more common in those with previous encounters/experiences with law enforcement agencies. It is estimated that about 66% of victims have had criminal histories“, I am not debating that it is wrong, I wonder if the text needed to be altered to: ‘with previous encounters/experiences with law enforcement, or defence agencies‘, it would fit this bill, yet making a resolution fit is not academically correct and as such I am not stating that I am right, I am merely wondering whether I could be right.

And there are other considerations to make, like how did he convert to Islam? Was he officially converted by an imam khatib? At what mosque did this happen? These questions are equally important for the reason that we need to ascertain how he became radicalised, was it an interior push or an exterior one. The facts as they are shown at present seem to imply that he was an angry person seeking another solution to whatever problem he thought he had, an extreme one and that makes it an internal change, but that is not a given. The data is important here as it casts a much larger shadow on several key elements and until they have been resolved there is no certainty that this will not happen again in the foreseeable future, a threat that Long beach (and other places) can do without.

Even now we see more questions rise. The BBC gave us only hours ago: ‘US Army veteran ‘planned to bomb Nazi rally’‘, we might all think that this is not the worst idea to have, but the extreme part of this is starting to form a pattern, he wanted to blow something up. We can argue that we have all had it at some point; some lash out at their high school, some do it in their high school. There is more in this case: “the former infantryman with combat experience in Afghanistan“, as such I have met plenty of people from that place who came out alright, to some extent I am unwilling to merely hand it over to the label called PTSD. There is a larger issue in play in the United States and this is merely the beginning. Never before in history has a nation been this polarised both politically and socially.

The political players have done everything to better their own lives and quality of life, but for the most they have been utterly unable to do that for the lowest 35% of that nation. The homeless, the unemployed and the minimum wage employees have been under increasing levels of pressure. Some need to work two jobs just to meet the cost of living; it gets even worse when we consider certain facts. For example in Kalamazoo, Michigan (expertly found) we see that well over 30% of the city population lives below the poverty line. That is well over twice the U.S. poverty rate, which stands at 12.3%. In a place that is seemingly affordable, a place where houses are on a median that is below $100K, we see a splurge of poverty. A place that is roughly 2.5 hours from Chicago , a city where the prices are non affordable for most these people. Did you not think that this inequality would come home to roost? If there are 15 places where these economic groups can live than it would be a lot, the issue is a lot less positive and the pressures keep on going up.

When we consider that a US veteran, a person that signed up to protect its civilians, is now on a course to kill them; we need to see that the issue is a lot larger than we think it is. Now as the expression goes ‘One Swallow does not make for a summer‘ we can see that one case does not mean it is so, but the pressures are visibly there, the deterioration of the lowest 30% of American incomes is there and when we start seeing the difference on what represents the quality of life in the US against what is regarded to be the standard of living, at that point do we see a first light on how much change is needed in the US. This has been known for the longest time, yet when we consider the simplest part in all this; when we consider that up to 21 million Americans are getting water from systems that violate health standards. When we consider that this is 8% of all Americans and when we realise that this group is more likely than not represented in 95% of the lowest 35% incomes, people who more often than not cannot afford to buy bottled water, how serious do you think that the pressure issue is and how worse could it get soon enough?

I believe that Mark Steven Domingo is the beginning of a much larger problem, it was not founded in religion, it is founded in social desperation and when that hits the least balanced people are the first to totally lose it.

 

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Remembering events

There is an issue in Palestine and Israel, I am not stating that Israel is innocent in events, but when I see the Guardian giving us (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/25/uk-cinemas-should-boycott-the-israeli-film-festival-seret) the headline ‘UK cinemas should boycott the Israeli film festival Seret‘, this was a letter and an opinion. I am not attacking the person, because everyone is entitled to an opinion. As such, I have no issue with: “We’re shocked and dismayed to see how many mainstream cinemas – among them Picturehouse and Everyman – are hosting this year’s Israeli film festival, Seret, whose funders and supporters include the Israeli government and a clutch of pro-Israel advocacy organisations“.

When we see that do these people remember the Sbarro event on August 9th 2001? You might think it was a long time ago, but it was merely the start of a lot of events by Palestinian terrorists. And the girl on the stretcher was wearing a white shirt, that is, until the explosion got to her, it is overwhelmingly red now. I don’t even know if she survived any of it. From my point of view, when you start bombing buses and civilian restaurants you have lost the plot and whatever case you try to bring, from that point onward the Palestinians were merely to be regarded as terrorists.

They even send rockets into Beer Sheva where it hit a kindergarten classroom (By Avi Ohayon GPO – https://www.flickr.com/photos/36313307@N06/3349461091/sizes/l/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6222905), yet in that case I will admit that there is absolutely no telling what they were actually aiming for, their material is unreliable at best.

So in all this, it is still an anti-Israel rally through an attack on culture. Now, I have stated that Israel is not entirely innocent, there are issues on both sides of the border but the only way to ever make any progress is not to ban cultural events, but to have more of them. So when we see “This UN report is the latest in 70 years of reports of mass expulsions, killings, house demolitions, detention without trial, torture, military occupation and military onslaught against the indigenous population, the Palestinians” we can clearly see that this is a pro-Palestinian article, leaving the Palestinian acts out of it. OK, I get that the writer is heavily pro-Palestinian and people are allowed to be that, freedom of expression and so on. We can also agree with part of the statement that gives us: “We cannot understand why cultural institutions continue to behave as if Israel is an ordinary democracy. It is not“, yet the part that is missing is that the State of Israel has been under non-stop terrorist attack since 1948; that part is ignored almost everywhere. Perhaps someone can explain to me how this will stop when Israel has been under unrelenting attack since it was founded? Now we can optionally disband the State of Israel, but only when Europe gives up 25% of Europe. Or did you forget that the extermination of 6 million Jews came with the disowning of millions of real estate locations? You see those 6 million owned some of the richest parts of Europe in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and a few more places. So if you can get those areas all to be re-annexed as original Jewish properties come back to talk, if not find another solution. By the way before you think of adding a number to that, it will depreciate Europe by well close to a trillion euros.

A choice was made in 1945 because of what lied ahead, it was perhaps the best solution for Europe and when we consider that the Jewish state was stolen from the Jews by the Italians between 1BC and the 5 centuries that followed, we see a larger issue. In that time part of Syria was also part of the 12 tribes of Israel, so in the end the discussion could go on for a lot longer than now. All elements that people tend to forget (because they ignore history). What should be remembered that any nation that has been under attack for three quarters of a century will at some point stop being polite, so perhaps lowering tension and embracing culture as an opening to commence a dialogue will be a lot more useful to set the steps towards an actual agreement based towards long lasting peace. And If I can see that with my lack of diplomacy and articulate cultural speech then all those artistic people, those directors, writers and others should know a lot better than putting their autograph under some short sighted narrow minded call to boycott any cultural event.

That is merely my limited view on the matter, yet I might be wrong too.

 

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Then the hard

As we all are looking at the accusations towards Saudi Arabia, the political presented power plays (not real ones) against Iran on ‘no more sanctions waivers‘, all issues we knew were coming upfront of all the other issues, most people forgot to look at France. Or perhaps others were able to pull attention away from France.

Some give us ‘France’s Macron Promises Tax Cuts, Reforms in Response to Yellow Vests‘, others give us ‘Unsatisfied in France: Muted response to Macron sales pitch‘, the short and sweet of the matter is that tax cuts are almost out of the question. The French national debt has risen to over €2,446,051,000,000, France is approaching the €2.5 trillion mark and France is presently dangerously close to the next recession, they only passed it last quarter by nothing short of a miracle, it had nothing to do with President Macron or anyone else, for the most it was merely sheer luck that they avoided the recession stamp, Q2 might not be that lucky a moment. At that point, all the claims of ‘tax cuts via less spending‘ will fall flat soon thereafter, less spending will be the massive agenda point of Q3, and France will have no other way of dealing with it. It is even less good when we consider yesterday’s Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/f9920a26-6750-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a056) where we are treated to ‘French employees face challenge to short-hours culture‘. When the French system starts applauding the casual work staff solution, France will be heading to a much deeper pit than they imagine, President Macron played the game wrong and even as most would applaud a mental change to the workers environment and how things were done, the system is too rigid to accept changes and as that system went into shutdown mode for too often, the larger impact was ignored, President Macron was too stubborn and now there is a much large impact to be seen.

The FT opens up with the best statement ever: “French workers pride themselves on being more productive than their peers in other countries, despite the fact that they work fewer hours — but that advantage is waning“, it is the ‘waning‘ part that matters. The world had adjusted for the longest of times and their advantage is no longer there, so we have a protective system (which is fair enough) and whilst it was an advantage no change was going to happen, but now that the advantage is gone change is still not an option and now these labour laws become a noose, new investors and new companies are trying to find ulterior solutions (apart from growing outside of France), now we see that the need for longer hours is essential, or we see that these people are in a stage of becoming casual workers and being complemented (read: replaced) with other casual workers and the hours will go to the best performing people, making this solution more than a slippery slope. The Financial Times is giving us numbers where we see that French production is already surpassed by the Netherlands and Germany and that is also where we see that a growth system of part timers made that happen. You see in the end two people working 20 hours part time will perform better and get more done than one doing 40 hours and that is the shift that some France exploiters seem to be looking at, it partially improves tax revenue, but it also does something else. In the stage of cost of living these people will often work two jobs, so doing 2 times 20 hours and merely ending up working 20% harder for the same pay. When France gets there it will hit the French workforce really hard.

Now we get to the part where the €2.5 trillion mark matters, as the ECB is trying to find new ways to convince others that the continued provision of stimulus to the economy matters, that against all the odds and against all the previous parts, we see that the ECB policies will hit France harder, the debt makes it so and whilst the ECB is not an elected official, it is draining the options away from the European nations, all whilst so far it has been proven that there was no actual benefit to the economy twice over. So after three trillion in unacceptable spending the ECB still believed it can work, all whilst we see the data different.

It comes down to the old premise from Albert Einstein no less: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” and this now gives us the optional premise whether ECB rate-setter Olli Rehn should be committed under section 20 of the Mental Health Act (the involuntary committing of a patient).

It hits several nations, yet in all what is happening these issues will hit France and Italy the hardest I reckon. That part is seen when we consider “In France only 71 per cent of the population was in employment last year, compared with 79 per cent of the UK and 80 per cent in Germany“, in this the case for casual workers is often easily made, yet in France the impact gives a larger rise, lets consider that it reduces 10% of the unemployed force, which would be great, if not for the fact that these 10% now employed imply that the same amount of employed people will see a 30% reduction to their quality of life as they now share the one job with another person. It will not increase tax revenue ad that is easily shown.

At present in France the first two tax brackets are: €9,964–€27,519: 14% & €27,519–€73,779: 30%

Example one: A person makes a full income of €35,000. This gets the treasury €4702, we now get two part-timers, giving each €19,000, giving the treasury two times €1265, making it €2530, a treasury loss of €2172.

Why? The zero bracket will now apply to both employees, and even they will not see it in their second job, we see a larger shift that will occur, so in their time of great debt the treasury will fail itself twice over and even in more ways than one thinks. When you consider that the average income in France is €26,700, the part timers will dent the treasury a lot further than you think, and consider that the second job is fully taxed, how long until the French will not go that way? How much will the treasury miss out on, that is beside the next wave of badly designed stimulus ideas, a game that only sees banks and members of the ECB winners, the rest gets an added debt, how was that ever fair, just or even beneficial to any economy? Yes, France too will face their endgame, yet whether this Endgame involves President Macron (Thanos) and the Avengers (the yellow coats) to come to blows is not a given, it is an expected must soon enough.

 

 

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