Category Archives: Politics

September 18, 2014 · 11:05

About that drink?

It has been a week now and I have to wonder how paranoid the week had made me. You see, the revelations of Natixis and how large its financial power is, still boggles the mind for now. This also has a lesser effect on my sanity. Whenever I see any political ‘advice’ from a bank, I wonder whether there is a Natixis link and for the top banks they are all linked. So, when I saw the article of the RABO show up, I just had to wonder (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/16/scotch-whisky-scottish-independence).

So, how does yesterday’s news affect Scotland? Well, the issue now is how trade affects a new nation when it becomes independent. The first issue is “Whisky is Scotland’s second-largest export behind oil and gas and is worth £4.3bn a year to the local economy, but sales could be hit if the country loses access to the EU’s free trade area and to markets in the rest of the world where Brussels has forged trade deals“. First of all is that information true and/or correct? You see, we the people (most of us) want to drink Whiskey and real Whiskey comes from Scotland. If it does not come from Scotland, it is called bourbon (at http://www.woodfordreserve.com/)! The rest tends to make it to the menu as an ‘alternative’, as some might say.

So, should we have a go at the Rabo?

It is never a bad idea to have a go at a bank, but they do have a point here. What is a major issue is the fact that we see these 11th hour messages, of feigned pressure. Why is Scotland (if they select independence), not immediately allowed a temporary membership into the trade agreements the UK is already a member of? The quote “A new Scottish government would face ‘a mountainous task’ in striking trade deals beyond Europe. Scotch is exported to about 200 countries, with major markets in the US, Singapore and South Africa, while Chinese consumers are also getting a taste for it“. You see, this article sounds nice, but the term ‘Chinese consumers are also getting a taste for it‘ means that if they get the bulk of the shipment, European customers will not be happy at all. Instead of embracing a new European adult as it left the arms of mother Britannia is just good business. Legally seen, the Rabo is absolutely right; Scotland will be its own master now and as such will have to apply for trade agreements. Yet, if we look at several sources, we see that the US is the number one destination and Singapore (with all over Asia) is on number three, if these two markets could be ‘enticed’, we would see a shifting balance. With France in second place, Spain in fourth (but due to economic issues decreasing vastly and Germany in fifth position, we see a market in motion. The spirited market is not an easy one and the Chinese changes on ‘gifts’ would also hit the drinkable gifts department and as such Whisky will get a painful dip. So, is there an option for the golden juice of the highlands? I believe that if an economy is truly about improving then this unique situation should receive its own merit. The BBC view (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-26987262), which they made last April shows that this ‘stalling’ need is partially on economy and partially on events and none of them are linked to the independence of the Saltire.

But I am also a person who needs to take a step back. The issues for Scotland are not small and several are out in the open, but these issues should have been resolved or at least addressed to some extent long before the vote was days away. When I looked at the initial facts and wrote the blog ‘The cradle of Whiskey‘ the issues discussed and read from both Professor Sir Donald MacKay and Ronald McDonald show no issues on trade agreements whatsoever. With their golden ambrosia so high on the export list, I feel uncertain why there was no more visibility on this. I do not remember seeing it on any decently regarded news site. Now in the 11th hour a Dutch bank comes with this? Is this intentional demoralisation or is this a case of clear cut evidence that Scotland is not ready to be independent? I remain on the fence. I have been in the ‘stronger together‘ camp for several reasons, but that has always been for pressure from outside economic issues. This is a first clear internal reason for not going independent.

So, as we see the articles piling up in the papers in the UK, the Guardian foremost, how come that several serious issues did not get the forefront until now?

It is nice to see quotes like “Alex Salmond urged tens of thousands of yes activists to ‘get to it’ by seizing the extraordinary chance for a “new dawn for Scotland”, as the final batch of polls before the vote confirmed the referendum hung on a knife-edge” (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/17/scottish-independence-alex-salmond-david-cameron-resign), yet the issues of trade as well as the 11% deficit Scotland could face in year zero are no laughing matters. There are other issues that come to mind too. What happens to Scottish students in tertiary education? What of their international placements? If we look at the legal ramifications of trade, then we should also look at any long term plans that were there for the Scottish students, if they fall away, then Scotland will soon face economic bashing on more than one level. It is possible that these issues were looked at, yet the guardian piece as the Rabo bank is quoted implies that these matters seem to have been ‘stalled’ until after the elections, yet this impact has not clearly be shown on several fronts, which beckons the question, ‘why not?’.

Forbes have been active too (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswright/2014/09/15/if-scotland-goes-a-mistake-as-big-as-the-great-depression/), they are showing other sides that did not make the news in several ways. One massive point is one that has definitely been kept from the Scottish voters: “Deutsche says the symbiotic relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK is older and deeper than the Yes camp dares to admit. Five, it says that the idea of replicating something like Norway and Denmark – similar population sizes, links to oil (particularly in Norway) – is disingenuous. Norwegian oil and gas fields are deeper and expected to last much longer than Scotland’s which are already in decline, and Norway has its own currency; Denmark’s economy is totally different, and has a better fiscal position”, so not only is Scotland depending on oil, which still keeps them 11% in deficit, but the decline of their fields will soon become a more visible issue, then what happens? So, I remain in favour of Scotland becoming one nation (just not now), but in light of these mounting issues, we must ask the question, why is Alex Salmond not openly dealing with the issues we see here and as such, why are these facts kept from the voters?

This gets me to the final point and perhaps the only truly unacceptable view that the Guardian is giving us (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/17/scots-final-call-rallying-political-engagement-votes). The headline “Scots’ final call: can rallying beneath the radar save the day?”, first of all, as this massive change hits 5.3 million wavers of the Saltire, this should be out in the open. Below the radar implies dealings for the benefit of a few, which is the one thing the Scots should not allow for. There is genuine anguish in the article as we see a few emotional turns, yet it is the end of it that should grip us all. “As Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Green party co-convenor, told Wednesday morning’s rally: ‘Nothing is going to be the same again, whichever way it goes.’”, I disagree,

I think that it is out in the open in new ways that Scotland is getting ready to be the new adult at the Commonwealth table, we the other members Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand should aid in setting in motion that transition, by allowing Scotland to sign trade agreements with all the perks of growing their economy to become solid. In addition, I still believe that India could be a large key player here, as I stated in my blog ‘the Cradle of Whiskey’ on the 16th of August. “As a solution, I still believe that India has options here. As the Indian generic pharmaceutical industry grows for Europe, it will need alternatives for both manufacturing, shipping (read distribution) and perhaps to a smaller extent research. Whilst everyone seems to stare blindly to London area’s where prices are through the roof, Edinburgh offers a much cheaper and no less sturdy solution”. This could still be a long term option for Scotland and if there is any truth in the statement that Scotland’s oil production was in decline, it is no longer a maybe, it is a given and an essential step to get several industrial changes going as well as opt for a few new ones. We just need to make sure that those ‘new’ players are not coming in under the flag of ‘friendship’ whilst collecting under the banner of greed, because that will never be a solution.

We have looked at shortages and surpluses for so long; it is time to see how those two can be connected to find the balance leading to progress. There has however been too many drum beating under the ‘honest’ statements on how bad it all is for others and how bad it is for Scotland, even the IMF weighed in on that. I think these people were slightly off the boil and I feel that the wording in Forbes was better, more sincere and a lot more correct “But if it happens, economies and investment patterns will adjust as they always have done. Deutsche is right that there are greater challenges facing the Scottish economy under independence than most people there have probably understood. But the idea of national pride is a powerful one, and some people are prepared to compromise a great deal to achieve it”. This is definitely true and it feels more sincere. It also seems to indicate how ‘flawed’ David Folkerts-Landau was when he stated “A ‘Yes’ vote for Scottish independence on Thursday would go down in history as a political and economic mistake as large as Winston Churchill’s decision in 1925 to return the pound to the Gold Standard or the failure of the Federal Reserve to provide sufficient liquidity to the US banking system, which we now know brought on the Great Depression in the US”, is that true Mr DFL? (the fact that he was stated in the Urban Dictionary was just a coincidence). We could see him, not as ‘flawed’, but as ‘shoddy’, ‘scant’ or ‘lacking’, but I leave that up to the readers. There were several issues involving the Great Depression of the US, and gold was there too, yet it was the inaction of President Herbert Hoover that were at the centre of this, he did set up the groundwork that led to the acts by President Roosevelt that would create the new deal and fix a lot of the issues that were around then. Now, as economies are a lot more intertwined the issue of trade pacts and the delay in signing up nations seem to be at the centre of this, so as Scotland ends up in the ‘stronger together’ field, we must acknowledge the need for change, the need for an independent Scotland, it is a side of freedom we all deserve. Is it so bad to help our sibling into becoming the stronger partner? That is what I find missing at the core of all the newscasts, the option to enable Scotland to become independent, preferably when economies are moving in a better direction, as to ensure the long term health of the land below the waving Saltire.

 

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September 15, 2014 · 21:31

IKEA politicians hammer changes!

Yes, the issues have come bashing through the walls, or in the case as Julian Assange claims it, though his floor from the apartment below. I feel uncertain what will happen to Sweden. Let me start by adding two sources. One is the Huffington Post (at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/14/sweden-election-results_n_5819612.html); the other is the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/14/sweden-election-feminists-greens-stefan-lofvan-social-democrats).

This is all in response to the initial setting that led to my Blog ‘Memory lane is a freeway‘, from last Saturday (13th September), which all started with some greed driven piece on something called ‘the sovereign investor‘, which did not make sense and let me indirectly to Natixis, who until then had stayed below my radar.

But why is there such an issue? You see I did not have any issue, just the text “But some political events have the power to destroy economies on a large scale. And Sweden’s vote is one of those moments“, this is at the core of the deception. It is not politicians who are failing, in the case of Sweden, some privatisations took the road of profit at the expense of quality; this had angered a lot of Swedes, which means no more easy profit and no exploitation of the elderly.

“A return to a Social Democratic government, allied with communists on the left, would see corporate profits plunge in Sweden as the state confiscates businesses’ earnings to pay for increased welfare payments“, reads like ‘American’ McCarthy like responses, yet Reuters gives us the clear reason why the Swedes are angry “Voters have been shocked by scandals over privately-run state welfare – including one case where carers at an elderly home were reportedly weighing diapers to safe money – and bankruptcies of privately run schools” (at http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/14/uk-sweden-election-idUKKBN0H90XN20140914). So the article by a ‘profit seeker’ called Jeff D. Opdyke, leaves more than just a little to be desired. This is a clear showing on how a small greedy fish is exposing a titanic sized behemoth, whilst leaving all the other people wondering why we are allowing for these absurd levels of exploitation. So, thank you Mr person from Delray Beach, Florida for showing us just how greed and exploitation needs to be halted on nearly every level.

Now, I allow him his viewpoint, I do not agree with it, but that is his right. You see, when you privatise something, which is always good when the government does not have to, we must allow for two things:

  1. If it is profitable others would come quick, or to some extent taxation goes down.
  2. If someone tells us that they can do a better job than the government, all people should demand EVIDENCE on how they expect to do that.

Any of these two parts are nearly always ‘avoided’ in any privatisation, which means that we see a decrease in services or an addition in cost. When someone expects to make a profit from a care centre, you can be certain that the people in the care centre end up being victims. We have privately run places here in Australia, yet they tend to cost in excess of $1,000 a week, the care is truly top notch, now consider that the government gives decent care to the elderly, cheaper and not as amazing as some private spaces, but that is the consequence of government health care. I have been in the arms of government health care in a hospital and I had ZERO complaints (apart from saving my life, these people showed true care and passion for their vocation), so when someone steps in stating ‘I can do it cheaper’ we will see casualties and it is not the people claiming to do it better. I think that the less we say the better. The Guardian had this quote “The decision, which follows four school closures announced by the company in February, came as the Danish private equity group Axcel, which bought the chain in 2008, decided it could no longer continue to cover the company’s losses“, which just shows you how some privatisation aims are not even close to being kept.  (at http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/may/31/free-schools-education) I wonder if Mr Profit Seeker took a look at the data from these places. In that regard, from that same article we learn “Michael Gove is open to the idea of profit-making companies running free schools, an idea expected to be in the Tories’ 2015 election manifesto“, so I hope that Mr Gove (a conservative MP from Surrey Heath) takes a long cold shower to mull things over, because in this climate, the UK can ill afford an education blunder like that.

So, is the Swedish Social Democrat system so bad?

There is no clear answer there, it is a given that the outgoing PM was not a bad person. Fredrik Reinfeldt took what seemed to be the safest route in a dubious economy, largely created by the earlier mentioned capitalists and their financial advisors.

Sweden, one of the most social and caring nations in the history of this planet went from an undisputed first position, to somewhere below the top 10, this in itself might not have been the worst place, but local pride had been given a devastating blow and as such a large change happened last night. Yet, is this road the best? Not sure if I can say yes, as a Christian I state that the road of Buddha (one of balance) is at times not just the safest road, but it seems to me that at present it is the only road many nations should consider. Greed is globally at an all-time high and it can only be countered by illuminating those people under loads of sunshine, whilst holding people accountable for choices and actions. Consider the repose we saw earlier “it could no longer continue to cover the company’s losses“, this implies incompetence, but is that the case? Schools will never be a place of profit. Why do you think that a place like Ashbourne in Kensington (UK) costs well over $11,000 per term? Quality costs in the end and proper teaching is all about quality. So did the Danish private equity group Axcel not crunch the numbers correctly? Was there a profit reason? It seems that this issue is still not dealt with, because equity groups tend to be about profit, what happened to the real estate value of these schools? Who owns them now? All questions, no answers and it seem to me that these matters are not enjoying that much exposure in that regard either. I am not stating that any laws were broken, but when you start ‘funding’ schools, it comes at a cost. The Ashbourne website states “Ashbourne was founded in 1981 by its current Principal and Director Mr Mike Kirby“, I am willing to bet the house (or at least a decent 21 year old single malt) that this took all his energy, dedication and pretty much every moment of his life to get this one place to the point it got (as one of London highest desired schools to get enrolled in). When some investment group gets involved I tend to turn cynical and suspicious (yes, all at the same time).

So, we do not know how the new Swedish government will pan out to be, yet we should all consider that the Swedish way worked through loads of hard times. Personally I think that turning away greed driven players is the best course, so how about me?

Well, I considered teaching English in Italy next year, whether for just a year or two, I do not know. Possibly in a Catholic school, preferably state run. If I get free classes in Italian and Latin out of it and some pocket money, a place to sleep as well as storage fee, I will be happy. I won’t cost anyone anything, I do not take up space and I bring positivity to a place that is not there for a profit, which means that if I am not a pressing cost it is a win-win. So, you the reader, when did you last consider turning that master degree or PhD into a long term social benefit to a school or a worthy cause, even if it is just for a year or two.

We all seem to race towards a ‘Return On Investment’ position, whilst those exploiting us will dump any of us in a second if we do not match the spread sheet index factor of profit. Let us all make this world a little better and let the financial system collapse the way it is, when they collapse, our lives will return to the notion that life should be about a roof, a bed (preferably with a passionate woman in my case) and a decent meal. These are all changes that do not require a hammer, and IKEA has all but two of the other components (they do not build houses at present).

There is no real moral here at present, yet if Sweden does pull of a real reorganisation whilst not diving into the deepest depth then Sweden becomes the first nation to ward of Greed and survive in the process, I reckon we should all keep our eyes on Sweden and illuminate any greed driven change, because if they can make it, so can any Commonwealth nation and as such, hope might return to America at some point. Greed driven players and financial institutions might not be doing that well, but I feel an air of certainty that no one else will lose any serious sleep over that part of the equation.

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September 13, 2014 · 20:00

Memory lane is a freeway

What do you do when you need to look better then you should? Well, the obvious reason some might grasp as is ‘to lie’. So how do you lie whilst remaining truthful? Well, here we get to grasp at the one of the smallest books with the power of a titan. It is called ‘How to lie with statistics‘ and it was the masterwork by Darrell Huff in 1954.

This book has never lost its charm, not even after 60 years of evolving news and economy, it still packs a wallop!

Let’s take a look!

The Dutch bank Rabo told us the following “Despite a downturn in the first quarter of this year, Dutch GDP volume is expected to grow in 2014 by ½%, largely due to a recovery in exports and investments. In 2015 economic growth is expected to accelerate slightly to 1½%, fuelled by a real rise in private consumption” (at https://www.rabobank.com/en/press/search/2014/20140612-Rabobank-Dutch-economy-continues-cautious-recovery.html). You know, this reads somewhat familiar. Ah yes! I remember now, it was May 15th 2013, and my blog called ‘A noun of non-profit‘ had something about the Dutch economy.

Where I wrote the following in addition to the information of the Dutch NOS: “The Dutch NOS reported the prediction that even though the Dutch economy will shrink another 0.5%, they do predict a growth of 1.1% next year. I personally join the group “Oh ye of little faith!” on that one and if they are able to get the economy up to 0.2% positive in 2014 than they would have achieved quite the small miracle”

Guess what! A year later it turns out I was less confident by a mere 0.2%, whilst they were overconfident by 0.7%. Now consider that I am NO economist, but I saw the rain and the worry. So were these economists informing the Dutch NOS, brilliantly on the dumb side, or was this an event of managing bad news? I actually do not know and I personally think that this is one of many events where the placer of ‘news’ was not based upon ‘realism’ but on keeping moral high no matter what the numbers are.

Is this fair?

I actually will hold out the ‘do not know!‘ sign. Looking at murky numbers is at times more an art then a science and today’s prophet is tomorrow’s ‘pussy with balls of dough’. Is that even a valid expression? You see, I do believe that we WERE heading in the right direction, but now we get two new players on the market. Actually we get 4 new players in two teams. The first team is Team Anglican with in the South Corner the one, the only the true champion of the British Empire ‘England!’ (Please say it loudly in style of Michael Buffer) and in the North corner, the new contender for the global market ‘Scotland!’ (Repeat Michael Buffer voice). This duo is now at odds and at this point, independence of Scotland is still not a fact. In this era, under these conditions, I remain a ‘stronger together‘ person, not because I am against Scottish independence, but because team 2 and a few other factors could drag down both Scotland and England, especially once they are divided, which is a really bad thing. We as Australians would come to the rescue of both, if at all possible, but our economic gravitas, especially as the previous labour government had spent 627 billion it did not have, we too are bleeding and not in the best condition for any economic price fight.

Team two is the main event and the big potato (no, it’s not Ireland). It is team USA and team Japan. Together they have overspent their coffers by a whopping 28 trillion, yes readers, these two are down 28,000 billion, which exceeds the budgets of both the Commonwealth and the EEC with an uncomfortable margin to boot. So, even if we consider the dead drop of that amount, consider that they need 280 billion per percent per year just to pay the interest on this. This means that every person in the US and Japan need to come up with $636 per person per year, per percent that means if the Us and Japan need to borrow at over 1%, every person in these two nations need to deposit $1272 each year from their net income, in America over 12% lives in poverty, which means that up to 25% of the nation has absolutely no way of making that payment. This is not a new song, it is a song, me, myself, I and many others have been trying to bring forward to the people at large. As we are all trying to survive, no one seems to be listening and the wealthy apparently do not (need to) care. This makes for a dangerous precedent because as we look at the truth of the matter, we see that team two is in such dire economic danger that the entire economic map will be redrawn soon enough. Weirdly enough, the team one issues will give additional pains to both team two and the rest of the world, whilst other events are not helping either.

You see, what can we do? This is at the heart of the matter. I try not to be the one just complaining and then leave it to others, even though I am not sure that my methods would work, it seems that my predictions have been a whole lot more accurate than those from economists making 7 figures (I personally believe I am due a $750,000 bonus, where to send the bill to though?).

Although I see USA as a strong (disregarding their deficit) option, we need to take hard actions, especially as their pharmaceutical (and several other industries) have been, in what I personally regard, a state of mindless infancy. If the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) does not come through, which I personally hope it does not, then the USA would need to change strategies in massive ways, and that is beside several other companies on the list of 30 that Americans keep their faith on high (aka the Dow Jones Index).

But we are not even close to the issues, mainly because this is not some anti-America rhetoric. Truly I am not against America, but against the change some executives want that nation to be, a nation that is no longer one for all Americans, but one where your return on investment and consumer spending decides whether you are allowed to live or not.

Europe as stated is still in a dire mess for several reasons. You see, there are elections in Sweden tomorrow, and for some reason, this is making many non-Swedes nervous. I did not get this at first, because I have lived there, I witnessed them and as elections go, they are as timid as you might think them to be. Watching submarines race underwater from the shoreline is a lot more exciting than the Swedish elections, so what gives?

Well, the first jolt of nervousness can be gotten from the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/swedish-elections-cracks-showing-nordic-model).

When we see Sweden, we focus on quotes like “it was Sweden that offered answers, having resolved its own debt mess a generation earlier. It is the only EU country that has lower public debt now than in 2006“, which shows Swedish Pragmatism is not confined to the furniture you buy at IKEA. When we think of the family bonds within Sweden (family is always seemed to be a Swedish trademark), we see “The care sector also suffered a privatisation scandal in 2011, when the Dagens Nyheter newspaper reported that an elderly care centre in Koppargården, run by the private company Carema, was catastrophically neglecting its customers, allegedly weighing their diapers to see if they could be used for longer, thus ensuring maximum usage and lower costs” so it seems that the care of the elderly does not have the safety of a Volvo, not to mention “Complaints about poor service and frequent delays on the high-speed train between Malmö and Stockholm also swung the mood against rail privatisation of the railways“. It seems like there is plenty under the covers that is not just upsetting the Swedes.

So how does this all link up?

This is indeed the question, on one side we see the worry of privatisation (which is really a common sense issue), because if someone wants to do it ‘better’ by taking it away from the government, then evidence of decades has shown us that this person is in it for the cash, which means the goal is to get it done cheaper, which gets us to ‘it will never ever be done better‘. At times I do not even comprehend how a population accepts such a fabricated story. But there is more (there always is, isn’t there). All this seems to impact on a European scale. Why? Sweden is not that big, as stated it is lowering debt. It is not a G-20 nation (only as an EEC member, yet not a Euro Zone), so why is there such a massive push here? They are in 7th position representing a mere 3% of the EEC in regards to the GDP, so this should not be such an issue, should it?

This is where it gets a little dicey, especially by the standards I try to keep. If we consider a player like Coface (Coface began to diversify internationally in 1992. Currently, the Group has global capabilities to support its clients’ growth in their home markets and with their exports by offering them credit insurance services tailored to their needs. Source: Coface Website). They stated the following in regards to Sweden.

“The country is returning to dynamic growth in 2014, as household consumption will strengthen in response to higher disposable income, thanks to the fiscal stimulus in the context of an election year. Unemployment affected 8% of the economically active population in 2013 and is expected to fall slightly in 2014, in particular because of new jobs created in the public sector“, here we see the two united: ‘particular because of new jobs created in the public sector‘ and the rejection of privatisation. So is Sweden a risk or is this about setting the continuing trend of ‘investment’ which is now holds the taste of ‘exploitation for profit‘. This is at the core of the issues. The world at large is perpetuating a scandalous system that has no limit, will not discipline itself and the larger players will not stop overextending their reach. It is like an elastic band that can double in size and has been stretched long beyond its safety limits for half a decade, stretching more and more each year, increasing risk and danger each week. Sweden is a lovely place and it looks magical around Christmas, yet it should not have the economic impact that some give it. Is Coface the right instance? Well, that is less for me to say as these ‘risk assessors’ at times all seem the same. I did however notice that their CFO looked aged as a teenager, which made me a little nervous. Especially when you see the massive exposure Coface enjoys on an international level.

So why are they in this article? You see, Coface is part of Natixis and Natixis manages the public guaranties granted by the French Government. Yet, Natixis is not just a player, it is a financial Behemoth. Bernard Oppetit who is also chairman of Centauris Capital is on the board there. Who was visible in the past as Swedish Telecom Giant Tele2 was fending of Dutch Versatel. These facts are mere unrelated facts (or so it seems), yet there seems to be an almost incestuous relationship between some of these Hedge funds and Sweden (amongst others). How direct is Nataxis or its subsidiaries connected to some of these privatisations? The water is too murky for me to see, but it seems that Hedge funds have a three degree separation between them and pretty much any government is more than a worry. Nataxis has direct links all over America and has an office in almost every Commonwealth nation (apart from New Zealand and the West Indies). So here we see the first steps into memory lane.

There was a link with SNS Reaal as we see the following “The 5-year Note has a total size of € 1.6 billion and carries a coupon of 3.5%. The Note was issued to a widely spread range of national and international investors. Lead managers were Citi, JP Morgan Securities Ltd., Natixis, Rabobank en UniCredit (HVB)“, the bank that could not fail was before it was nationalised has links to Natixis. When I looked into SNS, I never noticed how deep some connections went, until last night I was not even aware of how far the reach of Natixis goes. Now consider the powers of their board “Any acquisition of a stake in another company or increases in equity investments, other investments, divestments (or the creation of a joint venture) by Natixis or one of its significant subsidiaries representing more than €150 million” as well as “Any transfers, mergers or demergers in which Natixis is involved” (source: Natixis website). So is this the first we see of the larger funds, now squeezing out the remaining coin of the smaller places, because if that is so, we only have to wait and see when Natixis opens offices in the West-Indies and/or New Zealand, because that might be an indicator that the other exploitation wells have truly run dry (a personal, and possibly wrong assumption).

It is of course likely that the true economists (me is not one of them), are laughing in regards to my naiveté, yet who else knew and how is a direct subsidiary of Natixis, setting the credit score and advice for customers, supporting them and securing their transactions by protecting them against the risk of their clients defaulting. As they themselves state it, whilst their ‘big momma’ Natixis, with an impact beyond belief has a vested interest. I would state that ‘incestuous’ does not even close cover the issue.

This is not a jump from whatever to Natixis, this memory highway, as some might recall the issues on the Royal Bank of Scotland, which I also took a look at. When we consider the news from the BBC (at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/business-15212476), we see another view where Natixis has links. The quote “Natixis assumes the following percentage writedowns (or “marks”) on Greek, Irish, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish debt, respectively: 70%, 40%, 40%, 20% and 20%. And then it assumes the banks would need to preserve a core tier one ratio of either 7% or 8% on these stressed scenarios by the end of 2012“, Is the writing on the wall or have we all (including me) ignored a tier of economy, or better stated a commissioned golden lining of profit as certain ‘providers’ remained behind the screens. “You take in greed from the customer and charge them all twice” (sing this line in the tune of Harry Nilsson ‘You put the lime in the coconut‘) and you charge the others in the morning.

Memory lane turns out to be more than just a freeway, as we are limited to walking down this road, the financial advisors and stakeholders are driving back and forth whilst limiting the views we have and the governments involved seem to be driven to not be too revealing on where the money is coming from. It is important to know that all this, whilst true is devoid of any crime, devoid of illegal transactions and possibly even devoid of misrepresentation, yet as I see it a massive misleading amount of presentation towards an audience of taxpayers. So what will happen in Sweden? I do not know, they seem to have an election in less than 24 hours and I find it interesting that it could have an impact. Another vote is soon thereafter on Scotland, which will have an economic impact too. My worry is why the impact is so far beyond the borders of the involved parties, which gives wonder to global statements in the trend of ‘Economic policies in isolation won’t lead to growth in Europe‘. I definitely feel uncertain to oppose such a view, but when we consider players like Natixis, is it perhaps possible that economic isolation leads to a few less dangers? Especially in Europe that issue should be deeper investigated by people who do not have a stake in the game. The writer of the piece I gave was Dr Bryony Hoskins. From what I read, I would categorise her as ‘a really smart cookie’. Yet one of her points is “Encourage collaboration and partnerships between different types of organisations, such as schools, local authorities, youth groups, charities and businesses“, I do not disagree with the generic view, but when we see the involvement on a ‘guiding’ behemoth like Natixis, is there not the danger of government enabling business to push for other long term changes that only serves the business and no one else? With assets well over 300 billion, this player has loads of pushing space, the question is: are they actually pushing?

There is of course the other side, is it fair to blame Natixis for anything (I have not been blaming them)? For example, if we watch all these computers around us with viruses and they are all Windows PC’s, can we state that Microsoft is making viruses? This is at the heart of it all, having your fingers in every pie, could give the thought that any bad pie was because of the fingers, we forget to look at who is making the pies. Yet as we see changes happening in Sweden and as hedge funds and retirement funds are going together, perhaps enabling one another, how dangerous is the stable view of Sweden at present? These searches led me to the attached document named “http___doc.morningstar.com_document_183a66452941e059812946b714604784.pdf”. I do not pretend to understand it. But the risk of ‘5’, when we consider retirement funds and ‘NSIO-OFM1403A’, would give me a reason to worry. LET ME BE CLEAR! I am not an economist!

I added the documents (at the end), so that perhaps those who do know, will know better.

So why am I here then? It seems to be silly, stupid and all other sorts of not bright in a place that I do not understand. The fact that a relative small nation like Sweden could have such stretching consequences on the market was beyond me, yet if I look at the Natixis annual report (at http://ngam.natixis.com/docs/812/834/AF58-1213.pdf), I am confronted with another question. “If one cog in the machine changes direction, what happens to the financial numbers of a behemoth like Natixis?” I am not stating that they are ‘hurt’ in any way. It might be less than a pinprick, but the fact that this company has stakes in all commodities and every large bank that had been slapped around in the last few years; it does make me wonder in light of the issues we faced in 2008. “What happens when a hedge fund bets on a nation failing?” is that such a leap? Only last month several made millions, betting against Banco Espírito Santo. Is my thought really that far from reality? Apparently not! George Soros is already doing this, betting on the collapse of the US stock and he put 2 billion where his mouth was, so was I right all along (at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/18/george-soros-bets-2b-plus-stock-market-collapse-in/)?

http___doc.morningstar.com_document_183a66452941e059812946b714604784, 14_355_NSI_Bond_b9aeb, 14_355_NSI_Bond_b3c0c

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September 10, 2014 · 12:17

Changing topics?

It is Tuesday evening, I had been preparing some of my assignments when the two hour bell rang, it was time for a break. I am still ahead of what is needed, which means I can relax (only a little). For 4 weeks I have been doing my daily Uni work, so there is a moment to breath. This is good for now, so what to look at?

Well, I could take you down the road of a copyright driven Australia, yet, when we look at the facts, especially as presented by Brendan Molloy, councillor of Pirate Bay Australia, then a moment of depression hits me. We all speak in truths (or so I hope) and as such, so does he. I do not completely agree with his approach, but he makes a decent case. There are a few tweets he made as @piecritic that have reverberated in my own writings in the past.

  1. “Brandis is known to have not met with any consumer representatives and stakeholders as part of writing this draft. #copyrightau“, which seem to give slightly more weight to the issues I posted on my blog on June 17th 2014 called ‘The real issue here!‘, when I wrote “This is at the centre of it all. From my point of view Mr Burke knows it, Mr Brandis knows it and Google, who has every profit with large broadband usage, knows it too. I think it is time for this sanctimonious posturing to stop” it was to state the issue that in the end this is NOT about copyright, this is about bandwidth and as such the Australian economy cannot survive another multi-BILLION dollar blow to it at present. I think that Attorney General Brandis DEFENITELY got spoken to (not speaking with) by certain stakeholders (off the record of course), yet these people do not want ANY visibility in the limelight at present.
  2. “@piratepartyau made an FOI request for that data. They refused to release it. https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/copyright_legislation_working_gr#incoming-2467 #copyrightau”, which seemed to link to “A question about data costs being absurdly high. Love it. #copyrightau“, this is an interesting side. In my previous blog and other events I focussed on the bandwidth, which is what an ISP should be able to monitor and as such they do not, or better, only monitor for billing purposes. This all takes another turn when we consider the tweet by Ed Husic, Federal MP for Chifley, Shadow ParlSec to @bowenchris. His Tweet is “Abbott Govt should tackle copyright, pricing, access simultaneously and not just @copyrightau 1st“.

Well first, to get it all straight, I am a Liberal, so basically in the Abbott, Hockey corner!

Yet, these people make a decent case. You see, I am not in favour of copyright infringement, so if we can stop illegal downloads then this is just fine with me (additional reasons to follow soon). The issue here is not just about copyright; it is in part the ludicrous idea of continuing the TPP. This is at the centre of strangling honest commerce in the near future. I am all for a better legal system that protects the owners of copyrighted articles that Burke represents, yet ‘the rants’ as Brendan mentioned gives way that he is angry because the ACTUAL profiteers are too strong and too powerful (read the ISP and large telecom companies). This is why we see these ‘packaged’ solutions by Optus lately, amongst others. They are trying to convert people to a package as they know that securing revenue now is becoming increasingly important to THEIR survival, this is not seen anywhere in clarity.

So prices are being partially dealt with and access is being transferred to the US via the TPP. If you consider that to be not true, then wonder why Microsoft is setting up 300,000 servers. Just for gaming? Please get a grip and be fast about it!

Consider the following, this was stated by developer Jonathan Blow, but he is not the only stating issues in this direction. “I can spin up 10,000 virtual servers per host. They would just all suck. Saying 300k when they are virtual is a lie“, this is a developer, my issue, since even BEFORE day one has been on the ridiculousness of certain claims. This has all to do with streaming media and entertainment. Microsoft introduced it, when the backlash came they changed tune and dance, so why is this continued? Because the change to a broadband Foxtel approach will FORCE people in the bandwidth and there is no more downloads (which I do not oppose), but there is also no more privacy, with which I have an issue. When you force consoles online for all the wrong reasons, then we can safely state that this is about monitoring”. As America was the land of the free, it is now quickly becoming the nation of the monitors, which is what a debt of trillions will get you. As stated before, i cannot understand the TPP for the life of me, it strangles digital freedom (actual freedom, not freedom to download illegally), it will strangle generic medication (not part of this discussion) and it will strangle local commerce (very much the issue at present).

Patrick Bach, producer behind Battlefield 4 has an additional view “I’m not sure how the cloud will work for real-time stuff, but I can see how it could work for non-real-time stuff where you need a lot of calculations”, monitoring is not real-time, but requires massive power, here we see a side of that what is monitored and how it requires many servers. By the way, consider that this, when (or if) this is up and running, that the monitoring power of Microsoft will exceed that of the NSA by a massive margin. It seems a little extreme for streaming TV shows and online players, doesn’t it?

Additional evidence comes from the Australian (at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/copyright-law-is-failing-to-keep-up-with-internet/story-e6frg9if-1227050705973, this link requires you to subscribe) “As a former chief financial officer, I follow the money: these schemes haven’t worked, because the content owners aren’t prepared to invest in their administration. If they were genuinely effective, surely the movie and television studios would be happy to throw resources at such schemes“.

Again, as a technologist this could definitely be done, yet this is not in the ISP interest at all, his fortune is all about bandwidth, reducing it costs him money.

This is why I thought that the entire action was a waste of time from before the very beginning. Until greed (read revenue) from the Telco’s is set straight, whatever deal comes, will come at the price of ALL valid users and for the larger extent at the cost of their freedom (read privacy).

Yet, in all the tweets, Brendan Molloy does repeat on many occasions the issue that is at the centre of it all “fix your business models“. This is at the centre, yet in all scenario’s several players lose out on revenue (and loads of it), in addition Australia is not even at the heart of the issue that is playing behind the screens. For people like Google and Netflix (where a few groups have a valued investment of over 10 billion), it is not Australia, but the UK where the big price is. Australia with its 10 million households is just a small individual away from the Commonwealth pack. Yet this does not just hit the bandwidth and download models.

In all this, I have one other link. This one http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/09/malcolm-turnbulls-anti-piracy-forum-live-blog-follow-the-news-as-it-happens/ shows us the entire copyright AU evening and when you read it, please try to consider the following:

  1. The words ‘Revenue’ and ‘Bandwidth’ did not get mentioned ONCE. You might think that with illegal downloads and copyright infringements that issue would come up at least once, but both iiNet and Telstra were extremely cautious to sail away from getting near it. In my view that forum did exactly what it needed to do, keep interest away from the TPP, bandwidth and where the actual money would be draining from.

All this is as I expected it to be and if you read my previous blogs then you would have read that pointlessness is next to greediness. Not grammatically correct, but highly accurate. Whether we see changes remains to be seen, but the moment the TPP comes into effect the changes will be massive and it is likely that this changes get announced whilst the ink of the autographs on the TPP agreement is still drying.

So, why is this about changing topics?

Well, the discussion seems to be about piracy, copyright and copyright infringement, but the topic that hinders all events (like revenue and more important ‘blood money’) is kept out of the discussion for now.

I have already discussed revenue in more than one place, so feel free to read the other blog article (The real issue here!, mentioned at the beginning) to catch up on it. What I have not talked about is the issue of ‘Blood-money’. It is not my phrase, but I have adopted it as it applies (to some extent). You see, this is not the price of the game, not the cost of doing business. It is the price of being there and staying alive. It seems pure and simple, but it is not. You see, the topic of micro transactions is a little more complex and as such it is important to distinguish between them.

  1. The good guys and girls!

Highest on my list is Blacklight: Retribution. It is released for the PS4, yet there is also a PC edition. The game is large and is FREE! So how do they make money? Well they rely on micro transactions. When buying stuff you have two options, you start low, but as you get through games and as your score is there, you get money, this money allows for low to medium styled weapons. They are not cheap so it will take a little time to acquire the cash. Yet, it is free and you have time, so this is all good. However, if you want that one piece, that ultimate weapon, the slamalamadingdong of all shotguns that will rip through flesh, bone and Kevlar as you squeeze of the right trigger of your controller, then you must purchase Z-coins. There is an off-set here. Partially I think that without Z-coins you will be in a long trial to get decent gear to oppose, yet consider that this is all multiplayer and for those who are not really into this, it means no $99 and this is good, you can invest $10 to get decent gear. I think the approach is pretty good in this economy. This approach is better than try before you buy and is a decent business model. There are others that do this too and some have too steep a curve of costs, but Blacklight seemed reasonable.

For the iPad there is ‘Elemental Kingdoms’. A game, which is free to play and as you play and win, you get coin, which allows you to buy packs with random cards. It is easy to play, the game looks extremely well and the artwork is amazing, the cards unlike with actual cards evolve as you invest in the card, making it more powerful. If you purchase gems with your own cash you can buy packs with more rare cards and better rare cards, which makes for better odds. New players will get double the amount of gems with their first purchase. a good approach.

So, this is the good model, some like it, some do not, but nothing is for free and this way you get the pleasure to try and the option to grow without spending a cent. Those eager to step forward quicker can place $10-$25 and get a head start.

  1. The demons

Here we have the bad side. Whether we go after the Forza games, Gran Turismo or the classic which should now be regarded as an utter joke on the iPad! Prices range from roughly $7.5 for 500,000 in game credits to $75 for 7 million credits. Now consider that one car could cost you 20 million credits, which would be one of the extreme top cars, but that means one additional car at around twice the price for the whole game. How is this even considered sane? This pales by comparison when we see a great classic like Dungeon Keeper seems to push people to invest vast amounts of money into gems so that the player can get anywhere. This is free-to-play?

These are two extremes, yet how does this relate to the initial issue?

This is where the future takes us. The market on many levels is pushing for micro transactions on all fields. Whether it is an app or just a service, it is not just a worry, the future as we see it comes again from the Apple Market. This is not just the versions of the iPhone6 (plus or not), but the other options like the Apple Watch, where we see an interaction between watch and phone. This sounds like a decent gimmick, yet did you consider the exploitation of the consumer through services via micro transactions as well as the events we get as Apple collects all this data? It is not just Apple, where one goes Google will follow and the entire debate we saw on copyright now gets a whole new meaning as people on a global level sign up for ‘services’. This is where packaging of services will truly get a consequence. What if you have Foxtel?

Now we revisit the following statements:

Ed Husic: “Abbott Govt should tackle copyright, pricing, access simultaneously and not just @copyrightau 1st“

Brendan Molloy: “fix your business models“

Jonathan Blow “Saying 300,000 servers when they are virtual, is a lie“

I think that the business models have been adjusted, yet I think the adjustment is moving in a very dangerous direction. The Ed Husic nail is getting hit by a massive hammer; there is, at the core of these changes a need to immediately revisit pricing and taxation sides. You see, the ‘micro-transactions’ might seem small, but it reflects on the dangers we face how the frog will not jump out of the pot when the water is slowly brought to a boil, when we react to micro transactions, we will react too late. In this economy we need to make sure the consumer is protected as well as the national coffers, because when Apple and Google start their $0.99 a month service per service we will be hoisting millions a month outside of Australian tax shores, whilst at the same time collecting all that data to be resold and analysed at the other end giving them additional billions in revenue. The Privacy act will not guard us in any way for this new consumer wave. This all brings me to the question, how much do Telstra, Optus and iiNet know at present? Does the intelligence community realise this change of data and how can they keep track of some of the more shady events. Last but not least, when ‘3rd party’ people start pushing out data apps, how can this tsunami of data even be sifted through?

The final part will get us to the conclusion (at (at http://thenextweb.com/apple/2014/09/01/this-could-be-the-apple-icloud-flaw-that-led-to-celebrity-photos-being-leaked/) we see that last week someone took a look at certain events. and it gives us this quote “The vulnerability allegedly discovered in the Find My iPhone service appears to have let attackers use this method to guess passwords repeatedly without any sort of lockout or alert to the target. Once the password has been eventually matched, the attacker can then use it to access other iCloud functions freely“. As stated, this is not a fact at present, but it does give serious voice to the hacked phones.

Things you might think that have no bearing, but as we consider the case of the 101 naked celebrities (like Disney’s Dalmatians for adults), what else can outsiders get access to when people start using these new gadgets? If we consider that the financially well off start using these innovations first, how long until this clear target becomes a target of interest to the cyber-criminal?

So many issues linked to the changing topic. My question, what topic SHOULD have been debated? This is not about copyright perse, but that links to all of this, it is about a missing league of securities that endangers the lives of many Australians and none Australians alike. It is a change to facilitate for profit and data to be handed to big business at the expense of our personal, social and economic safety. Sides many seem to ignore.

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September 8, 2014 · 20:41

The Toothless tiger

It is roughly 1,544,400 minutes since we saw this message “The newspaper and magazine industry today takes the first steps towards setting up the Independent Press Standards Organisation, the new regulator for the press called for by Lord Justice Leveson” (at http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/08/jul/13/independent-press-standards-organisation, in July 2013).

So when I saw the words ‘press’, ‘regulator’ and ‘sham’ together in one sentence (at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/07/victims-press-regulator-ipso-leveson ) I was not that overly surprised. Let’s not forget that the implied innuendo in regards to the press cleaning up its act was never a reality.

You see, after all that visibility, on March 25th we see the report from the Daily Telegraph with the headline “Flight MHG370 ‘suicide mission’“, was anyone even surprised that the press regards themselves ‘beyond the law’?

Yet, if we are to properly assess the situation, we must therefore also allow matters of defence. So what is the issue that bites us so much? The letters from the 30 victims of press intrusion stated to Sir Alan Moses the following (as stated in the article of the Guardian):

“By rejecting the majority of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations, the paymasters and controllers of Ipso are rejecting due process”

“In its current form, Ipso retains no credibility with us or with the wider British public.”

It furthermore states: “it was not truly independent, breaches of the industry code of practice would go unreported and unpunished, and there would be no effective and transparent investigation of serious or systematic wrongdoing“.

Now, after what happened in the hacking scandal, I am all for bashing the press, but let us all be honest, if we are to convict a group, let us do it for valid and preferably legal reasons.

About these pictures!

This all links to several issues that I wrote about in the past few days, Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton might be the most famous ones, but they are by no means to most important ones (I feel for these victims, but reality shows us bigger problems). Yes, there is an issue that links to Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. If we go by the words of Reddit, we should use the quote “The site, which had an online forum named ‘The Fappening’, was one of the main places the hacked nudes were being posted and the website has now banned the page, six days after the photographs of the Hunger Games star first surfaced. It is thought the main reason bosses have finally pulled down the forum is NOT because of the J-Law snaps, but because photographs of Olympian McKayla Maroney which were also posted on the site are believed to show her underage.” which came from the Mirror. These places have been hiding behind the ‘innocent disseminator‘ flag for far too long. Their income is real and based upon bandwidth. If we want change, then perhaps forcing a tax bracket on bandwidth, especially with a bankrupt America, might be a novel way for debtors to get their coin back. Yet this is not about that. The fact that Jennifer Lawrence is now partially safe is only because another victim was a minor when the pictures were taken. This makes for a massively inhumane disaster and one that also affects the press. It is interesting that when we look at the name McKayla Maroney we see two events, both the hacked ‘under-dressed’ images as well as the Gamergate reference to Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.

Vox Media stood alone

It is Vox (at http://www.vox.com) who seems to be on top of it, so we see one place, which might be regarded as ‘trivial’ by some covers the real issues that many ‘major’ papers have been ignoring all over the US and in places far beyond the US. You can read their words in depth at http://www.vox.com/2014/9/6/6111065/gamergate-explained-everybody-fighting. It is well worth reading; however, there are a few parts I do not agree with. Let’s go over those, for they are all linked.

Here is the first part: “If it was just to bring attention to Quinn’s personal life, that’s, as stated, already happened. And if it was to create better ethical disclosures in online journalism, that’s happening, too. The Escapist is drafting new guidelines, while Kotaku is now forbidding its writers from financially supporting independent designers on Patreon, a popular method for backing independent artists, unless the site’s writers need to donate to Patreon for coverage purposes (since many developers release material first to their Patreon backers). And Vox sister site Polygon requires disclosures of this sort of support“.

I do not agree for the following reasons:

  1. If we look at the press at large, Quinn’s plight is less than a hot drop on a plate. “Jennifer Lawrence”, “Nude” and “shoot” gives us 41 MILLION hits when we use all the keywords. “Zoe Quinn” gives us 70,000 hits with less than a dozen reputable sources (including Vox Media). So, I think we can safely say that visibility is not even close to being a factor there.
  2. Better ethical disclosures in online journalism? Sorry, but are they for real? Most of these writers have never seen a class in ethics, it is also likely that some of them cannot ever write ‘ethics’ correctly. That being said, many of them write for mere passion on games, their transgression of alleged ‘corruption’ usually goes no further then receiving the free game. How corrupt is that? In all this, my issue with Gamespot has almost forever been with the open sponsor Ubi-Soft. They are not hiding it, so that is good, but I seem to colour my faith to any Ubi-soft review. Overall the writers and makers like Carolyn Petit, Jess McDonell, Danny O’Dwyer, Justin Haywald, Chris Watters, Cam Robinson and Kevin VanOrd do an interesting job. Depending on their ‘preference’ of gaming we tend to favour a certain person, whilst not ‘liking’ another one. The sad news that some of these writers are leaving as Gamespot is changing should be sad news to all gamers.

Scoops

This all goes towards “forbidding its writers from financially supporting independent designers on Patreon“, why? Is the likely fact that reviewers would have the inside track on a game and by personally backing a developer they will have a scoop? Is that not what pretty much every newspaper does? If not, how about cancelling ALL advertisements from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Adobe? How long until they are missing out on scoops? I think support should not hidden, but if I was still in the business I would be funding No Man’s Sky or Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar (I have been a lifelong Ultima fan), if it gives me a scoop days in advance of others, than so much the better. The question becomes is this truly about implied corruption or about mainstreaming a 100 billion dollar plus business? You see, the gaming groups was for a long time ignored (especially in the time I was involved)

True Scenario: “I went to the ‘Efficiency Beurs’ (a Dutch IT/Technology trade show) in the RAI in Amsterdam in the early 90’s (1991/1994), I forgot the exact time. Anyway, I was already deep into the gaming world and sound would be the next big issue. PS speakers were no good, Adlib was an option, SoundBlaster was the new kid and those with real money (read wealthy parents) there was the Roland card, which costed a fortune. This is the age when the PC was a wild market, CBM-64 and Atari were on a high and the PC was relying on blips and bleeps. So, I walk to the IBM representative and asked him on the new PS/2 PC’s and whether the soundcards in the growing gaming market was a field that IBM was looking at, as well as, whether IBM had considered adding a sound card to the PC-Private projects (which was a tax deductable PC scheme in the Netherlands). I was ‘walked off’ the stand with the response that IBM was for ‘professional’ use only. This same IBM is now advertising ‘Smarter Serious Games’ (at http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/gaming/)“.

So, these ‘losers’ (just to coin a phrase), who would not consider this industry for a long time are now trying to leech of a 100 billion dollar industry by ‘Simming’ (Sims joke) it on, so nice of IBM to join the party almost two decades late (they did however join the party decently before 2013). So now we get this escalation on several fields and interestingly enough all at the same time. Several approaches of wild growth is seen, personally I reckon this all truly took off in high gear in September 2013 when one game made one billion in only three days and passed the 2 billion mark this June making a videogame more successful then the most successful Hollywood production in history. Now nearly everyone wants to jump on board and it also seems to allow for a ‘wild growth’ of certain ‘elements’. IBM is not a party to this (they move in different circles), yet, those growing wildly on our shores hoping for their billion are learning hard and fast that gamers can easily spot the quality from the chaff and as such we see escalations. Whether we take Forbes article (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-system-how-a-gaming-journalist-lost-his-job-over-a-negative-review/) for granted or not, it seems that the name Sony and the possibility of pulling away advertisements apply in several corners (like the PS4 release and Terms of Service issues). So, to avoid ‘ethical’ issues, it seems to me that newspapers at large just ignored the plight of over 60 million customers and any link to ‘changes to the terms of service’. So how does this all link to ‘corruption’?

That is the part that seems to elude many, it is not ‘just’ about corruption, it is about alleged corruption with the writers (emphasis on alleged), implied corruption with their bosses in what they publish but more importantly what they DO NOT publish. The last part is on streamlining it all. If anything, GTA-V shows us that a billion plus revenue takes more than just a good game, it is about marketing and advertising, which shows now exactly the issue on visibility.

I am not alone with these views; some of them were discussed by Ashton Liu in her blog at http://rpgfanashton.tumblr.com/. She has an interesting view I had not considered. She writers “It has been no secret to the gaming community that many video game news sites have been employing increasingly extremist and reprehensible tactics to gain site hits and forward their ideology“. In that regard she seems on top of it all, I saw the harassment of Quinn and Sarkeesian as idiots who should go the way of the Dodo yesterday, if at all possible. Yet in her view, we are dealing with more than just blatant ‘ranters’, it is entirely possible that there is a corporate push behind it all. If we consider the actions by Sony and the market they need to ‘rule’ is that such a far-fetched statement? If people are willing to sell their souls for a niche market, what is Sony willing to do to remain the number one on the market, especially if you can motivate non-journalists (read non-accountable people) to speak out loudly?

What makes a Journalist?

It is a side, that until the article of Ashton Liu I had ignored. Ashton is like me, an ideologist, we seem to share a passion for RPG games and we are willing to put some time into sending the message of the Role Playing Game, hoping to introduce it to others. Yet, part of the view she offers seems incorrect, is this all about true gaming journalists? Many of them are not journalists at all, they do not have a degree in journalism, so let’s all agree that unless the person has a degree in Journalism that this person is just a games reviewer (I myself am a games reviewer), I have degrees in Law and IT, but not in Journalism, which makes me a non-journalist!

This is where the issues become (slightly) clear. Many are not journalists at all, so journalists are compared to ranters and outspoken ideologists, whilst not getting painted on grounds of evidence, which is almost slander (I said almost). We are all in need of more clarity, clarity I am asking for, whilst trying to remain clear, clarity Ashton is trying to give the readers and there are the additional thousands online, ranting all over the place. So what is a reader to believe?

Corporations

Perhaps that is the part we all forgot about? We seem to ignore the corporate site. Is that the background of those who remained with Gamespot? Is CBS changing the gaming area by starting to cut away the ‘non-professional’ staff? I do not know, I am asking this. I have no issue with any writer at Gamespot (even if they cater to games I never play), their passion has for a long time been without question, yet, if this streamlining requires the presence of education, not just knowledge, then those without Journalistic skills to be ‘relocated’ and not all end up within the CBS structure.

So as Ashton made the statement I disagreed with “These journalists behave terribly and browbeat anyone whose opinions don’t fall lock step with their own“, the question “which are the real journalists” come to mind. This is where we return to Leveson, the issues that IPSO is accused of and how this relates to Journalism.

IPSO is regarded as a toothless tiger (perhaps correctly so), yet as papers are more and more online and as we see more and more ‘contributions’ from critics and reviewers, we will see that their painting of a group ‘as ignored’ as stated by the phone hacking scandal victims, we see a corporate move by many newspapers that employ reviewers and critics who are likely non-members of the official Journalistic core, but in the online mash no one can really tell anymore. This is at the heart of several issues, next to the editors relying on people whose family name tends to be “well-placed sources within”; I wish I had a relative like that.

This all gets me to the only part of the Vox article that I have an issue with. It is not really an issue, it is more a disagreement. They stated “Because what #GamerGate is all about isn’t who is or isn’t a gamer, or what role the press should play. It’s about what games should be and who they should be for. And that’s worth a real discussion, not just a hash tag“. I think that anyone enjoying a game is in the smallest extent a gamer, and as his or her passion grows, so will the Gamer part of that person. I think it is MASSIVELY important the part the press plays and to some extent they need to be judged on what they publish and to some extent even more on what they ignore, not unlikely for favours from the advertisers. You see, what happens when it is no longer them, but also the stakeholders? Consider the stakeholders for projects of Ubi-Soft and Electronic Arts. The moment they start ruffling feathers on ‘their’ dividend and the press ‘obliges’ that is the true moment when we will no longer see whatever ails a gaming community. When it goes through a journalist we do end up with the smallest protection, but ‘small’ beats ‘none’ every time.

It is ‘what games are and who they are for‘ is as I agree an important discussion, yet the implied evidence at present gives little support that that true vision will come from #Gamergate, because anyone willing to develop a game, no matter what gender, what topic and what ethnicity of graphics we are presented with should be a reason for bias and/or discrimination. These are parts #Gamersgate seems to be ignoring.

Streamlining is also all about who owns the IP, that is the one part they all seem to ignore, if the future is about IP (Intellectual Property), then it is the novel idea that has the future of gaming fortune, which is all about streamlining in the eyes of EA, Ubi-soft and Sony (to name a few big companies in this field), you see, who owns the IP will continue and not unlike the flaccid economists of Wall Street, larger companies have been all about continuing a brand and less about the new idea, which makes indie developers the future (consider the massive success of Mojang with Minecraft), that is the streamline part all ignored. This is why I think it is important to protect them! This is seen in the slightly dangerous statement by Vox Media in the article as they state “Some argue that the focus on harassment distracts from the real issue, which is that indie game developers and the online gaming press have gotten too cozy“, is that true, or are the larger players realising that they passed the buck for too long and driving a wedge between the press and the Indie developer is essential to their survival as they try to ‘rekindle’ the press and push indie developers towards the ‘cheap’ deals where they can take over the IP. That part is at large ignored by most. If we look at 2014 we see a massive host of new versions of the same brand, whilst none of the truly new games are coming out in 2014. Splatoon, ignored by many is the new kid and so far it seems that it might largely drive sales for Nintendo. You see these larger houses have forgotten to cater to THEIR audience (not just bring a cool presentation about something not due for 15 months) and as such are under scrutiny facing an endangered future. When we see a headline like this ‘Battlefield 4 – It’s so bad, its actually funny!‘, they know that they are in trouble, no matter how much you pay marketing to focus on the small stuff and micro transactions, which some call ‘Blood Money‘. In my view this is partially the result of letting ‘Excel users’ anywhere near the gaming market and when these investments do not pan out panic will be the natural consequence.

Back to IPSO

Yet, this also reflects on IPSO, because is the story ignored not as irresponsible as calling a tragedy a suicide mission? I wonder if the two elements would have been anywhere near as extreme if IPSO had not been toothless. I cannot state this for America, but I am certain that many gaming issues would have been a lot more visible, which might have reduced the risk and abuse of both Quinn and Sarkeesian. If you do not believe the press to have any influence, then consider the Art ‘expose’ called “Fear Google“, which is exactly the method of News the Sun used to rely on for at least one page (a page 3 joke only the British understand), or as we could call it, how Rupert Murdoch got through his early years. So here we see the beginning of the future, as Jennifer will end up getting shown to the world in states of non-dressing, her stolen pictures are less likely to be stopped as they are not getting sold, even if sold, the chance of enough people getting convicted becomes a serious question.

We can safely say that there is a group of toothless tigers, law partially became toothless as it catered to business enterprise and as we see more and more ‘free’ services we see an abundance of innocent dissemination that no one seems to be able to stop, ‘oh yes’, for some reason many were ‘suddenly’, within hours, able to stop the film where a Journalist ‘suddenly’ lost his head. It seems that ‘sudden’ acts are at times possible, so why this entire system is not better regulated is to be perfectly honest beyond me, but you better realise that someone is making loads of money, not just the hacker (read: thief) that got a hold of the pictures.

 

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September 4, 2014 · 10:58

Values of insanity

I need to revisit my last article ‘Evolving our lives’, not the article itself, I thought it was a decent article and I stand by what I write. It is the massive absence of visibility that I see in the press that is so overwhelming, that it makes me wonder what on earth is going on.

You see, the fact that someone hacked the phone of Jennifer Lawrence is ‘great’ news. It had several pages of links of all shapes and sizes. I feel for Jennifer, I am happy that she is taking a stand and I hope her lawyer gets to take the hacker and his family to the cleaners for the next 5 generations.

The statement from her attorney Lawrence Shire is quite clear “This is obviously an outrageous violation of our client Kate Upton’s privacy. We intend to pursue anyone disseminating or duplicating these illegally obtained images to the fullest extent possible” (source: Perez Hilton at http://perezhilton.com/cocoperez/2014-09-02-kate-upton-leaked-nude-photos-addresses-statement).

My issue is not with Jenifer, as I stated I do feel for her. It is the LA Times (and many other US newspapers) that I am having an issue with. The LA Times who published only 10 hours ago: “After illegally obtained nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other actresses were made public Sunday, the FBI is on the case — and so is Lena Dunham“.

It is interesting that the FBI is all about the famous, yet, as it is portrayed Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and a few others, who seem to be the object of extreme hatred and this visibility, remains mostly absent.

Now, I do not agree with some of the views Anita Sarkeesian had, especially in her video ‘Women as Background Decoration (Part 2)’, she is entitled to this view. She does bring in several cases a correct view, but again the fact that the view of the Darkness 2 is pretty much how the comic depiction is was not stated. Also is not stated that the prostitutes in Assassins Creed 2 and Assassins Creed 2 brotherhood were a weapon for Ezio Auditore to kill from hiding and to remain unseen. There is more than just a game here and courtesans were a reality in that era in Italy.

Consider the following historical fact “The Venetian authorities became concerned that it was impossible to distinguish between courtesans and respectable women. Rules drawn up in 1543 determined what the courtesans could wear” and “There was a red light district in Venice but there were also courtesans who were less obvious. They were educated prostitutes who were refined and well dressed and serviced the social elite“. This is how reality was. There is no real defence from me, for the most Anita Sarkeesian gives a truthful view, even though that view is not giving the whole picture. The same she does with watchdogs, where not just women, but also men are the target, yet her reasoning does hold water. In addition, the issues as shown in Far Cry 3 are not unknown (at http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21586575-laws-punish-domestic-violence-are-too-often-honoured-breach-everyday-aggression) the economist and many others show that there is an abundance of violence against women. This does not make it okay, but it is a reality we are all still fighting against. The economist states “it is a slow process“, I personally think is “a much too slow process“. There have been several views by many people that things have to change and I personally believe that Anita Sarkeesian should be allowed to voice these issues in safety and whilst not getting harassed.

My issues only partially against that view is that Bethesda (Fallout, Fallout New Vegas, Oblivion, Skyrim) and Lionhead studios (Fable series) and Electronic Arts (Mass Effect series) offer the option of creating a main female character, that part she left out. In addition, Female Shepard from the Mass Effect series is just as deadly as the male one. Yet, I admit these seem to be exceptions.

As Anita and Zoe are real people, why is their safety not more strongly advocated? Anita Sarkeesian’s dangers made the Washington post, yet it seems that these people (both Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn) seem to have escaped the view of the bulk of all American Newspapers. An Indie game developer stood up for her, his name is Phil Fish. When I looked for more info, I found this description on some Wiki page “Phil Fish (Powerword: Jacques Paul Philippe Poisson) is a shitty video game designer who received immense praise following his creation of a Super Paper Mario rip-off called “Fez”. A filthy hipster, Fish is widely reviled on the internet mostly because he’s a douche and a drama whore. He’s also French Canadian, which goes a long way towards explaining why he’s such a stuck-up narcissistic twat“. The hatred spilt all over several sites is unbelievable, now, perhaps the man has an ego issue, I do not know, because I do not know the man, yet his quote in support for Zoe Quinn drove a level of hatred that is beyond belief.

Let’s get back to the issues involving women.

There is an anti-women group in gaming wave going on that seems to be utterly unparalleled and is far beyond any normal dimensions. I have no idea how repugnant something called ‘the Daily Caller‘ is. Yet consider the issue. A model named Kate Upton, her phone was hacked and we see this “So What Does Rep. Fred Upton Think About Kate Upton’s Hacked Nude Photos?“, which intros as: “Michigan U.S. Congressman Fred Upton is staying personally silent on the weekend hacking and posting of nude pictures belonging to his niece, model and actress Kate Upton“, so the man is her uncle and he is asked to give his view on his naked niece? How sick is this reporter? This was not some photo-shoot in Playboy and Penthouse, no this was the violation of her privacy and many are making ‘light reporting’ of it all. This is a side that Anita Sarkeesian seemed to have missed in her article, it is not just the gaming image but the press is to some extent glorifying this! Is it such a wild assumption that this is bringing a new low level of cyber-paparazzi? I wonder how much money lawyer Lawrence Shire could get and how much publications will bring in revenue on this matter. This is not about objectifying women, this all reads as a chauvinist tactic ‘to keep women in their place‘, which, if true is a crime as heinous as the acts Pol Pot’s killing of well over a million people. Does anyone remember the Killing Fields or did you all forget that massacre?

The victims are given this response “After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions“, so if there is a targeted attack, where did it come from? We get back to the basic need of a secure internet. The system has been built on such levels of ‘convenience’ for speed, that the entire issue of security seems to have been ignored to some degree (a targeted attack that becomes a successful transgression is one that requires investigation). You see, if we accept that any system can be transgressed upon, that it stands to reason that a clear market for the wealthier client is required. Consider the news that the US president was not allowed to have an iPhone and we read “explaining why he is sometimes seen with a bulky super secure Blackberry“, why are the personal assistants of both Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton not looking into that field? Yet, are these not new values of insanity?

Why should any woman need these additional levels of protection from criminals like these? It all goes back to the issue of non-accountability. People can do whatever they like and no one will be there to stop them. If we see the years of publications and the years of recorded issues on Domestic violence, we see an utterly flaccid legal system with too little actual results. The internet is just a new iteration of inaction.

Yes, the FBI is looking into this, yet how long until these women see results? How long until Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian can go home in relative safety for using their right to free speech? How long until the international press will take these issues and goes for real coverage of the issue, and not in some feigned opposition view as we saw in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/01/how-to-attack-a-woman-who-works-in-video-games) with text like “So, for those out there who have decided to join in and harass a woman developer or critic out of the games business, this is how you do it“.

Did the Guardian print the following in their papers: “If you want to take a good honest look at the breasts of Jennifer Lawrence and perhaps more, this is how you hack the phone“? Oddly, that is not what was printed, so why these two values? Yes, I know that the piece of Zoe Quinn was in sarcasm against the harasser, but I think it missed the point, especially as there is an abundance of non-journalistic sources burning her, whilst only the Guardian gave her any (but debatable) visibility. Is this the realistic view of Anita Sarkeesian view that women are objectified, yet now in a very real way?

Moving forward

I hope that Lawrence Shire might be willing to place a few calls and get a group of real journalists into the plight of both Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn, possible with Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton standing next to them. You see, I think that this is all linked to a much bigger problem, if the threat to both Quinn and Sarkeesian is unreal, then people have a right to know, but if the threat is real then ignoring the threat is no less criminal then what the hackers are trying to publish. All this whilst the media is just printing the names that will improve their circulation, so in their view, the lives of Quinn and Sarkeesian have no value and are ignored.

I will accept that a Hollywood star is news, however, within the last 15 minutes as I was writing this last night speculations regarding Jennifer Lawrence grew by 12 pages, not one fact on either Quinn or Sarkeesian by any reputable source was added. This is not life in the fast lane, this is ‘garbage in the junk lane‘ and too many who should be vocal, remain silent.

The responses

Emma Watson’s response on Twitter is perhaps the clearest “Even worse than seeing women’s privacy violated on social media is reading the accompanying comments that show such a lack of empathy“. Yet, I am personally not certain whether she is correct; when the by-line from the Independent ends with ‘Poor Jay Law!‘ which was read by another woman in a tone of ‘ah well’ we can safely state that the matter is a whole lot worse. The tweet from Ricky Gervais, although badly received is deeper than some realise “Celebrities, make it harder for people to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer“, which might read as “When you are famous, you have no inherent rights of ANY kind, which means that either you pose naked for the press at large or someone will get those shots for them“.

Which gives us the unjust consideration “Breasts and genitals are coin, coin is essential, you are only temporary!” Whether Ricky Gervais was actively trying to state this, or “The only safe nude of you is no nude of you!” is up to Ricky Gervais, but I hope that my way of stating this all shows that the dangers women at large face (famous and non-famous alike) seems to be escalating. The view that “Domestic or partner violence is a global concern. Worldwide 30% of partnered women will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime” is not a figment of anyone’s imagination, yet the fact that women overwhelmingly do not report these issues and only a fraction of the reported issues are successfully prosecuted remains a fact. This all links to all the issues we saw earlier.

There is an implied inherent air of ignoring, not prosecuting and persecuting these offences, yet overall these issues are more and more visible. I do personally disagree with my previous statement, yet consider the amount of registered domestic violence occurrences and how many of them were successfully prosecuted? Here I do not blame the police; it seems to me that at times their hands are tied even more than those of the victim. Consider the quote from the less likely reporting instance (the Daily Mail). “Domestic abuse prosecutions more than doubled from 35,000 in 2005 to 74,000 in 2010, and the conviction rate increased from 46 per cent to 72 per cent“, yet as we have seen from several sources like the CPS we see: “Nearly 1 million women experience at least one incident of domestic abuse each year (2009/10 British Crime Survey data: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb1210.pdf as reported in latest cross-government VAWG strategy http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/crime/call-end-violence-women-girls/vawg-paper?view=Binary)“, so in 2010 we still see that less than 10% makes it to court, for whatever reason, so that 72% is not a victory it is nothing less than a joke on a massive failure in my view.

That what follows!

For some reason the NSA has an abundance of data, yet women remain in fear of life, we see that consultants and federal agents are looking into the mailbox and pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, yet no progress has been made. You see, something does not add up, when you target 101 celebrities, it means that you are trying to invade 101 secured accounts, now, it might be possible to get ‘easy’ access to some of them, but 101 targets gives the FBI a place to hunt, this is another question that boggles me and I do have a postgraduate degree in this area. Yes, I know that there is plenty of technology around, but in all these issues, traffic needs to occur and specific points were accessed. How did Perez Hilton get her pictures so fast? Was his ‘apology’ sincere? Was he used or was he the go between so that the global press knows that they are truly out there and for sale?

I do not have the answers, yet, here we see again a press driven value of insanity and let us be honest, at present there is no end in sight and too many women are currently in the firing line, not a firing line of Misogyny, but one of Inaestimabilis (non-English for worthlessness), which is a much more dangerous notion, because hatred can be fought, yet if a population at large deem a group to be without value, then we as humanity will have truly become a failure.

Should you consider me wrong (which is forever a valid consideration) then answer the following questions for yourself:

  1. In the US the following numbers were published by the Huffington post: “Number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq: 6,614: Number of women, in the same period, killed as the result of domestic violence in the US: 11,766“, now make a 1% list, so make a list naming 66 dead soldiers and naming 117 women killed through domestic violence. How long did it take to make either list?
  2. The following two facts come from Steve Stewart, Prosecuting Attorney, Clark County, Indiana. Namely “Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States, more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. (“Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report,” Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p.3.)” and “There are 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters. (Schneider, 1990)” Now, these numbers are a little old, but even then a dog was more than twice as likely to receive safety and treatment than an abused woman.

Where to go next? Well, that is as ever a good question and I am honestly not certain. In my view, placing these issues in the light and coverage by all papers it needs to have is an absolute first. I also think that the US Congress needs to think this through to a larger extent, they should consider that as UK and Australian law is a little better in protecting privacy they should consider the consequence of these women, packing up for a large part of the year and move to Sydney Australia (or London). These places have the same exotic shopping places and they are more likely to enjoy privacy away from the US, how would congress react when the Hollywood top feels safer outside the US and ends up spending their millions outside of the US? I wonder if Governor Jerry Brown truly considered the dangers that the lacking and hacking safety of women will bring him (and the state of California).

 

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September 1, 2014 · 22:29

Evolving our lives!

This article is not for the faint of heart. This is not for the people who think that life is all sunny and joy. So if you are any of these people, then read not on and return when my next story comes online.

You see, in my mental world I am about to pick up an axe, I sneak upon the man who has no idea what is about to happen. I sneak, slowly into the den, the door was open this warm September and he likely hoped for the breeze to cool him down. Suddenly he feel one hot gush of water over his chest, he looks down, it is not water. It is the hot blood gushing from his skull, the blood that rains is his, he cannot shout out, blood is everywhere, he falls on the rug with a ‘thump’, he is no more! I hear the voice from the kitchen ‘what was that dear! Are you alright?‘ I hear the footsteps, she is not walking fast. I move to the left into the shadows, I see her silhouette, she seems to see the blood and that what was left of her husband. I had already placed the hunting knife in my left hand; it slices through her throat in less than a second. She goes down on her knees, looking at me, not having any idea why she is getting hurt. She had died before her head hit the ground.

I get the knife and the axe and roll them in linen. I grab the bottle from the bag and place the knife and the axe within the canvas bag with linen coating. I add ammonia to mask the scent of the blood, in case a police dog gets near. I look at my feet; they are covered in lamb coated overshoes. My overall is thin but sturdy. I take out the billy club. I slowly walk to the staircase; I hear the sounds of gunfire from a video game. I sneak up slowly and see that the door of the room is ajar. A boy sites with his back to me, it is time to put on my ski mask. I slowly sneak in and observe the equipment and I hit him hard to the side of the head and quickly turn the sound up by a lot. Not hard enough to kill him, that is not my goal. He is reeling at the edge of losing consciousness; I slap his face hard with an open hand. The leather glove makes the sound more intense. I pull him up and hit him in the gut with enough strength; he buckles over gasping for air. He looks up in sheer terror. I gag him with duct tape and cuff his wrists at the back, I drag him downstairs.

I place the cable ties on his thumbs and index fingers as close to the Opponens Pollicis as possible. He looks at the bodies of his parents, he is now truly afraid. I look at him and say “Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish did not care for your harassment!” I put the mask on his face; the nails will slowly but not fatally bite into his face. Last I tighten cable ties as much as possible. Within the hour, amputation will be the only option left to him. His life will never ever be about gaming of harassing again! I walk away with the bag in my hand, not giving the little troll a second look. Within the hour all evidence that I ever existed will be gone, so will I and he will only know fear until his dying day!

This is just a story! This is nothing more than a rant of frustration, dressed in the cloth of a short story, dealing with my frustration like Percy Bysshe Shelley, Stephen King or Virginia Woolf. Although I tend to take the high road, this time it is Slate who has the high moral ground (at http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/08/zoe_quinn_harassment_a_letter_to_a_young_male_gamer.html), it is an excellent article by David Auerbach about more than just a gaming scandal. I am all about gaming; I have always been all about gaming. The fact that more and more women are entering this field is filling me with joy. Yes, for now this market is all about the man, but consider that over time, we have seen women leading in artistic fields. We have given our souls to Diablo, Minecraft, Oblivion, Fallout and a league of other games. Would it not be great if we get another wave of amazing games? For now Tombraider has sold itself short. The game is nowhere near the first two which broke the mould of good gaming. We saw the rise and fall of Origin, Rare and several others, all bringing us great games. Now women come and I hope we see a host of amazing games to follow. So when I see such hate and harassment from men (99.4233% sure that the harassers are not women) it just pisses me off. The fact that these people are not hunted into extinction gets to me to some degree. I did not get the hate people showed because Caroline Criado-Perez successfully championed for Jane Austen to be the new figure on the ten pound note. For the same reason I do not get the fact that Zoe Quinn is persecuted either. The idea to bring the awareness of depression is a great idea; I wish I had thought of it. It had several review, our own Tim Biggs of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote “Tim Biggs, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, also stressed the lack of fun in the game, and went on to say that the game was ‘a testing and, at times, a boring experience to go through.’ However, he praised the game’s execution, and acknowledged its importance as a tool for raising awareness of depression and for helping its sufferers“.

OK, not the greatest review for a game, but who remembers Superman for the Nintendo 64? I still consider it the very worst game I ever beheld for reviewing!

So, why is there such an overwhelming hate for these women. This all was brought to light because someone speaking out for them (Phil Fish). I did not play his game either, but the movies and the views give an interesting and original game play. So, it does not look like anything Ubi-Soft releases, but consider that ‘their’ Prince of Persia released in the 80’s (Broderbund released it) had no great graphics either, now it is a billion dollar company, we all have to start small.

So what about Zoe Quinn?

Well, the accusation is that she slept with a reporter to get a better review, but that is not entirely correct either. She got harassed shortly after the release and before her ‘ex-boyfriend’ made his claims. So what is it about this particular group of losers who feel so threatened about women in the gaming industry? They must be losers, because if they were not, then they would have their own brands of success, but that seems not to be the case. I think that if anonymous is the idealist it claims to be, then they would stand up for these women and publish the names and addresses of all of these bullies, you see, trolling is all fine, as long as we all know who you are, they become liable. It should stop two issues with one group all at once. But are the allegations true? Actually, does that matter? Perhaps a journalist got ‘lucky’, perhaps not. The real question is, is it a good game?

Yet, the issue does matter, you see, her ex, who is ‘hiding’ on his blog and accuses her of acts. Hiding the fact that the relationship was a bust and she did not stand still, she created something! Motherboard quotes “he accuses Quinn of sleeping with various prominent figures in the video game industry, including a writer at Kotaku“, so basically she knew a few guys, is that criminal? the information motherboard gave (at http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/zoe-quinn-slut-shaming-the-feminist-conspiracy-and-depression-quest) “Gamers have been complaining about corruption in video game journalism for years now” is not new, look at Gamespot and the massive amount of additional visibility that Ubi-Soft enjoys as a sponsor should raise more than just a few flags. But how far does this corruption go? And it is alleged corruption, the question remains, is it really corruption? I started reviewing games in 1988. I got the games, I wrote the articles and I got paid for the published articles. In addition I got to keep the games. I had to pay for the consoles myself (except for 2) and the chief editor kept the Atari Lynx for himself, an act which was slightly irritating, but not the greatest of issues. I went to the ECTS (the UK edition of the E3) a few times, which I paid for myself and deducted it from my taxes. So where is the corruption? I gave an honest review of the game and sometimes if the game was bad I did not bother writing a review for the simple reason that I only got up to 5 pages per issue, why spend it on a bad game, whilst a good game is so much more fun to review. I also tried to steer away from the ‘big titles’ at times; I did not jump onto Command & Conquer in 1995, like everyone else but choose Wing Commander 4, Tekken 2 and Rayman instead. My ex hated Rayman (the end of level laughter), I never regretted my decision. Everyone wrote about Command & Conquer, I showed them different games. The question still remains, why hate Quinn?

Is it because her ex-boyfriend turned out to be a loser? let’s be clear about this, if he was in a relationship and she did cheat on him, he should be angry and walk away, I do not care, it is her life and her choice and if so he is free to walk away and perhaps be angry for a little while, yet he is the only one with the smallest degree to be angry, the other hundreds have absolutely no valid cause for such trolling and harassing behaviour. Consider that we start trolling all the cheaters, the man too! Spam mail would drop to 0%, there would be no bandwidth left for spam mails, which might be a new novel idea to get rid of spam messages.

This is all so stupid, because in the end, the real gamers want to know if the game is any good. In her case, does it matter? Her game was to bring forward awareness of depression, if that works, what could be better? Even if the game is not the greatest one, it is likely to be a whole lot better than Superman on the Nintendo 64. In the end, I hope groups like Anonymous actually do something to help these victims instead of some political agenda, I wonder how ‘loud’ the troll feels when everyone in the street knows their name and where they live, more even if their mommies and daddies realise what losers they are. It is an interesting form of justice!

To some degree I miss reviewing games, I have seen so many classics be born and evolve. I saw underdogs like Broderbund rise and fall, I’ve seen how new generations love the originality of Loderunner, as much as I did when it got released on the CBM-64 and I saw the giant Elite, move from system to system, only to see the concept evolve into Privateer. Later we see part of the original game on tables and PDA’s, now Elite is back in a state of the art version that is to be released this year, still showing the original logo that was on the box of the CBM-64. Yet, the sandbox part, the travels and another side of the foundations of Elite will be seen in 2015, as we explore the galaxy in ‘No Man’s Sky’, in ways the original designer could never imagine (he only had 48Kb to write the program). As my life is drawing closer to an end, I see that timeless games will continue, bringing joy to a new generation and to generations after that, after I am gone. If the world for us as gamers is to move forward then this cannot be only about the man, women should pick up this torch and bring new options and new levels of gaming. In the end it will be a win-win for all gamers.

When we look at long term playing we have seen the big titles, and we all have other thoughts on what makes the great game, but there is also unison, it seems that the bulk all loves Diablo, even since the original release in 1996, it still keeps us busy. Would it not be great if we see new and more surprising games from female developers? Let’s not forget that one of the most famous developers in the early years for gamers was Roberta Williams, co-founder of Sierra-on-line. The bringer of King’s Quest, as early as 1984, a woman was in our gaming midst and she was as good as any of the male developers, letting these trolls win means that we gamers of all genders are missing out, do not let it come to that!

 

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August 30, 2014 · 20:20

Is it offensive?

It is Saturday evening and I am about to chase up a different side. It all started with the Guardian article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/30/angela-lafranchi-who-links-abortion-and-cancer-stars-at-families-congress) and as a non-medical scientist I took great offense to it. Not just that, I found much of the article offensive to some degree. Why you might ask?

Well, that is as ever a fair question. I remain a Christian. I have a Jewish background and the one element (my maternal grandmother) is the one unknown. If she is Jewish, then so am I. My father was a Catholic and I grew up with Catholic links. Yet at some point I turned slightly Anglican. This is all relevant! You see, the Jewish background of my grandfather was kept a secret. I never knew (until 2003), after that I went digging a little and it seemed that my grandfather had a proud heritage, his family, the Lazarus family has links that go back to the pre-Victorian setting of Exeter (UK) going back at least to the mid-18th  century. That is a pretty good achievement, so why keep it a secret?

I grew up being a Catholic boy, but I was never that religious, I had my dark moments and like many youthful man, I so loved my neighbours wife (especially when she was sunbathing) as I was only 17. So, I was pretty much a kid like many others. I turned Anglican, like some others when I learned of the child abuse issues and moreover the way the Catholic Church (in several nations) dealt with it. It made me sick to see such injustice. How does it all link together? Well, there are two sides, the first one is how I react to some information the other is how I want to regard this information.

Part of this article reflects like it is a gathering of loons, which is in part offensive because the average Christian is not a loon, yet they are painted in that corner. It becomes even more offensive when their ‘star’ speaker is Angela Lanfranchi, who links abortions to breast cancer. This is not only wrong; this discredited view should be regarded as psychic assault against Christian women. The American Cancer Society (at http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/moreinformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer) and several other highly reputable sources all over the world state the following “Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women (aside from skin cancer), and it’s the second leading cancer killer in women. Because it can be a deadly disease, it’s one that many women fear” the information then gives us “A 2013 Danish study of over 25,000 women who had at least one full-term pregnancy found no link between induced abortion and breast cancer risk over 12 years of follow-up” this is just one of many studies, yet enough evidence has been given to give proper claim that this link does not exist, so I wonder why Angela Lanfranchi is currently not being investigated and prosecuted for possible psychic assault, I regard the act of scaring women into a pro-life stance is just plain criminal.

This is the most visible, but not the only part that I found offensive. There was more and this part falls to Fred Nile, leader of the NSW Christian Democrats stating “All this softening up of legislation is because we don’t have committed Christians there“. I disagree, we have plenty of committed Christians, but we also have a separation of state and church. I have nothing against any leader who at times as a Christian has moral stances, which he should be allowed to state. Yet, the vast majority of our population has made certain choices in life and these values have been democratically adopted.

He then speaks of a view “A drug-free society. A pro-life society. No pornography or prostitution. A society with wholesome public entertainment. A God-honouring, Christ-centred Christian nation“, I do not agree with it, I oppose it, but I also refuse to personally attack him for it. He has a right to his view as we all allow for a freedom of speech, but I will address this in a moment.

We agree that there are courts, there is rule of law and there is freedom of religion, so why do we see the quote “Catch the Fire pastor Daniel Nalliah founded the anti-Islamic political party Rise Up Australia and famously blamed the Black Saturday bushfires on Victoria’s abortion laws” laws do not set fires, people do, Islam has a peaceful foundation whilst the Catholic church has eradicated at least 17 civilisations, yet they would state that these 17 civilisations were all led by the devil (an assumption on my side).

The article ends with one of the vilest of proclamations “He said 90% of all the world’s poverty was caused by the breakdown of the family unit“, so who is not in poverty? Would that not be those in their Ivory towers (like New York), how many of them are Christians? How many are Atheists and more important, how many of them have a family? Family breakdown did not cause poverty, yet exploitation and greed caused poverty which led to family breakdowns all over the world.

This is all so offensive because the bulk of the Christians are people like me and many of you readers. We have a firm foundation of rational, so why are the loons always so linked to Christianity?

It seems like a self-answering question but it is not.

In regards to my view of abortions I remain on the fence. Pro-life wants to set it to zero, which is just wrong, but the fact that it is so openly available is also not right. There are cases of rape and incest where a woman does not want it, it should be her right to remove that what was forced upon her. The other side is also not acceptable, the Christian woman who kept the baby, is her right, yet the criminal father cannot rely on any chance to be given citizenship. That is exactly what seems to have happened in the UK, the man as the bleeding heart refugee lawyer won the argument that “his right to family life would be violated if he were removed to Nigeria“; the Strasbourg court seems to have little regards for the victims of violent crimes. Can anyone blame the position of Theresa May and her goal to remove the Human Rights Act?

Yes, this is still all about the Christians!

I personally am all for a drug free society, I am not against a pro-life society, but I feel that 100% pro-life is not acceptable either. So what is wholesome public entertainment? This is shown in the next quote “Without God they get filled with they get filled with pornography or terror or computer games“, well the bulk of all people are not violent, even if they have video games. Many are not in league with terror, yet Christians have annihilated the bulk of all non-Christian civilisations, so how are Christians allowed to exist? As for pornography, or better stated ‘erotic art’, the Catholic Church has founded a whole cadre of them. One of the more renowned masters of the erotic arts is Agostino Carracci, who is also responsible for “The Last Communion of St. Jerome” (not the Botticelli edition). So what would you do? Burn those paintings too?

Perhaps these Christians want to take a look at their own past. In early 1497, a priest named Girolamo Savonarola started a few bonfires, this event would later be known as the bonfires of the vanity. Hundreds upon hundreds of paintings and writings were destroyed as they were regarded sinful and immoral. The only person to go to these lengths lately was Adolf Hitler (Kristallnacht), so yes, that is a group of people we all should relate to (you do understand that this is a sarcastic remark?)

In my view such people of visibility have always used religion and the church to proclaim a new era whilst basically bullying behind scriptures. When we look at Savonarola we see “while Savonarola intervened with the king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and, at the friar’s urging, established a popular republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world centre of Christianity and ‘richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever’“, so a seat for the promise of power, something we have never seen before. That last quote came from ‘Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet‘, which gives us another message of a want-to-be-a-prophet-through-violence.

Yet, this is not the church, this is not Christianity. I have seen it in several ways. The mother and her two daughters working every Friday a morning as a volunteer, doing not just good deeds, but simple acts of goodness that are pivotal in making this a better world. Those who speak in kindness even as junks lash out in verbal abuse. There is much wrong in this world and true Christians try hard to make it a better world. They are not visible as speakers or in a forum. They volunteer for the SES, help with houses in need, they are with organisations like Marine Rescue; they work weekends for the heart foundation and the cancer council. They are not in the limelight, yet they are all true Christians. Some are Anglican, some are Catholics and for the most none have any anti-Islamic sentiments.

So here is my opposition to the entire article, whatever they call a ‘family congress’ seems to be a collection of religious loons. God did not speak there, because this message as we read it is about a military tactic. It read that their approach is about segregation, isolation and extermination. None of these tactics are god’s words, they are the words of man and the power hungry drive behind it. After all this one perfectly valid question remains. Why do they call this a ‘World Congress of Families conference’? Isn’t every family made of the children of other families and are they not made from individuals? If the smallest element in an equation is ignored, how can the formula make sense, or even more, be valid to begin with?

 

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August 30, 2014 · 11:03

The Sanctimonious pretender

I saw a smaller headline this morning. It was not a text, but a video from the Guardian. The headline read ‘Why is the United Arab Emirates secretly bombing Libya?’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/aug/29/why-is-the-united-arab-emirates-secretly-bombing-libya-video). The text below the video is “The United Arab Emirates, a small wealthy Gulf state, has been secretly bombing targets in Libya, from bases in Egypt without the knowledge of the US. We explain how the raids reflect new rivalries in the region and are likely to trigger new strains between the west and its increasingly assertive Arab allies“.

There are several sides to this, but let’s start with the obvious ones “without the knowledge of the US“. Since when do we need to tell the US everything? If allies share all information, then can Washington please be so kind to send a 100% backup of their collected NSA data? You see, when we look at the word ally, the Oxford dictionary gives us “A state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose“, but the one that is perhaps more apt is “A person or organization that cooperates with or helps another in a particular activity“. So helps or cooperates in a particular activity, not all activities.

There are two questions linked to all this. The first is “how much of an ally is America?” I do not mean this in a negative light. The reality is that as it stands, USA is no longer a super power. They are limited in their actions and as the Democratic administration has given away nearly all power to banks and debt holders, in addition, there is an increasing visibility on just how dependent USA is on their need for oil. The article shapes another side that might have been unintended. It states “they were once united in their fear of Iran“, the fact that USA has been trying to get a dialogue with Iran is unsettling to many. In addition their slow response to the threat ISIS is also seen in a more negative light. The Iranian change has left the impression that USA will talk with all, this left an uneasy taste in the mouths of the conservative gulf monarchies. For if America is willing to take the ‘easy’ path to their oil, as well as the implied move of America to move away more and more out of the middle east is showing them the question, who should be THEIR ally? This could be the economic prosperous situation that the Commonwealth needs, yet would it be prosperous and moreover, how much of an ally will the Commonwealth nations need to become?

This is part of the view that I have had in other areas as well. Big Business seems to regard any nation with a monarchy as a non-positive area. Big Business is all about their powerbase which allows for a more secure hold on any location where politicians are the powerbase for their profit needs, it allows for changes and settings that are beneficial to large corporations. It seems to me that they cannot get the power foundation they so desire. Although phrased in opposition, KPMG made notion (at http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/10/big_firms_consider_leaving_the.php) of this. They stated in the headline ‘Big firms consider leaving the Netherlands, says KPMG report‘, the quote “Some of the Netherlands’ biggest companies are considering leaving the country because of the worsening climate for entrepreneurs, according to a new report by consultants group KPMG“. It is my view that this is not the actual ‘truth’. As I see it, it should read “Some of the Netherlands’ biggest companies are considering leaving the country because of the required freedom of exploitation that is denied to them“. This is of course my personal view, but considering the tax responsibilities firms have and for now, the pressures on both companies and people for tax accountability in the Netherlands. A board of directors have no national allegiance, just an allegiance for profit. I feel that honest values of accountability have for the most been the best preserved in monarchical states. Which includes the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, and of course the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar. So is there another factor why there is growing uneasy between these states? It seems to me that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have absolutely nothing to gain in the long term to support ISIS, so where are these accusations as well as the implied evidence coming from that they seem to support these Islamic fighters?

The fact that Turkey and Qatar are stated to support Islamic movements is a call for more scrutinies investigations, as that implies that Turkey is now in opposition to its allies US and UK, so what quality evidence is there?

This is in the back of my mind when we look at the evidence. Is it truly the nations, or the larger players in these nations? If large corporations are indeed fuelling political needs of change by giving access to Islamic change, then we have an entirely new game in play. If we consider parts of ‘The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey‘ by Banu Eligür, we see another supporting side. It is the endorsing view by Jack Goldstone from George Mason University that gives us “Eligur shows how Islamists took advantage of the military’s obsession with the left and thus the military’s willingness to ally with them against leftist parties, the growth of a Saudi-supported Islamic business elite, and rapid urbanization, to create expanded networks and opportunities for electoral gains“. This is the side that is only one part. We tend to consider the side of on how Saudi Arabia and Qatar are involved, but we forgot the ‘western part’ in all this. Who exactly are the Saudi-supported Islamic business elite? These people, are they members of the house of Saud or are they exactly the opposite, Islamic members preparing to overthrow the house of Saud and turn a monarchy into whatever comes next. If that ever happens, then we get an entirely new situation. You see, whomever is in charge next can decide on who is allowed into Mecca, I have absolutely no idea what the consequence will be to that city, however I guarantee you that it might be the one spark to set a massive new strain of wars into motion, a destabilisation ISIS has been aiming for, for some time now.

Even though Jordan states to be ready to counter the radical threat, we see a view of widening support for ISIS among Jordanian Islamist fundamentalists inspired by its recent advances in countries neighbouring Jordan, which is a view that many are for now ignoring (likely until it is too late). This would force a massive military change for Israel and Israeli support as it will then be in a worse situation then it was in 1973, almost exactly 41 years ago.

The question becomes, how are they connected? They are not directly connected as events, yet the destabilisation will give a massive boost to the needs of ISIS as the younger population acts and reacts out, not in favour of ISIS, but against Israel due to a multi generation lecture of hatred (read non-acceptance), of the state of Israel. This might become the act tipping the scales in both Saudi Arabia and Oman. For ISIS it would be a win-win premise, if these two nations act out against Israel to appease its population, ISIS would claim to be the Islamic leader against Israel, if these nations hold off, they would create additional discord within the populations of both Saudi Arabia and Oman, which would only push the ISIS agenda forward more strongly.

So who is the Sanctimonious pretender?

As far as I can tell, they are the members of the boards of directors, in several cases just the man at the top who is pushing through support for certain extreme agenda’s so that a long term profit game can be played. The question would become would ISIS keep their word, or will they divide and exterminate this ‘infidel’ based support later on, for if we regard the meaning of infidel as ‘those who doubt or reject the central tenets of one’s own religion‘, are these people not digging their own graves?

Here is an Islamic view on greed: “Watch out for greed because the people before you perished from it. Greed led them to be miserly so they became misers. Greed led them to break the ties (of kinship) so they broke it. Greed led them to sins so they committed sins. (Abu Dawud)“, a view that was created almost a century before Christians went on the Crusades. Even then, Islamic view opposed the utter destruction that greed embraces.

If we do not start acting (read more than planning) for any solution that stops extremism, we might be left without options and the only oil America gets is whatever they can buy from Venezuela, Canada or Russia, which might make for a very uncomfortable oil price and a future we should all enthusiastically avoid.

 

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August 27, 2014 · 11:10

Which coin?

This morning I was confronted with my own thoughts of the last few days. I am not stating anything new (at least I hope so). The American issues, the overly visible multi-billion dollar deals and a few other notions. It started earlier this week when I heard that a friend was made redundant. These things happen. It happened to me, it will happen to others too. The issue I had is that for a decent long time we have known that companies for the most are not too bothered with loyalty, for them it is about the bottom dollar, what is interesting is that they tend to DEMAND loyalty to a fault until they cut away the people who loyally served them, in some cases for decades, only to replace them with ignorant junior staff members often costing them less than 50% of whatever they are paying now. This is not new, this had been going on for some time and they do it nice and legal, at times segregating a staff member in a niche position, waiting a year, if that person had been around a long time even two year and then closing down that department, which saves them years of due income in settlements.

Weirdly enough, yesterday’s story about the bankruptcy of America is linked to all that. You see, this entire issue can be reduced to two coins. One coin is the government, on one side we see the view they have of companies and the other side is how companies really are. The second coin is how we see companies and the other side is how companies turn out to be. They are not the same coin, they are an entirely different currency all together!

That is the view the older generation does not seem to comprehend and what the younger generation takes for granted. However, the long term consequence is that companies will end up having the short stick in all this (but about that side more a little later).

Let us take a look at coin number one. The government coin!

Companies, for the most have considered themselves nationalistic, it gives them an identity and also the protection of the government branch should that ever be needed. There is Woolworths, the Australian place to get your Groceries; there is General Motors, an American Company, British Telecom a British company and so on. These are actually the old times, we and with us our governments have had this image. To some extent, an Ambassador still to some degree acts as an intermediary between cooperative businesses to promote trade. So companies get the support of a government enabling them to have easier access to business opportunities. Their importance goes back to the Italian renaissance, more notably when Vittore Carpaccio painted the ‘Legend of Saint Ursula‘ series; they are called Arrival of the Ambassadors, The Departure of the Ambassadors and The Return of the Ambassadors. Ambassadors were the dream of business as they opened doors for trade to commence and increase.

Today this is no longer the case, business has no affiliation to any government when times are good (when times are bad they whine for money and tax breaks), actually they always whine for tax breaks. You see, a company as many can see have only allegiance to their board of directors and the bottom line that they worship in a spread sheet. Today’s corporations are not linked to a nation or a location. Google seems to be the only honest one in that regard. They do not call themselves an American company, but a Global company. Their concept of location is fluid, it shapes to the need of tax relief and where the fastest servers are to acquire the data handed to them by well over a billion people on a daily basis. Yet, this is not about Google! This is about the way business is allowed to be done. In my view it has something to do with spineless politicians (not just in America by the way). As companies were allowed too many degrees of freedom, they opted personal need and gain instead of the greater good. This is not wrong or illegal, yet they use the facilities offered for them with all the freedom, which by the way is as it should be for the most and at the same time these companies syphoned billion through a multitude of tax shelter constructions, all perfectly legal. Did you know that hundreds of millions of people buy their downloads in Ireland?

An option to promote trade has for the better part of almost two decades been used to avoid taxation, not to improve trade and/or long term economic benefits (well they are, but only for the board of directors). The greed economy had been turned against the governments, most not willing to change in fear that they will walk away. This is one of the main reasons why America is basically bankrupt and not just America. Many of the commonwealth nations, amongst them Australia, United Kingdom and Canada who are feeling the effects of people buying online and these governments end up getting $0.00 in any form of taxation whilst the stores are shutting down one by one. HMV and the Virgin Megastores were likely two of the most visible victims of online retail changes, yet the online purchases ended up not having taxation of any kind, which does mean that a nation’s government is losing out.

My initial solution was to make a change that made any online purchase taxable in the land of the buyer, an idea that was never adopted, some thinking they ended up with more perhaps? But all lost out, as the e-Giants remained in tax sheltered nations. Particularly the US and UK missed out on hundreds of millions of tax dollars/pounds.

“Tax administrators face greater difficulties in enforcing tax laws and maintaining their community’s legitimate revenue base when dealing with international rather than domestic transactions, particularly when dealing with a jurisdiction that combines tax haven status with bank secrecy. Increasingly, tax haven regimes with bank secrecy laws in place are accessible to almost anyone with a modem and a computer“, which comes from Mr Carmody, Commissioner of Taxation. It was an Australian Taxation Office Media Release on November 11th 1997. So, this issue has been known for over FIFTEEN YEARS! Who else is late to the party? Well, that would be the United States of America, the United Kingdom, as far as I can tell Canada (not confirmed, due to a lack of knowledge of Canadian tax laws), Australia and this prestigious list goes on for a little while longer. Yes, we were getting played in a most auspicious way by whining, crying small minded board of director members on a global scale.

There is one more side to the first coin (source: http://www.internationaltaxreview.com/Article/3252311/VAT-considerations-for-e-commerce.html). The article subtitles drew me in ‘Nehal Radia considers the VAT implications of e-commerce and how taxpayers can take advantage‘. The article has a few good sides and they are worth reading about, but for me it helps illustrate another side, partially the fact that a view given here is not as I see it to be ‘the correct one’, which by the way, thuy were never debating.

Consider your own financial situation, you the reader. If you have a job, it is more than likely that you have not been getting too many job raises since 2012, yet overall, your rent, your food, your electricity and food bills did go up, in some cases by a sizeable amount. Now consider the quote “According to Forrester Research Inc., US e-commerce spending will increase by 13.4 % to US $262 billion this year, with an expected continuation in growth to $370 billion in 2017. In Western Europe, it is estimated that 2013 e-commerce spending will reach €128 billion ($165.5 billion), up by 14.3% from last year and with expectations of €191 billion ($247 billion) by 2017)“. Really? Do YOU have that much more to spend?

I do not think that this is the case at all, yet, I know Forrester and it is likely that these are indeed the numbers (if they did not make a weighting error). What seems to be happening is that e-Commerce is growing stronger and stronger as this group is avoiding VAT payments more and more, which means that shops are getting shut down as e-Commerce is passing onto you part of the VAT savings. Consider that VAT in the Netherlands is 21% and in Sweden 25%, how can a shop compete when these savings are to some extent passed onto the customer by the e-shop, whilst they can avoid VAT and they do not need a location with rent and electricity. Business views have skewed the market and governments are now losing out massively, whilst their own economy is also suffering under unfair competition practices.

If this is the first coin, I would call this currency ‘slow and asleep at the wheel’.

We are the second coin. Our view has for the most been to work hard, to get the job done and to bring home the bacon. It is a simple view, as we aim to be the ‘return on investment’; we create a comfortable pillow where we rest. Not because we are lazy, or because we do not do our part, but because we know that as long as we get it all done, our boss needs us. He had paid us a decent amount and as we are the cause for more income then we cost, we should all be in a great position. Guess what! We were stupid! Today’s management or better stated, whoever makes the coin decision tends not to be stupid, but to some extent short sighted. You see, he can get the same person in India, or that one person just leaving University, to do almost the same at half the price. Whatever ‘loyalty’ you think your boss has had towards you is no longer there, as we are no longer people we are just part of a spread sheet, as we cost more we get replaced to cost less as to not affect THEIR bottom line, which is usually their profit (read commission). There is of course an issue we should not forget, the economy is still bad, and yes, we have to accept that trimming the fat (the most costly employees) will also happen as some companies are drowning. They are now relying on image, without the revenue to support it. Yet, this is not about that side. The coin is on how we perceive on the company and how the company really is does matter, not how they do business. Is that so?

Is their corporate soul not depending on exactly how they do business?

It is hard to stay on this without getting into the debate on how companies sometimes make hard choices to stay afloat. It is more about the changed spirit of the business soul and how they hope that youthful ignorance might get them these 1-2 deals that keep them going. Yet there is a side which we seem to ignore. It is ‘interpretation’ of business.

Consider the Corporate Image Awards 2014 (something that was brought by the Frontier Consulting Group), a company that is actually an Indonesian company. In their ‘Corporate Image Survey Methodology 2014‘ they actually had a nice twist to this story. They stated for their fourth dimension called ‘attractiveness‘ two parameters, one was called ‘Dream workplace company‘ and the second one was labelled ‘Company with high quality employees‘. Here we see the crux. What is a high quality employee? One that looks dynamic (read 22-25), fast (read slim lined) and get the job done, which reads like within six hours and however many hours of unpaid time they need to finish the job before the deadline, or the veteran can actually get it all done in 6 hours. It is ‘the’ unspoken question that is here and is loudly ignored by those not willing to answer honestly and those who are very unwilling to admit the question, is actually a massive issue. ‘What is a high quality employee?’

I am left with two coins and a question. Are we, both the people and the government too slow to change, or are companies driving us to change in too inhumane ways to protect ‘their’ profit? I feel uncertain to answer it, there are unspoken sides that have not been dealt with and there is the need for greed by board members on a global scale which is yet to be properly scaled back, even in these uncertain financial times.

 

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