Tag Archives: BBC

November 9, 2021 · 21:58

The enemy within

It was an expression that alerts us to the fat that not all the enemies are the ones attacking us. And as we might have seen. All those generals giving Americans the threat from Russia and China, they have nothing to fear, Americans will destroy America long before that becomes a fact. This is the setting that the BBC gives us. So the title is not merely ‘Metallurgist admits faking steel test results for US Navy subs’, it becomes how weak is the current American navy and were try trying to sell that weakness to Australia? You see, the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59186655) gives us “Prosecutors say Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, gave false positive readings for strength and toughness tests in at least 240 cases between 1985 and 2017” This would put a large stage of the Los Angeles class attack submarines in a weakened stage. One could argue that a nearby explosion towards arctic ice might create enough pressure for that steel to fail. And when they give you “Ms Thomas suggested that in some cases she gave metal positive results because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at -100F (-70C)” you know that you are being lied to. The fact that the steel can not pass the test sets a dangerous premise and US law is weak, very weak. Elaine Marie Thomas is not seen as a traitor, a person who put American armed forces in a dangerous place, no she gets faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1m fine. She will be sentenced in February, guilty of fraud. A very clear case that crime pays in America. The stage that we are given “This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years” that is nothing more than a false representation. It was about money, it was about a part unmentioned ‘living out her retirement years in luxury’, because if the tests failed, the bills would follow and she had nothing to fall back on. And the falsehood does not end there, there is a consideration. We see this with “the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised”, it does, if the -70 tests failed, the submarines are useless in arctic and Siberian conditions. The submarines might only function towards optimum stages in warmer waters. A setting the Russians would be eager to exploit. I think that any criminal would want to hire John Carpenter. A setting of treason has been washed by “took shortcuts and made material misrepresentations” At that point we need to concede that I could end nuclear dangers (by making the Iranian reactors meltdown) which might be a misrepresentation and is not in any way treason (I am not Iranian). I could do more, but I think I have proven a point. To convict a traitor of fraud is like selling water as undistilled Gin at $11 per 500ml. And this is all the BBC gives us at present, what I do not understand is the lack of anger towards Elaine Marie Thomas. There are 28 Los Angeles in use, each with a complement of 125 and that just one class. And there is no clear image of how many are compromised. Optionally Elaine Marie Thomas has been endangering hundreds, optionally killing in them in the  future, not as many as the attack on Pearl Harbour took, not as many as the amounts of victims on 9/11 in New York, yet equally as devastating and it was done by an American. 

I can only guess how these generals feel now that they have been caught with their pants down trying to run like penguins. Fraud? Screw that!

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November 8, 2021 · 18:01

The call of a budgie

Yes, that is almost the foundation of a new cartoon, the story of Sylvester the cat and his sunny side show, Tweety. A show that was funny when we were younger than 13, but now? That is the stage we face (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59182278) with ‘Twitter poll calls on Elon Musk to sell 10% stake in Tesla’. What is this? It is like the BBC has lost its senses. Just like the Dutch government who claimed that they gave in to Twitter pressure when they made a deal with Sywert van Lieden, and no one is asking questions that matters. 

In the first Twitter is no valid source of information, none of the vote can be verified. It could will be three politicians each wielding a troll army of 235,000, we cannot tell. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter, it updates me from sources that give me information. Newspapers that have a good reputation, movie productions that give me time lines and optionally a trailer or two, new games. And sometimes a link to something that matters, but polls? A shouting app that allows the rude and the loud to set policy? Never! Its like giving the power of policy on meat to the vegetable store down the road. Or perhaps it lets the NBA make NHL rulings. The proverbial ‘fuck that!’ comes to mind. 

So in this case it is about a poll that allegedly (because a Twitter account can always be hacked) Elon Musk put in the field and the BBC turn it into a lie. They give you “Voters in a Twitter poll have urged Elon Musk to sell 10% of his stake in Tesla in order to pay tax.” That is not what happened. Elon Musk (allegedly) put a question to an audience where he stated “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” The response was that 57.9% said yes. We see no numbers, but it could be that 579 out of 1000 said yes. And it is a mere question he aired. And the setting is more. Tax avoidance, or black letter law is legally allowed, it merely means that he would pay what he is due, not what we THINK he is due and the larger stage is that it is again about tax laws, a setting both democrats and republicans have never ever adjusted, not in 2 decades. 

Then we see a part that matters, the BBC gives us “In an earlier tweet on Saturday, Mr Musk said he took no salary or bonuses from any of his companies – meaning he has no earnings on which to pay income tax. But he has made billions of dollars through a compensation package, which gives him power to exercise large amounts of stock options when the company meets performance targets and its shares hit certain prices.” He is legally allowed to do this and certain stupid players need to stop baiting the hook, the law is there, he can do this and he does. It is not good, it is not bad, it is allowed. To be honest, it a certain Randy Lennox takes the steps I could (hopefully) end up with 10% of $400M-$600M. Do you think I will not take these steps? You have got to be joking. The tax laws allow me to do this and I will, it is the law. 

And I am not alone, more and more take this step, because the law allows me to do this. The tax overhaul,. The one step that stops this is avoided by politicians, why is that? Why are these (stupid) people relying on Twitter to try to pressure people? We know it is not a valid source, it can be an informative source, but cannot be verified (so you need to take care on what to believe) and the list goes on (and on and on and on). So there we have a setting and the BBC justly adds to this with “Mr Musk has an option, which expires in August next year, to buy 22.86 million Tesla shares at $6.24 each – a fraction of Tesla’s closing share price on Friday of $1,222.

Under plans proposed by the Democratic Party in the Senate, billionaires could be taxed on “unrealised gains” when the price of their shares goes up – even if they do not sell any of their stock.” This would add another $23,000,000,000 non taxable funds (at the moment). The law allows him to do this, I saw some of my bosses (in the past) do this with much smaller numbers and it has been legal for at least 30 years. If it was such a taboo why didn’t they stop it them. In that time the US had Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and now President Biden, and so far none have done anything. Well the proposition is from the current president, but I reckon that the votes will fail. And even if it holds up, I feel 99.335% certain that there will be a hiatus and there will be ways around it. Thousands of tax lawyers ill be ready to take that proposition apart and drive wedges through its X, Y and Z axis. 

And as some players claim, the value does not always go up. Elon Musk is one man but hundreds of others do the same, if one gets taxed up to these hundreds can use that setting to make it all tax deductible a side the people are eager to avoid staring at, because they see this one Elongatedly uberly rich Musk and they forget that the one winner comes with 999 losers. Do you really wanna give a tax cut to the 999 that follow?

And credit to the BBC to add the comment by Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman who gives us “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll” the one sane view in the article. Especially as one of the other Musk polls or statements got ‘altered’ to attain the flaming audience. I too would have questions for Elon Musk, but it would be on his new mobile and other settings that accompany this. I wonder if there is a side that is the danger of a much larger dangerous issue in the works. I am not claiming it is, I am merely wondering on the chances of this, and not from him or his endeavour, but on the dangers of third parties doing something stupid (as they tend to do when their pupils turn to dollar signs). For now I merely wonder, perhaps I will see an opposing view when the clear facts are presented to the world. 

I know, it is merely the view of little (and seemingly old) me, and that does not constitute evidence, but it calls for all kinds of questions, does it not? The call of a budgie is nice when you are drinking tea (or coffee) yet the stage of Twitter remains that we can switch it off when we do something that is important to us, did you consider that? And I get that the BBC saw this as an opening, but I reckon they could have written it differently, but that is my personal view on the matter. Have a fun day!

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November 6, 2021 · 22:22

The riddle

Yes, there is a riddle here. It is not a riddle that is on you, or for you. It is a riddle that is within me. Even as I am about to dig into a matter I have dug in before. There is another play in motion. I set the stage, I left the clues and it is all linked to Toronto (a village in Canada). I cannot tell whether the people will catch on, but the gains are massive. The problems is that if I give away the game, the profit dwindle too much. It is a stage where one side gets the group $25M-$45M, yet the unspoken one, if left under the radar gives the group $400M-$600M. It is quite the conundrum, and it is not about greed. It is about some wannabe’s should not ever be allowed to get to this goal. I am willing to give it all away to merely achieve it so that some people get egg on their faces, in public and in the limelight. That is more rewarding to me then the millions I could get. It would give voice to the ‘I told you so’ choir, but not merely 5 voices. A choir like a symphony orchestra giving a few players the ‘You are an idiot’ dialogue with soprano’s and tenors. The view will be magnificent and the window is not that big. I have time, but every month that window shrinks a little more and I am willing to wait, I am willing to lose it all just as long as the wannabe’s openly lose it. It matters that much to me, my feeling of rage and anger is just that big. It comes back to the riddle, the riddle of the two sided sphere. Oh and for the clever people, this is not a clever way to describe a digon (a polygon with two sides and two vertices), no the riddle of the two sided sphere is different and until you get it yourself, you will never truly understand it, giving away the clue defeats the purpose. The riddle was given to me in 1983, it took some time to work out, but when I did doors opened, ways of thinking unlocked and the feeling of that key unlocking is both mesmerising and overwhelming. It gives the larger stage and that stage is kept clean and away from as many eyes as possible at present, winning that, seeing how the other failed means more than millions, it optionally shows I won several wars that others are in denial of.  Yet the limelight also takes away their ability to remain in denial, others will ask these wannabe’s why they never saw it and whilst they come up with excuse and excuse and rely on levels of miscommunication they will enter the blame game and I will stand in the back watching chaos unfold. The idea that I am almost at that stage is exciting, more exciting than holding a KFC bucket filled with diamonds. And I am so close, I can almost taste it.

So that is enough about the riddle, related to the riddle there is also another riddle, and that can be explained. It started two days ago, all whilst some give the setting that the COP26 is a failure. I do not disagree, I merely wonder if some realise the dangerous game the media is playing. To see that, I will have to give you a few stages.

Stage one
Stage one is not new. It started on December 10th 2020 when I wrote ‘Hatred of wealth’ where the BBC article was the centre piece ‘Climate change: Global ‘elite’ will need to slash high-carbon lifestyles’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55229725). There we see Matt McGrath yielding the floor to Oxfam. They give us “The global top 10% of income earners use around 45% of all the energy consumed for land transport and around 75% of all the energy for aviation, compared with just 10% and 5% respectively for the poorest 50% of households, the report says” I debunked that BS in less than 5 minutes. You see Statista also gives us numbers (you can see them in that article, but the setting is that in the last 15 years plane travel went up by well over 15,000,0000 planes, this implies almost a million planes per year more. The article does not give this, does it? The article was lacking a lot more, especially when you consider the reports by the EEA (European Environmental Agency) and the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programs) so whilst I made chop suey of both  Matt McGrath and Tim Gore my work was done. 

Stage two
So what happens? The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/05/carbon-top-1-percent-could-jeopardise-1point5c-global-heating-limit) gives us on November 5th almost the same BS the BBC gave you all a year earlier. Here too we see “The paper shows that the fight to keep 1.5C within reach is not being hampered by the consumption of most people on the planet, but by the excessive emissions of the world’s richest citizens, said Tim Gore, author of the briefing and head of the low-CO2 and circular economy programme at the IEEP.” As I see it, the same bloody tosser gives us the same shit we got a year ago and the overextension of blaming the rich, whilst we now see TWO media outlets ignoring the report that 50% all ALL damage is created by 147 facilities. Now, if they would be in opposition of the report I gave you all in the earlier stories, if they were in opposition of the EEA numbers, it would be one thing. I have nothing against opposition, it forces us to double check. No these two players openly ignore presented numbers and if you seek those who did, you are not likely to find one. Why is that? Why do we give credibility to some person relying on “the fight to keep 1.5C within reach is not being hampered by the consumption of most people on the planet” whilst not presenting clear documentation of how they got there, all whilst (via statista) I showed that over the last 15 years more flights were created by almost a million flights a year, every year. The media is playing a dangerous game by misrepresenting the facts and this is exactly what COP26 is doing, helping each other being utterly useless in protecting the environment. By aiding some delusional setting to aid politicians and industrials via stakeholders. The question becomes has Oxfam become just such a player, aiding industrials so that their little niche might have some expected virtual protection for a few more months. If we turn back the clock today and scrap the 15,000,000 flights how much more will we save? I will bet decent money that it will be a hell of a lot more than what the top 1% uses with their jets, especially when you realise just how often he flies that thing and the 41,095 daily flights that the extra planes bring to the equation. But that is not how it is presented, yet I remember being on a flight (Amsterdam-Budapest) where there were less than a dozen people on a 767, so how much carbon did these 12 people (including yours truly) bring to the CO2 equation. 

Consider these elements and consider how you are getting played by large media on what they want you to think, and not what is optionally really the case. Playing the introduction towards ‘blaming the rich’ so that a seemingly useless president can play his tax the rich plan as he is now only 6 weeks away from another shutdown as he will hit another debt ceiling. The media has as I personally see it become willing to such a level of catering. And no one asks who are they actually catering to? As I consider it, it cannot be the truth and if that is the case they cannot be newspapers and they should pay their 6% added sales tax, not hide behind a zero tax option, is that not too what they accuse others of?

Enjoy the weekend, it will end in less than 50 hours.

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November 5, 2021 · 03:41

As Credit Cards run dry

That was pretty much the first thing that went through my mind as Reuters gave me ‘UK could speed up criminal sanctions for big tech, minister says’ an hour ago. The article (at https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-could-speed-up-criminal-sanctions-big-tech-minister-says-2021-11-04/) gives us the first dangerous setting ““It will not be two years, we are looking at truncating that to a shorter time frame,” she told lawmakers. “I’m looking at three to six months for criminal liability”” in the first I have all kinds of emotional outbursts as to the uselessness of certain political players. Then there are a few more chapters, yet it is not yet the moment for that (it will come soon enough). When we see “Powers to make executives liable have been proposed as a “last resort” to be introduced at least two years after the rules have been set, the government has said”, we see the first part that it is a timeline change of almost 75%, then there is the statement ‘as a “last resort”’ and I personally believe that none of it will hold up to scrutiny. There is of course the ‘old’ setting of “In general, Facebook may not be held liable for slanderous or defamatory posts due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 protects internet service providers, like Facebook, from liability for content posted to their platform by third-party users” Yet it also means that a demand could be made to hold Journalists up to those same standards, and that is where the shoe stops fitting and the dance ends real quick.

Consider Stephanie Kirchgaessner, someone at the Guardian. On July 19th 2021 she gives us “A phone infected with NSO malware, as Kanimba’s has been, not only gives users of the spyware access to phone calls and messages, but it can also turn a mobile phone into a portable tracking and listening device. In the period before she was alerted to her phone being hacked, Kanimba said she had contacts with the US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, British MPs, and the UK high commission office in Rwanda – all of which could have been monitored”

We now see:
A. ‘A phone infected with NSO malware, as Kanimba’s has been’
So where is that evidence? As such the guardian could be just as liable and hiding behind ‘big tech’ optionally constitutes a case for discrimination and the Guardian is also on Facebook, Twitter and so on, so what gives there?
B. When was the phone infected? Can the moment of infection be proven?

The Daily Mail reported on October 25th 2021 “The alarm was raised after an online harms issue known only to a few people at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was raised by a senior executive at Facebook in a recent meeting” So we see “I’m looking at three to six months for criminal liability”, basically Facebook would be prosecuted for events that the employees of that government leak on Facebook? How insane is that train? Who would be the conductor of that crazy brain train and with that in sight, when we consider that some of these messages come from all over the globe. And in plenty of those cases the so called trolls are to blame for some messages. When we consider that the track record in the US, UK, EU and larger commonwealth fails to deal with trolls, can we demand more from Facebook? Consider that the Council on Foreign Relations reported on June 7th 2021 “Chinese trolls are beginning to pose serious threats to economic security, political stability, and personal safety worldwide”. So how long until not so intelligent politicians see a larger string of attacks and fine Facebook whilst the business shifts to China where the US, UK and EU have no say in the matter? How stupid does one need to get to consider their stretched credit cards to get fines whilst losing billions in taxable revenue and optionally global revenue? When it all shifts to China (as well as the Russian equivalent) people like Britain’s Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries were too close to clueless to understand the digital media? Yes, we get it, Zuckerberg created a Behemoth, one a lot larger then even he thought was possible, but the rest had no idea whatsoever (I used to work for a few of them). So in all this we see lofty words like ‘criminal liability’, yet that same government (as the BBC reported) gives its population just 1.6% of rape allegations in England and Wales result in someone being charged, something the government has said it is “deeply ashamed” about. Charged, not convicted, that is a mere 80%, leaving 98% of the assailants free to do it again. That government who failed its population for well over three decades thinks it can judge “big tech firms already had the capability to make their platforms safer”, how is that insight gotten? Because as I see it in too many places the people have no clue on digital media issues, especially in social media. 

I believe that this is another ‘tax the wealthy’ stage, this time it is on what I regard as ‘false grounds’. And in that light, lets take a gander into another stage (adjusted stage in this case) of ‘flawed reasoning’

6 Most Common Causes of Wrongful Convictions

Eyewitness misinterpretation.
The stage where the observer does not comprehend all the elements of a digital track and uses his or her status as expert witness, or witness to the event all whilst the stage cannot be seen as a lot of the variables involved are not visible to that witness.

Misinterpretation.
Misinterpretation is set to what is seen, the data behind it and the stage on why and who placed it. In many cases (especially with flamers and trolls) several of these elements are faked and wrong values are captured mainly because flamers and trolls know what to change. This is similar to all the scam calls showing a UK/US number whilst the scammer is in India. YouTube is filled with those examples.

Incorrect forensics.
Is slightly the wrong term, it is incomplete forensics, because governments listened to self righteous pinko’s who demanded privacy and as such digital platforms cannot capture what needed to be captured to do more, so first (overly graphically stated) the government cuts off the hands of the media giant and then tells the media giant to pick up the right ‘pick-a-stick’, how lame is that part of the equation?

False confessions.
There is the cry-baby (hoping to get freebee’s), the trolls and flamers and those with a natural aversion to one side (abortion, politics, vegans), take a subject and there will always be a crying opponent and they are willing to embellish their side and optionally lie on what they feel, all sides that goes straight into social media and often several times over.

Official misconduct.
Basically is is seen on both sides and always will be, I used the government staff leaking lists, but the opposite side is also there (like Amazon staff greasing personal (family) needs. Several options and these things happen and time is the only way to get there, yet the issues mentioned earlier drains close to all resources.

Use of informants.
That is the larger problem, who is a real informant, and who is there to play some political game? The data will not reveal either but it also constitute a wrongful case.  A seemingly small but growing issue on a stage where size is the least visible element of all.

Inadequate defense.
The largest problem issue. It overlaps with technical abilities, privacy abilities and false confessions, they all impact the defence that is offered and as such is the easiest overrun in court or in a hearing. This also is a stage with documentation and as we see with some players at the ICIJ (Pandora papers) as well as the NSO group. There is no adequate defence as the presented attacks are too often absent of evidence, yet still there is a conviction against the players and the media became part of that problem. A stage where defense was not possible because some players were allegedly tainting the field. 

Six elements and they are out in the open, so when we see “Britain’s Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, who was appointed to the job in September, said she wanted the powers brought forward” I personally wonder whether she is clueless on what is involved, or is this a mere ruse to get fines so the governmental Credit Card is not cut into pieces by too many banks? And if the UK is in that stage, how deep is the EU and the US at present?

Before we leap to rush to the small minded people, lets make sure that they do not end up driving business to players like WeChat. A site that will not adhere to anything that is seemingly non-Chinese.

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November 3, 2021 · 20:17

The citizen model

We have seen the stage where governments all over the world started the wave of ‘Tax the rich’. The stage is wrong on two settings. In the first, we are a nation of laws, most nations are that and taxation is part of law. This results in two groups of people, the criminally inclined people who rely on Tax evasion, not paying the tax and the people relying on accountants and lawyers to set the stage of tax avoidance, which is paying the minimum they have to pay. One is criminal one is not. The tax avoidance people rely on black letter law, not the spirit of the law, but on what the lawmakers wrote down as the playing rules of a game. The rich use tax avoidance, it is not semantics, it is a state where they use the law as they can, as they are ALLOWED to do. 

So what happened to bring this to the surface? 

Well, the BBC gives us a long story and a decent recap (at https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-59062959) where we see ‘The Cryptoqueen’s £13.5m London penthouse’. Here we are introduced to the works of cryptocurrency scammer Dr Ruja Ignatova. 

We are given a lot of emotion, but some of the facts sipe through. There is “facing charges connected to the siphoning of millions of euros from Dr Ruja’s €4bn scam – which consisted of selling something that didn’t exist, a fake cryptocurrency she called OneCoin”, a seemingly clear case, or is it? We add “the lease was signed in August 2016, financial regulators in at least one European country had already issued a warning about OneCoin. A few months earlier, Dr Ruja had pleaded guilty to fraud and other charges in a German court, after bankrupting a metal factory she’d bought and leaving 150 people jobless in 2011”, so we see a stage that tarted in 2011, 11 years earlier. A lease was extended 5 years ago with at least one warning out in the open. Then we get “According to the property deed its owner is Abbots House Penthouse Limited. An anonymous Guernsey shell company – one of 12,000 such companies that own properties in England and Wales – meaning that Dr Ruja’s name would not have to appear on the UK deed, or in public records in the Channel Island.”

Apart from the stage of Fraud and scamming, she broke no laws, she was extremely careful not to break any. Then on 25 October that year she boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens, and vanished off the face of the Earth.

So we have an Oxford educated woman who knew hat strides to walk and she vanished with up to 4 billions and the existence of the current laws allows her to remain unfound until she is old, grey and still worth millions at that point. She won’t care what they call her. She will not care as she lives in her private golden cage, surrounded by walls of anonymous stages and staff (mostly lawyers). Consider if the law is useless to capture a criminal who knows the laws, what do you think will happen to a lawful obedient citizen with equal if not more wealth? What I stated again and again for 11 years is that tax laws need an overhaul. All these emotional people shouting ‘tax the rich’ is fun for TV, but useless in the stage of the law, until they are correctly adjusted. 

And the deceived investors? The ‘OneCoin Investors Entirely Dismiss Class Actions Lawsuit’ headline shows it. They no longer stand a decent chance of getting their money back. Het getting found and serving 90 years in prison is the best they can hope for. And those chances do not look good at present. Consider a wanted person named Ghislaine Maxwell. It took forever to arrest her in Bradford, New Hampshire by the FBI on 2 July 2020. It took them years to get a handle on her and she was wanted in plenty of places. The ultra rich are not breaking laws, the are not wanted and they are allowed to move what THEY own. The stage is laughable, the FBI and other parties required years to make a case, in case of one convicted fraudster 11 years and nothing was gained, not even an arrest. So do you still think I was blowing some horn? The flaccid politicians who claim and not deliver, they are part of the problem and them not overhauling the tax laws for well over a decade is a first sign of evidence. Inaction surpassing a decade, consider that evidence and see where that takes you.

The BBC article (beside the added emotions) is quite the revelation, you should take notice, because this helplessness will continue for at least another decade and I do understand it is too early to say, but when deforestation does not end in 8 years, you’ll know I am right and we both get to take that knowledge to our graves, that is where we are all heading anyway.

The model citizen in a citizen model is a joke, because if the law decides what a model citizen is, we also hold the first clear legal evidence that it pays to be a criminal, did you realise that when you read the BBC article?

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November 3, 2021 · 04:43

Fake it till you break it

I have been twisting and turning on this. This is not really my cup of tea, so I was happy to let it slide by. But then three things happened. In the first there were two stories, there was actually a third one, but I could not retrieve it. Then there was a tweet. Apparently the Glasgow COP had dignitaries at the scene, as such well over a dozen cars were running on idle during THE ENTIRE DAY, so how is that for the environment? But I digress. It was the second article, the one starting with ‘Thunberg tells Glasgow protest politicians are pretending’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59116611) that pushed me on. You see, she is right and I will hand over what I personally believe to be evidence over to you and I will let you decide. The article gives us “She told fellow activists from “Fridays for Future” that change would not come from politicians at the summit but from individuals showing leadership. The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was sailing up the Clyde, with plans to dock near the conference venue”, the article is almost a day old, I had been fighting with myself on this for a day. So it is the first article that was the tide setter. The article ‘World leaders promise to end deforestation by 2030’ started the trouble. This link is an hour old, but there was an earlier story. This article is at https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59088498. You see, if they were sincere about doing something, the promise would not be for 2030 when most of these losers would be out of office, it would realistically set to January 1st 2023, that would have been real, that would have been a decent mark towards some victory. But the greed driven need to capture whatever they can, mainly because some analyst in Wall Street seems to have given that deadline. So when we are given “warned a previous deal in 2014 had “failed to slow deforestation at all” and commitments needed to be delivered on” and no amount of posturing as is seen with “UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the global meeting in Glasgow, said “more leaders than ever before” – a total of 110 – had made the “landmark” commitment” is nothing more than a joke, a joke optionally forgotten by January 1st 2029, when most signatories are no longer in office and a landmark adjustment is made towards 2035, optionally 2038. I reckon that Greta Thunberg is right, they are merely pretending. I wonder how many of them have sold whatever they had at the coastline. So we can think whatever we want, but the person making the statement “end the role of humanity as nature’s conqueror, and instead become nature’s custodian” could be dead before that moment arrives. In this I find the response from Dr Nigel Sizer, the ecologist the most disappointing one “But maybe this is realistic and the best that they can achieve”, their best is not even close to acceptable, not in the cases we are seeing now. And in all this, I saw no commitment or actionable signs from China, the one who is still the alleged number one polluter. As far as some papers go, China made no commitments, one source gave us ‘no new commitments’, but so far (or as far as I can see) China hasn’t done anything in the old setting either. 

Where do we go from here?
I honestly do not know, the idea of culling the human population by 97.3% is still on the table as far as I can tell and if that happens, I will not be around for commentary, The super enabled will be part of the surviving 2.7% and in light of how drastic the situation might be, that is as good as it will get. And it is already starting. The Guardian gave us yesterday ‘Do not trust Brazil’s ‘greenwashing’ promises, say Amazon activists’, so the COP hasn’t even ended and the doubts are flying all over the field. So far it seems that a teenager named Greta Thunberg is seemingly a lot closer to the mark than any current or previous environmental editor in any newspaper. And when you realise that part, how much were the cost of meetings that go nowhere, because you the taxpayer paid for all that. And my skepticism is not unique. Elon Musk gave (via ABC News) the headline ‘Elon Musk offers $US6 billion to UN World Food Programme if it can prove it’ll end world hunger’, the UN, Environmental agencies, they have become the laughing stock for players in Wall Street play the delay game. Should you doubt that, consider the stage of full deforestation until 2030, that whilst an attempt was made in 2014, it failed and the so called critics with ‘it was voluntary’ is useless. It shows that governments need to fill their pockets, it is the need for greed and the setting where the population gets to One (see previous article). By 2019, 5 years after the ‘promise’ nearly all have failed. Russia and a few others weren’t part of this, but do they have to? If we cannot see the dangers we are facing it doesn’t matter what Russia does, we merely no longer deserve to live, hip hip hurrah to Wall Street. 

We can look at it from all the angles, but in the end it is all about fictive promises that will not be held by those in office when it counts, it will not set the stage of promises that are broken again and again. If they had set the promise towards January 1st 2023 when most would still be in office it is one thing, 2030 is just a joke, but as things go I will not live long enough to see that date come, so whomever is alive then, make sure that these politicians are held to account and if needed let EVERY newspaper print a page every day with the shame list of those who attended COP26 and were unable to keep their word. I reckon it will not happen, because it will stop business agreements and space for advertisements will be lost, and Wall Street wins again. 

Perhaps this will wake you up, in a stage of greed there is one winner, it is the ‘me-stage’ we face and that stage will not be defeated, it comes from the push and the reality that greed is eternal. 

P.S. WordPress still hasn’t fixed colours, I hope to find an alternative soon.

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October 31, 2021 · 23:33

When politicians lie

This is a setting that is out in the open. What happens when politicians lie? When does a lie become a lie? That is the question I was pondering on when the BBC gave us ‘Saudi Arabia expels Lebanon ambassador amid Yemen row’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-59096578). Here we are given “Mr Kordahi, who was speaking in August before he became a minister, called the conflict “futile” and said the Houthis were acting in “self-defence”” Is it a lie? Does a terrorist organisation have the right to rely on ‘self-defence’? For those who had forgotten the origins of the disagreement, let’s go back to September 2014 when Houthi forces took over the capital city Sanaa, which was followed by a rapid Houthi takeover of the government, a legitimate government no less. Houthi forces started a more and more brutal offensive against all they saw as enemies and did not stop there, they led drone attacks on civil Saudi targets, an act that was only possible through direct funding and equipment from Iran. I reckon that this is the price of Iranian fuel for Lebanon. 

Then we get to “The Lebanese government said Mr Kordahi’s remarks did not reflect its position – but relations between the two countries have worsened in recent years. The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, which also backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen, has grown in strength in Lebanon”, yet in all this, we need to look at the larger picture. In Al-Arabiya we see “Lebanon’s Information Minister George Kordahi said on Wednesday his country “cannot remain subject to blackmail” in response to calls for his resignation after his statements about Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s involvement in the Yemen war.” So blackmail from who? It seems that there was a price for all that Iranian oil. There have been claims in the past from different parties that Hezbollah had been active in Yemen (no clear evidence was seen by me), and in this stage his claim to ‘self-defence’ is as empty as a peace offering from Hezbollah towards Israel. 

And as we get exposed to ““I am now part of an integrate government, and I cannot take a decision alone, it must be the government’s [decision] as a whole… I place the interests of Lebanon above all interests. And we cannot be in Lebanon exposed to blackmail by anyone, not by countries, or ambassadors or individuals,” Kordahi said in a press conference.” So when we put  ‘The Lebanese government said Mr Kordahi’s remarks did not reflect its position’ next to ‘I am now part of an integrate government’ it seems that someone here is not being truthful, so is it the Lebanese government, or is it Mr Kordahi. The fact that He was appointed on September 10th 2021, as the Lebanon’s Minister of Information. Is a larger problem. To me it implies that the Lebanese government has taken the Iranian route and when that implodes (as any agreement with Iran tends to do), the Lebanese people have nowhere to turn to and nowhere to run to. 

So now that Al Jazeera gives us ‘Lebanese president says he wants ‘best relations’ with Saudis’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/30/lebanese-president-says-he-wants-best-relations-with-saudis) and (optionally) hides behind “Lebanese politicians are scrambling to resolve a diplomatic spat with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) followed Riyadh with measures against Beirut to protest against comments by a cabinet minister about the war in Yemen” and whilst we see mentions of “maintain good communication”, I reckon that President Michel Aoun seemingly learns the cost of catering to Iranian needs and ignoring real facts. On the other hand they have a harbour full of evidence of what happens when Hezbollah calls the shots. And the setting Al Jazeera gave us three weeks ago “Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Tehran willing to rebuild Beirut port and construct two power plants in Lebanon” seem to set the larger confines of the Lebanese problem and in all this Hezbollah remains part of the problem, not the solution. The problem is that a lot more people know this. They all hide behind the simple part of “The explosion resulted from the detonation of tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a combustible chemical compound commonly used in agriculture as a high nitrate fertilizer, but which can also be used to manufacture explosives. The cargo of ammonium nitrate had entered Beirut’s port on a Moldovan-flagged ship, the Rhosus, in November 2013, and had been offloaded into hangar 12 in Beirut’s port on October 23 and 24, 2014” You see, clear scientific evidence gives us “Compared to most combustible materials, ammonium nitrate itself is not exceptionally explosive. But the compound can contribute to explosions because it belongs to a chemical class known as oxidisers” It needed something more and that is the part that Hezbollah fears. When the people learn of Hezbollah stupidity too many people there will demand larger changes, that is what Hezbollah fears and for now they are willing to dance to Iranian music and there is where we see George Kordahi, no longer presenting who wants to be a millionaire, he is now catering to the millionaires Lebanon needs and we get it. But with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain severing ties, Lebanon is now left to the mercy and resources of Iran and when that runs out (or gets weird delays) the setting changes even more. 

So, How wrong am I?
Consider the facts, consider what happens from September 2014 onwards, it clearly shows Houthi forces as a terrorist antagonist, we see conflicting information from Lebanese spokespeople and there is the larger stage where FOUR nations have cut ties with Lebanon. In a stage where Lebanon needs all the friends they could find. A stage of segregation and separation, the first two stages or eliminating any source.

Yet in all this, There is a clear lack of critical analyses on the acts by George Kordahi, which in light of the Iranian settings is weird. Wouldn’t it be the first that the US would do and the first thing that (overly quick) gets leaked to the NY Times or the Washington Post?

OK, that previous point is somewhere between assumption and presumption, but the setting in light of all we have seen so far makes sense. 

In all, I get the stance of Saudi Arabia here, I get the stance of the other Arabian nations here, yet in all this the acts of George Kordahi and President Michel Aoun are seemingly weird. In a stage where Lebanon desperately needs Saudi Arabia, the setting of a flaccid response towards the actions of George Kordahi are off, especially as three other nations took sides with Saudi Arabia. One might think that Lebanon has no idea how to deal with the requests by Iran and that too matters. If communication lines there are presently so convoluted, Lebanon faces a lot more hardships soon enough and they are only weeks away from the December cold. December to March gives them 11 to 13 degrees on average. November and April are not far off from that and with the winter stage and without power, or 1-2 hours a day at best Lebanon is looking to one of its worst winters in decades. In all this the promised Iranian power centres sound nice, but they will not get there before late autumn 2022, so it will be a hard time for the 7 million Lebanese, that much seems a given at present. 

Were the politicians involved lying? That remains the part that is unclear, no matter how they slice it, they were stretching facts and truths far beyond points of breaking (which does not make it a lie), but it sets the premise that catering to the wrong people now comes at a price that Lebanon never considered having to pay ever before and that too matters, because that stage could determine the degrees of freedom that Iran will have in Lebanon, optionally as part of Hezbollah.

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October 28, 2021 · 19:15

Baffled

I have that at times, don’t you? We see something, we see a statement and we go towards the ‘Are you for real?’ queue. This happened to me this morning. It was an article about the ‘Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ I had seen a few pass by on earlier occasions and for the most I do not care. There is nothing novel and news about someone blowing its own trumpet trying to be as important as they could never be, to be as innovative as they dream they are and as clever as they could hope to be. Even Google takes a gander as she is now seen as a ‘American former businesswoman’, former being the operative word. We see some papers throw ‘How Elizabeth Holmes lured rich VIPs like Rupert Murdoch to back Theranos’ at us, with the optional “to avoid the potential pressure from larger investment firms to go public, according to an investor at the DeVos family office who kicked in $US100 million for the blood-testing startup”, and there we have the first part, even if it is hidden between the lines. It is ‘to avoid the potential pressure’, and no one here beckons the thought that some (especially investment firms) going with ‘to avoid the gaze of scrutiny’. Then there is ‘Elizabeth Holmes trial hit by new concern: losing too many jurors’ for whatever reasons (one involving Sudoku), and I see no real interest, but in the first setting with what the BBC gives us now, I see a much larger flaw, a flaw of stupidity. You see the article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59071205) gives us that one part, that one statement ‘Are you for real?’ It was not the headline ‘DeVos family ‘misled’ before investing $100m’, it was the quote “Lance Wade, suggested the DeVos family had not done proper due diligence, to which Ms Peterson replied: “We didn’t think we needed it.”” In this my personal view of Lisa Peterson, a representative of the DeVos family’s investment office, states that it was not needed? How blazingly stupid is this investment office? More important when we consider that Betsy Devos, a Republican, served as education secretary under Donald Trump. We need to wonder if the defendant shouldn’t be let off in line of the old expression of ‘A fool and his/her money are soon parted’. It is one of the reason that only three players are allowed onto my 5G IP, but to be honest, it was done for very different reasons, the idea that an investment firm is too stupid to be allowed anywhere near my IP is a novel idea and I have to admit that I never considered that. The idea that $100,000,000 does not require due diligence with the optional “We didn’t think we needed it” is the wet dream of any organised crime endeavour. So what on earth is the case here? In the setting of Elisabeth Holmes, if she gets nicked for her actions, fine! And in this case, if she is seen as a person who was delusional yet not guilty would be just as as fine as the first option. To be honest, I have no issues with people being delusional, at times we all are. Yet the idea that she might walk because the prosecution side didn’t think it was essential to have due diligence on investing $100,000,000 makes me giggle and if she is released because of that so much the better. To be honest, this is seemingly turning into a new version of war of the Roses, a stage of dumb and dumber part 3. Devos versus Holmes and the one more stupid gets the other one off the hook, a novel setting indeed.

Even as we all recognise that Fraud is a serious crime and a more serious accusation. I now wonder on the diligence that Wade Miquelon, the former chief financial officer of pharmacy chain Walgreens did. This is not an accusation, it is a question. I do not have access to an active case and I do not have insight into what happened before, hence I ask. There is now also the question on ‘Former Safeway boss Steve Burd said his company spent 100 hours doing due diligence on Theranos’ I am not doubting Steve Burd, I wonder how complete the cover-up was to get this man on board. And the less said about Sunil Dhawan the better, from what I gather, he seems to be the putz, an optional shield for Elisabeth Holmes to hide behind, one that didn’t pan out as far as I can see. 

And as I started today, I saw a side of a fraud case that had me baffled, for most of us (ever republicans) this is a case that is loaded with entertainment and that distinction would make me want to put down my game of Sudoku, it honestly would. 

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October 26, 2021 · 02:19

Stupidity is key

I was almost ready to go to sleep, it is 1:45, so that makes sense. I have been enjoying the devastation of Japanese armed forces (playing Aragami 2) whilst enjoying Philip Glass in the background (Satyagraha), it was a lovely evening. So as I was about to put my head on my pillow whilst imitating a sawmill (I am exceedingly expert at that) the BBC messed it all up by giving us ‘Saudi crown prince suggested killing King Abdullah, ex-official says’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59032931) and I was wide awake to take notice of this. Now I accept that they are merely reporting the news (according to the needs of their stakeholders). Yet there is a lot missing. So when we see “In an interview with CBS, Saad al-Jabri said Mohammed bin Salman told his cousin in 2014 that he wanted to do so to clear the throne for his father.” So what is up? 

To give you that, we need to give you a small history lesson, I covered it in the past, but to do so again is now essential. 

In the first, we need to take notice of the small fact that he has been living in exile in Canada since May 2017. So why do we get this almost 5 years later? If it was a real thing there would have been a debriefing when he exiled to Canada, Canadian intelligence (CSIS) and CIA would both have debriefed him from A to Z. There is the civil suit of an alleged issue, yet that case was filed in the US. A case of an event in Canada filed in the US? That is weird, in addition we see the Middle East eye giving us “Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, explained why Al Jabri kept a low profile after arriving in Canada: “I think he’s scared. Wouldn’t you be?”” Which is fair enough, but I reckon that his coins are dwindling down and there is a decent chance that Al-Jabri is playing the get rich a little more game. 

Then there is a part that is speculative from my side, but hear me out. The Guardian and Al Jazeera give us in July 2020 “Senators Patrick Leahy, Tim Kaine, Chris Van Hollen and Marco Rubio wrote to President Donald Trump urging him to press for the release of Al Jabri’s children. Calling him a “highly valued partner” they said: “the US has a moral obligation to do what it can to assist in securing his children’s freedom”. The Department of State noted that it had “repeatedly” requested that Saudi officials “clarify the status” of Al Jabri’s children, and undertook to: “continue to engage Saudi counterparts to resolve this situation in a manner that honours Dr Aljabri’s service to our country.” In this the following points come to bare (or is that bear)?

  1. How is he a valued partner three years after events? I am not saying it is not the case, but the man was out of the game for over three years. 
  2. If this was so important, why is he in Canada and not in the US? Also, no one was able to smuggle his family out in three years?

These two parts are not a given, but should call for all kinds of questions. I get it Canada is beautiful and has better quality hockey, but is that enough for a person like Saad bin Khalid Al Jabry? 

In all this we also see “Mr Jabri warned that Crown Prince Mohammed – Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and the son of King Salman – was a “psychopath, killer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, who poses threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet”” this shows that he is out for something else and it is driving his needy ego ‘who poses threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet’. Perhaps the Americans feel threatened, but that is not the drive, Saudi Arabia has been happy to order billions from the US, so the statement is already flaky. Of course if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia takes my lead and order the billions in planes from China (and pretty please give me my 3.75% commission) America will feel threatened, but that is in the first on loss of revenue and a few other matters. The planet? That is ridiculous, this is an ego drive and it is to satisfy the need of stakeholders (names unknown at present). The second part is given to us with “he added that the meeting was secretly filmed and that he knew where two copies of the video recording were”, in the first he plays the statistical game with ‘two copies’ in the second he is keeping that until he gets a lot of $$$$$, it is the game he plays and it is decently played, because the moment the CSIS and the CIA know he is fake they will drop him like a bad habit and that is what he fears. Without the protection of the US and Canada he is done for and the interview was to appease certain stakeholders (my personal view).

So whilst you consider that, also consider “He denies stealing any government money, saying his former employers rewarded him generously” Really? How much? Consider that he is a former major-general, consider that his wealth is allegedly creeping towards billion. Which he has been accused to embezzle. So how much did the CIA, FBI, CSIS, RCMP find? And if it is more than 20 million, how could a general in a non-dictatorship get that much? Last time I checked generals made a nice bundle, but not the side of a container full of dollars. All elements that the BBC could have added by vetting the data they had and the data they could investigate. OK, I admit that the BBC did nothing wrong, but there is a larger picture and they are not giving you that one either. As such I am left with all kinds of questions. 

It is OK to think that I am the stupid one, yet in this the facts have been all around us for years, so why didn’t anyone act? In this I actually wonder how valid and how much quality is in his intelligence. Well, it is easily checked, perhaps the ICIJ after they are done with their tall tales on Pandora (and her box), Hesiod already covered that a long time ago. 

So as we see more bashing of Saudi Arabia, I wonder how long it will take Stephanie Kirchgaessner to…. No, I spoke too soon, she is already on it (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/25/saudi-crown-prince-a-psychopath-says-exiled-intelligence-officer) and when you consider this all, also consider the quote at the end. It comes from former CIA director Mike Morell “I don’t know if Dr Saad was corrupt in any way. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t because he’s such an honourable man. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if he was. Because everybody to some extent had their hand in the kitty. And King Abdullah allowed it, permitted it” Yet the third side is not (allegedly) contemplated and from my side it is mere speculation. The idea that Al Jabry placed the explosives to create a way out it seemingly not investigated. So in all this, how much did he exile with? When I am told to exile it will be with no more than $54.55, but then, I am not a General. So how did he get away with what he did? When you have to run you are either prepared or you set preparations in motion and when was the last time you left with an 8 figure number? The stage is set, the orchestrators are playing and we are the ones dancing. That is how the stakeholders like it, but in this the stakes are a little too high. If Saudi Arabia turns the taps off in Europe and the US, that oil will go to China. Consider the mess you have at that point in the US and optionally Europe too. I find it interesting that the name of Stephanie Kirchgaessner is used in conjunction with anti-Saudi sentiments a little too often, I personally feel that this is about something else. It is speculative and I could very well be wrong. I will let you dig into the events and see where your intellect takes you. That is all I can do, show you the doors and the windows and let you decide for yourself. 

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October 19, 2021 · 21:58

Searching for a reason

We all do that at times, we all search for a reason. Whether it is for a solution, to blame or to incite. These are the most likely reasons, but they are not the only ones. The thought came to mind when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58961836) gave me ‘Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ‘may have lied to Congress’’ a stage where ‘may’ is operative. So there is not even any level of assurance that he ‘had most likely’ lied, that on the premise it was highly likely that he was not truthful, or any other stage of ‘creating doubt towards sincerity’. We are also given the claims that “Amazon copied products and rigged its search results in India to boost sales of its own brands”, as well as “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question” and in finality we get “they were considering referring the firm “for criminal investigation””, so in the third, what ‘criminal investigation’? For allegedly rigging results in India? For inaccurate media articles? It is an open field and in all this, we need to consider that US congress is merely trying to get fines from rich companies any way they can get, it is what incompetent people tend to do, play the blame game. 

Yet to understand it we need to take a look at the Reuters article (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging) where we get ‘Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show’. Here we are given “The internal documents also show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data about other brands on Amazon.in, including detailed information about customer returns” this is indeed a solid accusation. In addition we get “It is difficult to develop this expertise across products and hence, to ensure that we are able to fully match quality with our reference product, we decided to only partner with the manufacturers of our reference product”, it is quite the accusation, yet this happened in 2016. So in the first, why is this not in Indian courts? In the second, why do we see a bland US Congress setting when it is not an activity on American soil? It was Amazon.in, it was in India and referred to Indian products. In addition we get the small part at the very end of “In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” I see it as two parts, in 2019 there is a stage of “Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” which would support the stage of wrongful action mentioned earlier, and in 2020 we get “prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business”, as such a stage optionally exists that a flaw was found and dealt with. Optionally there remains a stage that in 2016 “Amazon employees working on the company’s own products, known as private brands or private labels, planned to partner with the manufacturers of the products targeted for copying”, so a stage remains that Indian employees became creative to create their own private fortune in debatable ways, a stage that was close over time and there Reuters has a larger issue. The documents, what EXACTLY do they prove? I am not against Reuters here, they have proven themselves a few times over, so I am asking exactly what internal documents were in play? If they were emails and there the language and the path is also important. Reuters might be on the money, but they start with “A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods” and there we see the assumption it is linking ‘internal Amazon documents’ towards ‘the e-commerce giant’, yet these employees, how high up the ladder were they, were they all Indian? In that case can a quality case based on quantifiable data be made against the e-commerce giant, or is this the event involving a few rotten apples (sorry, rotten pieces of fruit). So when we see the questions that rise from the Reuters article, the US Congress made leaps without investigating the evidence before referring it for Criminal investigation. You see, there needs to be a viable case before referring it, so there needs to be decent questionable evidence and so far, no one has seen it and I reckon it might not be there in the way the BBC article gives us the goods. I think there is a lot more and in all this, when we see “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question”, we could have seen evidence and more importantly the media can show the evidence that it was wrongful data handed to them, but we do not see that either (at present), the media is very protective of one another at the alleged expense of anyone else. 

Can Amazon have done something wrong? Yes, absolutely, the firm is too big, things fall through the cracks. Yet the chance of Jeff with the Telly Savalas hairdo Bezos, or Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel to openly lie to Judiciary Committee is too ludicrous to consider. That is the stage and when I see “We strongly encourage you to make use of this opportunity to correct the record… as we consider whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate,” I feel that this is an attempt to get another fine out of Amazon. Yes, I agree that the letter is merely good form, but I reckon that the players would have done a decent level of homework before that letter went out, and with another shutdown 9 weeks away, America needs all the cash they can lay their fingers on, I am merely wondering if their path is all on the up and up. But that is merely me, questioning whatever I see. I merely wonder if anyone else noticed the questions that the article brings up, it might be my not so trusting nature.

If Amazon did something wrong, OK. It happens and a fine will be the result, but this happened in India, so why is there no reference to a request from India, a request from Indian vendors and a more thorough investigation into the evidence. All that seems to be missing, weird, is it not?

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