January 14, 2015 · 11:01

By the Jewish numbers

I have been thinking a lot in regards to the Jewish population. It all started when the numbers showed how small the fraction of Muslim extremists is. Was it like the fatwa pronounced against snowman in Saudi Arabia? I am not judging on that ruling, or on the reasoning there. It seemed so odd that one religion was such a large issue to some. You see, outside of Israel and the US, the Jewish population is less than 2% of whichever nation they are in, it is 1.9% in Gibraltar, because Gibraltar counts 600 people (excluding the monkeys), which gives us less than 12 people. It is likely just one family, perhaps even two. Why is this hatred against the Jews so intense? Perhaps the thought is sedition? Anyone who ever has a Shoarma (with garlic sauce) will decide to become Jewish?

A totally random reason, but what to think of this hatred? A level of hatred (or perhaps envy), that has existed in the minds of some people for such a long time. Let’s not forget that the total Jewish population is around 15 million globally, which is less than the Dutch population, giving us 0.19% of the global population, so what gives?

It is not just the events in France that have sparked an issue regarding the safety of Jews. When we look at the Atlantic, we see a different link (at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/will-this-time-be-different/384322/) ,

“A survey of French Muslims in 2014 found a community seething with anti-Semitism. Sixty-seven percent said “yes” when asked whether Jews had too much power over France’s economy. Sixty-one percent believed Jews had too much power in France’s media. Forty-four percent endorsed the idea of a global Zionist conspiracy of the kind described by the Holocaust-denying French Muslim comedian Dieudonne. Thirteen percent agreed that Jews were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis“. The quote is an interesting one. You see, statistics are at times like horoscopes, if the numbers fall flat, you can just ignore them. The last one on the financial crises is such a revelation, because the fact is not false (Marcus Goldman, the founder of Goldman Sachs is indeed Jewish, so is a slice of the top of Goldman Sachs), so even as this fact cannot be denied, the entire 2008 financial fiasco such a weird mention. Yes, the same involvement could be stated for the Lehman brothers. It was a twist of managed fates that kept Wall Street out of jail. Loads of the involved parties were not Jewish at all, the fact that national laws allowed for these events calls blaming the Jews even more in question. It is actually the mention “Sixty-one percent believed Jews had too much power in France’s media” that is central in all this. You see, these facts have bearing, but not in the way you might have ever considered.

If you look at different religions, we see that some are in unison, but for the most, people for the most remain at odds and in strife. The next is not a proven given, but it has shown to be correct. If we look at the old ages, we see that at times the Jews started in a place, in Munich (Germany) the first recorded name is ‘Abraham the Municher‘ in 1229, persecution through rumours and non-evidence has started from as early as 1285 (Source: Susanne Rieger), it took until the late 1700’s for levels of false persecution to diminish. When the Jewish population returned, it did so fairly quickly, and there is a weird situation linked to this. Wherever they moved to, the change was monumental.

Now the next parts are supposition and very speculative. It is my personal believe that the Jewish community is not one person, it is a united group. I have seen that the Jewish population at large is communicative almost in extremis ad infinitum. They debate and discuss everything with one another. What was then the Jewish area, now in Munich ‘the streets surrounding Gaertnerplatz in the trendy area of Glockenbachviertel are in increasing demand‘, which is a real estate quote! So as you consider my statement as reductio ad absurdum, than consider that this is not an isolated case. Amsterdam, Paris and many other cities in Western Europe have areas what was before the German culling through World War 2 to be amongst the most valuable real estates. This was not due to magic, witchcraft or crime. These people would buy a property and then take all effort to improve the house and to make the house a proper home, keeping it in perfect order. Where we would see rental properties fall into decline due to bad maintenance and greed driven choices, the Jewish houses would increase in value. In many cases (especially in Paris and Amsterdam) we see the proper optimised commercial use of any property, making it a long term asset. Now consider the Jewish population talking with each other, not at each other (as we see in many Christian places).

Weirdly enough, nowadays we share information open through social media, in those days the Jewish population did this using a Goose-feather, an ink jar and paper (aka actual communication). That trait got these people an advantage in banking, commerce and what is now regarded as media.

So is my speculation (based upon information read) so far out of synch with what might be? That is of course the question, which does not let the Goldman and Lehman family off the hook, but here we see an aggregated factor of growth that is exponential above many others. Is that the reason for the hatred? When someone internally ponders ‘the Jews’ are doing so much better then poor old lazy drinking me? If that is the view of some of these people, then perhaps they will consider getting educations and jobs instead of picketing against Jews (a subtle Westboro reference). Interestingly enough, in a Jewish family, everyone works (not unlike some Muslim families I know). That will in the end have an impact on the budget a family has and on the amount of debt that they can reduce.

Now we go back to some of the references, so even though some statements are true, are they still correct? That is the part no one can actually honestly answer. You see, they do not have too much power over the French economy, they are part of it, and many regard Natixis to be the biggest player in France, not a Jewish firm at all (as far as I can tell), so as we watch the quote of ‘found’ events, we see that in the cold light of day, against all elements the fact seemed true but they were not, neither were the facts correct.

The big issue here is anti-Semitism, by the numbers we see a correlation where bad economies seem to need scape goats, as these emotional attacks start, we must tactically acknowledge that for those people, attacking a group that represents less than 1% is an easy target, what is strange is how this can happen again and again, whilst the governments involved seem unable to stop such attacks until serious damage has already been inflicted. Yet, this is not completely correct either, when we see that in the French case it was actually a Muslim hiding the people under attack in the cooler, there we see that this one man Lassana Bathily, made all the difference in keeping the intended victims safe.

The issue goes further when we consider the Guardian article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/13/french-jewish-community-ponders-future-after-paris-attacks), where we see the following ““I’m tempted to go,” he said, referring to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s invitation on Saturday to French Jews to “come home to Israel” to escape anti-Semitism in Europe“. I very much disagree with the sentiment for two reasons. The first one is that if the Jews leave and they all move to Israel, we as a people have failed them. I believe that people when united, can and will achieve a lot more then when they are segregated and divided. We must find a way to keep our people (in a local national sense) all of them regardless of religion safe.

Yet then again, we need to learn how to stop and how to counter such hatred. Part is seen in the analyses of the people regarding Charlie Hebdo. The Guardian article states: “Amédy Coulibaly took the first steps towards terrorism in prison, but what the three had in common was growing up on the margins of French society“, here we see part of the issue as Nazi Germany grew, and now we see similar patterns after the 2008 crash. ‘The margins of French society‘ is more than just a phrase, it is a global issue. As we see the stronger and longer exploitation through big business, we see an unbalanced shape of life, so unbalanced that the mass of the people is growing resentment and require the need of scape goats to focus, the reality is that their marginalised lives came from speculators, big business and the financial industry. Sides governments all over the world were unable (partially refused) to deal with, now we see the results and this is only the beginning. As we see the facts evolve on how these events also could be seen When we take the quote “At that point, the young Kouachi, known as Abou Issen in the group, didn’t seem structured in his thinking. “He couldn’t differentiate between Islam and Catholicism” and wasn’t well educated, said the source“, we see a pattern that we have seen before, radicalisation through confusion. It is not unheard of. What is more important is the person who was connected to Amédy Coulibaly, namely Farid Benyettou. When we take the NBC quote “Farid Benyettou was sentenced to six years in prison for recruiting young Parisians for al Qaeda, including Kouachi, but since his release from jail has been training to be nurse“, we must wonder why he had such a change. Has Farid truly changed, or has he taken a vocation, where his chance to find marginalised people has a much stronger chance on finding those ready to radicalise through a marginalised world.

This is a question, not an accusation!

You see, in the way the Jews are spread (thinly) over nations, Lone wolf attacks would be devastating towards diminishing the Jewish population. The authorities would have no way to counter it and until it deals with the elements of marginalisation, they might never succeed at all. That part is not just France, that is a global issue and we need to find a solution fast, because as the economy goes at present, there is every danger that the attacks in France are only the beginning. I truly hope I am absolutely wrong here, time will tell!

 

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January 12, 2015 · 11:09

Statistical defiance

There are mornings when you get the surprise of a lifetime. One version is when you are not actually awake; you look to your side seeing a smiling woman stating that she feels nice. Suddenly the phone rings and you wake up! In another version (where you are awake) you get of the subway, you see a ten dollar note. You see some worthy cause 20 feet down the road, easy come, easy go! You feel you did your civic duty and life goes on, the coffee you pay for after that with your own money still tastes a little better that morning. The power of Karma!

A third one is the one I saw this morning. It was on the Australian Channel 7 (Sunrise). The shining light was none other than Andrew O’Keefe. Whilst some dark haired woman from Melbourne was going on about vilifying the Muslim community, Andrew was not the voice of reason, but the voice of wisdom and insight. There is no denying that the Muslim extremists are getting a lot more attention, often through their violent doing but when we consider the acts of up to 50,000 people (the combined numbers of Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Hamas and a few others), it is almost less than a drop in the ocean of the 1.5 BILLION Muslims. How much vilification did we see for those bombing abortion clinics? Or how much light was shone on the ordeal that the Muslims in Burma face whilst getting prosecuted by Buddhists?  It seems that there is an unacceptable unbalance and Andrew O’Keefe made sure that this was stated!

Way to go Andrew!

I have no issue hunting down extremists, not just for the dangers to Christians, but for the equal protection of Jews, Muslims and other religions alike. We should also clearly see that Christians have had their own groups of extremists and in several places including the US. We seem to forget that part. There is a lot wrong with all of us as we condemn a group because of the rotten apples in their basket, even though this amounts to a little less than 0.003% of that population. It is like sending 300,000 apples back to an orchard, because one had a worm.

Now you will state, where one has a worm, more worms will be found. Yes, that is not a wrongful assumption, but at what point will the purchased shipment be actually unworthy of purchasing? The fact that we condemn the apples for one bad one, is no reflection on the apples, it is a reflection on us! That part is at the core of the problem. Yes, we need to hunt down extremists and yes, we need not be nice about it. We do however have a sworn duty to make sure that the innocents are protected; no matter what faith they adhere too. Let us not forget that the shot policeman in the Charlie Hebdo case was a Muslim himself, a French policeman who died defending the freedoms he believed in. His name was Ahmed Merabet, let his name not be forgotten! So, extremists will not care! They care for the false image of self, a demonic view that does not even exists, because any view of self will always lack objectivity. We do not care if it is a person staring at their own reflection, but when that results in the hunt and killing of innocents, they cross lines and we need to accept that there will be a consequence to that. However, vilifying others will never be a good or acceptable point. Andrew O’Keefe gave good light to that part.

So it turned out that I was watching a nice morning unfold! An outspoken clarity of events, one that had gone missing on many fronts for too long.

Yet, there is more, I think that last week was the straw that broke the camel’s back in several places. For this I need to take a step back to September 11th 2001, you see, my personal interpretation of those events might not be the ones you have considered. You see, I think that the attack never succeeded. It is my personal believe that the intent of Osama Bin Laden was different. I expect that yes, the towers were to be hit, yet his intent was that the towers would burn all day and all night, like torches over New York, keeping everyone busy and the symbol become torches of fear in the hearts of Americans. When the towers collapsed his intent of fear became a consequence or rage, we know what happened after that and those who saw Zero Dark Thirty know how they got him anyway. Hiding in Pakistan, scared of the eagles circling ever closer until he was removed from life. The events last week in France might become the same point. I do not think that Islamic State ever considered that a ‘mere’ cartoonist would bring millions into the street in sadness, but thereafter in acceptance of the need to hunt these people down. Now it is not just the US, now it is the collected members of NATO, the EEC and the Commonwealth. In addition, Islamic State is now losing its hidden internal ‘friends’ in many of the Middle Eastern nations. This would always have happened, for the simple reason that history has proven that terrorism will never work and will for the bulk of events have a counteractive effect, yet as the Islamic State was still trying to grow, these events are now the cause that not unlike OBL, these members will now be forced to hide as they are hunted by too many players. Those with similar agenda’s had outgrown their welcome for some time, but now there is a resolute acceptance that people are willing to concede that reasoning is no longer an option with such groups. The benefit is that this could spell an actual increase of security for places like Israel, as the pressure will push for the hunt to continue in Jordan and Libya by its own local ‘population’ could spell a change of weather. Where they expected to bring fear failed, they achieved to anger a group of people who were up to the #JeSuiCharlie point hoping for a civil solution, that time has now passed. Even though these people are massively against violence, they are now to some extent conceding that action needs to be taken.

The Guardian had a piece in ‘comment is free’, where I saw the following quote regarding the polarisation of debate regarding Charlie Hebdo: “By framing events in Manichean terms – dark versus light; good versus evil – an imposed binary morality seeks to coral us into crude camps. There are no dilemmas, only declarations. What some lack in complexity they make up for in polemical clarity and the provision of a clear enemy“. I do not believe this to be correct. It is not untrue as a statement, depending on who this is regarded to, but I think the game is as per yesterday changing. As we see the move of #JeSuisCharlie for freedom and against violence, that move seems to be showing a below the surface change, the acceptance to some extent that simple talks are no longer an option, these people are now willing to accept that professionals need to do whatever they need to do to get these acts of violence stopped, in whatever way will stop the killing of innocents. It was not just the act, part of this equation is a person who filmed from likely a smartphone what was happening, the filmed part is less than a minute, but as thousands a people saw the cold headed execution of a French policeman, we now see a film, not unlike the film of the Kennedy assassination (the Zapruder film) that those who see it are no longer asleep, the presentation is like a bucket of ice water. Just like I woke up from the fake dream of a beautiful woman being happy in bed next to me, they too get a realistic vision and less optimistic view. The view that what they believed possible (civil talks) can never be. The evidence is too raw and too direct. Whatever notion they had of acting whilst a population remained half-awake is no longer, the people will allow such extremists to be hunted, the damage of the fake fears through Edward Snowden is now getting undone, the resolution of the people wanting this resolved allows for it.

So, as we will see, a weird twist of fate on how one act suddenly calls our attention to the craziness of what we allowed to continue for too long, we will soon see a change of venue, the hunters will become the hunted. It is not just Paris, even though this is event shows a visible support against extremists into millions, the view gets additional power through the alleged execution by ISIL of Journalists Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari from Tunisia. The support here is showing that there is more than just a show against violence, we are slowly seeing a change where the shift is not where ISIL is, but the fact that there is no one left not willing to hunt ISIL down, a different perspective, one they had not bargained for. The second benefit here is that there is every chance that the people will now also wake up towards the issues involving Hamas. Even as Hamas thought it was relatively safe after the European voting events, it now must content with the fact that they are now very likely to be seen as unacceptable as ISIL is. I spoke before about the options for Palestine, providing its excluded 100% of Hamas that reality is now, due to the visibility of #JeSuiCharlie a lot more likely. Because as the House of Hamas is less seen as acceptable on a global scale, they will react in ‘fear of self’ and unite with the people who would not find them acceptable in the first place. It all might work out for peace in the end, how statistically weird is that for a change?

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January 10, 2015 · 11:11

Comprehension

Yesterday has been a weird day for France, unlike here in Sydney; they had their dealings with terrorists. You see, I remain in the mindset that what happened in martin Place last month was a crazy person with a gun, the fact that he was a Muslim makes little difference. He was a mental health case with deadly intent, it got him killed, but only after he killed some of his victims. France is an entirely different kettle of fish. Here is the YouTube link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBGVwZyXYlQ (in French with English subtitles), I normally would not add something like this, but it is important to see the difference. This is not some hostage situation asking for a flag, this is almost military precision, it is direct, clean (pardon the expression), kill and get out! A policeman was on the scene and was executed without any consideration.

Here you see directly what Israel has faced on a daily basis; this is what the direct hatred of Jews looks like. Even though this is against a satirical cartoonist, the hatred of these extremists’ remains the same. The Guardian has an article by Jonathan Freedland that covers several parts of what bothers me. The article ‘Charlie Hebdo: first they came for the cartoonists, then they came for the Jews‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/09/charlie-hebdo-cartoonists-paris-killers-fascist-death-cult) gives us a few views. The quote: “They hated the cartoons, we say. Free speech was the target, we declare. They wanted to silence satire and gag dissent“, this was not unlike my view. I find satire enjoyable, but when you touch religion (any religion), some people tend to get a little off the balanced sane side. Some get abusive, some get a little violent, yet as far as I know, none will act to this degree (although opposites in the India – Pakistan debates might not agree with me). No matter what I think or believe, Charlie Hebdo was in a place with free speech and he was entitled to it. The best comparison I heard was from an American Journalist describing Charlie Hebdo as the French version of ‘the Onion’.

When we see the following two quotes we get to the real stuff: “Then on Friday, a siege at a kosher supermarket, four hostages confirmed dead, the murderers apparently linked to those behind Wednesday’s carnage” and “Perhaps the murderers are bent on killing people not only for what they do, but for who they are“, this is at the centre of a lot of issues behind the objections against allowing Palestine into the UN and other places. I and many others have no hatred for Palestinians however, we will not accept Hamas to be allowed at any table for the terrorist organisation that they are. And so long as Palestine will not disavow Hamas and as long as Hamas calls the shots, there is no future for Palestine as I see it. This is at the heart of the matter, so when you think of these poor poor Palestinians, watch the uncensored shooting in Paris and now realise that this is what Israel faced for many years now, with added rockets and nail bombs!

The next part is actually at the centre to what we tend to feel and also how our civilised minds should be feeling. “For Muslims, that has meant spelling out that these killers speak only for themselves. Note the speed with which a delegation of 20 imams visited the Charlie Hebdo offices, branding the gunmen “criminals, barbarians, satans” and, crucially, “not Muslims”“, this makes sense in regards to the next part “Of course they should not have to do it. The finger-wagging demand that Muslims condemn acts of terror committed by jihadist cultists is odious: it tacitly assumes that Muslims support such horror unless they explicitly say otherwise“, this makes sense. Perhaps we all remember the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and white power groups against African Americans. We distance ourselves as Christians, because their acts are not those of Christians at all. They are at the centre of some agenda of hate that the boggles the usual civilised mind. Some cannot grasp the small mindedness of it. Yes, we all hate at times and we hate enough to kill, maim or harm, but that comes in defence of a rational against us, or our family when it is harmed. To blatantly hate is not within our power (it should not be), I will go one further, children when they are born do not have the capacity to hate; it is the one dark side that gets taught to us, which makes it so inexplicable to some.

Now we get to the parts that I do not completely agree with (even though what is stated is not wrong) “Wednesday’s deaths brought a loud chorus insisting that Charlie Hebdo was vulnerable because it had been left out on a limb. That was down, they said, to the cowardice of the rest of the press, lacking the guts to do what the French magazine had done“. The press has been many things (cowardly to some extent as well), when the press (globally generically speaking) started to cater to advertisers and circulation, many papers started to cater to the emotional reader “Flight MH370 ‘suicide mission’” (The Daily Telegraph, March 2014) and “Death Cult CBD Attack” (The Daily Telegraph, December 2014). It is only one of several papers, the public gets misinformed too often, too much innuendo. “Andrew and the under-age ‘sex slave’” from The Daily Mail, implying the Duke of York is just the most recent of revenue claiming headlines. When you rely on income in this way, we see the newspapers as they no longer are, they are no longer informing the people, hopefully setting their minds to a more informed stable position, we are left with groups of people getting angry on implied innuendo. It makes for revenue (but becomes non-informative). So how about we make it a little more clear? How about tax offices change that glossy magazines are not tax deductible as they do not qualify as ‘researchable materials’? The ATO states “Newspapers and magazines, you can claim a deduction for that part of the cost of newspapers and magazines that relates to your using them in researching a topic as an employee journalist“. When we remove glossy magazines and add the Daily Telegraph and sort minded groups on that list, perhaps they will clean up their act?

So as non-violent Muslims fear repercussions for emotional responses, we in general have a duty to shield them, but in my mind we have an equal need to hunt down these extremists. We need to become a lot less tolerant of hate crimes like we are seeing in Paris this week, but they must be held against the real threat, not the threat that some papers perceive to instil. So this is where my view slightly differed from Jonathan Freedland. The French issue should wake us up in other ways too. Not only should we regard the hate attacks Israel has been under for a long time, we need to notice that walk softly and ‘try to reason’ will not work. The policeman had little option but to talk the man into not shooting him, it did not work! I feel for his family, and for the family of other victims, but you all need to wake up now, terrorists are real, they are not some deranged Sheik with delusions of grandeur wanting a ‘Shadada’ flag in a chocolate shop. They are people with guns, with a tactical mind that tells them to kill that what they hate without hesitation or remorse, so as you keep on crying on ‘your’ privacy, whilst posting your ‘nightly’ achievements on Facebook, remember that limiting those who hunt these extremists, might get you or someone you know killed at some point.

Yet Jonathan’s gem is at the very end “Theirs is a dirty little war, a handful of wicked fanatics against the rest of us. And they must lose“, I could not have said it better myself, but with that comprehension comes a change to all our minds, not to our hearts! Our hearts must never embrace the acts and the violence needed; our minds must however accept that some need to do what they do to stop these people, preferably before innocent lives are lost. It must happen everywhere and it needed to start yesterday. So, as you ponder these ‘lost souls’ as they go Jihad in Syria, then also quickly realise that these people come back with the skill, the intent and the reasoning of the extremists that you saw in the YouTube video, so if you are a parent and you wave your hand to your little boy or girl as they go to school, you should realise that they might leave the house the last time that day. What are you willing to do to keep them safe?

I am not trying to quell you into emotion like the press so often does; I need you to comprehend what must be done by professionals to keep you and your family safe. Think it through and cast your vote! You need not act, you are not trained and not qualified to suddenly emotionally react to these extremists. Only the calm mind will know what to do and they must be given the option to win and to make sure that extremists lose, or we lose it all!

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January 9, 2015 · 15:25

The Cat and the Bacon

I have written about the economy on several occasions, I always proclaimed that it was pure insight as I saw it and that I do not have a degree in economy, I am an analyst. Yet today these borders of non-knowledge might get stretched a little further than previously shown. Today is all about the Euro!

I personally never believed it to be a good idea. We saw how all these politicians were proclaiming on how ‘good’ it was for the economy. Was it? You see, it might not matter for the bakery on the corner, the grocer next door or the butcher across the street. It matters to the giants of industry and how it benefits there bottom line, the extra coin for the members of the board, not for the people in the stores, that image tended to be a virtual one, it virtually did not matter at all!

I saw how the change of coin, from the Dutch guilder, things suddenly seemed to be 50% cheaper (2 guilders equalled one euro), but the math is easily made there. What those people experienced that buying a chicken on the market was 6 guilders, it became 3 euro’s, but then what? In a little less than 4 years that chicken from the same dealer ended up being 6 Euro’s. An annual 25% hike in prices. The chicken example is a little extreme and many articles did not raise that quickly. Some will mention the issues of milk in the Netherlands, but that is an issue much more complex and the Euro itself is only a small fragment there.

So, could I be wrong?

That is centre in this debate. I could be wrong, but it is very likely that we are all looking into the wrong direction. It would be nice to blame places like Greece, and they are definitely having an effect, yet the issue is not the EEC, it is more and more pointing towards America. You see, we are all in a bad shape, no one is denying that, yet in American, things have not gotten any better for a long time. Let’s face it, some people are now shooting at the police for fun, or for reasons of aggravation and despair. The people in America are suffering in many ways, but the all holier than DOW keeps on rising in addition, their currency is massively on the up, which under the issues showing, seems a little too good to be true, it an assumption, but is it fair and correct?

That remains to be seen, when we look at the Guardian, we see (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/08/euro-dollar-1999-levels-deflation-oil), the following: “Recent data for the Eurozone has proved weak, with inflation falling and unemployment rising. Italy remains in recession while France has seen consumer and business confidence wane. Only Spain and Germany among the major economies have appeared to gain in strength, though Berlin has failed to kick-start GDP growth and Spain still suffers from an unemployment rate of 25%“, these are facts, they are not in denial, but where are the results of the UK (which were not great)? You see, these facts are true, but there is more to consider (besides Greece dragging the EU down). What about Sweden and the Netherlands? Not the greatest economies compared to the big 4, but still sizeable ones, we can admit that they are all struggling, yet the fact that we see a ‘propagated’ booming economy in America needs to be addressed too.

Who statistically has a job?

When we consider an article in Forbes last August, where we see “My friend and the waitress are victims of a massive but hidden problem called underemployment. Watching falling unemployment numbers being reported at 6.2%, down from nearly 10% four years earlier, is simply misleading“, attached to a headline ‘Tackling The Real Unemployment Rate: 12.6%‘ (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/louisefron/2014/08/20/tackling-the-real-unemployment-rate-12-6/), we get to see the picture that the people are living, Wall Street is ignoring and  the current administration of the US is misrepresenting. So is the Euro doing this bad, or is it dragged down by a misrepresenting nation carrying a 17 trillion dollar debt? By the way, did we not see something similar with Tesco and a few hundred millions misrepresented? How did THAT turn out?

When we see this quote in Forbes we see the real danger “741,000 discouraged workers – workers not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them – are included within the list of marginally attached people. Another 7.5 million were not considered unemployed because they were employed part-time for economic reasons. Those people are also called involuntary part-time workers – working part-time because their hours were cut back or because they were unable to secure a full-time job“. The danger is twofold, how many of the 741,000 are over 50? It seems that companies, especially those with younger, inexperienced executives are afraid to hire people with skills and know how. In regards to the 7.5 million part time workers, does that include those Wal-Mart people, who need to rely on food stamps and all kinds of other support systems? I am not debating their need, more that the owners each walked away with well over a billion in 2013, whilst its staff was on governmental food stamps. How does that ‘boom’ your economy? It almost reads like ‘gangbang’ for your buck whilst the governmental administration bends over, a lack of fairness on more than one front, one could state!

Booking a balance!

You see, the unbalance goes a lot further, the US as a nation can float its currency, this is not a bad thing, normally every nations does it to some extent, to weather a really bad time, so that business and consumer is not hit with weird spikes, it is an issue that has happened for a long time and it will continue to happen, yet the Euro does not have this privilege, these economies are set to what is done in Bruxelles (Brussels), and as such, it is likely impacted by spikes to some extent. However, as their currency is spiking downwards against the Dollar, which seems to be decently overvalued, we get a new danger that the drag will continue, whilst no one seems to be looking and the bubbled version of the US Dollar. So is my non-economic view correct, right or wrong? Yes, there are three options, because, what is correct may still not be right.

Consider, that the Euro nations are not doing so well, which is true after all, that fact does not make the dollar better does it? It is correct that the dollar looks better because the Yen and the Euro looks less good, but the economy in America is not booming, if it were, we would see a lot more people gainfully employed without the need for government support, you see, here we get to the matter on what is correct and what is right. If the US is having a virtual boom, we are judging the US on merits of misrepresentation, which by the way might not be illegal, but should an economy not be held to its cost as well? The US debt is still increasing; the people (a large amount) are not paid to a level of being self-sufficient. We see an economy that had made the thirteen amendment in 1865, there we see “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction“, in 1867 the US got the Peonage Act of 1867, where Congress abolished “the holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage”, as well as specifically banning “the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise”, now this all sounds pretty clear, and having a job is not this, but when a population is forced to work for scraps, whilst still requiring food stamps, it seems that we now have an issue. no one is a slave, but under the conditions where the very rich grow their fortune at well over 30%, whilst those on average grow less than 2%, we should clearly see that the balance of fair play is no longer anywhere in sight. I am not against making profit, it is a capitalistic form that has merit, yet when we see six members of a family, each making a 9 figure number, whilst the 1% of America it employs makes less than the line of poverty, we need to ask serious questions. In addition, as we see a group where they deal in articles that are from questionable sources (at http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/10/supermarket-prawns-thailand-produced-slave-labour), where the quote “A six-month investigation has established that large numbers of men bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailand are integral to the production of prawns (commonly called shrimp in the US) sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco“, we are confronted with a governmental issue, where it allows for profit at expense of its own industries in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. We can acknowledge that the oil spills have been detrimental to the health of the industry, but when the big players get their goods overseas, how can any economy recover, especially as these overseas players (as implied by the Guardian), can rely on profits through slave labour. This goes further than just the shrimps, other food items or clothing. It shows a disconnection from the people, you see economies are more than just behemoths, we could see them as parasitic in nature, which sounds wrong, but is actually very correct. The retailer lives off the people, but can only do so if the people can spent. It is a symbiotic relationship; it requires the host to remain alive. Large businesses have forgotten about that, they focus on where the profit is, not on the required equilibrium, so as places like India grew form a third world market into a super economy.

Cycles of equilibrium

The people outsourcing, seem to forget that its own population is every bit as important, so as that group falter, so will businesses slowly but surely. As we see that cycle progress, is it not strange that the US Economy remains booming? A nation with many people unemployed; even more people in a state of poverty; 15% in poverty, this gets us a little more than one in seven in poverty, meaning that big business is now relying on revenue based on the remaining 5 out of 7. It looks nice in a statistical model, but as the overall quality of life goes down, that group of 5 will dwindle down too, when that happens, the economy will falter in new unprecedented ways, leaving the only option that a few people walk away with all the money they can carry to their own island and the rest is left without anything. This can be read as misrepresentation as well, but is it far-fetched? that part is not a given until we see an actual economy that truly improves, which means that the poverty line descents, people will start having a liveable income, that will give rise to shops needed and more jobs created and all that opts for the US national debt to go down by a lot, something that this administration has not achieved, more important, it might take 2-3 administrations for that debt to be addressed in any way, shape or form, which only fuels the wealth of banks and financial players. If it is addressed too quickly, the poverty line could soar far further then 21%, giving an instant crises in the US that goes beyond the imaginations of many and will be one nightmare Wall street did not foresee to this extent. Yet how would that affect the Euro? Well in two ways, as the US people will become more and more desperate for jobs, suddenly the economy looks even better on our grass, but it is an ‘economy’ for the wealthy living, the rest will see a further drop in living conditions (an assumption on my side)

So as big business ties the cat to the bacon (meaning: opportunity knocks), we must wonder how these elements call for a booming economy as an economy is reliant on people spending money, buying items and none remain to do just that.

You see, there seems to be a fluctuation on what an economy is (seriously!).

The first one we see is: “the state of a country or region in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services and the supply of money“, which is what we all believe it to be, yet the second meaning “careful management of available resources“, which we can take as “offering good value for money” and “a financial saving” last there is “the cheapest class of air or rail travel“. Weird or not, they all apply. I got them straight from the Google dictionary.

Now when we mash them we get: “the National state in terms of the production, the cheapest way possible, whilst advocating good value for money, whilst ensuring the highest efficiency in regards to managing our available resources, whilst optimising consumption of goods and services, ensuring the best supply of money through contribution“. Does that not sound very familiar? You see, it seems like a booming economy, if you are getting the money. The consumer is left with the option, whilst not guaranteeing a pool where such sufficient income can be maintained, almost a death pool of discontinued certainty.

So, how did we move away from the Euro? Well, I actually did not, you see, these elements have been a factor with American companies all over Europe, now consider how much taxation they did not have to make due to tax havens and specific invoicing? You see, a government is depending on its coffers to be filled so that there is a growth and continuation of an economy, whilst these corporations are now stating that this inherent side of the symbiotic relationship was not theirs to care for. Now we see and a loss of balance as well as a first glance on how dislodging an economy can have long lasting effects. As the Euro has less ‘floatation’ options and as some unbalanced it even further, we now see no options on the Euro side, whilst the Dollar has legal options to float its currency, unbalancing the amount further, the upped representation does the rest!

Blame Game

Now, it is important to see that I am NOT blaming the dollar for the Euro, yet it must be said that those behind the Dollar (businesses) have presented themselves overly good, so there is a secondary effect, whilst we see more and more often a changing scale of what is to be reported on. Let us be clear, several EEC nations have done this in the past, but the balance is now changing further and further, giving no one a clear view of what is real, we see presentations that are all a little out of whack, so as Europe starts its plan of credit easing, we will see the numbers jump, yet in what direction cannot be predicted (not by me at least), because, if investors walk away ‘en mass’, no credit easing will do any trick, if you doubt that then look at India, is it not weird that NTT DoCoMo / TaTa, the big winner of 2013/2014 suddenly wanted to dump its one billion share? Is it not strange that in this ‘booming’ economy, all are looking on the inside? Is a booming economy not about growth? So as we ‘see’ a growing economy, is that not (usually) a sign of growth? So why are the mobile providers T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon all steering clear of the Indian market that is seemingly up for grabs?

So is the US economy booming, or is it going boom-boom?

 

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January 7, 2015 · 21:41

As we judge morality

This all started a few days ago, I was unsure what to think, for the most I remain in a state of disbelieve. I was also one of the last to come on board on the train regarded Rolf Harris. I could not believe his guilt, even now there is a sense of surrealism here. You see, when we see this larger than life types, their lives and fame, we see a life that we expect to be glitter and jet set. These people are in positions were we expected that women would throw themselves at them. In that regard we often see those who are beyond normal wealthy. Especially when we see men like that, who look a lot better than the average Joe Worker (like me). Why would they bother with certain acts, when women want these men all the time? You see, as you read this, this is all assumption. It is a view that me, myself and many of my fellow man believe to be the truth.

So when we see accusations against a person like Jeffrey Epstein, until he had been found guilty, we tend to regard them as the fantasies of a woman trying to score it big.

But the Law taught me to look at all sides, to be critical and to remain on the fence.

When we look at the Epstein case, we see that the press is all over the innuendo, but what about the facts? In addition, the circumstantial facts involved should count to some extent too. The smoking gun had the affidavit which would be really nice, but now, I can only get the first page to load, the rest is no longer there. Fortunately, ABC News had the goods (at http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/Palm_Beach_Records_Epstein.pdf). This report is more than just a smoking gun, even if there is one, perhaps more than one event where (as stated in the affidavit) that the girls claimed to be 18, there is at least one that mentioned that she was 16, now we have ourselves a game of balls!

Florida Statutes, § 794.05 (at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0794/Sections/0794.05.html), gives is the issue that it is statutory rape. A child who is at least 16 years of age and less than 18 years of age cannot consent to sexual activity if the defendant is 24 years of age or older, at least one girl has stated that he was 16, he was very much beyond 24 (almost a quarter of a century), however, the plot thickens by a lot after this, you see, when we look deeper, via for example www.findlaw.com, we see the following: “To prove a rape offense, a prosecutor must establish each of the elements for sexual battery given by state law. As required by the Florida statute on sexual battery, the prosecutor must show that the defendant engaged in oral, vaginal, or anal penetration of the victim with a sexual organ or another object. Alternatively, the prosecutor must prove a union by the defendant’s sexual organ with the victim’s mouth, vagina, or anus“, if you reread the affidavit after knowing this, then the report present itself to be a manifest of what a man can get away with, knowing he is doing something wrong, even though there was penetration at least with one of the women, the document reads (implied as how I read it) as the work of, not as he himself states as a predator, but as a manipulator. I actually cannot conclude what is worse; did these victims consider that they were meeting not with a ‘sugar daddy’ but with a masterful manipulator? When we consider sentencing guidelines (at http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/sg_annual/0001/intro.html) that a second degree felony gets you a hotel ‘Iron Bars’ stay for up to 15 years, his 18 months seem extremely light under these conditions, even with the top lawyers he was able to afford. However, when we look at the statistics when we continue the Florida DOC pages, we see that his sentence falls within the 45% that were convicted for the same crime severity, 30% got up to 2 years more than that, yet, this all falls into a field where less than 25% went to prison and over 50% got probation, so as I see it that he did not get anything ‘lighter’ then implied by the maximum punishment, through his wealth he could have ended up on the probation group.

All this happened after an investigation of 11 months; now we get to accusation regarding Prince Andrew in the Guardian and several other papers (at http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/06/palace-prince-andrew-links-jeffrey-epstein). You see, there is something seriously wrong here, which is why I was happy that the internet has so much, including the affidavit in PDF form, which several sources had for some time. The quote “claims made last week in a Florida court by Virginia Roberts, a former masseuse employed by Epstein, that she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York over 10 years ago, as well as the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz“, now becomes central in all of this, especially in light of the affidavit by the Miami Police. The document shows (as I see it) a manipulator, one that never held anyone against their will, and who paid each girl/woman involved. This all looks wrong, a manipulator would not resort to violence, in addition, there is nothing indicating any indecent act EVER by Prince Andrew.

The issue takes on another turn entirely when I read some of the news as portrayed by ‘journalistic’ sources. You see, the headline ‘Virginia Roberts’ new lease on life after escaping from billionaire sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein‘ reads mighty strong in the Sydney Morning Herald on January 6th 2015, as well as some of the headlines as we see the Daily Mail in the UK, yet when we see the quote “Virginia Roberts was allegedly kept as a sex slave by Wall Street financier Jeffrey Epstein and was forced to have sex with the Duke of York” we should look at all the angles. Yet, these so called newspapers are all about the emotion and little about the facts. Is it not weird that it took me less than 15 minutes to find the affidavit, and find that the officer involved Detective Joe Recarey, is now a retired police officer, still working and he is also on LinkedIn. Did anyone talk to this man? When someone is on a case for this long, is this distinguished (80 commendations), you might want to consider being an actual journalist and look into the matter, especially when it is about a member of the Royal family, or am I oversimplifying things again (as I usually tend to do)?

If we consider the ‘allegations’ by the Mayor of London (Boris Johnson), the man with a hairstyle not unlike Donald Trump had the following to state: “Prince Andrew, let us be very clear, is a guy who does a huge amount of unsung, unheralded work for this country. People go on and on about air miles and so on. But I’ve seen that guy get out there and sell this country, try and help British firms get business around the world“, that is one side of him, we can all agree that his connection to Epstein would be a bad idea, so when we read more Daily Mail junk with the headline ‘Prince Andrew’s billionaire paedophile friend given permission to land private jet at RAF base for visit Sandringham‘, we might all get a little unnerved, yet suddenly the small fact emerges: “The flight log of Epstein’s Gulfstream revealed it touched down at RAF Marham on December 7, 2000, before he was hosted by the Andrew at the Queen’s Norfolk residence“, which was half a decade BEFORE the Epstein case started, so is this just more junk and badly investigated trash, which relies on circulation through innuendo.

It is somewhat sickening to see that the press might be the fuel for falsely alleged trials and claims. Yet, I must also be aware that I need to remain on the fence as fair and as balanced as possible. The question becomes: “How much contract has there been between Jeff Epstein and prince Andrew since the conviction of Jeff Epstein?” there is no answer in any of the articles as I saw it and the allegations are about events more than a decade ago, which would have made it important, for any level of reliability to talk to former detective Joe Recarey, interesting that no one either tried this (and reported on the attempt) and no view from that side was given, it seems to me that someone investigating this for such a time might have interesting sides to show, but that might also immediately show the innocence of Prince Andrew, which calls to question the motivation of the press. Are they just about revenue and the ‘excitement’ factor, or are they about properly informing the readers. I will let you decide, but the fact that I got you some of the facts in less than one hour should also give light to work that these papers produced.

How the case progresses will remain an unknown for some time. I cannot judge on hearsay and all this might not reveal any valid levels of evidence, or they might, time will tell, yet the fact that all this comes to light almost a decade after the conviction of Jeff Epstein is what I personally regard to be a factor too. It is my personal believe that the claim would have had a lot more weight if it had been done either when the trial was on, or soon after the conviction, not a decade later. Yet when we consider the Sydney Morning Herald in the article that does offer something (at http://www.smh.com.au/world/why-the-prince-andrew-accusations-are-surfacing-now-20150105-12hz27.html), we should consider the following: “the US Attorney who agreed to the plea deal with Epstein now appears to believe it was too lenient“, which cannot be denied, yet the statistics as offered by the DoC showed that 65% of the people in this category got this sentence (if I read this correctly at http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/sg_annual/0001/desclevels.html), we see that over two years, around 45% got such a verdict (offense severity 6), whilst over 50% ended up with probation. My issue with statement “Prince Andrew’s relationship with Epstein is well known and has been a source of controversy” is that I have found no links to their ‘relationship’ after his trial, there is every indication that their paths might have crossed, but if we accept the statement by Boris Johnson, then there is every chance that the Prince will enter a room filled with billionaires, which (likely) means that less reputable billionaires will be present. If we limit a person by who might be there then we can pretty much end the option of doing any business, so if this is about morality, then try to visit Cannes next year, you will likely meet several dealers in narcotics, weapons, at least one chemical weapon dealer and possibly people who used to supply Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. So will you go to Cannes and shake hands with Bruce Willis, or will you stay at home and watch a DVD?

False morality is a state of delusion and morality often relies on false believes; so when we judge it should be on facts, in this case we see a lot of articles and many of the facts there are absent, misstated or severely out of date, why is that?

Palm_Beach_Records_Epstein

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January 6, 2015 · 11:09

Implosions

An interesting article hit the Guardian this morning; it is another decent piece by Zoe Wood. The article does leave me a little wondering on what is either wrong with me, or with everyone else. You see, I feel like a Ghost Rider, driving on the right lane on the M11 from Cambridge to Stansted Airport. The radio is warning me to look out for a Ghost rider, I am wondering how crazy the BBC dude is as I am seeing dozens of them all in the wrong lane.

That is the feeling you need to keep into mind when we look at the article ‘Bank Fashion collapses, putting 1,500 high street jobs at risk‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/05/bank-fashion-collapses-1500-high-street-jobs-at-risk). You see, when we consider ‘young’ fashion retailer, 84 stores, whilst we see at Parliament UK “The unemployment rate (the proportion of the economically active population who are unemployed) for 16-24 year olds was 16.6%“, then we should ask ourselves whether this is such a stretch at all. Yes, we can see that the curve of young employed is lowering, but almost 1 in 5 is a huge group to miss out on. And let’s face it, not all will buy at Bank either, so the question remains, is this such a worrying step? Should we ask why the group did not trim down its size long before this? The quote ““Bank has struggled in a highly competitive segment of the retail industry and has been loss-making for a number of years,”” only adds to this amazement of not trimming. In my (possibly incorrect) view, I wonder whether this group wagered with the existence of 50 shops by not getting rid of 34 of them. The number is arbitrary and highly randomly generated, but you get the idea. Did some people bet on better time for their possible commission and were they as such willing to pay a dangerous game with the 50 shops that might have been saved? In addition, what formula change might have given them a broader perspective? I am not telling, merely asking.

So we see that the previous owner (JD Sports) did coral the wagons when they sold the Bank Fashion part with the part “JD Sports’ executive chairman, Peter Cowgill, said at the time that the sale of Bank was in the “best interests of the group” and that he expected the deal to result in a “substantial recovery” of an intercompany loan“. It makes perfect tactical sense. Yet when we see the earlier statement “In a statement to the stock exchange announcing the sale to Hilco in November, JD Sports said Bank had made a loss of £8.1m in the year to 1 February 2014 and had gross assets of £51.7m at that date“, we must wonder what made Hilco decide to buy it in the first place. So less than a year ago it had made a loss of £8.1m, which is fine, but who expects to turn this around within 18 months in a time of low economy should be willing to answer a few questions to a panel of economic boffins. In my personal view I would set up a second meeting with this person and a mental health review board 30 mins after the economic meeting, as it might be an interesting second interview to say the least.

Fashion Bank might be the visible one today, but it has not been the biggest one or the only one. A less clear view is the reasoning behind Blockbusters, how was it to be turned around by Gordon Brothers? I am not judging them, perhaps they had a changing formula that might have worked, there will always be a different look on how firms versus equity firms look at their new baby and shape it to be a return on investment to some extent, in addition that blockbusters catered to a much wider audience, giving additional possible solutions that might have been backfiring, it is just speculation.

No, going back to the Bank group, or those behind it. Why was the ‘transfer’ made? I mention transfer, because is that not what it is, someone takes hold of a loss making firm. Who answers the questions on the strategy of buying something that is losing you money, whilst you remain using it in the same field. When you buy a car with a broken engine, you fix either the engine, or you replace it. No matter what you decide, fixing it will take time. That part is an absolute given; I just wonder how the rationale went for something that is supposed to get turned around in 10months, whilst it has lost an equal of 15% of its total value. It requires deep changes; such changes take time, more than the projected 10 months here. So again I wonder, am I that Ghost Rider, or is the bulk not watching in what lane they are driving? It is not that far fetched a question!

These are not the only players, at http://www.retailresearch.org/whosegonebust.php we can see a range of players not making it, but business has always been like this, some make it, some do not and they are replaced by newer or better players. This is a phase going on way before the recessions. So why is this issue such a deal now? You see, now, we see a two pronged survival streak. In the first pass a company under threat seems to buy more businesses to seem larger, hoping that they will survive a little longer (which tends to work short term), then as this fails it all goes on the block and we see the shattering of chains, leaving with every shattered attempt 1000-2000 retail workers in need of a new job. As I see it, the problem just grows, when a worker is competing with one to two hundred working peers, they have a decent chance, you see, from the ashes others rise, but when competing with one to two thousand peers, the issue becomes almost unsurmountable, bosses love this as they can get people at 10-15% less, but the workforce becomes uneven, unfair and those bosses as they blow their own business, they tend to walk away with a pretty penny to survive the 5 years that follows. It is this level of implosion that the law should start to protect against. It is for that reason that there should be a new panel, one that does not just question what happens, but also sets a punitive change, because the man behind the purchase, addition and sell of Bank has another part. He gets to be audited and he should be revoked any right to in another company in any level of authority for at least 10 years.

The fair question becomes, is this at all fair? That is actually the question that bothers me too, because innovation and success are fine lines, it is a fine line drawn on a thick black bar called ‘failure’, which is on an even wider bar called ‘getting by’. This must be regarded too, yet is a 10 month turnaround realistic in any way, shape or form? I do not know the answer, because I am not a retail innovator and here I cannot see what some would see, but in the opposite side of the same fairness, Tesco might be regarded as an extreme, but is the case of Bank Fashion not set on an equal face of misrepresentation? You see, before Tesco went (as I see it) criminally overboard in misstating their ‘achievements’, there must have been a phase of misrepresentation (which is not a crime). Where do we see the steps where an economy becomes a better place when these acts of quick fixes and quick manipulations become the centre of business? If we look at the names in the retail research link we see stated words, words we might regard as facts, but are they? When we look at the numbers we see another case.

In that view, in 2008 on average 1380 people per company lost their job, 54 companies and 74,500 people is a big group out to find new jobs, of course it was hard on all then. On average it comes down to 9-12 people per store, which makes perfect sense, yet when we see that almost 4000 stores were shut down, we do get a skewed view on how not so good the economy is, but is that entirely true? The economy is stated to be improving and I am willing to believe that, it is just that under these skewed projections we also see a difference where the employees are getting a lessened deal with each iteration of failing companies, because as more merge and still fail, we see a stronger competitive need, which is translated into getting the same work done for less money, the standard of living falters, which gives views that getting by is almost no longer an option, which then sees us how Bank Fashion is losing money because people are not buying anything, that was the (not so) nice consequence of a lesser income, the snake that eats its own tail ends up with a hunger that does not satisfy and with an increasingly diminished size, did the players of that game consider this or were they only interested in how much they got out of it?

So as we look at possible future implosions of retail chains in 2015, consider the story of the Ghost Rider. Was I the Ghost rider, are you all Ghost Riders, or are we now considering option three, where someone removed the no entry sign and optionally replaced it with a one way sign?

 

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January 5, 2015 · 10:32

Authentically Realistic

Whilst we see many sources talk about the need of blaming North Korea, we see an abundance of changes that are now not just changing the way we think, but these changes will also change the way we live and act. As we are soon to be lulled into more false sense of security, we must now content with the thought, what is real and what is not.

In IT these issues have existed on several layers for a long time, yet the overall lack of Common Cyber Sense has been absent for a massive amount of time. Bradley Edward Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning is only one of several parts of this puzzle. Wikileaks has added its own levels of damage and let us not forget the acts of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. This is not on how things were done; it is about a lack of proper measures and controls. In the age of people screaming that they have a right to know, they will publish whatever they can for the need of ego and then scream on how the government is abusing their right to privacy.

These are all elements that link back to ‘Common Cyber Sense’.

CCS as I call it has in its foundations a few branches. The first is proper use and knowledge. Many still laugh and sneer at manuals and proper use of equipment, yet when other people started to ‘look’ through their webcams on laptops into their privacy, smiles disappeared quickly. We live in an age where everything is set around the fake image of comfort, it is fake because comfort at the expense of security is never comfort, it is just an added level of danger into your own life. At this point people forget that what is set into software, can usually be switched on and off at the leisure of a skilled ‘someone else’.

Buying what is cheap and what is right are worlds apart, that part is more and more a given fact. The bulk of people are lulled into ignoration when it comes to a simple easy tool that can be used everywhere, at which time they forget to ask ‘by everyone?’. Consider the HP laptop (one of many brands) has a build in webcam at the top of the screen, instead of relying on a software switch, these makers could have added a little slide that covers the lens, literally a low-tech solution making the lens see nothing, as far as I can tell, no one took that precaution for the safety and security of the consumer, is that not nice?

The second branch is access. If I got $.50 for every person that uses their name, ‘qwerty’ or ‘password’ or even ‘abc123’ for their login, I could buy a small Island like Hawaii or New Zealand, probably even both. Even though many websites and systems demand stronger passwords, there is always that bright person who uses the same password for every site. This is part of a larger problem, but let’s move on for now.

Third is the connection branch, places where we can ALWAYS connect! You think that not having passwords on your home Wi-Fi makes you safe? Wrong! You could add loads of problems on every device that connects to it by not properly setting things up. I wonder if those with an automotive router have considered the dangers of not setting it up properly and letting all the people they pass access to whatever is connected to it in the car.

The fourth branch is for the unknown. This might seem like a weird option, but consider how fast movable technology is growing, I am using ‘movable’ and not mobile, because this changing field includes phones, laptops, PDA’s, tablets and other not yet defined devices (like the apple watch, handheld game systems and consoles).

At the centre of all this is proper usage, but not just your hardware, it also includes your software, a fact many have remained oblivious to.

At this point, I will take a temporary sidestep and let you consider the following term ‘non-repudiation’.

Non-repudiation is about identity and authentication. Basically it states, ‘you and you alone‘ have sent this item (message, photo, financial transfer). In legal reasoning this will be the strong shift that will most likely hit many people in 2016 and onwards, it could hit you this year, but there are more than just a few issues with this situation for the immediate now. So when you lose your money and you state you were hacked, then you might soon have to prove it, which means that any evidence that you EVER gave your password or pin-code to a spouse, lover, boy/girl friend or sibling means that you nullified your rights. You get to pay for the consequences of THEIR acts at that point.

So when we see biometrics, we think fingerprint, we expect to be a lot safer. WRONG! Only last month did a group in Germany show how they recreated the finger print of the German Defence minister from simple digital photos, which means that this could have given them access to a whole collection of items, events and information they should not have gotten access to. So what to do? Well, that market is growing really fast. ‘Vein’ is the latest. It does not rely on fingerprint, but on the veins in a finger or hand, it is just as unique as a fingerprint, it is a 3d issue, making it even more secure and it requires an actual living hand. It also will lack the dangers of influence that a retinal scan has when a woman gets pregnant, or in case of a diabetes patient or alcohol levels. These all can shift retinal scans, with the added problem that this person stays outside the lock, becoming the valid person ‘no-more’. Yet, ‘Vein’ is still a new technology and not currently (or in the near future) available for movable devices, which gives us the issue on what devices are actually decently secure.

Let’s not forget, that even though this is not an immediate issue, the people will need to change their possible ‘lacking’ approach with more than just slow muffled interest, whilst they rely on the comfort of not having to comprehend the technology. That part is still not completely disregarded in several cases, the issue at Sony being likely the most visible one for some time to come. There is still a massive amount of actual intelligence missing. Most speculate, including me (yet I have been looking at these speculators and claimers of facts). Whilst Sony is visible, there are still unanswered issues regarding the NSA and how a place like that had the implied intrusion Edward Snowden claimed to have made.

Now let us take a step back to the four branches. I showed the webcam issue in the first branch, but the lack of consideration by the user is often a bigger problem. You see, many ‘lock’ their device, or just walk away and switch their screen off. Their computer remains connected and remains accessible to whoever is looking for a place to hack. I know that waiting 45 seconds is a bother at times, but learn to shut down your computer. A system that is switched off cannot get hacked, the same applies to your router (which actually has the added benefit of letting your adapter cool down, making the device last longer) and your overall electricity bill goes down too, all these benefits, all neglected for the fake comfort of accessing your social media the second you come home. Yet proper usage also includes software upgrades. Many do them, but more often than not, they tend to be made when the system reboots, when this is not done (or the software upgrades are not made) your system becomes increasingly at risk for intrusions of all kinds. Windows 7, which is a lot better than either Vista or Windows 8, still required 84 patches in 2014. With over half a dozen being either critical or important, you see why even in the best of times, under all conditions met, you still run some risk. And this is just Windows; in 2013 they had to fix 47 vulnerabilities regarding Outlook, explorer and the Windows kernel. There was a massive issue with remote execution, which means that your system was open to the outside without the need for a login (source: PCWorld). Now, to their defence, Windows and office are massive programs, but still, it seems that Microsoft (not just them) have taken a strong stride towards ‘comfort’ whilst ignoring ‘safety’ (to some extent).

Branch two is usually the biggest flaw. Even though many websites will require a decent level of strength (usage of small and capital letters, numbers and a special character), but that list is still way too small. The amount of people that I have met that use the lamest of simple words (like ‘abc123’) and these people cry the loudest when their money is gone. You see, it is easier to just hack your computer or device and use that system to order online via other means then it is to hack into your bank account. Yes, it is a bother (at times) to remember every password, yet in that regard you could be clever about it too. There is nothing stopping you from creating variations on a password whilst making sure it is a completely different one. I learned that someone had used her dictionary app to use a version of word of the day, she changed ‘adscititious’ into something like ‘Adsc1t!tious’. Good luck figuring that one out! (I had to look up the word in all honesty), the options become even more interesting if you speak additional languages. So, branch two is something that you the user largely control.

Branch three is actually the growing danger. It is not just when we connect, but when things connect automatically that becomes an issue (and where from). Insurance companies are more and more about your visibility, even though no official moves have been made, the day that junior uploads that catch of the day to his Facebook with dad in the background. That is the option for the members from the ‘institute of discrete entry and removal operations’ to help you with your old stuff (the missing items when you get home). The information you ‘give’ when you connect (especially on free Wi-Fi places), you see, when you connect to free Wi-Fi, more than one danger exists that others can connect to you, yes, you could learn that free Wi-Fi was the most expensive part of your vacation soon thereafter. It however moves more and more to your area of usage. As we get more connections and as we can connect from more places (like the automotive router), we will receive additional responsibilities in setting devices up properly for our safety and the safety of our children.

Now, to take a second sidestep. This is not about scaring you (a nice benefit for sure), some of these things can be prevented from point zero. Knowing what you switch off, switching off when not used are first easy and elemental steps. You see, a hacker looks for a place to get into, when your computer and router are switched off, the hacker will not spot these devices at all and move on. Hackers do not like to waste time, so when you use proper passwords, that same hacker will lose a lot of time getting access to your devices, time he could be having ‘fun’, so these two elements are already diminishing the chance of you getting transgressed upon. But in the end, there is another side. Makers of hardware and software need to become increasingly aware that their ‘toys’ have malicious usage. It was Geek.com that had the article ‘Yes, Xbox One Kinect can see you through your clothes‘ (at http://www.geek.com/games/yes-xbox-one-kinect-can-see-you-through-your-clothes-1576752/), which gives an interesting demo (without showing off anything indecent) how defined and articulate the scan system worked and it is a hackable solution, even there we see the mention that a lens cover would not have been a bad idea.

Yet we have digressed away from the heart of the matter. All these are linked, but the crown in the hardware is an increasing need for non-repudiation, showing that you and only you acted. A lack of this evidence could also go a long way in proving that you were innocent and that you were the victim. It is easy to claim that the makers are at fault and to some degree they are, but there is a growing need to have the right solution, and so far having any clean solution remains absent, whomever comes up with that could own the cornerstone of the global technology sector, an area that represents a massive amount of long term revenue.

 

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January 3, 2015 · 11:03

Slander versus Speculation

There is a lot wrong in this world, we cannot disagree with that. Soon we might see rental prices go down in London, because of Superman (the New Ecstasy), yay to those needing an apartment, being free of drugs was never so nicely rewarded! So is this speculation, or slander?

We could debate my sense in taste (many have for decades), yet in the firm juridical ground, when can speculation be regarded as slander?

That part is more and more a question when we consider the US sanctions against North Korea. Oh, and perhaps we forgot to mention that Sony Is a Japanese firm (even though the crime was on US soil), giving additional spotlights to the reasoning of certain actions. Consider the following sources. First let’s take the BBC (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30661973). Here we see sanctions against organisations and individuals. First there is “Jang Song Chol: Named by the US Treasury as a Komid representative in Russia and a government official“, then there is “Kim Yong Chol: An official of the North Korean government, according to the US, and a Komid representative in Iran” and last there is “Ryu Jin and Kang Ryong: Komid officials and members of the North Korean government who are operating in Syria, according to the US“. Now the article ends with the most hilarious of all quotes “White House officials told reporters the move was in response to the Sony hack, but the targets of the sanctions were not directly involved“.

So the White House is within this part confessing to the breach where they are targeting innocent civilians (of that crime at least)? Can anyone explain to me how this is anything less than legalised slander? Consider that if (not when, but if) they ever figure out who exactly was responsible for the Sony hack (the actual individuals involved), how the US government could be held responsible in any court of law for this. Consider this part (source was the APA of all places, at http://www.apa.org/about/gr/issues/violence/hate-crimes-faq.pdf). “Current federal law defines hate crimes as any felony or crime of violence that manifests prejudice based on “race, colour, religion, or national origin” (18 U.S.C. §245). Hate crimes can be understood as criminal conduct motivated in whole or in part by a negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons. Hate crimes involve a specific aspect of the victim’s identity (e.g., race)“. If we clinically look at the facts, then these acts are a hate crime against North Korea.

Now, let’s be fair as well. Most will not care, I reckon that the North Koreans might not even care, but this act does remain a legal transgression!

Let me show you why (because without reason, there is nothing), part one is found in yesterday’s news in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/02/sony-hackers-may-still-access-computer-systems-the-interview).

Here we see the following parts:

  1. “Sony Entertainment is unable to confirm that hackers have been eradicated from its computer systems more than a month after the film studio was hit by a debilitating cyber-attack, a report says“

So not only has the hack occurred, it is very possible that the transgression and the damage is currently still ongoing, in addition, one of the most watched and scrutinised nations is still accessing Sony? Not one press agency is asking the questions that matter. For example, there was some visible Press Tour into North Korea (must have been around when Kim Jong-Un was elected big boss in 2011), when we saw some of the filmed events there, we saw North Korean officials in total disbelieve that a smartphone could take photographs and these people walked over Sony’s cyber security?

Now we get to the Chief Executive of Sony himself, his quote gets us the following:

  1. ““It took me 24 or 36 hours to fully understand that this was not something we were going to be able to recover from in the next week or two,” Lynton told the Wall Street Journal“

So this was not a mere grab for data, this is a system paralyses of sizeable renown, the hack was so complete, high paid executives could not get their minds around the events. So, are we still looking at North Korea? Basically this requires an evolved form of ‘stuxnet’, the hack was seemingly more complete then the stuxnet virus could achieve. We now have only three players left. Russia, China and whatever hacking organisation walks around within the US and its allied nations. How is North Korea anything else but a mere puppet for slander? Whilst some people are possibly hiding their lack of skills, and likely other people linked to all this are trying to cover up issues that have been ignored ever since the first hack of 2011 (the Sony PSN hack). By the way, I am using stuxnet as a comparison, I have zero knowledge how the transgressions was done, but we can all agree it was way beyond a normal level of sophistication.

Yes there is another scenario and I will get to that soon, North Korea is not off the hook yet!

You see we have been looking at the event, but not at the capital involvement that is two tiered at present.

  1. “Sony’s network is expected to be fully operational within the next two months but hackers have so far released only a tiny fraction of the 100 terabytes of data they claim to have stolen“, so not only will it take months to repair security measures, the fact that the new fences are there are still no guarantee that the data remains safe.

When gets us to the first tier. Data! Someone streamed 100 Tb, which is more than just a number; it would require every PlayStation 3 on the planet to download up to 2Mb. The fact that this is not monitored, or that is got through to this extent, is a first view that this was no mere trifle event. And even though 100,000 Gigabytes seems small when compared to the PSN issues, it becomes interesting when we consider that the PSN had been hit more than once, but as those members did not all download, where did all this data get syphoned to?

Now we get to the one part that might be regarded as tier two. You see, it is not just the amount taken, which takes a good server park to store, it goes back to issues I discussed in regards to piracy and the parts I mentioned in my blog ‘For our spies only!‘ on September 26th 2014. There I stated “in the end this is NOT about copyright, this is about bandwidth“, the big players all knew it and they were all very concerned if such events would start to get measured and logged. Now someone casually walked away with 100,000 gigabytes of data?

Before I restate, it was not North Korea, let us take a look at another article by the Guardian in that regard. The title is ‘North Korea may have hired outside hackers for Sony attack, says US‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/30/north-korea-hackers-sony-pictures-cyber-attack) and it was written on December 30th. Now we must consider the following: “US investigators believe that North Korea most likely hired hackers from outside the country to help with last month’s cyber-attack against Sony Pictures, an official close to the investigation has said“. The operative word is ‘believe‘, they just do not know. As a speculation that would be my guess as North Korea does not have the skill needed for this, not even close. By the way, those hackers might want to get paid, how will North Korea do that, or perhaps that is beyond US oversight too, because it would be a sizeable amount for something this complete.

The next part is the part that opens the discussion ““The FBI has concluded the government of North Korea is responsible for the theft and destruction of data on the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment,” it said in a statement“. The first question: What evidence?  As stated before, North Korea is lacking in many ways, the fact that they hacked past Sony to this extent, whilst at present no guarantee can be given that the systems are secure at all, whilst North Korea has been watched 24:7 for a long time now gives rise to the demand of evidence showing the guilt of North Korea. So, they are seemingly better than the cyber divisions of both Russia and China? I am not buying it, in addition, the fact that the article implies that outside help was engaged for a hack this thorough leaves us with two thoughts.

  1. If true, where is the real balance of power in cyberspace, because this now implies that North Korea is a real player, even though no one (including people a lot more intelligent than me) have concurred that North Korea does not count when it comes to the internet and cyberspace.
  2. If false, what incompetence is the US hiding from us all and is that not the true crime?

Consider this quote (from the Guardian article too): “Some private security experts have begun to question whether Pyongyang was behind the Sony cyber-attack at all. The consulting firm Taia Global said the results of a linguistic analysis of communications from the suspected hackers suggested they were more likely to come from Russia than North Korea. The cyber security firm Norse said it suspected a Sony insider might have helped launch the attack”

I cannot disagree with Taia Global, as this could be Russia hitting back at US sanctions, but that would be speculation on my side, I also very much agree with Norse. Consider that if someone walks into a bank vault and it is empty. There was no sign of break in, the doors were not forced. At this point the police and the FBI will initially look at ‘the insider’ plot. It makes perfect sense. To get past the Sony server parks to this degree someone was giving aid in some way. Initial passwords, the network structure, because if that was not the case there would be a lot more logging evidence to giver clear view whether North Korea was guilty (or not involved).

Mark Rasch hits the nail on the head with this quote ““I think the government acted prematurely in announcing unequivocally that it was North Korea before the investigation was complete,” said Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor. “There are many theories about who did it and how they did it. The government has to be pursuing all of them.”” there is the crux, the mention of theries on who did it. Even if it is outside help, Russia would still make more sense, the Russian Mafia could be the front for cashing in on selling the data, they pay commission to the people ‘hurt’ through US sanctions, they are looking at the least likely suspect because of a comedy, one that I (and many others) had not even heard of before these events.

It is the last quote that is food for thought from Kevin Mandia of Mandiant “Mandia, who has supervised investigations into some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks, said the Sony case was unprecedented. “Nobody expected when somebody breaks in to absolutely destroy all your data, or try to anyway, and that’s just something that no one else has seen,” he said”

That part is not entirely true, I remember the DBase virus of 1988, I remember some people who had fallen victim to them, a garble parser that does not show until the virus is removed, it leaves your data garbled from that point forward. There was also a data virus in the 80’s. I forgot the specifics, but whilst most viruses would attack ‘.com’ and ‘.exe’ files, this one would attack data files, until that day a truly scary moment. So, it is not entirely unprecedented. Consider, if you copy someone’s data, the best sale is to sell it to the competitors, yet, what happens if the owner no longer has that data, does that not drive up the price? Yet, it is bad tactics, to copy in secret and resell it all makes perfect sense, the fact that these events happened, whilst Sony IT, the Cyber divisions of the FBI and others are not able to track the events is something very novel. It is a first to this degree, do you now understand why it makes no sense to accuse the one nation where we see this as their highlight: “Aug 6, 2013 – North Koreans hungry for tech skills are buying up used desktops on the black market, these desktops smuggled in from China have become a much sought-after item in North Korea“, this is the nation that thwarted one of the biggest cyber power players?

People please wake up. The question becomes what was real? I call my version insightful speculation. I have been involved in IT since the 80’s, this level of hacking requires serious system skills with in depth knowledge of all layer one components (hardware layer), if we ignore the inside job part, this takes North Korea out of the loop, it also removes a massive amount of hackers of the table too. It requires the skills we would require to see from people at the NSA and other high tiered cyber firms. From these facts I come to three options:

  1. The hackers are a new level of hacker with the ability to get past the security of nearly any large firm and government data system.
  2. Sony has been criminally negligent and the US is willing to ‘aid’ this Japanese firm for a price.
  3. A simple inside job (possibly even a disgruntled employee) with links to organised crime.

Please feel free to give me a valid fourth alternative.

 

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January 2, 2015 · 10:54

Misrepresentation

That was the first word in my mind when I looked into the Guardian seeing the following headline ‘NHS cancels 3,000 operations in two December weeks‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/28/nhs-cancels-3000-operations-in-two-december-weeks), it is not the only NHS story in the Guardian and to be fair, there has been an awful lot of bashing of the NHS, not entirely in an unfair way, but it has been in a very misrepresented way.

I have written about the NHS a few times, with the main reason that whatever hits the UK, will hit Canada, Australia and perhaps even New Zealand, later if not sooner. The small inserted text “The figures, highlighted by Labour” is entirely an issue too. Perhaps the Guardian might also want to illuminate that part of all this is DUE TO the actions of Labour, not just illustrated now by Labour. It all starred in the age of Blair, perhaps not the most unknown Prime Minister of the UK (1997-2007), followed up by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown who continued the mess from 2007 to 2010.

So why blame them?

Even though the project started in 2002, during these three administration cycles, that project was blown in access of well beyond 10 billion with nothing to show for it. 10% of that fund could have prevented well over 80% of all current NHS issues. So, I will state that Labour might not have started this mess; they definitely were in the midst as it got bungled again and again. When we consider the September 2013 article (at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn), where we read “CSC’s contracts could not be cancelled because a legal challenge by the company may well have succeeded, the report claimed“, we can see that this issue was bungled in several departments, the IT branch not being the smallest one.

Yes, we know, we see and we all feel that any NHS system costs us, but this fiasco is beyond the entire budget of the Ministry of Transport for 2015, so we can say that there are issues. Whatever we will hear in defense regarding how things must move forward, the current administration is still cleaning up the mess of Labour, best way they can (with emptied coffers), so the sanctimonious highlighting by Labour (not unlike the current acts of Labour in Australia), should be looked at with some contempt. When the previous landlord sells the garage, he does not get to remark on how less ‘clean’ the car is, when he had removed the shelter in the first place.

When we see the quote ““To reduce pressures on hospitals and to keep a flow of patients coming in and leaving hospital, we need to manage the number of available beds more efficiently. To achieve this, we need to reduce unnecessary admissions and visits to A&E and improve community care.”“, we should add to that that the system was meant to be better by having an actual system. When we consider a previous made quote “Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the BMA, says £20bn savings drive to blame, as doctors and nurses are made redundant“, we must now remember that wasting in access of £10bn for a non-working IT system has everything to do with that part. But that is only one factor.

For the next part I need to refer to a decent article in the Independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-myth-excessive-government-borrowing-got-us-into-this-mess-8601390.html). There we see the following: “In fact, government borrowing did not get us into this mess. As we shall see, the last government did not borrow excessively, whilst the recession was a consequence of overleveraged banks and the collapse of the US housing market. The banks overextended themselves in poorly regulated financial markets, indulging in high-risk lending in the belief that a housing bubble would never burst“, this is absolutely true, yet not entirely correct. consider in 2008, Gordon Brown was handed a lemon for sure, yet, the strong measures that should have been taken, like cutting back hard, especially in late 2009 onwards, were also absent. The article has a few other ‘represented’ events that are true, yet incomplete, you see, no one will deny that the banks were all at fault for the bulk of the mess, yet harsh acts afterwards were mostly none existent, moreover, many of these big wigs went home with a golden handshake a fat donation to their bank account and enough to buy a ‘St James Hamper’ for all the members of their family (Catalogue Code: 2099429 at http://www.fortnumandmason.com).

So when we see the current Labour highlights, we need to take a few more details into consideration and can we agree that those issues were absent in this article?

So when we see the very premature promise of “He pledged Labour would invest an extra £2.5bn in the NHS each year, resulting in 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 GPs“, we need to consider that the bungles under labour had costed many of them their jobs in the first place. The NHS still needs a much better IT system then it has for now and until this is completed these issues will remain, trusting labour to get the job done is really not a good idea. We could misrepresent that we currently have well over 10 billion pieces of evidence to make that case. I will let you mull over any contemplation in that direction of financial deficit.

By the way, when considering that part, we must also consider Wednesday’s article (at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/31/sexual-violence-soars-uk-hospitals), there we see security issues of several levels in the Guardian, now reread the issue from December 28th, at that point, these issues would have been clearly know. There is no mention of security or upgraded HR needs; just nurses and GP’s, so how out of touch is a three day old statement that did not consider known details at that very moment?

I see this as an out of touch Labour government that is highlighting and promising, yet the highlight is incorrect, the promise in inaccurate, perhaps even insincere and all of this in completely unrealistic (personal note: it sucks to be Labour at present). This is the view from Labour, whilst only looking at the issues that are touching the NHS, one of the most important issues that will remain around in the coming decade. I hope that the siblings of the UK (Read: Australia, Canada and New Zealand) take these thoughts into consideration, because if we ‘the Commonwealth’ in the upcoming age of IP want to survive, we need to up the game in several areas buy a lot! In this regard IP is not just a piece of software; our Intellectual Property is not just software (even though it is largely regarded as such). If we consider that the mind is the software of the brain, we need to rethink the premise that Big Business has forced us to make in the age where ‘they’ had set the target, the premise and the consequence. If we take the basic approach where ‘the Turing test is a test of a machine’s ability to conclusively show intelligent behaviour that is indistinguishable from a human being’, can we make a similar statement that ‘a system’s adherency to set and cater to a rule of definitions, which in turn allows servicing the need of a community’?

 

So what if we invert the current situation as we might see in the paper by Alan Turing ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence‘ around 1950. Our systems have been exceeding the ability of those computers for a long time, yet as technologists have been greed driven into a iterative release of hardware (and software), we ignored use of innovation in UNIX (or LINUX or SE-LINUX), to truly drive productivity as large players like Microsoft, to cater to profits forced business to take a step back, to be the sheep carrying the pay checks for these large corporations. So as we stare at the words of Alan Turing and as we look at the words of cognitive scientist Stevan Robert Harnad, where we wonder whether a machine can act indistinguishably, we all forgot (an implied assumption by me) about the part, ‘can a system truly cater and flexibly work under a premise of security as it caters to the need of health officials’, so that they can focus on treating and curing. A system bogged down by consultants and speculators on how it ‘must’ be, whilst ignoring the small academic innovators on how it actually could be.

Whilst dishing billions to a company with a legal challenge, we all should have looked at the future of IT as these minds were shaped at universities. The technologies required were never with the people in office now, they learned the previous iteration of technologies, the actual innovators are at university now and catering into that direction at 1% of the cost is more likely a solution then the one not delivered at present. Consider for a moment the PDF (at http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/rec-man-pol.pdf). Now, there is nothing wrong with the entire approach to the document, yet at 5.9.12 we suddenly see “Be aware when redacting Microsoft Word documents electronically by using the black highlight text tool as this process is reversible. A Microsoft Word file converted into PDF can be easily read merely by copying if from PDF back into Word” suddenly we see that Microsoft is just part of all this, a ‘simple’ formatting is now a Microsoft based guideline. Why?

At 5.18.1 we see: “A secure drive (S:drive) has been created to hold such data and staff should contact openservice@atos.net to request a secure folder“, so this goes via a French multinational IT services corporation headquartered in Bezons, France, making 10 billion in 2013? How much of that revenue is coming from the NHS, and why is this cost not going through a British company (seems like an awfully simple question to pose). By the way, one other thing to notice is that the Glossary after page 27 shows the term ‘metadata’, yet the document itself leaves the term metadata unused, which refers to Protective marking, only discussed in Appendix D, where it is mentioned to the minimised extent. Although this document should not be seen as any representation of NHS IT (the document is actually a very decent piece of work), it should leave us with several questions, we might not get an answer to, if not for the now, then definitely towards the goal the NHS must steer to if it wants to survive beyond 2015, just adding funds will not do, and the funds Labour offers are those they have no access to until after an election, which will then be the funds that are non-existent as the present shows.

So where should we look when we are confronted with these misrepresentations (as I see them)?

I am not telling, just asking!

 

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December 31, 2014 · 11:31

Last Clooney of the year

My idea of stopping my writing until the new year has truly been bombarded into a sense of that what is not meant to be, so back to the keyboard I go. One reason is the article ‘‘Nobody stood up’: George Clooney attacks media and Hollywood over Sony hack fallout’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/19/george-clooney-sony-pictures-hack-the-interview), which I missed until this morning. So has the actor from ER become this outspoken because of his marriage to Human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin? Nah! That would be incorrect, he has been the champion of major causes for a long time, outspoken, thinking through and definitely a clever cookie with a passion for Nespresso!

The article kicks off with a massive strike towards to goal of any opponent “George Clooney has spoken of his frustrations with the press and his Hollywood peers at failing to contain the scandal around The Interview, which Sony has pulled from cinema release as well as home-video formats“. It goes a lot deeper then he spoke it does, perhaps he fathomed the same issues I have had for some time now, some mentioned in my previous blog ‘When movies fall short‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/12/15/when-movies-fall-short/), two weeks ago.

I will take it one-step further, several players (not just Sony) have been skating at the edge of competence for some time now, as I see it, they preferred contribution (revenue minus costs) regarding issues of security. It remains debatable whether this was intentional or just plain short-sightedness, that call requires levels of evidence I have no access to.

By the way, Mr. Clooney, you do realise that this topic has the making of an excellent movie, not unlike the largely unnoticed gem ‘Margin Call‘ with Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany and Zachary Quinto.

The one quote I object to (to some extent) is “With just a little bit of work, you could have found out that it wasn’t just probably North Korea; it was North Korea … It’s a serious moment in time that needs to be addressed seriously, as opposed to frivolously”. You see, the inside job is a much more likely part. Yes, perhaps it was North Korea (requiring evidence), yet this would still not be the success they proclaim it to be without the inside information from disgruntled (or greedy) employees. In addition to the faltering security Sony has needed to ‘apologise’ for twice now (the Sony PSN hack of 2011), none of which was correctly covered by the press regarding this instance either. There was the press gap of November 2013, so we have at least two events where the press catered with silence, but at the price (read: reward) of….?

Yet the part: “He joins others who voiced their dismay at Sony’s decision, including Stephen King, Judd Apatow and Aaron Sorkin. Rob Lowe, who has a small role in The Interview, compared Sony to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and his capitulation to Nazi Germany before the second world war“, is more than just a simple truth, it shows a fear of venue, cater to the profit. Chamberlain was from the old era and he failed to perceive the evil that Adolf Hitler always was. That view was partially shown by Maggie Smith in ‘Tea with Mussolini‘ too, yet the opposite was strongly shown in Remains of the Day, when Christopher Reeve as Jack Lewis states: “You are, all of you, amateurs. And international affairs should never be run by gentlemen amateurs. Do you have any idea of what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could just act out of your noble instincts, are over. Europe has become the arena of realpolitik, the politics of reality. If you like: real politics. What you need is not gentlemen politicians, but real ones. You need professionals to run your affairs, or you’re headed for disaster!”

This hits the Sony issue straight on the head. Not that the Gigabytes of data are gone, but that they got access to this data at all. IT requires a new level of professionals and innovator, a lesson that is yet to be learned by those having collected Exabyte’s of data. It is a currency that is up for the taking with the current wave of executives that seem to lack comprehension of this currency. Almost like the 75-year-old banker who is introduced to a bitcoin, wondering where the gold equivalent is kept. The new order will be about IP, Data and keeping both safe. So, it is very much like the old Chamberlain and Hitler equation, we can see Chamberlain, but we cannot identify the new Hitler because he/she is a virtual presentation of an identity somewhere else. Likely, a person in multiple locations, a new concept not yet defined in Criminal Law either, so these people will get away with it for some time to come.

Yet the final part also has bearing “Clooney was one of the Hollywood stars embarrassed by emails being leaked as part of the hack. Conversations between him and Sony executives showed his anxiety over the middling reception for his film The Monuments Men, with Clooney writing: “I fear I’ve let you all down. Not my intention. I apologize. I’ve just lost touch … Who knew? Sorry. I won’t do it again.”“, personally he had no reason to be embarrassed, when your boss spills the beans (unable to prevent security), do you blame the man or the system that is this flawed?

Why has it bearing? Simple, he shows to be a man who fights and sometimes fails. He states to do better, just as any real sincere person would be, a real man! By the way, since 2011 Sony still has to show such levels of improvement. A lacking view from the people George Clooney served in a project, so we should not ignore the need to look at those behind the screens and the press should take a real hard look at what they report and on where their sources are, that same press that has not scrutinised its sources for some time. When was the last time we asked the press to vouch for ‘sources told us‘?

Consider the quote “We cannot be told we can’t see something by Kim Jong-un, of all fucking people … we have allowed North Korea to dictate content, and that is just insane“. As I mentioned in the previous blog, with the bulk of the intelligence community keeping their eyes on North Korea, why is there no clear evidence that North Korea did this? Not just the US both United Kingdom and France have access to an impressive digital arsenal, none have revealed any evidence. Consider that the École polytechnique under supervision of French defence is rumoured to be as savvy as GCHQ, can anyone explain how those three cannot see clearly how North Korea did this? So, either, North Korea is innocent and just surfing the waves of visibility, or the quote by George Clooney in the Guardian “the world just changed on your watch, and you weren’t even paying attention” would be incorrect. The quote would be “the world just changed on your watch, and those in charge do not comprehend the change“. In my view of Occam’s razor, the insider part is much more apt, the other option is just way to scary, especially as the IT field is one field where North Korea should be lacking on several fronts.

I will let you decide, have a wonderful New Year’s eve!

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