Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be | Journey to the Justice Brennan award

November 23, 2016 · 13:20

When games become real

It is one thing to stalk a person, sneak up on that person and slice his throat, it is not that big a deal when we do this on a console or PC, but when we do it for real it is murder, whether targeted killing or not. It is warfare against most often a non-combatant. And when it is simple murder, we are outraged (or we should be) and if the rules of evidence are clear and fulfilled you go to prison, unless you are in the Netherlands and you kill a child and two grandparents whilst speeding, in that case you get 120 hours of community service (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Q0Mg9tioM) . So, at times things are not equal, that has never been a surprise.

Yet, what happens when the lines are blurred? Let’s take a step back to 2014, after a year of delay Watchdogs was released. It was over hyped in many ways, yet it was not awful and it was as we needed to recognise an entirely new game, a new Intellectual Property in gaming. So like many, I thought it was a flawed game, but it had potential. So, I kept an open mind for the sequel that was released a week ago. Well, I have spent enough hours of game time to form an opinion. Graphically the game is passable (read: awesome in some ways) and as an open world it is pretty impressive. I think that San Francisco as a choice for several reasons was the deal breaker that took the game from failure to optional success. I reckon that in another major city this game would not have worked. Whether you visit Nudle (read: Google), whether you see Pier 39, the Rock or just Jack London Square. The game gave me the feeling that I was actually seeing San Francisco, and let’s not forget that big bridge!

As an open world it is one of the best released open world locations. I think Ubisoft did what I hoped it would and as such, the jump from Assassins Creed to Assassins Creed 2 has been equalled from the stern Altair we went to Ezio Auditore. In Watchdogs we went from the driven Aiden Pearce to the data tyranny opposing Marcus Holloway. This African American is more than just likeable, like Ezio Auditore he is the good hearted scoundrel we all wish we were. In a similar way to AC, this game is also a large leap forward. They are not there yet, because the game still has issues on several levels, but overall the game is more than just playable. In the first game, I quickly grew a dislike to driving, that feeling was not present in this game. Traffic was a lot better, less annoying (apart from some Taco truck, which might be an inside joke), the game has a much better setting towards stealth, it could improve in many ways, but it is a lot better than it was. Control of Marcus is still a question in some specific cases, yet we might digress too much towards Assassins Creed and this is no Assassins Creed game.

What is above all others is the story, this one is sublime in several ways. Those stinkers (read: level of envy) at Ubisoft Montreal did something brilliant. Even though the game comes with disclaimers of fiction and coincidence if too alike, but they did manage to pull a rabbit out of a bow tie. You see, the world we move towards as per 2017 is in the game. It will not be like the game in reality, yet when we see the data gathering that is happening now and when we see the 5G world as it is to happen (at https://5g.co.uk/guides/what-is-5g/), parts that were described in my earlier blog ‘Non iudicium tuum‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/10/18/non-iudicium-tuum). We need to get an eerie feeling, you see the accusations for 2 years on Facebook selling your data/information, and we see mentions of Google doing the same.

We see these accusations and the opposite defence by both that this is not happening. It is not what I believe, because I do not think that this is what is exactly happening. Yet, when Facebook offers the deepest and most granular population for your advertisement, it seems to me that it has access via portals to offer to advertisers a selection of people. Google does the same, it offers a portal for advertisers even though those advertisers will never know the identity of the individual; their advertisements go to the most likely interested people. So data is not sold, it is a semantic on how people are approached and by what means. This reality will grow over the next 5 years, especially through 5G and that is the group watchdogs 2 is now dealing with. You see, the reality of 5G is offering Smart mobility, domotics and Utility management. It also offers smart security and surveillance. Yet what Watch dogs 1 and now 2 in a larger extent addresses is that one man’s smart is another man’s stupidity. So is the world we move to as in the games or not? You see, the reality is catching up to the games and this game is showing the dangers of no privacy. The issue in reality is seen to some extent (at http://theconversation.com/there-really-is-a-link-between-your-facebook-posts-and-your-personality-68186), where we see “Privacy campaigners this week applauded Facebook’s decision to block big UK insurance firm Admiral from using young people’s social media data to help set their car insurance premiums. But this is just the start of a debate over the use of social media information for such purposes“, yet this the reality we faced for a while. The event seen in November this year happened in real life less than a month before Ubisoft voiced it in its game where people saw premiums rise because of life choices (like ordering pizza) and a mere 10 months after I mentioned it in ‘Double standards, no resolve (part 2)‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/01/26/double-standards-no-resolve-part-2/), where I stated: “So if we do the following math 32% of 70 million (falsely assuming that they were all American gamers), then we now get the number of people confronted with a $144 a year additive. So in one swoop, this data set gives way to an additional $3.2 billion for insurance fees. Data is going to be that simply applied sooner than you think“, and guess what, UK insurance firm Admiral did try just that. Yet as we read: “Facebook’s decision to block” is just a shot across the bow, because when the genie is out of the bottle putting him/her back is much less of an option and data tends to get out into the open. If you doubt that, just ask the Mail server IT person of the Clinton family, he can assure you of that.

In this now, we get the point when gaming and reality get uncomfortably close. It is one thing when we play call of duty where it is just guns, guts and adrenaline. The reality of war tends to hold us back from doing stupid things, yet what happens when the reality is merely copying a file, how will we stop acting when we have misguided ourselves into believing that it is just a harmless file? When we see: “The Admiral case could well be remembered as just the beginning of a tortuous back and forth over using digital footprints in financial modelling“, yet the danger is seen in other ways too, yet it is not voiced. We pay a certain premium for a certain risk, yet it takes years to get a discount for loyal non claiming clients. It only takes one algorithm to raise it by 10% plus on collected data that is alleged of personality not a given and as such we get to pay for being social in many ways. This is a clear case of worry at the very end where we see “As long as companies use our data transparently and with our consent, why not allow both parties to an insurance transaction to rely on what appears to be very accurate data?“, because it might give a $10 relief for a healthy young person. It will cost anyone who had been in an accident an additional $200 a year and we have decades of data that these companies are run by greed driven people, board members who do want their 8 figure bonus and giving discounts is creating a gap of getting that bonus. Meaning that we sell our neighbours away for a few dollars whilst the neighbour is cut off from health insurance because he fell and hit his head, that is what the message on Facebook said and it did not come with an admittance or with evidence. That is the danger and Watch Dogs 2 shows that in clarity as you move from hacking router to hacking router.

The 5G guide gives us: “By 2020 it’s predicted that there will be 50-100 billion devices connected worldwide, many of which will need continuous data access“, which is a low estimate. Here at University I see people with a Laptop, a smart phone, some with additional Tablets and music stream devices. Now some of these elements overlap, some are used strictly separate, yet in all this the low estimate of 50 billion devices can easily be surpassed before 2020, and connection are growing in other ways too. Most TV’s are now Android enabled and connected to the home network, so are PC’s and consoles, so the average family will have 8-12 devices connected. That whilst the RFID world is only now starting up within the domestic household sphere, so this number will drastically change soon enough. This is what the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility team advertised today “At least 60% of security breaches start with employee credentials getting into the wrong hands. With modern mobility and bring-your-own-device solutions, protecting your data starts with protecting the identities of your organisation’s employees. That’s why we’ve made identity security central to Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Discover how focusing on identity can help make your organisation more secure“, I am not questioning on how needed this is, because mobile security needs to be on the top list of any person, whether as an employee or as a personal reason. You see a system that requires over a 100 patches on an annual basis has issues. Now, we need to accept that this was always the case and a system this big will always have flaws, yet when we see the level of issues in an age where non-repudiation is almost more important than digital evidence gives rise to the reality we face and the games we play.

Are we an algorithm?

Are we real is the question we should ask and whilst we play we are not the real us, we play to be Marcus Holloway in San Francisco, Ezio Auditore in Venice or Geralt of Rivia in some other place. We are seeing that Marcus Holloway is showing us a world that is the one we seem to live in and that should be a little more upsetting than it actually seems to be, because we remain in denial. Although, all things being equal, me working in a place like the Delaware data farm would be a dream come true. Who would not go weak at the knees seeing the tens of thousands of data servers all streaming data? The game story gives us several parts, many I will not speak here because I do not want to give away the game, it is so much better when you experience it for yourself, but the truth will hit you as it remains close to the reality we now see in newspapers, although without 5G none of it can come to pass to the degree we see. The question that we are faced in reality is that as we are valued and weighted by our social interactions, have we been minimalised to a mere algorithm, which then leads me to the question are Sociopaths soon the only people valued correctly? It certainly seems to be the case when we consider the elements of the Admiral insurance scenario. The SK Telecom white paper on 5G (at http://www.sktelecom.com/img/pds/press/SKT_5G%20White%20Paper_V1.0_Eng.pdf) goes as far on page 40 on combining Business Intelligence (BI), Network Intelligence (NI) to form within IoT (Internet of Things) to form Service Intelligence (SI), that whilst we now get one of the earliest official papers to set SI as a “It knows me better than I know Myself“, this will vamp soon enough as they state it themselves as ‘Telco Asset-based personalised service‘, which is pretty much the founding father of Mobile based Software as a Service, based on collected data. It is a stretch to call this a personal data based service level agreement, yet, I wonder how far off I am when I do that. In addition, at the IP conference last week, I predicted that by 2022, the total amount of Trade Marks will have grown by 300% on a global scale. 5G will be driving new versions and new iterations of corporations, many who missed the initial digital age boat, those will run like crazy to not miss a second of the next wave, because those who do will be corporations that become non-existent. If there is one part that Google AdWords and Facebook advertising are proving is that granularity will become the next key in those who advertise, although there is a case to be made that the current data at present is not voluminous enough to currently completely rely on this advertisement track, implying that this path seems to be less than 18 months away.

This is where we are going and Ubisoft was more than a little brilliant implying darker versions of reality in this game, especially in the San Francisco light of living, where freedom of identity is everyone’s Personal Jesus. So in light of that, the game does hold up, due to the improvements and in larger pat to the stories that connect to one another in the game, the fact that some elements are taken from life almost here is just the icing on the cake making for a sweet gaming treat.

So even as the corporate world at large has been ignoring non-repudiation as a bad taste, we see that 5G is no longer making that an affordable option as the collected data is going to be key in the time of personal services. Don’t take my word for it, Edgar Allen Poe is stating the same thing on Facebook, as did Shakespeare who gave me his fax number (bonus points for those who know what film that was from). In an age of SaaS, SI and service personalisation’s, we will see a dependency on identity and more important the linking of certain elements, which also implies that messing with that part will be the prankster’s new ‘O’ (for Orgasm), giving non-repudiation a very new light in security requirement on a level we have not cared for before, although, the wrong people have not been not-caring on that requirement for a little too long. So as we realise that there is a reality to these things, as our reality caught up with the games we play, we might wonder where Marcus Holloway is. So Ruffin Prentiss (at @RPrentissIII), you need to get your ass in gear and save millions of potential victims from themselves soon enough!

Now, we know that an actor might not have the skills to do what is needed, yet in all fairness, some actors became president, so the call is not that far from centre, in addition, many require decent degrees to get a gig nowadays, not just in communication. The reality that Watchdogs uses is based on real issues, some providers offer ‘zero day exploit protection‘ at premium price, so when we saw “By 2020 it’s predicted that there will be 50-100 billion devices connected worldwide“, how many will have been engineered by the lowest bidder? How many zero day exploits will we be confronted with? Now, many of those devices will have no real information, but what about that ‘intelligent fridge’? Remember Admiral Insurance? What happens when he has that juicy list of your fridge? The fish fingers (optional with custard), the Pizza, all those sugary drinks. What happens when your parties become the health risk you advertised in your fridge, what happens when your health insurance premiums start going up? That reality is not that far-fetched, because Facebook isn’t giving that data at present, does not mean that Admiral Insurance et al cannot get their fingers on the data it wants and needs to spike premiums. That is the issue we all face. And the image of the ‘smart’ fridge is already 3 years old, implying we have come a lot further in less time. The reality of growth is here, but so is the realisation of personal secured privacy data and it did not require a game to give that reality to us, but Ubisoft is bringing this story in an excellent way, a way that should give cause to realise that our private needs of safety are not being met and we are giving away whatever privacy we had much easier and freely than we admit, because we do not realise what else can come of it.

Even as Google is calling this ‘the year of mobile’, there is every clear indication that 2017 needs to be ‘the year of personal data safety’. I wonder how many people realise how little they have done for themselves in that regard and if you have a PC or Console, Ubisoft has a game that can help you figure that part out, even though it is still a little futuristic for now.

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Tagged as 5G, Admiral Insurance, Assassins Creed, BI, Ezio Auditore, google, Marcus Holloway, Microsoft, NI, Saas, San Francisco, SI, SK Telecom, smart devices, Ubisoft, Watch Dogs

November 21, 2016 · 13:41

Batches of three days

After a Law conference of three days and a case of the flu, it is time to get back into the saddle. For the speculative people amongst you, I needed 8 boxes of tissues, so if you invested in Kleenex, their forecast is very expected to be up, so you are all good! There are a few things to deal with, but let’s get into the deep end, with ‘Trump cabinet appointments will ‘undo decades of progress’, rights activists say‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/18/trump-cabinet-appointments-sessions-pompeo-flynn). Yes, from their point of view that might be, but you do not get to cry wolf over Syria, whilst leaving a pussy to deal with the situation. This is now a Republican administration and as such, there will be a change of hearts, minds and a few tactical directions. The first one to look at, director Pompeo is an interesting choice. He has earned his stripes in several events. A thorn in Clinton’s Benghazi disaster and a member of the Tea Party. However, this is not same Jasmine flavoured variety, this member from Kansas is more like gunpowder tea. An acquired taste that is likely to turn a few stomachs in Iran. As I see it, one of the most likely to receive a high Israeli award for keeping them safe from Iran’s bile as some would quote it. My issue has always been no matter how liberal this elected official is, we have seen that the next elections could bring another Ahmadinejad, not something anyone is waiting for.

But let’s get back to nominated director Mikey. The one part that was part of the Wichita Eagle (link lost) was that Mike Pompeo predicted a new energy bill would cost millions of jobs and make the United States a net food importer. There are two sides to all this, the first the energy part. There are too many question marks (apart of the change to make it realistic), the net food importer is another matter, and it also drives at the core of national security. You see, NAFTA, opened up a whole range of options in regards to the trade with Mexico and overall there is a benefit, yet when we realise that this opens up regional security options (as stated by s Col. Michael Dziedzic, USAF), we see that in light of multiple sources stating that the Mexican Cartels have been assisting ISIS members to get into the US to explore targets. The fact that ISIS sleeper cells are reported by a few sources to be close to the US border gives cause to consider certain new avenues for the CIA to consider. That is, if they aren’t already doing that, because we can all agree that yours truly isn’t being kept up to date by Langley for reasons that need no clarification.

The Wichita Eagle also gives us: “Pompeo ended up co-authoring a separate report from the main committee investigation, which accused former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, of downplaying the attack to boost President Obama’s re-election efforts” (at http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article115756373.html), which is only half the truth I reckon. I mentioned earlier that the intensely wrong acts by people in the US Department of State in 2012 was centre in all this and the events since have only shown that they were utterly negligent in several ways (not only the office of State Secretary Clinton), the downplay has been beyond that office and as such left too many concerns, especially when you do not react strongly to such an event, should you be considered President of the United States?

I reckon that once confirmed, Mike Pompeo might be one of the strongest members of the Trump government and could possibly be one of the better CIA directors of these last three administrations, which is speculative, and time will tell. Jeff Sessions is another interesting pick, although the President elect could have taken several extreme options, which in light of following Eric Holder, the only cabinet member in history to be held in contempt of congress (there will always be a first one), the President Elect had a few options, yet those were basically taken off the table when Loretta Elizabeth Lynch, the 83rd United States Attorney General decided

On June 27, 2016, Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met privately aboard Lynch’s Justice Department jet which was parked on the tarmac in Phoenix. ABC15 Phoenix reporter Christopher Sign broke the story on June 29, citing unnamed sources. (at http://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/loretta-lynch-bill-clinton-meet-privately-in-phoenix), in light of Benghazi, when we see the quote ““Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix,” said Lynch Tuesday afternoon while speaking at the Phoenix Police Department“, now we can agree that if you have 35 things to do before lunch, having a social meeting on the tarmac of an airport in a jet is rather odd, to say the least. It is true that it might not have been about Benghazi, it might have been about future careers, yet the event on the tarmac and not in some closed of 1^st class business lounge implies that this was about deniability, not something that is required when Golf is on the menu of conversation. The image of Benghazi remains, whether just of unjust, when you decide to do a Deep Throat (read: Woodward, Bernstein & Washington Post), you set yourself up for all kinds of gossip.

So when we see Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a former senator of Alabama, we have to wonder what America will get this time. The media is already all over it. The Guardian stated: “The hawkish trio have made inflammatory statements about race relations, immigration, Islam and the use of torture, and signal a provocative shift of the national security apparatus to the right“, the subsequent quote is “For liberals they appeared to confirm some of their darkest fears about the incoming Trump administration“. To them I have this message. ‘Over a period of 8 years, this administration has done absolutely nothing to reign in corporate accountability, the financial sector can go its own sweet way and this American administration turned 180 degrees around on corporate taxation. Their acts, together with the IMF is why Brexit is now a fact and is also still the driving force for Frexit. Those who are now fear mongering in the direction of France better realise that a second bad estimate (like Brexit) will be regarded as clear evidence to dismiss their services’. Columbia Threadneedle was quoted in Reuters on what a catastrophe it will be. Yet, who would it be disastrous for? The quote “Mark Burgess, chief investment officer for the firm in EMEA, said that unlike the positive or even ambiguous market reaction to the British vote on an EU exit or Donald Trump’s win last week, a win for avowedly anti-euro, anti-EU party in one of the many euro zone elections next year could spell disaster for the still-undercapitalized European banks“, the banks have had more than enough time to get their affairs in order. We have seen bail-out after bail-out and we have been all subject to a large loss of quality of life, whilst the financial sector played and gambled living on incomes that most people have never seen, not even before the financial crash. This has driven anti-European Union sentiments. The sentiment of all talk and no achievements, no forward momentum for anyone but the large corporations. This is what the Democratic Party left America with, no real future and a 20 trillion dollar debt. It is now up to the Republican Party whether they can return the USA towards a status of less debt and a healthy economy. This will take a years to achieve, but no matter how far it is taken, America seems to realise that the party is over, they only have themselves to blame on how they got to this point.

So how did I get from these three to Frexit and Greed? Let’s face it, the President-elect is part of a system of greed and Frexit is pretty much next on the agenda. All those ignorant economists and media that have been ignoring these events for over two years, all with comments on how this was never a reality now have faced Brexit and after that, they played anti-republican for 8 years, they now see their options cancelled and they are left in the dark regarding events in the White House. How many wrong predictions does it take for the media to realise that reporting is not the same as speculative empowering?

As the world is now setting the stage of how the first three picks of the President-elect is to be regarded. We need to realise that the world is a lot larger than America and our choices are indeed diminishing when we side with only one group of governing people. For those who seem to be focused on how bad this upcoming president will be, perhaps we need to take a look at a little place like Syria and how this current administration has not achieved anything at all. With bombings increasing and the Non-Assad supporting Syrian population getting closer to zero, we need to ask questions that no one is asking and even less are willing to answer.

The last part in all this is the IMF, as mentioned before. When we see the Australian, we get: “The IMF has given powerful backing to Labor’s call for a crackdown on negative gearing saying Australia’s tax rules are encouraging people to take on too much debt to invest in the housing market, pushing prices higher. The IMF’s annual mission to Australia has also criticised the Turnbull government’s May budget, saying it is trying to narrow the budget deficit too rapidly and risks hurting the economy.” Can anyone please explain what the fuck (pardon my French), the IMF is doing telling a sovereign nation on how we prefer not to be in deep debt and that is not OK with them? Consider in what state the debt driven economies are when it can be endangered by one economy removing its deficit. Consider on how many papers have given proper attention to debt driven economy (read: meaning almost none have done so, apart from those ridiculing the issue), this in light of the IMF quote in the Australian “The IMF says the government has been right to allow deficits to blow out over the past few years, saying the shortfalls have been mainly due to weak revenue, not excessive spending. The fund suggests that if the government spend more on infrastructure, it would generate enough economic growth that there should be little impact on the ratio of debt to GDP“, we need to wonder on how we were all kept in the dark when the media at large ignored calls for clarity, when we were (as I see it) intentionally misinformed, now we see that ‘right to allow deficits to blow out‘, which was never OK, even as Australia is getting out of that dark valley, other nations are still fighting their own battles. This is one of the driving sides to France, who have been pushed into a $2.4 trillion dollar debt. Perhaps President Hollande will have the same excuse that it was ‘mainly due to weak revenue‘, so the French people get to live with consequence of the IMF driven ‘equalising’ of debt. Now this last part is purely speculative from my side, yet how wrong is my train of thought? And as other nations realise that these debts are orchestration and the governments refused to tighten belts, spend irresponsibly regarding the need of other nations, keeping debt at a maximum. How do you think people will react when they realise that irresponsible behaviour will keep their quality of life down, perhaps for more than one lifetime? Are you still wondering whether Frexit will happen, or are you realising that Frexit not happening is no longer being considered?

Now, events differ from nation per nation, yet there is clear evidence that nations have been overspending for well over a decade and none had the idea to tighten the belt (except Germany in 2009). This is how Europeans feel and all this to enable big business, whilst they get more and more deals offered. This is the setting in which President elect Trump finds himself. The three nominations are not part of any of it, but they give rise to the question, who will be the elected officials in the departments, of State, Interior and Commerce, these three subsequent nominations will be at the core of what will happen next. No matter what the pressures are for the upcoming American Administration, they will be at the core of events that will take centre stage in 2017 and 2018. So many eyes, not just in America will be on those nominated for these three fields. We will have more and more questions, we only need to await the first results.

In that light we get to look at some of the issues I predicted two years ago. Last Saturday I got the Quote “European leaders have come to a 27-nation consensus that a “hard Brexit” is likely to be the only way to see off future populist insurgencies, which could lead to the break-up of the European Union” (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/19/europes-leaders-force-uk-hard-brexit-farage-le-pen). The subtitle gives us even more ‘Fears grow about impact of populist surge as Nigel Farage predicts Marine Le Pen could win French presidential election’. I got there a year earlier, even now there is still some doubt as Sarkozy is making an about turn move on French National issues, yet Marine Le Pen remains a contender. Slightly stronger than before Trump got elected and there is where the issue for Europe now resides. Their indecisiveness in certain matters is driving people towards nationalism, with President elect Trump now approaching office, those issues will polarise and the shift will move stronger towards the right. The additional quote: “The latest intervention by Farage will only serve to fuel fears in Europe that anti-EU movements have acquired a dangerous momentum in countries such as France and the Netherlands, following the precedent set by the Brexit vote”, is one that is not correct as I see it. You see, Brexit was always a risk, yet those working behind the screens were so intent on the Status Quo that they forgot sight of the effects of the actions that they caused, Greece being the first and strongest elements. By trying to hang onto a non-realistic 300 billion, they now stand to lose 14.5 trillion, you tell me how stupid this was. The Netherlands is not the strongest influencer and at present, the Dutch PVV might be strong, twice as many seats as the number three (CDA) and leading by merely 4 seats on number 2, the reality is that this party became the largest fast and as they were only regarded as something not to be taken serious, the size they are now does not warrant such consideration, they are the largest player. Yet in all this, the issue is that 150 seats are there and a majority requires 76 seats, which cannot be done without some coalition that will require the PVV. In this the PVV is the only clear anti-EU party. The example as given by me in ‘A noun of non-profit’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/05/15/a-noun-of-non-profit/), where I state: “Consider a large (really large) barge, that barge was kept in place by 4 strong anchors. UK, France, Germany and Italy. Yes, we to do know that most are in shabby state, yet, overall these nations are large, stable and democratic (that matters). They keep the Barge EU afloat in a stable place on the whimsy stormy sea called economy. If the UK walks away, then we have a new situation. None of the other nations have the size and strength of the anchor required and the EU now becomes a less stable place where the barge shifts. This will have consequences, but at present, the actual damage cannot be easily foreseen”, What I predicted on May 15^th 2013 is not just coming to pass, finally others are admitting that this is the future, a future they kept you in the dark about, consider that when you realise that this had been known for some time. They played their ignorance and fear mongering game and those who have done so are now considering what one more bad prediction will bring them. I still believe that it required the second of four to truly collapse the EU barge, but that reality is now getting closer, with the Republican push we see, the chances for Marine Le Pen getting elected as President is now an actual reality. I knew that there was a chance just within France and as President Hollande failed again and again her chances increased, now with the Republican view of nationalism, the French view only enhances that view for themselves, enabling Marine Le Pen as a possible President of France. This links to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and his conservative views. He plucks the same chords on the musical loom of government as Marine Le Pen will when it comes to immigration. In that regard, the choices that still have to come will make even stronger impressions for European nations as they unite or dissent from that view. You see, we still need to realise that America is 20 trillion down, which implies that if Europe decides to exit hard for the second European nation (France most likely), the economic view for America changes, especially as it has been a net importer of food and a few other materials. It would need to strengthen ties with Canada and Mexico by a lot, allowing those two to get a better overall deal, increasing the cost of living for Americans. At this point, we see that Wilbur Ross is now the strong favourite for the Commerce position. It is CNN that gives us a quote, which seen in a different light implies the issue I had for a long time. The quotes “Pritzker strongly supported free trade, traveling to 38 countries over her tenure. She advocated clean energy partnerships and the Trans Pacific Partnership deal” as well as ““Free trade is like free lunch: There is no free lunch,” Ross told Lou Dobbs of Fox Business in August. “Somebody wins and somebody loses. And unfortunately, we’ve been losing with these stupid agreements that we’ve made””, Here we see that someone visited 38 countries, which sounds like an office paid world tour and we know that is NOT the case, but all that travelling must be nice. Following that, we see Wilbur Ross stating that there is no such thing as a free lunch. That we have all learned, many of us learned it the hard way and the TPP was a bad deal from the get go for several nations. These quoted came from CNN (at http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/20/investing/wilbur-ross-donald-trump/index.html) and are at the core of changes for commerce, which will reverberate in both the English and French minds as well. So 4 of the 6 main nominees are also powering the European Exit. I believe that one of them is in for quite the challenge. Michael Flynn is a veteran on several levels, as a retired General he knows the military and as former director of the DIA he knows the intelligence whip. Yet, the premise he faced will start to change dramatically in 2019, as such the America he will be the National Security Advisor for will have new challenges, some none have seen before. Time will tell how realistic those challenges are, yet we are already faced with the limitations of dealing with 4G and the next wave is now less than 365 days away. The funds needed for cyber security and cyber development were never forthcoming, giving nations at large new challenges and totally new issues in Criminal law. All fields untouched to the degree they needed to be. Another reason why W. Ross and J.B. Sessions need to sit down sooner rather than later. In that regard, the UK needs to clearly revisit some of the protocols that never worked in the first place.

There are many changes coming towards us, some will drive others, some will just be met with complaints, and others will just drive the Democratic Party insane, which will be used to the entertainment of the media at large.

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November 9, 2016 · 12:48

Matt Damon’s Quote

You could wonder what Matt Damon has been up to, there will always be reason to do this, not because he is an exceptional actor, even a celebrity on Mars. No, the reason here is his connection to documentaries. He was the narrator on ‘Inside Job‘, which got a well-deserved Oscar in 2011. I personally feel that this is the best documentary on the financial crises ever created. So let’s get started. Today, we see a number of news items reach the twilight of dawn.

The first one (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/panama-papers-22-people-face-tax-evasion-investigations-in-uk), gives us ‘Panama Papers: 22 people face tax evasion investigations in UK‘, with the added text “Philip Hammond also said a further 43 wealthy individuals were under review while their links to the offshore files were investigated further. He made the comments in a written answer to the House of Commons explaining what had happened since the offshore tax files emerged“. Now we might go all huffy and puffy on these tax evaders, yet when you consider the news from August (at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-31/ex-tesco-finance-chief-mcilwee-probe-closed-by-u-k-regulator), where we see “The U.K. accounting regulator closed an investigation into Tesco Plc’s former Chief Financial Officer, Laurie McIlwee, saying there wasn’t a “realistic prospect” that misconduct would be found in the case“, with the added “The Financial Reporting Council closed its case into McIlwee Wednesday, according to a statement from the regulator. It is still investigating the grocer’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and other individuals involved in Tesco’s accounts“.

This has been going on since 2014, they have not been able to find anything after two years and now you are going after ‘simple’ tax evaders?

My initial message (with all due respect) to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is “Mr Philip Hammond, are you out of your bloody mind?” You are still trying to get anything real on PwC, or were you ordered to let it die down?

When a company suddenly loses billions in value (also due to their own stupidity) and you cannot find anyone to prosecute and go to jail for overstating profits by £263 million ($345 million), whilst we also know that for that year PwC gave Tesco a 10 million pound invoice for auditing (annual) with an additional 3 million pounds for consultancy that year (Source: the Guardian). You cannot find anything and now you are going after people, where you cannot state whether they broke the law and you will rely on illegally obtained papers. How stupid is this?

How about you making the following change as per immediate!

a. Until the Tesco case has been satisfied, PwC and its senior employees cannot undersign any accountancy venue, or corporate balance for any UK corporation for 2016, 2017 and 2018 until the matter is solved.
b. In case wrongdoing by PwC employees is proven beyond reasonable doubt, PwC will not be allowed to operate within the UK.

How about them apples?

So far we have seen massive leeway by the press and the SFO has not achieved anything at all regarding Tesco. So it is time to adjust regulations and legal premises, until that point comes PwC will have to operate on non-British companies. Now, we can all understand that when we see the quote “McIlwee resigned as Tesco’s CFO in April 2014, prior to the discovery of the accounting errors, amid reports of disagreements with then-Chief Executive Officer Philip Clarke” seems to imply that McIlwee was not privy to, and not guilty of any wrongdoings, yet the fact that the SFO got nowhere in two years means that there is something massively wrong. When we know that so many millions were overstated, we seem to have a decently clear case of fraud, yet no one goes to jail. In addition, we also know that PwC was in on it (at least to some degree) and in addition, the subsequent Deloitte investigation showed more than initially was found means that there is no scenario where PwC can be absent from guilt in the first or second degree.

The SFO gave that Carl Rogberg, Christopher Bush and John Scouler were charged (source: BBC), they pleaded not guilty and at present the court dates are set for September 2017. It is my opinion that until all that is settled, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has no business whatsoever to dig into cases based on illegally obtained papers, whilst his branch as well as the SFO has no flipping ability at present to close a 2 year old case for at least another year (if ever). And as reported by the Times in September (at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tesco-auditor-slips-back-into-retailers-aisles-0gm9xt8md) that “Tesco has appointed PwC as an independent adviser, despite replacing it as auditor with Deloitte“, which gives my emotional and slightly inappropriate response “Are you fucking kidding me?”

So, whilst the PwC issues were kept very low key by nearly all the press, whilst there is no condemnation on a daily basis by the press and even less success by the SFO, we should agree that PwC has no business being in the UK to begin with, especially as “Last week the FRC cleared Laurie McIlwee, Tesco’s former chief financial officer, of wrongdoing over the scandal, but added that its investigation into PwC and other unnamed individuals continued“, we could go by once bitten twice shy, or we could go by the fact that as the SFO is either unable or unwilling to prosecute PwC, why would we even consider their presence? In case some are considering a specific rebuttal, to them I would respond with the April article (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/14/brexit-could-lead-to-loss-of-100000-financial-services-jobs-report-warns), where they stated ‘PwC report estimates 70,000-100,000 fewer jobs in 2020 compared with estimated number if Britain stays in EU‘, so let’s start with theirs and let smaller accountancy firms continue and allow for growth. In addition, when we accept the news by the BBC in Feb 2015 (at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31147276), where we see “We believe that PricewaterhouseCoopers’s activities represent nothing short of the promotion of tax avoidance on an industrial scale,” said Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)“, so in that light, we could just send PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) packing, giving light that the facilitator of tax evasion have been dismissed from the country and as such the UK will see a decline in Tax evasion, no need for illegally held papers, no long and expensive investigation and the thorn in the UK economies side is equally removed. It will not mean that tax evasion is a thing of the past, but if PwC is send packing now, the other three might do a 180 degree on that clientele, which would at that point make the tax evasion issue moot, or at least deprive it from many options, which would amount to the same in the end.

So, you like apples?

If I am accused from persecuting PwC, then I would plead that I am not entirely innocent in that regard. I would bring the defence that the SFO has not gotten anywhere in 2 years and they are supposed to have the ability to find those culprits. Yet, as John Crace pointed out in the Guardian on April 5^th that “Only last year, the public accounts committee reported that the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was promoting tax avoidance on an industrial scale. To make things worse, it was first in the frame to benefit from administering the windup of Tata’s steel operations in the UK. So where was David Cameron? At PwC’s offices in Birmingham. Some might call it a brave choice“, in that light, there is an additional reason to give PwC their walking papers.

In all this the exchequer has one final issue to deal with, you see, accountant at large, including (read: especially) those at PwC are really clever with what they do, meaning that there could be no broken laws to begin with, making the actions from certain parties from 2014 until 2018 even more questionable, with a strong need to truly scrutinise the rules that accountancy firms applied and how they were applied. As I see it, there is nothing worse than to paint a lovely target on a person only to learn that the laws fell short and none were ever broken. If you question that, then consider the following two options.

The SFO has, as it embraced corruption onto a new level decided not to dig into PwC on the levels needed to secure evidence for the prosecution regarding Tesco.
The SFO has found that even as it is clear that PwC assisted in these levels of Fraud and Misreporting, yet when the books and memos were investigated for these transgressions, there was more than a reasonable doubt that PwC was not fully aware, in addition, there are no papers filed by PwC to implicate them in any way in fraud or misrepresentation. As well as the established fact that no laws were broken at present.

When you look at the two options, which one is more likely than not the situation regarding PwC?

In my book, the fact that a person is not guilty, does not mean that they are innocent. I remain of mind that shutting PwC down in the UK is not the worst idea at present, yet is that point of view valid when we consider premise 2, which is actually the most likely scenario? When we consider that the spirit of the law has been violated by PricewaterhouseCoopers, at that point we still have the issue that no literal laws were broken. Here we could set forth that the government (read: parliament) created the foundations and the setting where industrialised tax evasion and fraud became legalised options. Even as we saw that there was a clear case for fraud, the law has been altered to the degree that the facilitators cannot be held accountable, as such, an issue was created and until that is resolved, and PwC cannot be prosecuted (which is wrong in many ways from the point of a simple taxpaying labourer).

So, we now have the issue of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, which should be seen as grammatical opposites, not just in grammar, it is that they are also opposites of the soul (read: soul of the law). When one obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit, one is obeying the literal interpretation of the words (the “letter”) of the law, but not necessarily the intent of those who wrote the law. Which is what black letter lawyers (and accountants) tend to do, because a nation of laws is about a nation with rules of playing the game. In our case, in Common Law, until a case is set as a precedent in law, there will be no adjustment and this can go on ‘ad infinitum’ and Intentionally following the letter of the law but not the spirit may be accomplished through exploiting technicalities, loopholes, and ambiguous language (at times a mere comma does the trick too).

Yet, when one obeys the spirit of the law but not the letter, one is doing what the authors of the law intended, though not necessarily adhering to the literal wording, which could get them automatically prosecuted if the District Attorney woke up on a Monday morning with a really foul mood.

So, whilst we might agree with Margaret Hodge, stating “We believe that PricewaterhouseCoopers’s activities represent nothing short of the promotion of tax avoidance on an industrial scale“, the fact that they are not breaking the law, implies that no corrections to the law have been made to correct for this. As such, you only have yourself to blame and admittance of this failure to the public at large is an essential second step. As I see it, making a lot of noise going after people who might have done something like this, whilst papers are absent and whilst all parties know that this is because of illegally obtained papers from the law firm Mossack Fonseca is even less intelligent, as the people behind this have leaked these papers for their own personal interest and ‘late taxation’ was not their goal, so to adhere to the promotion of such crimes is not the best way to get results.

Now that we see claims rising towards Tesco for misrepresentation from their investors for the amount of £100 million, which comes on top of the diminished value, so I feel that no matter what, there should be a negative impact on PwC one way or another, yet within the confines of the law of course. This takes us to ‘The letter versus the spirit of the law: A lay perspective on culpability‘ by Stephen M. Garcia, Patricia Chen and Matthew T. Gordon (paper here). The part that gives us the cakes are found in study 5 on page 486. “Study 5 sought to examine another instance in which the letter of the law is not broken but the spirit of the law may have been violated“, which is where I for the most stand with PwC in the Tesco matter as stated “We also wanted to control for various counter-explanations that underlie culpability such as violations of social and moral norms“, with references to Bicchieri & Chavez, 2010 as well as Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008. Yet in the first there is Tonry, 2010, where he argues that “the foundations for disparity causing policy choices lie in the cultural and social forces that combined historically to shape U.S. society“, which is interesting as this implies that the policymaker and not PwC is the actual culprit and my rage was misguided. Yet, is that actually true? The spirit of the law is not equipped, or better stated should not be equipped to manage the input of self-interest, because the spirit of the will assume the setting for all people and as such will force the text and derail the letter of the law (as I see it). Tonry goes on into the racial destabilising side, yet in my view the racial part is not the real instance, I believe that the division is that we see two groups One is the (white) social enabled group who is set to the game with preparation (read: legal advice) to break the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law as long as self-interests are served. This setting will at that same time destabilise the (black) group, a group that is suffocating on the lack and lapse of social options and opportunities, where without proper and affordable advice the letter and the spirit of the law will be adhered to, yet at a massive cost through loss of opportunity. This now makes PwC a facilitator for the wealthy to avoid breaking the letter of the law and to optionally, when unavoidable adhere to the spirit of the law. From one point, can the facilitator be held to account? I believe so, yet the area is slightly too grey for my comfort. It is the policymaker that requires to shift the grey area, so that breaking the law is a more clear setting and as such the SFO could actually create a situation where conviction (let alone prosecution) becomes a reality.

I still believe that PwC has done great wrongs, yet as far as we can establish, not in the letter of the law. I find them guilty of knowingly set the stage for managed ‘breaking’ of the law. The spirit is as much a factor as the letter, either should be seen as breaking the law. Yet there is diminishment as the policymaker is seemingly also guilty, yet the reasoning for that flaw can never be easily determined, so we can tell it was wrong, yet to what degree is not a given, but an essential issue to address. When we look at the policymakers, we need to ascertain the application that the paper discusses. “This framework broaches a new language to understand complex situations such as those that are not technically illegal but seem wrong“, we can see that this applies to multiple incidents. In those cases it needs to be clear that these levels of protection do not make the cake edible. It makes for a sour venue where those with legal advice can abort too many payments whilst the underprivileged groups end up without support, protection and options. I am speculating here that this is the (read: speculated intentional) creation of the haves and have not, which is a policy drip down effect when you implement a prismatic system, which policymakers from business and sociological fields seemed to have resorted to as they (tried to) implement laws, on the premise of a non-legal mind. Which is what is pushing the issues. The political field needed the business view of opportunity and the resulting laws are toothless against larger corporations who end up getting a free pass here with PwC as the facilitating office.

In the end I am more correct than even I thought I was, yet this should not digress from handing out the penalties that are needed to give a clear signal that the party is over. We have learned the hard way from 2004 onwards that unless we make a massive shift, this will continue a few more decades, as such stronger language and harsher penalties are required, because continuing on this path is far too rewarding for all the players that can afford to play this game, which gave me the idea to give PwC their marching orders out of the UK. I don’t believe it is too harsh, especially as they made 35 billion last year alone. So the question to you becomes, do you have any idea how much taxation they paid? I have no idea how much exactly, but we do know that PwC was elemental in avoiding Lehman Brothers to pay an addition £1.2 billion in taxation, due to inconsistencies, we see the quote by Mr Justice Hildyard: “It is of real importance, both in terms of good governance and a fair market, that HMRC should make every effort to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again“, (at http://www.theweek.co.uk/lehman-brothers/77510/lehman-brothers-creditors-to-avoid-12bn-tax-bill) giving rise that larger changes are needed to bring back fairness to all tax paying people, who have not seen a whole lot of fairness in that regard these last 12 years.

Judges will soon have to science the shit out of these tax laws, making them actually fair to all, not just large corporations, who seem to be judged on ‘the Principle of least accountability’.

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Tagged as Bicchieri & Chavez 2010, Carl Rogberg, Chancellor of the Exchequer is, Chief Executive Officer Philip Clarke, Christopher Bush, David Cameron, Deloitte, HMRC, Inside Job, John Crace, John Scouler, Laurie McIlwee, Lehman brothers, Margaret Hodge, Matthew T. Gordon, Mazar Amir & Ariely 2008, Mossack Fonseca, Mosseck Fonseca, Mr Justice Hildyard, Panama papers, Patricia Chen, Philip Clarke, Philip Hammond, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, Serious Fraud Office, SFO, Stephen M. Garcia, the Guardian, The Times, Tonry 2010

November 8, 2016 · 16:39

The editor in question

It started to be such a fine morning. I got up at 5:45, got onto the business for the day. Which started by sending a fax to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi regarding the pressure points of the Dow Jones. It was then that I realised that Mario Draghi has been in office for exactly 5 years. In addition, there is still my anger with Paul Michael Dacre regarding last Friday’s front page, with the mention “The judges who blocked Brexit: One founded a EUROPEAN law group, another charged the taxpayer millions for advice and the third is an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer”. It makes me want to ignore the law and slap the man silly on Trafalgar Square with a 25 inch pink coloured rubber dildo! This side of me wants to make it clear that I do not completely oppose the subtitle ‘journalists are free to complain about Brexit ruling, as Labour confirms it will not block article 50‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/06/labour-will-not-block-article-50-jeremy-corbyn-allies-confirm), however, when I read the trivialised version of demonising three judges, who have served the nation and were instrumental in pushing (read: evolving) Common Law forward, we need to remind readers, politicians and most others, that it was the daily mail that stated “Leveson law ‘is worst threat to free speech in the modern era'”, for him I have the message: “No, Pharisee Mountebank Dacre, we wanted to hold people like you and Murdoch accountable for the things you write!“, which pretty much sums up my anger and in that regard, I tend to blame the person at the top.

I do agree with the Prime Minister when I read “the prime minister said she believed the high court had every right to deliver its verdict but argued that journalists were similarly free to complain about it“, she is right, there should be freedom of the press, that was never in question, yet the reference ‘an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer‘ is to be regarded as sexual discriminatory as my view goes. Let’s face it, the Daily Mail is no Jimmy Carr sketch, although, that reference should also come with the warning that Jimmy Carr has a lot more class than the Daily Mail ever had or likely will have.

Let’s face it, those who read my blog know that I have been pro Brexit, although the well-known Marky Mark of the British Bank (read: Mark Carney, Governor of the bank of England) pulled me back on the fence, almost changing my direction regarding Brexit. His address to the House of Lords was that good and gave the clarity all Britons needed before the votes. You see, my move towards Brexit was driven to some extent towards the idiotic spending spree by Mario Draghi. The fact that many nations were losing their national identity was also a factor, but for me that was not the largest one (which is the larger issue for Frexit, if we accept the view of Marine Le Pen). You think I am digressing, but I am not. Yet, we will take a few steps back for the next part.

At [5] we see “in these proceedings is only dealing with the purest question of law” as well as “whether the executive government can use the Crow’s prerogative to give notice of withdrawal“. These are the issues that needed addressing, mainly because the UK remains a monarchy, even as the bulk (51%) wanted to withdraw from the EU, it still needs to be done legally correct. The added issue for the three man wearing wigs that would usually be found caressing the skull of Lady Gaga is that this situation has never happened before, so Common Law needed to focus on Constitutional Law as well as the national (read: domestic) effect of EU law.

In the final paragraph we get “For the reasons we have set out, we hold that the Secretary of State does not have power under the Crown’s prerogative to give notice pursuant to Article 50 of the TEU for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union“, this gets us to that place where the ‘parlour minties’ live, meaning that an Act of Parliament (i.e. passing through both the House of Commons and House of Lords) is needed to actually (and legally correct) invoke Article 50. MPs would to a certain degree vote according to the referendum result, but several will seek to influence the type of exit agreement from the EU to be sought (read: an implied alteration for what they perceive to be the common good). Moreover, the Bremainians will now seek that time to sway as many MP’s as they can to prevent Brexit. This is a perfectly valid political path, because it also treads the path that some need for their opportunity to serve the ‘masters’ that were never elected, some of them not even British. So as we see this document regarding R (Miller) -V- Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (PDF here), we can now look at the response from the paper of PM Dacre:

1 ‘The judges who blocked Brexit‘, they did not, they ruled based on the Law that exiting the EEC will require a decision by parliament.

2 ‘One founded a EUROPEAN law group‘, this is a ‘nice’ statement. The truth is that the ELI is “an independent non-profit organisation established to initiate, conduct and facilitate research, make recommendations and provide practical guidance in the field of European legal development with a goal of enhancing the European legal integration“, so basically, Wiki pages are more eloquent in stating the identity of a European Law Group, designed to enhance legal integration than the Daily Mail is, or ever was!

3 ‘another charged the taxpayer millions for advice‘, well, the legal profession has pricing, so if that taxpayer hired a judge for a summary and consultancy of 1600 hours, then an amount well over 2 million would be due (making the statement ‘millions’ true), yet if taxation was paid, no crime was committed and proper advice was given, what value does the statement have? Especially when we see the statement that PM Dacre, by his own admission “had used the private detective Steve Whittamore, who was jailed in 2005 for illegally accessing information, but claimed that the rest of the British press had done so too” (Source: BBC News), so who needs more scrutiny?

4 ‘the third is an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer‘, so the fourth judge is not just legally able, he is also an Olympian, which might be a nice extra, yet showing a judge to be a superhuman athlete seems to be counterproductive on many fields, there is only the issue with the fact that he is depicted as gay. How does this give any indication of either academic or athletic ability?

So, 4 parts of a statement, one part inaccurate, two parts irrelevant and one part utterly incomplete and substandard.

Let’s take a look at another headline from the Daily Mail “ANZ bank chief Mike Smith paid $9.7 MILLION for just three months’ work – or 123 TIMES the average Australian wage” (at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3914880/Former-ANZ-bank-chief-executive-Mike-Smith-received-9-7m-three-months-work.html), which now gives us the question regarding that ‘expensive judge’, what were the tax costs for this person and were all taxations paid? I reckon when it comes to ‘costing the taxpayer’ the Daily Mail needs to revisit what certain values and definitions encompass. Yet when we take a look at the Guardian, we see “The Mail editor has claimed £460,000 in subsidies since 2011” (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/31/paul-dacre-eu-subsidies-hypocrisy-daily-mail-euro-lies), in addition we see in a 2014 article “Paul Dacre’s pay and bonus package soared by 25% during 2014, taking the total remuneration of Britain’s best-paid newspaper editor to £2.4m” (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/22/paul-dacre-earnings-up-annual-report-reveals-daily-mail), whilst his peers got marginally more, including Lord Rothermere, and the CEO of DMGT, that poor man (read: Martin Morgan) got cut down for an amount close to a million, no, Dacre went up by a lot. Now, this might all be fine and ‘correct’, yet when we see the ‘accusation’ on judges and taxpayer, whilst the man getting £460,000 in subsidies and personally getting a car allowance of £10,000 with added fuel benefit of £6,500. So can we agree that the shoddy description from the Daily Mail should be getting a better editorial in light of the news (read: in 2014 it was news), regarding its own chief editor.

In addition, the fact that the Daily Mail has a financial interest in opposing Brexit was also (as far as I know) never revealed by the Daily Mail in any way. So, as I see it Pharisee Mountebank Dacre is a worthy name of mention when regard the hypocrisy I personally categorise it to be. Of course accusation should in addition towards the Guardian by insulting Paul Dacre for being called the ‘Nigel Farage of Newspapers‘, so far Nigel Farage seems to be so much better and more a man than the Chief Editor of the Daily mail is regarded to be at present.

When we get back to target D (Mario Draghi) we see that the Daily Mail is less ‘insinuating’, it merely hides behind the words of Reuters. Isn’t it interesting that a person, whom I believe could be regarded as criminally negligent, is given wave after wave of consideration, even now, less than a day ago, so many, so eager to support another stimulus package, all written out as verbose as possible in the Wall Street Journal. In that I voice that Mario Draghi could be seen as criminally negligent, especially when the next Stimulus ends up not bringing home the bacon at which point he is still not seen as accountable.

When I see “Most European economists disagree with the conclusions of a recent report by the German Council of Economic Experts, which argued that the ECB’s easy monetary policies were no longer appropriate” (at http://www.wsj.com/articles/european-economists-back-ecb-stimulus-1478514545). So consider the following quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results“, it comes from Albert Einstein and it could aid Mario Draghi in his insanity plea. America has been funding labour through tax breaks leaving it currently 20 trillion in National debt. Mario Draghi is spending trillions, not stimulating anything, which is the massive reason why Brexit got pushed. Why does the British population in the end has to pay for some Italian, spending trillions with the (as I personally see it), lack of actual economic growth, fictive lowered unemployment numbers by paying for their cost of labour and in the end of that cycle, just more and more debt.

So how will this be solved? I think it is time to take another look at the Leveson report and consider the full implementation of it. Even if it merely gets us better and more accurately informed, that by itself would already be a great victory, if it cuts down certain editors by a notch, stopping them from doing the unacceptable act of assaulting three judges the way they were, that would just be the icing on the cake. I never opposed freedom of the press, I just want them to be held accountable for what they publish, in this I am seeing a large population that is in support of what I wrote, that because the outrage they created is shown nearly global. So even as Dacre is pulling a Murdoch out of his hat stating that all publicity is positive publicity.

We need to see it for hat it is, a statement that is currently as far from the truth as it could possibly get and it is time to hold the Media accountable, we sit by for too long. It took the events surrounding Milly Dowler to get the ball on the road and the outrageous statement on three judges is no less a reason to re-consider the Leveson report.

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Tagged as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Brexit, DMGT, Dow Jones, Frexit, German Council of Economic Experts, Governor of the Bank of England, Jimmy Carr, Leveson, Lord Rothermere, Marine Le Pen, Mario Draghi, Mark Carney, Martin Morgan, Mike Smith, Milly Dowler, Paul Michael Dacre, R (Miller) -V- Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Steve Whittamore

November 4, 2016 · 14:24

A leaky Cauldron is a just sif!

Well, as we are moving into the final days of President Obama, we get to see one more rodeo of entertainment, amusement and comedy. You see the headline ‘Barack Obama delivers stinging critique of FBI: ‘We don’t operate on leaks’‘, we can argue that they actually do, or we can howl with laughter, because for the most, the Obama administration created leaks, it did close to nothing to do something about it that would actually work. For one, here is a quote from thinkprogress.org. It is from August 7^th 2015: “Congress’s Cybersecurity Plan Has Some Major Flaws“, this is in his second presidency and we see Congress not being even close to resolving essential issues that should have been addressed well before 2008. This level of inaccuracy (read: incompetence) is shown in “Civil liberties groups including the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), New America, and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged the public to call their senators to persuade them to vote against, what even the Department of Homeland Security has deemed, a flawed bill with more than 20 proposed amendments“. So an issue where the ACLU and the DHS are on the same page, even when taking decent amounts of LSD, the world would still seem more logical, when ACLU and DHS are on the same page, the matter is a lot more critical than some make it out to be.

When we look back to 2013, when Robert Gates, the former Defence Secretary, reveals in his book ““reveals the depth of Mr. Obama’s concerns over leaks of classified information to news outlets, noting that within his first month in office, the new president said he wanted a criminal investigation into disclosures on Iran policy published by The New York Times.”“, we see that President Obama, knows all about leaks, they were at the centre of his core for two terms, so when we see again and again that the ball was dropped, what does that state about the president and his administration that keeps on twisting their ‘cyber’ thumbs?

Yet in all this, it was the Guardian who gave us (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/03/fbi-leaks-hillary-clinton-james-comey-donald-trump) an essential issue “Even some congressional Republicans, no friends to Clinton, have expressed discomfort with Comey’s last-minute insertion of the bureau into the election“, apart from what I discussed in my blog ‘As messages pass by‘ two days ago, there is one other part that must be mentioned in all fairness, because this is about the situation, not about anti-Clinton rants. The quotes are “As The Post’s Sari Horwitz reported on Saturday, “a largely conservative investigative corps” in the bureau was “complaining privately that Comey should have tried harder to make a case” against Clinton“, as well as “Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chair of the Oversight Committee, quickly tweeted news of Comey’s letter Friday and stated: “Case reopened.” This is not what Comey said (and technically the Clinton case was never closed). But many in the media bought Chaffetz’s hype, especially in early accounts. That’s what happens when an FBI director hands an explosive but muddled letter to a Republican-led Congress. In fact, Chaffetz had already made clear that if Clinton wins, the GOP’s top priority will be to keep the Clinton investigative machine rolling“, which came from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/comey-gives-in-to-shameful-partisanship/2016/10/30/c31c714a-9ed8-11e6-8d63-3e0a660f1f04_story.html and this clearly shows two elements. One is that the republicans via Congressman Jason Chaffetz, Republican from Utah pushed. For those who think that this doesn’t matter, consider the following which we get from the FBI Website (at https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs ). “Who monitors or oversees the FBI? The FBI’s activities are closely and regularly scrutinized by a variety of entities. Congress—through several oversight committees in the Senate and House—reviews the FBI’s budget appropriations, programs, and selected investigations. The results of FBI investigations are often reviewed by the judicial system during court proceedings…“, so when Congress pushes the FBI, it has bearing and impact (although ‘bearing’ would be allegedly). So whilst the media is going all out against Director James B. Comey, can we agree that Congress was pushing and in addition, the fact remains that Hillary Clinton could still up ending to be regarded as criminally negligent.

Now that last accusation needs explaining, and funnily enough, for the most, we all have that evidence. Those who have a job, ask yourself how many bosses allow you to do company business using your private emails? There are plenty of companies that such an action, seen as a transgression that could result in immediate dismissal and that isn’t even high dangerous secretive information. Now consider that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton submitted over 20 top secret issues via private email, in addition, the emails went to the laptop of a previous employee, basically giving classified information to a non-authorized person. The fact that she ends up not being prosecuted is a little weird to say the least. Yet, I discussed that in an earlier blog, the link remains because the issues are linked.

What is important now is that the media at large had access to more information that I had (or so they think), and they kept you, the reader in the dark. The bias against Donald Trump is THAT intense. Now, personally, I think that Donald Trump is as dangerous as a baboon on XTC, which is an issue as this primate is merely dangerous and lethal in the most docile of times. Its teeth rip through your flesh and bones in one bite. I’ll be honest, Baboons scare me, not because of what they do (they are equipped to protect, not to hunt people), they are highly intelligent, yet when cornered they can be the most dangerous animal you will face in a lifetime. Making my correlation with Donald Trump a lot more accurate than even I bargained for. His latest actions known as ‘Donald Trump’s Impeachment Threat‘ (at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/donald-trumps-impeachment-threat.html), when we see “they may well seek to impeach Hillary Clinton if she wins, or, short of that, tie her up with endless investigations and other delaying tactics“, the Democratic Party is seeing the result of President Obama’s bad presidency. The result and fallout of Benghazi, the mail issues with the Clintons and a few other matter. As stated, Congress gets to push the FBI and it is a republican congress. There is a little too much realism in the quote “Mrs. Clinton won’t be able to govern, because we won’t let her. So don’t waste your vote on her. Vote for us“, because her promise to do something about the economy will fall flat for at least 2 years. In addition, there are other matters that play, matters that involve the non-committal towards Common Cyber Sense and with the alleged Cyber-attacks from Russia (I am calling them alleged, because no clear evidence is in existence, yet clear reliable speculative data that pushes towards Russian involvement cannot be denied, not even by me), we see that Russia is instigating another cold war, one that America is unlikely to win makes the Democratic position even more weak. Even if we all admit that it is too unlikely for Russia to win this, it will work as an anchor on the US economy, so the next president has that to worry about too.

So as we are confronted with the Cyber issues at hand, in light of the extreme negligence that Hillary Clinton has shown to have, we see certain markers that weigh down on the positivity of her campaign. This might be the first election where the third party had a decent shot of winning, isn’t it a shame that Reverend Jesse Jackson wasn’t running? I reckon that unlike 1984 and 1988, he actually would have had a chance this time around, when we are brooding on which of the two is the lesser of two evils, the third player o gets be an actual contender #ThatsJustMe, wasn’t it funny that he of all people that showed up in Detroit yesterday after which he praised Donald Trump for his commitment of Diversity. Although from the news we have seen, I have to wonder if ‘diversity’ was about the sizes and shapes of breasts. I just had to get that of my chest, #Pardonemoi.

In all this, the media themselves are also a worry as they are pushing the people with outdated information. An example is the Business Insider only 2 hours ago. The article (at http://www.businessinsider.com.au/hillary-clinton-new-emails-found-fbi-2016-11), gives us “The FBI says it found new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, CBS News reported on Thursday. It is not known whether the emails are relevant to a case involving Clinton’s private email server, the network said, but the messages do not appear to be duplicates of emails the agency has already reviewed, according to an unnamed US official cited by CBS News“, the article was given the date and identity ‘Bryan Logan Nov 4^th, 2016, 11:12 AM‘, yet when we look at the CBS article “In a letter to Congress last Friday, FBI Director James Comey indicated that the agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Clinton’s private email server. Those emails came from the laptop of Weiner, a former New York congressman“, which was what I reported on 5 days ago, which came from CNBC on October 29^th. So, as the Business Insider is intentionally misinforming the people. So, can we agree that the Media could now be regarded as ‘tempering’ with elections by misinforming the public? Even as we see these events evolve, we need to take heed that Donald Trump is the kind of man that large media corporations do not mind to be indebted to. Because his next crazy idea that pays off, these people will be knocking for exclusives, so when you think that you are getting informed, think again! The article never ‘lies’, it just trivialises older news and gives only part of the complete timestamp on other sides, leaving us with the message that Hillary Clinton has more eventful issues, instead of us getting the correct information that Business Insider is just rehashing old news, to get a few more cycles out of it. How is that not tempering with the view of the voters?

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Tagged as ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Anthony Weiner, Barack Obama, CBS, CNBC, Congress’s Cybersecurity, DHS, Director FBI, Donald Trump, Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), FBI, Hillary Clinton, James B. Comey, Jason Chaffetz, Jesse Jackson, New America, NY Times, Oversight Committee, R-Utah, Robert Gates, Sari Horwitz, Secretary of State, the Guardian, thinkprogress.org, Washington Post

November 3, 2016 · 09:02

I know a Japanese joke

An Englishman, and Irishman and a Japanese industrial walk into a bar, which could be the start of a joke, yet there is a very serious issue behind it. You see, when we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/31/nissan-assurances-over-brexit-cannot-be-published-says-business-secretary) on how “the stark warning from Haruki Hayashi, president of the Japanese chambers of commerce in Britain and the European CEO of Mitsubishi, who said businesses needed more than “general reassurances” if his country’s investment presence in Britain was to be maintained” needs to take a little lesson from a firm called ‘Hypocrisy Inc.‘, when we see (at http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2230999/Nissan-sells-UK-cars-Switzerland-tax-ruse.html), which is from 2012 “Nissan Motor Manufacturing, which has received tens of millions of pounds in Government grants to build cars in the UK, is a contract manufacturer for another Nissan company based in Rolle, Switzerland. The Swiss company buys the raw materials and owns the finished cars. It pays the UK business a fee that is slightly higher than the manufacturing costs, limiting the amount of profits that are declared in Britain”

In addition, this is a game that Japanese car makers have been playing on a global scale, including Australia, getting millions in grants, getting what was calculated as a $2,000 discount per manufactured car, whilst shipping tens of thousands for sale overseas. The comedy team Kim Carr and Bill Shorten (the honourable BS) from the Australian Labor party were on that merry-go-round, that whilst in week 3 of the new government blaming the Liberal party for ‘losing‘ the automotive industry. I discussed this in May 2016 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/05/22/tuesday-evening-quarterback/), the UK is facing a similar situation, basically, Japanese firms are trying to strongarm a better deal, which is business minded and all fine, yet the Brexit scaremongering thing is getting on my nerves because I am fed-up with this category of ‘wanker‘ (or is the term ‘tosser‘ more correct?) that they represent. For those people I state, there was no Brexit in Australia, Japanese firms will do whatever they can to broker an increased profit any way possible, Brexit is just their latest excuse (whilst we admit that some raised items are a valid concern, there is still no certainty whether the set changes will actually impact). In interesting side that was not mentioned in this comes from Reuters (at http://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu-nissan-support-idUSL8N1CY3QI). “The support that the UK government has promised carmaker Nissan in return for building new models in Britain could prove expensive, but the Japanese carmaker’s complex structure makes it hard to estimate“, so like Australia, whatever grant the Japanese receive, could be seen as legalising slave labour, for that is basically the setting when the grants add up to work whilst having no cost for the manpower employed. The Reuters article lights up a few additional issues, yet it also gives view that the Bremain group is still playing and pulling lines to scare the population in making them believe that Brexit was a bad idea and as such trying to swing a way to undo Brexit.

So whilst you contemplate those elements, think back to my September article (those who read it) ‘For Only the Messenger‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/09/05/for-only-the-messenger/), where we see the Japanese Prime Minister making demands, whilst we also have the added information that he is making demands for companies that funnel sales through Switzerland, so that paying taxation is kept to an unrealistic minimum. Having cars built in the UK, whilst the grants exceed the cost of labour, whilst in addition, sales are funnelled through Switzerland giving them a 10% taxation option, gives voice to the findings of Reuters. The prestige of having cars build in the United Kingdom does not seem to bring the bacon home, the cost for this prestige is a lot more than the UK governments bargained for. So, when I see the quote “The strong intervention from the Japanese came as the business secretary, Greg Clark, claimed the government’s letter to Nissan cannot be published because of commercial sensitivity“, or is it actually a simple reason? Mainly that any person with an abacus or calculator could work out that government administrations have been giving in to car makers for too long a time at way too high a cost to both the consumer and the taxpayers?

This debate on Japanese demands is actually interesting, because the French political left is now more and more on the side of Frexit, so with Frexit now a realistic issue for 2017, we see that 128 million consumers could fall out of reach to these car makers, should they push for certain options. If Japan wants to play around and endanger an optional 18% European consumer base, that’s fine by other car builders. In my view, the push for non-taxability at any cost could be the more expensive one for Japan in the end and with their economy even more on the edge than America is, it is a gamble that they could actually end up losing. The question becomes, how scared are the UK politicians at present and have they done the clear and correct calculations on what the costs are, because paying for people to be employed is not what job creation is about.

We see similar issues with Honda, from the Wall Street Journal (at http://www.wsj.com/articles/honda-net-profit-jumps-39-1477896050), where we see net profits to $1.7 billion for the last quarter, whilst we see that tax breaks are on the clear side of delivery here. The Wall Street Journal also states “The party may grind to a halt once those tax incentives go away“, in my view the question should be, why on earth are we giving tax breaks to any player making 1,700 million dollars of net profit on a quarter?

In addition, when I see “net profit is expected to increase by ¥25 billion yen to ¥415 billion yen as a result of lower costs“, I ask here: ‘How much tax breaks represent the annual 25 billion in increased profit?‘, which is a question we should all ask, especially when we see unrealistic demands from an industry, where a single player in this industry is expected to be making 2 billion a month more. Would you not agree?

This all intersects with the exit strategies from the EU. Brexit is actively an issue, Frexit is currently a realistic change, yet the silent player in this is now Italy with a December 4th vote coming up. This vote is regarding a constitutional referendum regarding the appointment and powers of the Parliament of Italy. In the background however, the changes could also simplify any referendum on leaving the EU if that becomes an issue. The Italeave group is currently not that big, yet grew when Brexit became a reality, also the right wing groups are not that strong at present in Italy, a change that could become a lot more intense when Frexit becomes real, because it would push Germany as they, together with Italy would be the only two anchors leaving the Euro in a somewhat stable state. As I stated before, two currencies will not be able to do that, making Germany and Italy run for the hills soon and fast. Beware! I stated when Frexit becomes a reality! So there is no given, merely an increased level of likelihood, which is no less threatening.

This now strikes back to the Japanese side, because with these changes over the coming two years, any change the Japanese market makes will have other consequences as well. Consider that they suddenly get that ‘special offer’ from Slovenia or Poland. What will happen when France and the UK are out of that single market? They could make a deal together where the UK and France markets support one another whilst pushing other markets to the left. Suddenly certain Japanese dignitaries will need to explain to certain bosses of the Japanese International Trade that their hand of poker backfired, that whilst they only had 3 of the 5 cards to play. That should make for interesting newscasts in Tokyo, I just hope that NHK News will be airing those news cycles with English subtitles.

Are my thoughts realistic?

Well, that is part of the issue. The other part is that politicians on a global scale are always willing to give away the kitchen sink to be able to boast that they secured 100,000 jobs. The fact that nobody is asking what the costs were makes it even easier for them to do this. Yet overall, the consideration of cost is actively being pushed to the foreground by others, giving me a stronger case, but is it strong enough? I honestly cannot tell, but time will tell as we see the publications of concessions given to the car industry.

The question now becomes, who offered what and for what reason, because at this stage, the Bremain group and especially those with political power are eager to make certain promises (within the office they hold), whilst knowingly undermine the continuation of Brexit at the same time, so that hurdle is one we will see a few times more soon enough. So when we get back to the statement that several newspapers reported on ‘Japanese companies have already begun receiving offers to relocate elsewhere in the EU‘, isn’t it interesting that no one is making any claim that they made the offer and no one is making any report on where they might go to. In this place where ‘leaking’ reports is at the core of scaremongering, that fact does not see the light of day. The clarity is, is that the only place where there is a clear benefit to go to apart from the UK, is the Netherlands, because in the end, manufactured cars need to get delivered somewhere, so as the infrastructure goes down, the costs go up by a fair bit. That part is not given consideration to the extent it needed to have. As 50% of the created cars go into export, consider when the factory is in (for example) Germany, what additional jumps would be needed to get the cars to the same location? Sweden has a similar deal, however with out of control weather 3 months a year and additional issues with extreme cold and an additional delivery distance of 1100 miles, what costs would Japan face in addition?

Just questions that impact the decision, there might be answers, or not. What matters is that people are suddenly demanding decisions, taking away the rights that the British voters had. Is it not interesting that this all happens, whilst Wall Street is in absolute fear that Donald Trump might win? The reason to mention this (at http://www.wsj.com/articles/investors-consider-a-brexit-times-10-trump-win-1478111985) is very applicable as the Japanese profit needy corporations rely on stability, something we see here “In the past week or so, the Vix index of volatility has risen from around 13 to just under 20 points; the S&P 500 has fallen for six trading days in a row, for the first time since February 2015; and the Stoxx Europe 600 has fallen for seven days, for the first time since February“, under these conditions, Japanese car makers will resettle somewhere else?

So these three men were in the bar, the Englishman orders an English Chapter 6, the Irishman a glass of Paddy and the Japanese gentleman ordered tea. As all three look at the tea, the Japanese states: ‘If you are not drinking alcohol, then neither am I!‘ (a reference to Awamori)

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Tagged as Australian Labor party, Awamori, Bill shorten, Bremain, Brexit, Donald Trump, Frexit, Greg Clark, Haruki Hayashi, Independent, Italeave, Japanese International Trade, Kim Carr, NHK News, Nissan, Paddy, reuters, Rolle, S&P 500, Stoxx Europe 600, Switzerland, the Guardian, United Kingdom, Vix index of volatility, Wall Street Journal

October 31, 2016 · 16:54

As messages pass by

There has been a lot of throwing regarding e-mails in the 11th hour of the campaign. As elections are officially about to start, the need to get them out in favour of the Republican side seems to be clear. Yet, in all this there is an equal worry why the Democrats have let this get so out of hand.

For those who do not keep up to date with the daily need of any Clinton e-mail, let’s mull this over, so that the sequential parts will be a lot easier to understand. For the most, part of the history (at http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/29/the-history-of-the-clinton-email-controversy.html) will give you part of the goods, but it is still a little short.

You see, this all goes back to 2012, when the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia started a coordinated attack against two US government facilities in Benghazi, Libya. It resulted in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith. It was the New York Daily News that reported on State Department officials who were criticized for denying requests for additional security at the consulate prior to the attack. In her role as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton subsequently took responsibility for the security lapses. So, that should have been the end of it, should it not? The basic premise is that mistakes will happen, it is really not great when lives are lost, but it is a danger many foreign dignitaries in conflict places face.

Although, at this point, one valid question becomes debatable: ‘Should any elected official making such a lapse of security be regarded as a possible president of the United States?’

I am merely phrasing the question, it is not an answer pushing you into the direction of the Yes or No answer. What followed was a media rush towards the semantics of ‘Act of Terror‘ versus ‘Act of Terrorism‘. I am calling this an issue of semantics as in the end Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens ended up being equally dead, so in that regard there was no impact. Just as many have seen, but perhaps not realised that syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer claimed that a State Department e-mail, which passed along a report from Embassy Tripoli that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attack on Facebook and Twitter was evidence that the White House knew of terrorist connections to the attack almost immediately. Charles Krauthammer stated, “This is really a journalistic scandal. I mean, the fact there was not a word about any of this in the New York Times or the Washington Post today.” This comes from the 23^rd October 2012. The issue now is that there are layers of issues not dealt with. Consider this part and also consider the Senate Hearing Response by Hillary Clinton “With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they’d go kill some Americans?! What difference, at this point, does it make?!“, which is only part of the response, yet the response in the hours before the attack would have been important, especially as the movie linked to all this ‘Innocence of Muslims‘, a movie by an Egyptian born Coptic Christian, an anti-Islamic movie with the intent to denigrate Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. Was there really no clue that this would have repercussions? In addition, Anti-Islamic content had been added in post-production by dubbing, without the actors’ knowledge (source: Christian Science Monitor). What is interesting is that Sarah Abdurrahman states “If you watch closely, you can see that when the actors are reading parts of the script that do not contain Islam-specific language, the audio from the sound stage is used (the audio that was recorded as the actors were simultaneously being filmed). But anytime the actors are referring to something specific to the religion (the Prophet Muhammed, the Quran, etc.) the audio recorded during filming is replaced with a poorly executed post-production dub. And if you look EVEN closer, you can see that the actors’ mouths are saying something other than what the dub is saying.“, this is important because it clearly implies an attack on religious values, one that the Muslim community values above all others. Now we cannot expect that the internet is policed to a certain extent, yet in light of the trailer, was there really no one who asked ‘could this get out of hand?‘, whilst in the other direction, the fact that the trailer had been online for almost 50 days, were there no danger flags at all? So on a September 11^th day, was there no perception at all that there could be a dangerous situation? In addition there was a PDF (at http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo33519/Flashing%20Red-HSGAC%20Special%20Report%20final.pdf), where the Regional Security Officer in Libya compiled a list of 234 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, 50 of which took place in Benghazi.

America and American interests were (regardless of reason) under direct terrorist attack.
The State Department should have increased security on several levels
It gives another view to the Senate hearing in light of certain facts (January 23rd 2013)
The United States Senate Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs paper from December 2012 shows that additional security would have been essential.

Now, why is this so important during an election? For the most, we could call trivialise all this in regards to ‘administrative failure‘, which will happen, even as we all realise that lives were lost, it gives weight to the response that Hillary Clinton gave. As she stated “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again” as well as “The Intelligence Community has a process, I understand, going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out”, which now makes the second one a killer to say the least.

This is now part of the problem!

You see, the email controversy is not just that mails were missing, it became publicly known that Hillary Clinton, as she served as the United States Secretary of State, had used her family’s private email server for official communications, instead of the State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. So certain triggers could have been missed and an issue of reporting now exists. In addition, the mere notion that thousands of emails that would later be marked classified by the State Department retroactively had been on other servers is also a clear case for response. This now gets us to Bill O’Reilly (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYma3zZf7U), who now informs us on two sides that matter. At 2:11 we see the ‘accountability of people in power‘, which is an issue at any given day, yet there might be a clear explanation, yet the implied issues as seen gives us that there has been a level of miscommunication going all the way to the Oval Office, which is now a really big issue. In that regard, the Clinton campaign is getting cut all over the place, in addition, at 4:16, there is now the implied issue that FBI director James Comey was either not aware or covered up the private email issues as they were missing from the summation of the case.

Now, after all the grief that FBI director James Comey is now receiving. In addition, Nevada Democrat Senator Harry Reid gives us ‘James Comey may have broken law‘, is that so Harry? The trouble with Harry is that he doesn’t seem to mention on how private email servers and not the State.gov servers were used. Can we all agree that this might be the bigger issue, for more than one reason? The fact that impeachment could be due to all or any crime that abuses office powers, we could surmise that there is an optional case of perjury. If proven, we can avoid the entire election. That is not, as Harry Reid states ‘interference in an election‘, but the investigation of possible criminal acts. On one side, if this goes up after the elections and should Hillary Clinton win, than it is a first in history that both members of a family, both in a position of presidential powers gets impeached for ‘Perjury and obstruction of justice’, which is at his mere age of 76 still an interesting event to personally witness. Harry gets enthusiastic in his speech as given on the Huffington Post. You see he states “letting her GOP opponent get away with breaking the law“, which is interesting as the system does not seem to make a criminal ineligible for running for office. It mentions that you need to be an American and once elected you cannot run a second time for president (re-election does not apply), so a one term president cannot be a president again. When we look at the Constitution, Article 2, we get an interesting side. Section 4 gives us: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours“, this implies that a felon can legally become president of the United States, practically that is a lot less certain.

So here we get the trouble with Harry. You see, until the election it is the premise of conviction, if Hillary Clinton gets prosecuted and convicted regarding the Benghazi mails after a successful election, she would be impeached. It is a possible and practical solution, but it isn’t likely and in addition initially James Comey made a notification of events. In light of the Washington Post (as well as the Guardian) we see “Their decision partly reflected the institutional power of the FBI director, Comey’s personality and the political realities they were facing, according to current and former Justice Officials. In this case, officials said Comey put the department in an untenable position by informing them that he was sending a letter to Congress because he had an obligation to lawmakers or they would feel misled“, is this separation of powers at its finest, or is this a mere loophole? We need to see this in contrast to another quote in the same article. Here we see: “At the July news conference, Comey announced that the FBI had completed its investigation of Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state. Comey said he was recommending to the Justice Department that Clinton not be charged, but he added that Clinton and her colleagues had been “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.”” So it was after July that things escalated. The part that we see ‘when Harry met Hillary’ is that the path that is taken is odd to say the least. The mention by James Comey ‘in an unrelated case‘ as well as the fact that when this all happened Hillary Clinton should have had a cleaning pass on a very high level. That never happened, for the most it is an actual consideration exactly HOW Anthony Weiner got these mails to say the least. Consider that he left congress in June 2011, a little more than two months before it all happened. So how and exactly why was he kept in the loop? If the facts are correct, we are now facing a case where Hillary Clinton mailed classified materials to an outsider. A part that leads to even more questions when we see “FBI director James Comey revealed the existence of the emails, which law-enforcement sources said were linked to Weiner’s estranged wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin“, which now gets the Clintons in even more hot water. It came from a private server, it went to the top aide and she was using the laptop of resigned congressman Anthony Weiner, now it seems that the mails were meant for his wife, did she not have her own laptop (at http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/30/fbi-obtains-warrant-for-newly-discovered-emails-in-clinton-probe–as-reid-accuses-comey-of-hatch-act-violation.html)?

From my view, the fact that classified materials went via unqualified sources to a device owned by a person who’s is no longer in office. It seems that Harry is spinning his way through legal mentions whilst ignoring transgressions of classified communications. So, Harry needs to be careful on whacking the paint brush around. In the end, there is of course a chance that it will influence the election, but we could in equal margins consider that the Clintons, due to careless ignoring mails in the field, the entire mess ended up hurting themselves again.

It is because the clarity of what actually happened is out there is missing, is exactly why this is now coming to blows now. As for the mention of ‘Reid Accuses Comey of Hatch Act Violation‘, we should in equal measure consider that this is not an act where we see ‘political activity’, this is an FBI director who is now looking into possible criminal negligence and the fact that classified materials were on a laptop not owned for the person who the intended mail was, in addition, it belonged to a person no longer in office, so those conditions could well spell more mess as former Hillary Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and another top aide had “some” classified material on laptops they turned over to the bureau in its probe of Clinton’s private server use as secretary of state. Through her own statements, we saw that she was unaware what classified meant, she did not use the proper protocols on sending classified, secret and more than 20 top secret emails. So as we see Senator Harry Reid go all up in arms, we need to consider one additional quote from the Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/comey-gives-in-to-shameful-partisanship/2016/10/30/c31c714a-9ed8-11e6-8d63-3e0a660f1f04_story.html). “The evidence suggests that FBI Director James B. Comey is a decent man. The evidence also suggests that he has been intimidated by pressure from Republicans in Congress whose interest is not in justice but in destroying Hillary Clinton“, that seems to be the driving force here. It is my personal belief that this is what happened and this is why the initial mail was so vague. If I resort to calling a spade a spade then I would state: “Yo Harry, we know that you are stupid, but you are not stupid. You know what I am saying?” Instead of lashing out to the Republicans in congress, instead of looking why the massive level of ignorance from a former Secretary of State wasn’t properly cleaned up the moment it was a clear visibility issue, we will get to the direct consequence of dropping the ball on the bottom of the 9^th when you are down 4 points and this is the last play. It could cost you the game and that is exactly what could happen at this point. When you trace all this information back you get to the clear understanding that WikiLeaks doesn’t need to find whistle-blowers, with the cyber negligence we see at present, Congress could in theory be supplying WikiLeaks with Top Secret information for decades to come (dramatically over-sized speculation). Perhaps Congress could take a moment to send an unclassified email to Maj Gen William T. Lord (you know the dude in charge of the Air Force Cyber Units) requesting a highly needed presentation on ‘Common Cyber Sense‘, it seems that a sizeable population on Capitol Hill is in dire need of one. #JustSaying

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Tagged as Ansar al-Sharia, Benghazi, Bill O'Reilly, Charles Krauthammer, Cheryl Mills, CNBC, FBI Director James B. Comey, Harry Reid, Hatch Act, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Innocence of Muslims, J. Christopher Stevens, James Comey, Justice Department, libya, Maj Gen William T. Lord, Nevada, Nevada Democrat Senator Harry Reid, Sarah Abdurrahman, Sean Smith, Secretary of State, the Guardian, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, United States Senate Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs, US Congress, Washington Post

October 27, 2016 · 09:50

The second zero hour

On 11/11/11 Bethesda released a game, we know Bethesda is pretty good at what they do, so they knew they had something that the RPG niche market would enjoy. Yet, I wonder if they were even close to realising that they were clueless on just how well they had done their job? You see, I am a passionate RPG fan, so I was on board from day one. Yet, Skyrim was different in many ways. To illustrate that, consider that it’s your 18th birthday and your parents give you a new kind of Maserati, a real one, but this one has one extra option, this car allows you to drive without any speed limits, so not speeding tickets ever. How would you react?

This is what Skyrim achieved. In the first week a little over 7 million copies were sold, which is already a record in RPG land, what no one thought possible happened, Bethesda pushed RPG clear into the mainstream gaming area, they somehow got the magical formula right. So up to now there are well over 23 million copies sold making it one of the few billion dollar plus game revenue.

Now, 5 years later we get another zero hour, the same game is being released on PS4 and XB1, the people are about to go nuts again. Leaving us with the realistic prospect that this game could equal and possibly surpass Grand Theft Auto 5 sales. That would still be a very tall order as they sold 65 million copies, but it is possible and the rage and hype that is out there at present is definitely a decent indication that it could happen.

As I said: ‘they were clueless on how well they had done their job‘, which is perhaps one of the better compliments on the doorstep of Bethesda. Even with Fallout 4 surpassing all records, this one will push their records even further. I have stated again and again, if you aren’t willing to get to the edge you will never make a truly exceptional game. Bethesda went to the edge and stared into the void of the dread father Sithis. They are coming out on top!

So why is this game so amazing?

I believe that open world games are the long term trend of games and the true desire of gamers. In this game you start as being a convict on the way to execution (a wink to the previous Elder Scroll game). After a small introduction that helps you keep your character mobile and alert, you are about to get your head chopped off and that is where the world goes pear shaped on your executioners. From that moment on you have the ‘escape’ part teaching you the elemental things of the game, which takes about 20 minutes, fraught with action and after that, it will be whatever you want to do. Follow the path offered to you or seek your own destiny. That is how most RPG players like their game and this appeal has gone mainstream (meaning the non RPG population at large). A game that offers you value for money. For the same reason that I was ‘offended’ that a $90 game named Tombraider brought with 10 hours of game-play, and for the repetitiveness that some other games bring. The open sided part of Skyrim offers a long term fun that not many games offer. For that $90 on Skyrim I have had well over 1000 hours of gaming fun. That is value for money to say the least and this version will be a one price with complete game and all the DLC additions that the game had offered for Skyrim. So for the new players this will keep you busy until the New Year. For the returning players it is a different story. You see, in my case, it is the same thing, but now with upgraded graphics. In addition, the consoles will now get the option to play mods, which was until now only an option for PC players. It will be a brand new day for RPG players, and that brand new day starts at midnight as the remastered HD edition of Skyrim hits the shelves for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

In that regard, there is one additional bonus for those who went all out earlier this quarter and bought the Xbox One S, will, if they have the right TV enjoy this game in 4K, which is as far as I can tell a first (please correct me if I was wrong), which would be a nice additional feather in the Bethesda cap. Giving an additional edge to the Xbox One market. Even as some ‘gaming experts’ have stated that there is no market for it (too expensive, no games and so on), the fact that the Xbox One S at present has two clear advantages over the PS4 Pro, the setting that Skyrim now offers can (and might) drive Xbox One S sales as it is introducing Skyrim to an even wider audience. That last part is a given as pre orders are of the charts in some places. Yet all this is now pushing for another side of visibility that also needs to be said.

That other side is seen as we look at Forbes, we see that merely 15 hours ago (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/10/25/bethesdas-decision-to-withhold-review-copies-is-bad-for-gamers-and-sets-a-dangerous-precedent/) the following was released ‘Bethesda’s Decision To Withhold Review Copies Is Bad For Gamers And Sets A Dangerous Precedent‘, and in that regard, I would initially be completely on his side, apart from the fact that Ubisoft has been doing that since Assassins Creed Unity. Yet when I look at www.youtube.com/watch?v=onFm-7_wTyA as well as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mpQF-01raY we see reviews of that new versions a week ago. Of course we agree that ‘new’ is a relative term for a game originally released on the 11^th day of the 11^th month in the year 11 (+2000). In addition, the second video also shows that the game has a few additional effects to the Skyrim experience. Yet the issues shown, does not diminish the words we see in Forbes. The article brings good points, yet with Cam Robinson and minion having reviewed this game a week ago, my issue is not with the article, but I am stuck with the question why that reviewer had no ‘advanced copy’. It could be for any reason, but is that a real problem? This game is a new format release, the game itself still has the same missions, quests and places to visit, what is new are the mods. So the review would not have needed that much time in the first place.

So, will you get the game on PS4 or XB1?

If you loved the game the first time around, the answer is very likely to be yes, if you are new to this game than it should be yes for several reasons and one additional reason if you are the lucky owner of the Xbox One S. Also, ‘new’ gamers should remember that this game has been played and loved for almost 5 years, which is quite the achievement for any single player game.

The one thing that is a definite, is that it will give rise to one question on a global level: ‘When will Bethesda release the 6th game in the Elder Scrolls series?’

As for me, I will enjoy playing this game again and I will try not to take an arrow to the knee this time around.

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Tagged as Assassins Creed Unity, Bethesda, Cam Robinson, Elder Scrolls, Fallout 4, Forbes, Microsoft, PS4, RPG, Sithis, Skyrim, XB1

October 25, 2016 · 14:19

The risk of androgynous automation

Today we see another message, another prediction and another approach to make people nervous. This time it is a combined effort from the fields of Oxford University and Deloitte, they find that ‘77% probability of ‘repetitive and predictable’ roles being automated‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/25/850000-public-sector-jobs-automated-2030-oxford-university-deloitte-study).

So how true is this?

Actually, there is a lot of truth in it. The truth is not just a given, it is an essential need. Yet the headline ‘Study says 850,000 UK public sector jobs could be automated by 2030‘ is a problem, not one of disaster, but one of opportunity possibly missed. The article gives us a few things, including links to the full report (indirect), which is a good thing and let’s be honest, Deloitte is no PwC; they stand miles above that group of Excel users. My first issue is with page 2. Not because it is incorrect, but the difference from my view is as I see it more than semantics. You see, they state “eliminating the budget deficit – into an era of parallel challenges as it moves towards Brexit“. I believe that Brexit will enable over time a speedier recovery of the deficit, it will be no picnic, but it will happen. Which is why I in earlier writing opposed the view the independent had. They wrote “Britain’s largest banks are planning to move business overseas due to uncertainty over the Brexit process, the head of the British Bankers’ Association has warned“, where my response in a decently diplomatic tone was “So, let them fuck off! The moment they feel the initial 2018 collapse of the Euro and the US Dollar, which will be voiced as ‘our currency will face a temporary contraction of value’, then they will see the cost they face and the revenue they are now missing out of. So, feel free to consider to return after learning that mistake under conditions of massive administrative fees for consideration of inclusion into the UK economy“. This is not an empty view, when the UK returns to strength, those moved away will see contracting economies in Germany, where the Deutsche Bank will be desperate to retain business out of fear of the damage of ‘written off’ collapsing corporations. France will be in a similar state, but there Crédit Agricole and Natixis are the Powerbrokers and neither will consider some ‘grocery bank’ that is relocating to ‘new shores’, so these moving banks will not be too welcome there. And several other nations are in a similar setting. So what is left? Italy? Greece? Good luck with that idea!

So as the UK is facing new issues and new challenges, Deloitte is showing that it is not all roses. The report shows on page 12 “The OECD and IMF views are backed up by OBR analysis that suggests spending on investment, public services and benefits are the interventions most likely to provide rapid economic boosts while providing a platform for medium and longer term growth“, this illuminates an earlier issue that has been mentioned by yours truly (aka: me) more than once. It isn’t just the £11.2 NHS IT failure the UK Labour party gave its citizens. The bigger issue is that governments at large have had a failing grade in managing such projects. Over micro-managing made these projects too massive and in the end no longer feasible or realistic. If this is the path, than it needs to precede an altered adjustment in procedures on how to manage and set these projects. The issue we see that still is required for the NHS, also clearly shows that the political interference tends to be a hindrance rarely a solution. However, the political part cannot be removed, but the entire setup can be altered in another way. A clear definition of what is required, that would after this point be scrutinised by proper IT specialists working for the government (to keep that part of the costing down), only then when that part has been dealt with, can the project move into a new field. If this was the Law and Mental Health, it might be best phrased that the government needs an IT version of a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Such a manual would need a data requirement part, and application part, a data networking part and a security part. Until such an approach is made, the need that we see, will end up being a massive expenditure towards the Exchequers chest, with the risk of no result and no alternative. These paths make sense in two ways. In the first there will be a lot more clarity on what is requested, required and delivered. There will be less contractual mud and as such whomever took the project will be responsible for the delivered bad boy and it would show a clear path of adjustment and repairs (where needed).

There is even a new side in this, it will shape the required need of technical universities. Because as they become involved, delivering the hours and manpower towards these projects, the costing will be reduced, the Universities will also gain an income and their students would end up with a partial career and years of work and subsequent income. You see, the need to move away from these ‘conceptual consultants’ and selling concepts not products is an essential need to make it all work. There is even an additional benefit that larger IT corporations will lose their grip on governmental budgets and it will serve a wider audience, a change that has been overdue for at least 10 years.

The report gives on page 20 the public’s attitude. My issue is number 2. “More people expect public services to get worse because of Brexit“, I am not sure if that is complete. It is not incorrect, but the point of focus would reset really quickly when we consider the Guardian where we read “Deloitte’s previous work has shown that all sectors will be affected by automation in the next two decades, with 74% of jobs in transportation and storage, 59% in wholesale and retail trades and 56% in manufacturing having a high chance of being automated“, any automation where we see the change from personal towards an automated androgynous system, tends to cause waves of rejection and stress. Even today, we still have an automated irritation when we hear ‘press 1 for sales‘. Until we can upgrade these systems into a much better evolved system, automation will fluctuate into people seeking other avenues in acquiring that what they need. In addition, there is still an aversion to automated sales in some areas as distribution misses the quality marks the recipient demands in some cases. Now, we can all agree that there is plenty of evolution in this field and the evolution is growing in many directions and in long before 2030 we will have systems that are vastly superior to the systems we have today, that is the way the beast tends to work. There is also a given that we cannot yet predict how that will be in 5 years, yet all this requires a solid foundation between sales, services and facilitation/distribution and that part is currently still missing.

Now we get to the part that is a little bit of an issue with the report. We see that the top issue is ‘Better public transport‘, but better how? We see it on page 21 of the full report, so when we see ‘What things would you say would most improve public services in your area?’ Here, I miss a part where we see what the audience now feels is missing or failing. Is it prices, the amounts of times the public transport comes in, how busy it is (no sitting options), you see, they all come with extra costs. More busses means more costs. The solution that seemingly addresses all three mentioned, but is that the failure, the flaw or is it something else? I think that this issue remains subserving to the public’s personal issues ‘Poverty, inequality and low pay‘ as well as ‘Housing‘, which is all about the quality of life for most people. How to address that part is also an issue and automation does not address these policies in any way. Which is respectively 20% and 18% of an asked population of 1099 adults, which in my view is a population way too small to set this ‘State of the State‘ to. For a decent level of reliability, especially as the UK is a mere 65 million people, having a response quota 5,000-10,000 on a national level would have been an essential first. If the results were weighted towards the UK demographics, than it is likely that this report will have additional ‘flaws’, making me wonder who signed off on the requested paper?

There is another side the Guardian gives “However, in contrast to the doomsayers who predict mass unemployment, the firm has argued that over the last 140 years automation has created more work than it destroyed“, I am on the side of Deloitte here. In addition to creating more work, from the issues I raised earlier when considering that 10%-20% is moving towards retirement, the new jobs that are brought will be largely long term jobs and as the setting from tertiary IT education focusses on the governmental automation needs it already has as well as those we will likely see over the next 5 years, the overall quality of the workers in this field could rise almost exponentially when set this against the prepared workforce in the last 10 years. The result of better and more focussed workers will also increase the curve of automation as well as the quality of it. Part of the new data world is discussed on page 34 of that report. the quote “A police and crime commissioner compared data security challenges in the public sector to those in banking, concluding that banks “have secure information and have got away with it”” reads a little weird, yet the foundation of it is a requirement factor that will grow immensely. That field will grow in two ways. The first is the growing field of non-repudiation, a clear register that a certain person accessed certain data and only that person could have done it. This field especially if a cause for concern because there is a gap in technology here and especially in the case of NHS data, that gap needs to be filled (as well as several other fields). Should you doubt that, or prefer to trivialise this, then look towards Ashley Madison, the Office of Personnel Management, Anthem, Hacking Team and Premera. In effect totalling the endangered personal details of up to 150 million people. And this is only the hacks of 2015. When we see the upcoming move towards domotics, the overall danger of personal data getting out has the option of growing the number of people exposed by 1000%, basically a lot more than the complete UK population, at that stage even the sheep, sheepdogs and pony’s on Shetland could find their personal details online. This industry will grow, with a large club of international career opportunities in IT and the growing niche of Data Security.

In the end, we can agree with the numbers, or we can disagree. No matter how the meat is sliced, the recommendation on page 49 are in the end what matters. That part reads a little too diplomatic, but in all fairness they are points that count. Yet, as I personally see this, especially when set against page 2, I am missing something. You see, in my view, there is an item 6. I would state “This state will need to grow into a different dynamic (Government, Non-Profit and Commercial), it requires to grow its government policies by actively engaging and hiring the final year students into its governmental workplace and make them part of the IT evolution“.

It is my view that corporate needs will always exist, yet by preparing these students, graduating them and for them to adhere to corporate policies as they sell their innovations to government is all good for those corporations and I am not against that, because they will get a massive dose of that throughout their careers. There is nothing wrong by having these places of education create part of the engines of solution for the UK government. It falls directly in line with the thoughts in recommendations 2, 3 and 4.

The paper is a lot more than just about IT, even though IT takes the forefront here. When we look at the Guardian quotes “Interactive roles, which require “a high degree of personal interaction, including jobs such as teachers, social workers and police officers”, face a 23% chance of automation“, “senior staff in “cognitive roles that mostly require strategic thinking and complex reasoning, including finance directors and chief executives”, 14% have a chance of being automated” as well as “but the number of health service staff in this “interactive” job is expected to fall to 266,000 by 2030“. This grows another side in the IT business. Over the next 10 years we will see evolution and change as we see CRM systems and the interpretation of ‘What is a CRM system?’

The interpretation of ‘manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle‘ has gone through massive change due to places like Google and systems like Facebook. This is an ongoing path and the inclusion of 5G and domotics over the next 5 years will create even more waves. It is starting to be almost essential that governments at large (not just the UK) are grabbing these changes by the proverbial balls before we see another iteration of lagging adapted technology. It is not the requirement to be ahead, but to be ‘inclusively ready’ will turn the tables on many issues. To be ready to include within the current technological iteration would give an additional decade of data and opportunities, whilst not adhering to these large changes could become increasingly costly over time. In an age where we move towards automation the need to be ahead is not the most essential one, it is staying behind where the danger lies. In that regard, you end up having to adhere towards whatever the commercial technologist brings, instead of shaping technology in ways where it is most useful for you.

A lesson most have learned the expensive way in this generation.

If there is one part I have to disagree with, than it is “Our wider research on automation also shows that while jobs are displaced by automation, new, higher-skilled and better paying jobs are created as a result“, the issue is not the need for these people, but as governments are no longer able to afford certain pricing plans (as those commercial managers hope they could price them at), it becomes a market where the cheapest provider is willing to offer it on, meaning that junior staff gets to be under higher scrutiny for less money, in a place where unemployment is relatively high, these hiring managers will get away with it. I reckon that the market will positively adjust by 2021, but that is still 5 years away. Unless you are a niche specialist, it will be your fate, but overall the quality of life would start to go up by 2019 (due to rising cost of living, aka rent), that is if you have the right degrees.

A slightly gloomy picture that is absent of doom and still a lot better than the issues the EU population overall is facing over the next 3 years.

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Tagged as 5G, Anthem, Ashley Madison, Brexit, Crédit Agricole, CRM, Data Security, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, domotics, Facebook, France, Germany, google, Greece, Hacking Team, IMF, IT, Italy, Natixis, NHS, OECD, Premera, the Guardian, the Office of Personnel Management, The State of the State 2016-17

October 24, 2016 · 19:17

For those doubting Brexit

There have been a few issues with the EU, some are petty and some only seem petty. You see, many are all in arms and all about the issue on how Canada is a good place, and it really really is. Yet, we have to understand that a trade agreement tends to be an agreement where one is better off than the other. That is a simple fact of life. A trade agreement, when completely balanced equally to all parties is a figment of the imagination of the visionary who wanted it, for the simple reason that it was in their interest. Now, that does not make the person evil or greedy, it is merely the reality of any trade agreement. Yet, when the trade agreement is done in secret, there will be additional issues. This is not such a case, but in the case of CETA (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/24/belgium-eu-ultimatum-canada-trade-deal-ceta-wallonia), there is the image that French speaking Belgium (aka Wallonia) will miss out too much in this EU-Canada deal, so they are all about not letting it happen. The article gives us ‘Paul Magnette, the leader of the Wallonia region, says the deal is bad for Europe’s farmers and gives too much power to global corporate interests‘, which would give ample voice to the justification of Wallonia trying to scuttle this deal. It does not make Canada bad or evil, it only gives voice to the European side that Wallonian farmers lose out, from their point of view too much. This shows partially the justification of Brexit; yet in equal measure it shows how the Bremain group feels scared and scarred as well as their justification that together the UK would be stronger. On one side they have a point, on the other side, we see here that if Wallonia gives in, the EU basically sells their future short and away from them. The quote “One European diplomat said that the reassurances “responded to all of Mr Magnette’s concerns”” implies that Magnette is unreasonable as reassurances were given, yet we have all seen how politicians can roll on their backs when the wind turns, so is he wrong? In this case I very much doubt it, as does politico (at http://www.politico.eu/article/meet-monsieur-paul-magnette-the-man-killing-ceta-deal-trade-agreement/). Here we see two mentions. The first is “Wallonia did its homework” as well as “In particular, he protested that CETA would leave European governments vulnerable to court action from unscrupulous multinational companies“, these are issues raised in both the TTIP and the TPP. In the TPP it was New Zealand that showed backbone, whilst Australia folded like a tissue in front of a hair dryer on high, it was not a pretty picture. We have had several issues with the US in the past, yet not with Canada. It is my personal believe that large corporations are dictating the trade agreement language to governments at large, which is cause for concern in two ways.

In the first it means that the governments are not enough about governing and a little too much regarding the status quo of the Fortune 500 they have connections to and in the second it implies that they overall quality of government legislators is dwindling too much and as such national interests are not being met, which now implies that proper taxation laws are about a decade away and nations at large cannot afford to work that way.

In that light the quote in Politico seems pretty decent: ““This treaty affects the lives of 500 million Europeans and 35 million Canadians for years and years,” Magnette told La Première channel Wednesday. “We can take a few weeks, a few months to analyse the problems and overcome them.”” Is that such a bad idea? The fact that a decision is demanded in less than 12 hours gives additional cause for concern. Why the speed?

Canadian Global Research had this quote “The CETA agreement –presented to public opinion as an innocuous “bilateral” EU-Canada trade deal– constitutes a TTIP in disguise, which would eventually evolve towards the integration of NAFTA and the EU, i.e into what might be described as a giant “North Atlantic Trade and Investment Area”. Those who are involved in the negotiations are fully aware that CETA is a back-door mechanism which would would create the underlying conditions for the formation of a North Atlantic Trading Block, i.e. a US “Imperial Project” controlled by Washington“.

This now implies that this is a new approach to TTIP, a backdoor. The part where we see “US “Imperial Project” controlled by Washington“, gives voice to the part that I have given for close to two years. The United States of America is broke and bankrupt. This is the only path that the US has left to remain in the game for a little while longer, whilst giving 98% of American power to large corporations, which n my humble opinion was never a working or acceptable solution. The fact that pressures are applied to get this done quicker and quicker only gives rise to the fact that this American Democratic administration could end up being the worst in American history and this administration needs a clear ‘win’ to be less regarded as less of a failure. What a legacy President Obama brings, no matter how this goes, it will make progression for the next US administration near impossible, so we can see why the Clinton campaign was against the TTIP to begin with. In addition, the Canadian Tyee (at http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/10/22/CETA-Failure-Reflects-Public-Rejection-Trade-Deals/), gives us “Leaving aside the odd reference to how nice Canada is, this is remarkable language that lays bare the obvious frustration and disappointment for the government, which prioritized the CETA agreement above all trade deals“, in that my personal response becomes: ‘drop the option to large corporations to sue governments‘, first they get tax breaks, now they get to sue for missed alleged profits? When did we get ourselves so retarded that this: “Currently, the US Lone Pine energy company is using ISDS provisions in NAFTA to sue the provincial government of Quebec for $250 million because it suspended shale gas mining pending an environmental study in response to community concerns“? How on earth was the mining of Shale Gas ever allowed before clear environmental studies were made?

Environmental regulations are there for a reason. When the environment is damaged, these companies tend to get really far and away when the invoice is due, trying all kinds of loopholes not to be held accountable. The Australian Newspaper The Age gives us “The high cost of ISDS makes the threat of arbitration a potent tool for the tobacco companies“, meaning that in not so wealthy countries, Tobacco, Soda drinks and alcohol companies can hold a nation over a barrel when they can find an option to apply the ISDS. Australia Spend $50 million to defend its plain packaging requirement in cigarettes. A system that allows for Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), where we see the issue of alleged discriminatory practices is too dangerous. In addition, the proven dangers of tobacco, how many people died and were not compensated? How discriminatory is that?

Yet the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gives us “Is ISDS a threat to Australia’s sovereignty? No. ISDS does not prevent the Government from changing its policies or regulating in the public interest. It does not freeze existing policy settings. It is not enough that an investor does not agree with a new policy or that a policy adversely affects its profits”, yet this is the opposite of what we see when we the Australian case of Philip Morris. The fact that only 5 days ago, News.com.au (at http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/govt-wont-reveal-tobacco-case-costs/news-story/7a81f7003241d0290685b5ce1d83f6db) gives us “Nick Xenophon wants to know what it cost taxpayers to defend the case, but the department insists it needs to be kept secret“, it gives light to the danger that the ISDS poses, it shows that Paul Magnette, the leader of the Wallonia region seems to be a lot more clued in and a lot more on the ball than those trying to get this dangerous trade pact passed and in addition, the fact that court costs are kept secret means that the taxpayer is not getting properly informed. The ISDS is more than just investors feeling safe, it is a secondary tool to get revenue up when the forecast gets downgraded by (amongst others) environmental needs and governmental freedom to set policy, although some deny that this is happening now (like the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), yet the fact that the cost is kept in secret gives indication that the sum is likely to be running towards the 9 digits, whilst it was about opposition on a health policy. Two cases like this could make most Eastern European EU nations bankrupt overnight, so there is cause for concern and in that Paul Magnette has a clear mindset in requiring more time.

In all this, the one part that is not making sense is that the ISDS could be seen that this is to protect non-visionary investors, investors that aren’t doing their homework, to give an additional option to get their money’s worth. Why on earth are we facilitating for corporate losers? If for example a UK company decides to cut corners and go for places where they learn that they are blocked, why would we give them any allowance for suing the UK government? If this example seems fair fetched, consider Philip Morris Asia Limited (Hong Kong) v. The Commonwealth of Australia. They might have lost, but the costs were really high. And this was whilst plain packaging was already in place. So getting rid of parts, or better the ISDS as a whole, would be a decent idea. Let’s not forget that if these companies were truly wronged, most common law nations have the option of proceeding through Torts.

Giving them additional options seems too far-fetched and in the end only counterproductive. No matter how many tears Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s trade minister brings to the table. In that part I wonder, why she had not considered removing the ISDS. Let’s face it, if investment is too dicey or dodgy, those companies should not go there to begin with, would that not be common sense? So why drive the ISDS? Perhaps I am oversimplifying the problem. I know that the ISDS makes sense, yet the Australian Philip Morris case shows the ISDS parts to be flawed and in light of how American and Chinese companies play the game, it is time to face the harsh reality that facilitation is becoming the lesser healthy alternative. In the end if there is profit, these companies will come.

So in the end, this was not about Brexit, but here we see in clarity, that this one market deal is not as great for the people at large as they think it is. For those only iterating that a one market deal is the only way, consider Wallonia, no matter how you slice it, people will lose out and if the court case is strong enough, you could lose a lot. A side that the Bremainers are not giving a clear view to, which is equally disturbing. There are elements on both sides, yet the disturbing one that Paul Magnette is bringing to light is one that too many have ignored. Brexit might end up giving the UK options and protections, that the EU trade agreements are currently trying to remove from the UK.

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Filed under Finance, Law, Politics

Tagged as Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Belgium, Bremain, Brexit, Canada, Canadian Global Research, CETA, Chrystia Freeland, Investor-State Dispute Settlement, ISDS, NAFTA, Nick Xenophon, North Atlantic Trade and Investment Area, Paul Magnette, Philip Morris, Philip Morris Asia Limited, President Obama, provincial government of Quebec, The Tyee, TPP, TTIP, US Lone Pine energy company

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