Tag Archives: Human rights

May 26, 2023 · 15:04

Human rights versus?

That is at times the question. Don’t get me wrong, human rights is a good thing and we need to take heed, but hat happens when it stops life in other ways? In this case the setting is against Microsoft and here I do not oppose Microsoft, that is folly in some cases and this is one. It all started when early this morning I got ‘Saudi Arabia: Microsoft Should Suspend Data Center Plans’ via some newspaper (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/23/saudi-arabia-microsoft-should-suspend-data-center-plans). Why? Saudi Arabia is a nation and it is entitled to have its data centres. The text that is part is “Microsoft should suspend its plans to invest in a new cloud data center in Saudi Arabia until it can demonstrate how it will mitigate potential rights abuses, 18 human right groups said today. There is an enormous risk that Saudi authorities may obtain access to data stored in Microsoft’s cloud data center, thus posing unique and direct threats to human rights and privacy, the human rights groups said.” Really? Corporate America and governmental America have been treading all over EVERYONES privacy and rights for years, so where are those warnings? In other news. I personally do not care, you see Tencent with news (at https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/20230510-05-tencent-takes-steps-toward-chinas-biggest-data-center) gives us ‘Tencent Takes Steps Toward China’s Biggest Data Center’ and I feel certain that they are ready to step in and setup a Data Center for the Saudi government in Saudi Arabia as well, just a few more billion in revenue for China. This is simple, plain and out in the open. Tencent is hoping for more options in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the Human Rights groups are handing this to them. A nation that is now almost a week from financial collapse needs whatever it can get and losing jobs and revenue to China is not helping, especially after the clambake that Governor Ron DeSantis arranged and that is costing Florida thousands of jobs and a million in revenue, so making Microsoft lose billions as well does not help (but it does aid my prediction that Microsoft will collapse, or implode in 2026). As such, when we see “Microsoft needs to conduct a thorough human rights due diligence process and publicly detail how it will mitigate the potential adverse human rights impacts associated with Saudi Arabia hosting the data center”, we need to realise that Microsoft needs to keep its head above water, it needs to deal with governments and it needs to deal with them and sell stuff. For those Humane jokes, how many from Cambridge Analytics are in prison? How many people from the ECHELON system have been prosecuted? How many privacy laws did they break? The list of questions go on and this anti-Saudi rhetoric is quite simply a joke. Is Saudi Arabia perfect? No, it is not, no nation is, but there are bigger fish to fry. Iran and Pakistan are merely two on that list and then there are the Russian transgressions. How much visibility did they push on that front? The larger folly is not what they do now, but what options would open with Microsoft for a dialogue for diplomatic conversations is one (not all but at least one) and that too will aid to what they refer to as human rights. But that part is not nice enough, too long a track, but now, if this falls through Tencent technologies will step in and take that revenue too. This is seen with “At least 10,000 servers are functioning smoothly and all the cooling equipment is installed, Wang added. Upon completion, the number of servers should reach 800,000, and the computing power should be 10 times that of the world’s most powerful supercomputing center. The Yangtze River Delta hub will provide cloud computing services to the public, including instant messaging, image processing, and medical insurance payments. Moreover, the center supports Tencent’s ChatGPT-like HunyanAide project, per Wang.” Do you think Saudi Arabia (UAE too) is ready for that kind of data center power? How many jobs will the US and US consultants lose and how many will China gain? Did you think of that and that is when you realise how the HR groups are in China, how massively did these HR groups shoot themselves in the foot? 

It might seem like a cheap joke, yet at present these human rights groups are a much bigger danger than Russia has been in the last three decades, that is something to mull over I reckon.

Have a nice day and it is now less than 60 hours until the end of the weekend. 

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December 11, 2019 · 16:15

The List

What happens when we demand certain action by the media, yet that same media might not think it is in their interest to pursue such actions, will the people win, or will the media win. It is a direct question as we are being told (via the media) that we have been kept in the dark for years now and we need the media to step up, will they do it?

I have been playing with this idea for a while now and I think it has become a largely visible issue now. I am taking the action as per ‘Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/10/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-seven-times-faster-than-in-1990s), and it is time to recognise the players. 

The first fact is that this particular issue has been playing for well over 20 years, so we now have a timeline. Even as the media now alerts us through “Scale and speed of loss much higher than predicted, threatening inundation for hundreds of millions of people”, the issue has been playing for well over a decade, so we now can demand a list.

The list needs to show ANY scientist who have been hiding or trivialising facts. These scientists are NEVER EVER to be considered for government jobs or for environmental jobs, they are to be named and any of them attached to big business will find their presence to be a nullifying factor in assessing a company’s environmental value. When we are given the value “Glaciers calving icebergs in south-west Greenland, which has lost 3.8tn tonnes of ice since 1992, and the rate of ice loss has risen from 33bn tonnes a year in the 1990s to 254bn tonnes a year in the past decade“, we need to see the dangers that some scientists have presented us with. So any scientist who altered their views to please governments will alo be marked and in that stage we will see a fading view of intentional misrepresentation. Scientists have been protected by cushy jobs for the longest of times, by smearing the truth in different directions by marking these people governments will have to face the issues thrown at them, not set them to lay by. 

Even now as we see: “That means sea level rises are likely to reach 67cm by 2100, about 7cm more than the IPCC’s main prediction. Such a rate of rise will put 400 million people at risk of flooding every year, instead of the 360 million predicted by the IPCC, by the end of the century” we see an issue that could have been a reason for illumination years ago, but in the age of 1996-2006 the world was swallowed by the need of greed. Even now, we see blatant misrepresentation ‘Fossil fuel firms ‘could be sued’ for climate change‘, is that so? So we want to shove that bill to the Middle East? How about shoving it off to the US, they wanted a car driven population. So as I see ‘Filipino human rights committee finds world’s biggest oil companies have legal and moral responsibilities to act‘, which sounds partly fine when we see the international actions by the Royal Dutch Shell, yet in the end it is an economy that pushed for $29 plane seats, as such that the economy suddenly had cash to burn (almost literally), yet no one sets the value of such drives to the test. So as we are treated to “The head of a Philippines Commission on Human Rights panel, which has been investigating climate change for three years, revealed its conclusions on Monday that major fossil fuel firms may be held legally responsible for the impacts of their carbon emissions” (at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cop25-madrid-climate-change-greta-thunberg-fossil-fuel-lawsuit-a9239601.html) we see an absolute absence of the economies that pushed for those solutions, all to ignore a stage of economy no one wants to hear about in our times of debt and debt driven economies. Even now as we see the stories from half a dozen sources go on about how tree planting jobs could be yours, whilst NASA Engineer Mark Rober (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY) showed a working solution that was modern and could be implemented months ago. he even gave visibility at https://teamtrees.org/, where we see that in 6 weeks he got to 17,756,768 of their required goal of 20,000,000 trees. A clear solution that is (obviously) being ignored by mainstream media. Even as the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/brexit-tree-planting-michael-gove-eu-conservatives-a9205371.html) gives us “‘It’s nonsense’: Michael Gove criticised after blaming EU for government missing tree-planting target” on November 16th 2019, way after the Mark Rober solution was presented, and whilst he presented it, it is clear that this working format was already in existence, so whilst Greenpiece and Michael Gove are butting heads, neither of them make mention of the solution that a NASA Engineer gave visibility to and tried (via viral ways) to entice people to help him get to the 20 million tree target. As I see it, the government, Greenpiece and several journo’s all missed the point that was out there to see for all. I wonder how many scientists have been overlooking certain solutions.

So whilst we get another clear view via “Successive Conservative governments have already ensured we will miss one tree-planting target in 2020, and we’re on track to miss the one in 2022. Now they’ve set themselves a new target for 2025 and people will be wondering whether this is raising the ambition or just moving the goalposts yet again“, we do not see the names of the people who have been pushing for these changes, I think that we are entitled to that, those people should not be allowed to hide behind the media, we are allowed to see the emphasis of all who agree of changed goalposts. And even as UK Labour will find some picture (like a baby in a hospital) to hide behind, lets face the truth that the sliding environmental values started in the 90’s, that measn that both sides of the isle is guilty of environmental rape. 

So whilst we see “Parties across the political spectrum have been boasting about the tree-planting efforts they would undertake if they won the general election” we should add the need to invalidate their right to govern for no less than 3 administrations should they FAIL to keep their word, especially when a happily flaky NASA engineer was able to show the opposite in a clear video, all with examples on how to tackle merely some of the issues we face on how to quickly plant trees (in an affordable way).

This all loosely relates an article in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/07/oceans-losing-oxygen-at-unprecedented-rate-experts-warn) ‘Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn‘, the fact that we see “Dead zones – where oxygen is effectively absent – have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s“, so where were all the alert signs a decade ago? Two decades ago? Were we all asleep? Was it hidden in the news papers on page 35 below the fold? The numbers give us that 650 oxygen deprivation areas were added in half a century, I reckon it would have been news two decades ago, so who aided people to hide these truths? As I see it those people are equally dangerous as mass murderers and any scientist on that stack of choices gets to be put on a list. So any scientist that is considering the ‘befehl ist befehl‘ excuse that some Germans used in November 1945, they better realise that the people had no qualms about hanging those people as well. In light of some information we can optionally agree with “the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations“, if that is true, then why is there no global agreement on the actions of overfishing? Why do we see the laughingly inactions by Australian law groups in the Great Barrier reef? Why are poachers not arrested, their boats set up for action in another state (to prevent reacquisition) to limit poaching? There are dozens of other options and actions not being seen and the inactions against criminals acting against the environment is an almost global problem, as such the inactions of governments is becoming more and more debatable.

As such I wonder when the media will look at an actual list and give the people a clear view on who is misrepresenting the factual parts, I wonder what we see those scientists say. And lets not forget the number one action that governments use when the data does not meet the question, at that point some will merely rephrase the question, have you considered how often this solution has been an option for governments in environmental questions?

 

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September 2, 2019 · 11:23

Funny Money, Amusing Thickheads

There are two issues and they do not link, but they are supportive of one another. I made notice of this situation 5 months ago in my article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/04/27/then-the-hard/) called ‘Then the hard‘, in the article I give “Now we get to the part where the €2.5 trillion mark matters, as the ECB is trying to find new ways to convince others that the continued provision of stimulus to the economy matters“, as I see it the stimulus protects banks, makes them more powerful, it allows for political stupidity, yet the economy has not been saved (not in the two attempts), it has not been jump started, and it has not been a positive impact for its citizens, merely the industrial executives and the rich CEO’s (OK, that was a more biased view from yours truly, the writer).

As Bloomberg gave us on Saturday (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-31/more-ecb-officials-pile-into-stimulus-debate-as-economy-wilts) ‘More ECB Officials Pile Into Stimulus Debate as Economy Wilts‘, and when we see: “the ECB should keep all options on the table to reinvigorate inflation and growth, including a relaunch of quantitative easing“, it is at that point that the EU citizens are getting screwed (again), more debt (again) and no resolution because the ECB is about the gravy train and not about resolutions. Yes that same article gives opposing voices, yet I would not be surprised that (by a narrow margin) the stimulus people win. This is why Brexit was so important!

In the end the retirees get hammered for those debts, the ECB officials have too fat wallets to care. At this point the debts have surpassed €3,000,000,000,000 and it seems that the end is nowhere near, yet the stage of bankruptcy is there. Even at 0.1% (no debt interest is ever that low) implies that the interest is €3 billion a year. A payment that is way beyond the budgets of any of the EU nations, payment due every year whilst the bulk of them have overextended themselves with budgets that should have been shrunk by well over 5%, so pretty much all the EU nations are running an economic deficit whilst the Mario Draghi Posse is handing out more money, printed money, for a lack of a better term funny money.

What the ECB is not telling anyone that most stimulus options fall flat when the UK officially leaves the EU that is the despair there. Their options melt away when the UK is out and that is why everyone is suddenly in a panic, that is why we get these moronic acts and even UK Labour is all about remain now. And with that part we move to the second part of this.

Now we get to the Chief of Grief, the Duke of Fluke, the one and only real loser in history (as I personally see it) Jeremy Corbyn. When we see headlines like ‘No-deal Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn vows to ‘pull Britain back from the brink’‘, or ‘Final sovereignty on Brexit must rest with the people‘ we see the idiot he is. There was a referendum, there was a voice and Brexit won, the issues with the ECB shows us that we are a lot better outside then inside that mess. There is no brink of Brexit, there is an economic mess and we will enter a stage of recession, anyone telling you that it can be presented is lying to you, or they are wielding massive amounts of money, amounts that no one has. This has been shown by people more intelligent than me and by people with actual economic degrees; they all are on the ‘remain’ fence, merely because it butters their bread. It gets worse when we see that the Hysterical Remain groups that have become violent, abusive and out of control, more important, to a larger degree the media isn’t even covering it. How is that for balanced information?

I have heard one or two actual ‘remainers’ who made a really good case, yet in the end, they have no control over the ECB and the ECB is in Europe at present the great evil. What they claim is good for Europe is to a much larger extent merely good for big business. When we look at those companies leaving the UK, these are all companies hiding behind taxation options, or facilitating to really large players and to some degree that is fine, but the ECB forgot that the well over 150 million small business owners see nothing of any of that and more important, they will see the impact of the 3 trillion euro of debt that the ECB created, things are that much out of whack and I do not get why people accept the presented BS that people like Jeremy Corbyn have been presenting to the masses. I am aware and I also believe that Brexit had its own waves of BS presenters. I made up my own mind and for the most I was leaning towards Remain, Mark Carney (the Marky Mark of the British bank) and especially his speech to the House of Lords was the setting of that stage. Yet he too had one flaw (if you want to call it that), there was no controlling the ECB and they are out again making some lame excuse on the essential economic need for more stimulus, whilst we already know now that it will not save the economy and they are willing to wager another trillion euro and spend it up front.

These people are not held accountable in any way and I say: ‘Enough is enough!‘ The UK is better off by itself steering the economic waters as it had done for centuries. Oh, I almost forgot the second part on sovereignty, sovereignty does not rest with the people, it rests in Buckingham Palace with HRH Queen Elisabeth II. There was a referendum and the Brexit group with a little over 51% won. And to those people still in doubt, you only have yourself to blame with the mess you are creating. There were 46 million votes, representing a 72% group, so 28% did not even bother to vote! Those 13 million votes were invalid straight of the bat, with only 25,000 invalid or blank votes we see no real impact, it they were all remain voted it would not have mattered. When you consider all this and you see the hooligan masses being remain people, we see two parts, the first is that they are moronic (worthy of UK Labour), yet the larger issue is that a lot are in anger because they are not getting properly informed. Stories like: ‘UK government officials told the food industry that supplies of liquid egg could run out in a no-deal Brexit‘, yet the operative word is ‘could‘ we just do not know, and not knowing is adamant in a lot of this, yet the people have faced two years of fear mongering, all large consortiums that see a danger to their margins, not the margins of the shop, the margins to executives and their bonuses, and the people are eating the fear hook, line and sinker. There will be actual issues, but the foundation of all this is that this has never happened before and the EU and the ECB did this to themselves. We all forget how this started, this all started when Greece in 2009 had misrepresented itself and we saw issue after issue, debt after debt and the politicians that caused it merely walked away. Then we were told stories on how Greece might be evicted from the EU, the news was all over that yet the truth was that we were misled (or is that made Miss Led?) The Guardian (in 2015) gave us: “As Athens will be unable to satisfy its financial obligations after a default, many hardliners expect Greece to leave the Eurozone, and printing as much neo-drachma as necessary. Some see this as the only solution to the Greek crisis: it would allow Greece to devalue its new currency, supposedly making the country competitive and resulting in economic growth and the ability to repay its debt“, in addition we get: “while only article 50 of the EU treaty regulates how a state can leave the union. And a mechanism for leaving only the Eurozone or for expulsion even has not been provided for at all“, basically the stupidity of the EU was that they stated that every member will always be up front and do what must be done, which was deceptive in its own rights. So a group that is merely inclusive and under stringent rules can they leave, yet in addition other sources gave us that NO MEMBER can be expelled. This is called a Corporatocracy, not a democracy. Corporations decide on what happens and that is what we basically see at present. The problem here is that any Corporatocracy will limit its actions towards enablers and consumers; the rest is pretty much screwed. In a monarchy all citizens matter and the people do not seem to be able to grasp that, the UK (and the Netherlands, as well as Sweden, Belgium and so on are monarchies within a Corporatocracy and that is a very different setting, that stage can only be made profitable where debts are soaring and the banks not the government decide where you can be at, a situation we see all over Europe. this is not new, I did not invent it, other voices going back to 2014 say pretty much the same thing, I merely have a lot more data available at present. The media relies on advertisement money from any Corporatocracy, so you cannot expect them to actually inform you, it is a double edged blade and both sides are pointed at YOUR guts, it is that detrimental a situation.

So as Greece made a few issues clear in the wrong way, people like Nigel Farage went with the notion of ‘Better Out than in‘, I agree with him, yet I remained on the fence for the longest of times. It was the second ECB stimulus who would put us so much deeper in debt that got me across. The first stimulus was fine, it was an option and even as it did not work out, it gave Europe time, yet the second one the best we could hope for was time and that is where the problem started and now as stimulus 3 is on the table the setting is too unacceptable, the UK needs to get out and fast, deal or not.

Let’s not make a fairy tale, this will not be a nice time and things will get worse for a little while, anyone telling you different is lying to you. The issue is that with the ropes cut the EU cannot force debts on the UK to the degree it is doing now, more important the UK gets to make a few other choices and it will down the road (3-4 years) turn the economy in something stronger. It will result in an actual better quality of life over time, but it will not be immediate. This is why the ties and economic options with players like Huawei (5G), nations like Saudi Arabia (all kinds of goods) and a few other players become important (optionally India with generic medication). Anyone with the misguided notion that Human Rights are the optimal route better stay at home. If Human Rights were an actual power there would be no age discrimination, there would be actual better (and more) housing and there would be a better social security. All missing and mostly because in a Corporatocracy, corporations are largely tax exempt, exactly what we see today. In that stage we now see the rumblings, even as players like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and others are all making noises on leaving, they do so at the risk of losing 69 million consumers. Facebook is truly global, so is Google to the largest extent, yet for Apple we get Huawei, ASUS and HP, Amazon leaving would give the people a slimmer HMV and optionally small businesses come back (my preferred solution), and even as corporations are shouting, screaming, streaming and threatening, they all realise that you cannot walk away from 69 million consumers. Not when they need to share the smaller EU pool with 3-4 competitors at every corner. That is the part we all forgot, consumer power is actually power and we listened to the likes of Jeremy Corbyn for far too long. To be honest, I never thought that it would be possible to be more dim than Nick Clegg (LIBDEMS), yet I was wrong, Jeremy Corbyn pulled it off nicely. I am not stating that Boris Johnson is without flaws (his barber being the obvious one). I am stating that the UK has been in a dangerous position for far too long and as long as the ECB does the way it does it, the danger stays, getting away from that danger is an immediate need at present.

 

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July 7, 2019 · 14:03

Be the bitch

We are confronted with all kinds of changes, some are trivial, some are important, but when do we get to decide what is what? Consider that Iran is now stating ‘Iran says it is ready to enrich uranium beyond nuclear deal levels‘, the news (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/06/iran-says-it-is-ready-to-enrich-uranium-beyond-nuclear-deal-levels), it is all under the guise of the reality. When the main players (the US and Europe) are showing to be the bitches of politics, what are we supposed to do? Trump talks a lot, he yells loudly (adapting poor grammar) but in the end, the US is not acting, neither is Europe, they are trying to remain delusional into the air of ‘saving’ something that had been lost some time ago. In the meantime, as no one acts Iran continues not merely by enriching Uranium, it is the other part, the ‘Saudi Arabia intercepts drones launched by Houthi militia from Sanaa‘ (at http://www.arabnews.com/node/1521686/saudi-arabia) that shows a much larger danger. Even as we heard: “the drones actually destroyed in the air by systems belonging to the Arab coalition“, the fact that is being ignored by the media to the largest degree is that these drones come from Iran, there is also still the issue that there is no real evidence that Houthi forces are up to controlling them, yet that part cannot be proven at present, a proxy war that is getting more and more out of control and in this when we add the Uranium pressure, there is every chance that both Saudi Arabia and Israel will have no option but to take this to the next level and whilst the bitches of politics (USA and the EU) are sitting on the sidelines complaining, reeling and dealing for delusionary deals, Iran plays its game and even as we see that the game is badly played, we need to acknowledge that they are getting shit done because they properly anticipated that neither the US, nor Europe would actually act, indecision and incapability to act are at the centre of these non-moves.

For the US it becomes even worse as we see that there is every chance that the denial is likely to grow when we see the CBS news quote: “Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard believes that war with Iran would be “far more devastating” to the U.S. than the war in Iraq was, saying in an interview with CBS News that President Trump was “pushing us closer and closer to war with Iran”“, she is on the European side of inaction, when we see: “that nuclear agreement prevented war“, it never stopped it, it merely delayed it so that Iran could get ready and that part has been shown in several ways over the last three years alone, now that the pressure is growing we need to consider that no one wants a war, but Iran made it impossible to avoid and as they make tally of all who are willing to become the bitch by not acting, that is how we might lose this upcoming war, not merely by inaction of them, but the mere fact that these politicians are willing to grab their ankles and let happen what would happen next. They will call it: “We have reached an immediate cease fire so that a diplomatic agreement can be drawn” that will be the second sign that the war was won by Iran, if that is what you want to happen, then go ahead, but also realise that you lose whatever rights you have. I for one will align with Israel and Saudi Arabia and go to war, because that is how evil is defeated. No matter how decorated Tulsi Gabbard got to be by the Hawaiian National Guard. The world is adhering to terrorist factions too quick and too much, in all this delusional acts by humanitarian laws are becoming a joke and that needs to stop.

When the news becomes about lashing out to a rapper named Nicki Minaj, have we not lost the plot? Oh and before I forget, the fact that we saw only 18 hours ago that ‘Houthis Commit 18000 Human Rights Violations in 6 Months‘ and the fact (as far as I could tell) that only the Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper is giving the world that part, is that not a first indication on how the world has lost the plot on Human rights? And it links because Iran and Hezbollah are directly involved in funding, training and assisting Houthi forces to do that part, but these Human rights bozo’s are really not up to the part to report on that, yet their adversary (Saudi Arabia) is getting the front seat for getting a rapper perform in Saudi Arabia. It is in the realisation of these issues that we see that America and Europe have both become the bitches of others to a much larger degree than most can even fathom.

So when we see (at https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1800416/yemen-houthis-commit-18000-human-rights-violations-6-months) the stage of “the number of kidnappings and imprisonment of women and children escalated this year, accusing Houthis of systematically and physically torturing women, defaming many of them, and accusing them of unethical charges contrary to Yemeni custom and traditions” we see a much larger stage that requires intervention, but where are the Americans? Where is Europe? They cannot act because they have their own clever plan involving Iran and it is backfiring fast and much harder than they realised (failure usually does that).

How long until they comprehend that you cannot reason with a rabid dog, you put it out of its misery plain and simple. And most people are part of the problem, they elected the politicians in Europe not doing anything and in America they are optionally selecting a Democratic president who wants to talk a little more, I wonder what happens when the others are no willing to talk, when these politicians are placed on the sidelines not allowed to speak at all, how fast will the media suddenly acts as some delusional conscience? we know that they are merely the bitch of big business, but for now they are all in denial of that reality and I wonder how many people will accept that delusional stage, because when Iran gets in a first strike the caused war will be much larger and there will be no negotiating with the ones they stuck against, as well as the neighboring countries, that is the impact of a dirty bomb, it freaks out everyone, especially those living next to the place that got hit. so it will not only affect Israel and Saudi Arabia, it will then suddenly impact Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE, and that by all definitions implies the start of World War 3 when one of these nations get involved.

In the end it started not by started a war, but by refusing to act when action was essential, I wonder how the politicians will validate their own existence at that point. Yet there is a bright spot at that point, when it happen, the human rights organisations will not have any reason to be around, because the impact that we get to live through will be a clear indication that talking solves nothing and Human Rights organisations will end up being in the same stage that they were in the 17th century when the VOC was a global power, the HRA organisations will become non-existent.

Could I be wrong?

Well, that is up to you people, check your local news, your local newspapers and what they give you, who else had the Yemen story on Houthi Human Rights violations? As far as I was able to tell, not one of them had it, but several of them all had something on Nicki Minaj, some merely gave view to that UN speaker Eggy Calamari and her accusations (that so called essay) regarding Jamal Khashoggi, the media has become that polarised on the political needs for Turkey and Iran to be cut as much slack as possible and most of us are enabling this to continue.

So when that enabling attitudes starts open hostilities against Iran by Israel and Saudi Arabia, how will the news be reported, or will it at all? Will we merely see some top line report trying to make Israel and Saudi Arabia look as bad as possible as long as Iran signs some fake nuclear deal?

The pressure is rising and there is not much time before things go out of control, all because of inactions, and you better realise that really really fast.

 

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May 2, 2017 · 13:07

Technological delusions

We all have a side we hide, it does not matter how you live and how outspoken you are. It is a truth that we have seen in movies, TV Series and other media. In this I like the outspoken truth of the series House the best: ‘Everybody lies!‘ This is not some extreme form of expressionism; it is the truth in many ways. Whether we are in denial or whether we outspokenly remain silent on the matter, we lie!

Now do not think of this in a too negative a light, marketing is all about lying and they call it specific presentation. Whether this is the launch of the Samsung S8, the upcoming Xbox Scorpio, the iPhone 7, there is misrepresentation which shows itself as non-mentioned facts for now.

Is a known fact, remaining unmentioned a lie?

That is no just at the heart of the matter, it is what makes it worse than it already is. An example is seen in software corporations that state ‘We do not expect any issues with the software upgrade’. Is it a lie? Consider that any change will introduce new unknown factors, so as such, is the person not speaking a party line that is wishful thinking, and as such is it a lie?

You might at this point wonder where this is going, so here we get to “Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling ‘insecure’ and ‘worthless’” (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/01/facebook-advertising-data-insecure-teens), when you consider that a person (especially a teen) needs psychological assessment to ascertain whether insecurity comes from mere angst or whether there are underlying issues, we need to become very careful when anyone offers an algorithm to ascertain that. Big data is nowhere near any level of certainty in this matter. You see, with data and especially with big data the decades old expression ‘Garbage in, Garbage out‘ applies and the ability to sift through these mountains of data per person requires a level of scrutiny that software cannot provide and more important, that data becomes useless if there is no ‘beyond the data box view’. This is not some cheap Mark Zuckerberg app called ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’ which is basically to the better degree harmless entertainment. This is to set a psychological classification on a group of people who tends to be least secure of themselves in their entire lifespan. In all this the quote “Facebook, which has faced severe criticism in the past over research in which it sought to alter the emotions of users, without their consent, provided somewhat contradictory statements in response to the story in the wake of its publication on Sunday” makes it even a worse joke. Consider in addition the dangers that Facebook no opens with “In its original statement to the Australian, Facebook apologized and said it had “opened an investigation to understand the process failure and improve our oversight”“, which is a joke when you consider that the researchers must have had access to data that only the deepest insiders on DBA cloud levels could have had. To get anything that is even close to the minimum level of reliability the researchers did not just have access to the data, they required assistance from the database system engineers to get anything useful out of that collected mountain of data and that is per person. So, basically I cannot get a job because Australia is in a wave of intentional age discrimination and Facebook casually assists in a system that “can monitor posts and photos in real time to determine when young people feel “stressed”, “defeated”, “overwhelmed”, “anxious”, “nervous”, “stupid”, “silly”, “useless” and a “failure”“, which impacts the job market even further, yet requires accurate parsed data going back many months.

Consider the reality here. to get a Facebook account, you need to be over 13, which means that 3 years of a teenager history is not available. In addition, these kids go through puberty between 10-17 (depending on gender and additional factors), so not only do you need the track of a person, you need to know how a person is socially (not socially networked) is connected to peers, parents and siblings. That data is not available. Now consider that interactions and events that are geographically locked are also an influence. I am not talking about an extreme example like the Columbine disaster, the mere effect of a traffic accident that can start more than angst and in that data will always be missing and more dangerously, data can be wrongly categorised which could result in red flags of psychosomatic interactions, that whilst the person was never there. How many pictures are there in your social media account, which were accidentally wrongly tagged? All basic elements that will give a shift in any assessment that will lead the algorithm down the wrong track. So when we read: “a Facebook Australia executive dismissed the report and criticized the reporter who broke the story, saying the article was “written by a journalist who writes inflammatory articles … every Monday”“, we need to ask a few additional questions. The dangers of social media data that I have been warning about for at least 3 years is now showing us additional dangers of software misrepresenting social media data and could have dire imprints on the actions of anyone using social media and the repercussions of their future down the track. The quote “Facebook declined to rule out whether similar research on the emotional vulnerability of teenagers had been conducted for advertises in markets outside of Australia” could imply that the teenagers that are already getting shot at American High Schools and colleges will soon have additional worries as they approach their exams with all levels of angst. So when we consider on how ‘Facebook has detailed information on mood shifts based on “internal Facebook data” that is not available to the public’ the social media users will have to worry on what data they have and more important has Facebook been collecting and matching other outside data sources to get anywhere near the minimum dataset to get even the smallest of insight.

As I stated before: ‘garbage in, garbage out’, in that I can add that in the past some lovely lady asked me on Facebook if I wanted to fuck her. I know she would never offer it to begin with, so the reliable issue was that someone has quickly grabbed her phone and he offered in her place that her vagina was open for #censored activity#. So at that point, how could Facebook see her as stupid or silly, or even worse: a nymphomaniac? The article has more than a few issues, but in that they should be placed at the doors of Facebook, because with the revelation of data abuse we clearly see announced, there is a growing danger with the Facebook classification system, whether actual, factual or psychological.

Sam Levin at the Guardian is asking the right questions, yet I think that this is not going far enough. I think that the events when we include the ’emotional contagion’ issues that happened some time ago. The fact that is ignored that all this was only possible to the slightest degree by seeding the database with data collections and hidden markers that facilitated the creation of mental properties to collect. A data system cannot facilitate for this without adding hundreds of elements that were never visible and I am not merely talking about the date and time of posting. It required levels of geographical location and social background data that is not part of the Facebook social media system. I wonder if the Guardian article will renew the questions on both European and Commonwealth levels as this American company seems to be swimming in a sea that might ignore this, but it can only do that as long as we are unaware. In this I reckon that it becomes imperative that the Australian political engine makes official enquiries with the two top Australian executives, David Fernandez and Andy Sinn. In this we get one additional part that is very much a danger, if we accept the quote: “The presentation, which the Australian has not published, was reportedly written for one of Australia’s top banks and stated that the company has a database of its young users – 1.9 million high schoolers, 1.5 million tertiary students and 3 million young workers“, which now implies that banks are setting a person’s psychological profile into classifications. This is not merely discriminatory, it implies that we could all end up being seen as bankable or not, so in that it goes beyond mere insurances and credit ratings, the dangers of our freedom of speech and expression will now result in a possible credit rating and job eligibility. How is that fair on any 15 to 19 year old person trying to get anywhere in this world?

In final part, it is the excuse by Facebook on making this a mere ‘process failure‘, if there are enough pieces of evidence (and that seems to be the case), it is a complete ‘institutional failure‘ and in that the Guardian/Australian article might just be the beginning of a real ugly side of social media that will hit the mainstream media on a global scale soon enough.

So how vulnerable are you and is exploitation of that side of you acceptable to you?

 

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November 30, 2016 · 09:35

Insomnia Rules, OK?

It is 3:30, for some weird reason, I cannot fall asleep and I have no intentions to play a game until I get tired, so what do you do? You start looking a little more intense at twitter and that’s how I got into the twitter tweets with a Human Rights Lawyer. Now, I am all for human rights, were it not for that pesky HRA at times, but that is not the issue. There actually is no issue. You see the tweet that got this all started was :

hr_tweet

The issue given was “I, for one, have always been somewhat bemused by the concept of a right to life. What about the young girl who tragically dies of leukemia? What happened to her right to life?” To be that made sense. You see, I am not against a right to life at all, I just wonder how you can set a phrase like that to law. You see, I have been on the other side of matters, so the right to life as seen as a concept where it is not under scrutiny of capital punishment, war, abortion, euthanasia and justifiable homicide is very much the core of the matter, The one part some add, mainly ‘public health care‘ is not in question in this case (it should be a given right no matter when, how or who). I am not against capital punishment and war allows for the situation where lives are lost, hence the right to life is not a given here. I feel different about abortion and euthanasia. You see, I do not agree with either pro-abortion or pro-life. They are stigmatised and polarised opposites of different currencies at time. Pro-lifers are all willing to hang an abortion doctor at the nearest tree, whilst pro-abortion seems to see it as a solution for unadulterated sex (read: exaggeration for dramatic effect), which is how I see these two players. In my view the truth is in the middle.

There are clear cases where abortion needs to be valid, yet I feel uncertain on the wisdom to where the line should be drawn, on the same issue, I see that pro-life doesn’t always have a clear case beyond their conviction. That view tends to be smitten with parts of religion and natural law, yet the full acceptance of both cannot be maintained, so a blanket pro-life abolishing abortion as a whole is equally unthinkable to me.

The best term is the worst classification

You see, for the most I am not against the concept of right to life, but the title itself is unrealistic in a few ways, making me side with the member that started ‘House of Lords member is unsure about a legal right to life‘. You see as stated, my issue makes the ‘right’ almost null and void. In that same setting, the quote “An obligation on its members not unnecessarily to hazard the safety of others” comes as a light in the dark. For the most, we have an obligation not to endanger the lives of others, we get this for the most when we consider the military. They get to endanger themselves and defend that life by taking the lives of those who endanger that life. In this age of terrorism and extremism (like that place you can find on historical maps, namely Aleppo).

A pro-life polarisation cannot survive, and as such the right to life comes under attack and whilst the attack on it might seem correct, the sentiment itself should never be under attack. We all have a right to life and at some point some people throw that right away and the blanket ‘right to life‘ cannot correctly deal with that situation, which is why the House of Lord member makes perfect sense. Yet telling all this in 144 characters was never a possibility, which is why today is all about that tweet.

The strongest opponents in all this is Capital Punishment and Euthanasia. At times I have had a much polarised view on those proclaiming justice here. You see, from my point of view, those who cannot hand out the death penalty might be hypocritical cowards. This is way too strong an expression, so let me explain this (I think I did in a much older blog). You see, we all adhere to the law. Now let’s say that we have a rounded 70% lawful and 30% criminal population, the law will take care of that, and for the most, all laws, even those who have no death penalty do that. I am fine with that. Yet the crime part is not 30%, within that group is a 0.000001% sub group that is so extreme, so willing to take the lives of others (like terrorists) that the law can never properly deal with them. So we either wait for that person to get in a court of law (which could be after the death of many more lives). So where was the right to life for those victims? We have a duty to hunt those extreme cases down and put them to death if need be, either by death penalty or by targeted killings. Now consider the number I gave. On this world, that would amount to 8,000 people. When you consider that as per last year 2,984 were on death row in the United States, the number I grasped at is not that far a reach. You see, when we holster the ‘right to life’ and the Crimes Act as golden calves onto our field of vision, worshipping that principle beyond all, is it not fair to say that these people are willing to set the victims of these extreme criminals as human sacrifices? How is human sacrifice seen in view of a right to life? As for Euthanasia, how much suffering should a person endure until he is either constantly drugged or died from pain and suffering? I am not stating that I have the wisdom, but I reckon that at times physicians need to be able to offer such an option, especially when there is no option to manage the pain or outcome.

In this regard I now need to address the issue that some call ‘justifiable homicide’. You see, just like ‘right to life’ I have an issue with that term. I am all for targeted killing, because it comes with a switch. Targeted killing is not the same and I am not sure if ‘justifiable homicide’ is legally acceptable as homicide is a clear crime in the 1900 Crimes Act (or other Common Law equivalent). You see, the term comes with this dictionary explanation: ‘the killing of a person in circumstances which allow the act to be regarded in law as without criminal guilt‘, that could apply to the act of a Sociopath or a Psychopath. Some could proclaim: “homicide is justified when it prevents greater harm to innocents“, you see, we now get dangerously close to Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven where we hear: “killing an infidel is not murder. It is the path to heaven“, which is not the only quote, I reckon that Ridley got part of one characters dialogue from Pope Urban II, who at the Council of Clermont in 1095 is witnessed to have stated: “Deus lo vult! – ‘God wills it!’“, which is my issue, as religion needs to stay far away from today’s Laws. I just feel too uneasy on something that can be ‘justified’ especially when a militant mass comes with hate speech and offs people to safe others. Targeted killing is not like that and as far as I can tell, from my legal point of view, ‘Justifiable Homicide‘ should not be allowed either. The fact that a valid action (like that of a policeman) resulted in the death of a person would always be investigated and the officer would either be prosecuted or be cleared from prosecution, these events have clear mechanics and when we resort to targeted killings, that too comes with a machine of checks and balances. Justifiable homicide could theoretically avoid some of these checks and balances and I really have an issue with that.

So as we are splitting hairs on murder versus killing, we are not digressing from the right to life, I am establishing (or trying to do so) that there is a right to life, yet people can act in ways to negate that right. This is why the member of the House of Lords struck a chord within me. I find myself in the same situation when I consider ‘right to family life’, to which I have had an issue or two in the past. I agree that a person should have the right to a family life. Yet in the same way as he/she has that right, he/she can also squander that right. It could be squandered through abuse, either sexual, physical or psychological, which now gets me on my issue with the HRA. You see, if the HRA was a piece with teeth, then there should be a majority who would allow for domestic abuse to be set within article 3 (torture) as it is a clear form of physical and psychological torture. The fact that this will not happen (and is unlikely to do so) makes me wonder why we have an HRA (or at least one lacking teeth under certain conditions), which might clearly be a short-sighted view and position from my side, yet as I saw my mother getting beaten to death when I was young, my sentiment remains to be on the right path as I personally see it.

All these thoughts resurfaced as that one tweet hit my eyes. Now, I have been following this Human Rights Lawyer and he makes great cases and sets the bar of Human Rights realistically high and it is always a delight when he has a go at everyone’s favourite piñata in the UK, Grayling.

So, I still feel that the tweet as exposed has an issue and I personally feel that I remain on the side of the member of the House of Lords, yet merely in the fact that the sentiment on right to life should exist, but I am not sure if that is what we should call it and in addition, we need to realise and accept that this right can be lost by the actions of the person who lost it. It has nothing to do with a child suffering from Leukaemia as stated, but from the acts of a person who does not respect the right to life of another, or the sanctity of a family without harm or suffering. Both laws, humane, yet I feel too humane and therefor I found them personally to be flawed.

I needed 7429 characters more than the 144 twitter offered.

 

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December 22, 2014 · 10:51

The shrinking EEC

It has been in the papers and the paperwork for some time now. It is getting close to a certainty that the EEC is now in jeopardy of losing the UK as an EEC member.

And my reasoning is?

Well there is more than one reason, but the number one spot at present would be Ukip. As the EEC courts are adding legalisations into the mix of the UK stemming the influx of illegal wannabe residents, they are only fuelling the Ukip engine that will denounce membership to the EEC, it should be clear that this is getting to be an increasing view of consequence. I wonder how large the panic will be when the EEC GDP gets downgraded by 15%, which must be the stuff of legendary nightmares for Wall Street and several other zip codes that are managed by an abundance of financial institutions. Where their ‘survival’ depends on posting a +0.015%, -14.5% is ample reasoning for speculators of all shapes and sizes to leave the building via the exit in their windows (opposed to taking the stairs or elevator). Well, that at least might open up affordable housing for some, so there will be winners there too. That downgrade would potentially buckle two currencies and around half a dozen nations in one step.

So as we see these ‘humanitarians’ fight for the rights of those misusing their rights at the earliest convenience, be aware that once your savings are gone, feel free to thank those human rights courts as well. Now, let me be frank, I am all for human rights, I think that Human rights are essential, but what we now consider to be a Human Rights ‘issue’ should be regarded as debatable too. It is almost like faced with a group that will settle for any small ‘victory’ whilst ignoring the massive issues that should be on their actual radar. One could even speculate that these people and those judges will do ANYTHING to avoid making the changes that actually matter in a Human Rights environment.

The first issue linked in all this is the article we see titled ‘Migrant overstayer figures swell to more than 300,000, watchdog reveals‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/17/migrant-overstayer-figures-swell-watchdog-reveals). We see the quotes “John Vine, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, revealed the existence of a further 223,600 records of foreign nationals who have overstayed their visas, all dated before December 2008, in a report published on Wednesday”, as well as “fewer than 1% had left the country as a result of their intervention“, so we have a quarter of a million people, using a system where possible, where the system is not equipped to deal with such additional numbers. We can go all huffy and puffy on the quote “even killers had been given British passports because of lax Home Office character checks“, where were these crimes committed? And if the home office checks are lax, should we blame immigration, the system or the pressure of papers? I am asking as I am not certain where and if there is blame to dish out at that point. What is clear is that this system is broken and people have had enough. We do however need to take into mind the last quote there which is ““New powers in the Immigration Act are restricting access to work, housing, benefits, healthcare, bank accounts and driving licences of illegal migrants, making it far tougher for those with no right to be in the country to stay here.”“, which of course will further drive up crime and disease issues. I know I am just stating the obvious, but at large I have seen people ignore the obvious for a decent long time, so there!

The second article ‘Non-EU family members do not need visa to enter UK, says European court‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/18/non-eu-family-members-visa-uk-european-court) is what is driving issues on several parts. If they do not require a visa, that means that they can enter whenever, which also means that they get limited access to services already stretched to the point of collapse as it is now. Ukip gets a lot of support when they translate the Dutch writings of R.H.J.M. Staring called ‘Reizen onder regie: het migratieproces van illegale Turken in Nederland‘, the migration of illegal Turks into the Netherlands. If we believe Geert Wilders from the Dutch party PVV, we see a cost in the Netherlands close to 13 billion for 2010 (when the article was written) against a total 200 billion for the 4 decades as mentioned. there is no real defining number, giving us no real inside whether these numbers are true or not, yet the fact that the Dutch government has abstained to truly investigate this, gives rise to the fact that the costs are a lot higher, and the consequence of those numbers becoming a factual dimension is what scares the current government, the numbers might be high enough for people to seriously regard the PVV as a party, as such that same fear would hit the UK as those shown costs would give further rise to the increasing growth of Ukip, one thing all three parties are truly scared of. So as we see the national population spread to a solution that lowers their costs, gives better care and reduce the abuse of a social system, the illegal immigrant is soon to become the new pariah in nearly any nation. As such, this European court finding is not just a nuisance, it is the tinderbox to a powder keg too many ignored for too long.

So as we see judgement on one case that might have been ignored, as an issue, where we see the quote “Colombian wife of Sean McCarthy, a dual British and Irish national living in Spain, did not need a UK visa or family permit to visit Britain“, we are confronted with the realistic fear of non-manageable influx. So the fear of what legal and valid immigrants like: 730,000 from India, 465,000 from Pakistan, 640,000 Polish, 180,000 Nigerians and 100,000 Romanians will bring the UK, if one in ten brings over a relative, the UK will be confronted with an additional quarter of a million, whilst this is only 5 from the top 20, that number could end up being a lot higher, well past the Home Offices ability to clean up a system, which might have been regarded as out-dated less than a decade ago, and the UK is not the only nation where this issue plays.

So overall this verdict could be the coffin nail, financial institutions has tried to avoid, hoping that they could leverage a ‘survivable’ solution for themselves, when this goes pear shaped, the courts will have an entirely different scope of horrors to contemplate. If we consider the consequences of the events in Martin Place in Sydney, where we see the unacceptable abuse of Muslims whilst in prayer (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29781967), we see a change to actual Human Rights that are not looked at to the extent they should be. It is a worry. When one crazy individual with a gun can get this started in Australia, what happens when the social system in the UK gets pushed beyond breaking? We have seen plenty of shouted claims against these 5 groups in the past, when the illegal immigration goes beyond a certain point, how safe will the legal and valid immigrants be? That is the worry some part that is overlooked at present. It is a part that Ukip cannot (and might not) ignore, but the fallout and the timeline of that fallout will push a lot of people and families in danger. As the European courts considered and possible did the legally right thing, they might end up not having done the correct thing.

In the end the EEC is an economic thing, the European Union is at its foundation a set of economic rules, the imposing of changed laws for nations, whilst it core is adhering to an economy is faulty at best (even more faulty when that economy collapses to the extent it has). By removing areas of self-governing the EEC is setting a different precedence, one must then wonder whether the identity of any nationality will allowed for the EEC to continue, once that is answered in the negative, those members might not want an EEC future, a danger that is not just contained within the United Kingdom, there is a growing wave of concern that France is getting to that consideration point a lot faster than most economies can correct for, France might not wait until 2017, the main reason is not just Marine Le Penn, it is French pride, which is not in light with the foundation of the EEC and we can add the lack of catering to French Pride by President Hollande, it only gives additional worry to all involved. We can admit that the economic slump was not due to Hollande, but not resolving it will be blamed on him. This beckons additional fears for the economy, once that critical point is surpassed all bets will be off and those with invested life savings might not have any savings left soon thereafter. So buy that house, that vineyard and that business, because owning what you have without debts will soon be a better position than having the status quo with your investments junked, the one fear Wall Street pushed forward too often with less and less options of keeping that value intact.

When people are in fear of losing the simple parts of life, parts that were always there, when that continuation is endangered, they will act in unexpected directions; Nigel Farage and Marine Le Penn are pretty much counting on that and so far they have yet to be proven wrong.

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