Tag Archives: Luxembourg

June 24, 2025 · 19:51

Stupid people

Yup, that is what we are surrounded with. So lets get to it showing WHY I think that the bulk of these people are stupid. Because there needs to be a reason, doesn’t there?

So before I start with the article, let us get a little refreshment. I have taken a stand as early as 2014, and this article I wrote on October 13th 2017 called ‘Strike a match’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/10/13/strike-a-match/) gives us: 

“So, when was the last time that a corporate CEO got time with a national ruler to discuss national taxation? Because that is exactly what Tim Cook CEO of Apple seems to have been doing in France. With one source giving us “So, when Tim Cook meets with French President Macron, the matter of taxes could make for an icy situation between the two men. Macron has said he wants to promote France as a place for tech companies to set up shop, but he has also been critical about the role internet companies, in particular, play in society. Macron has been pretty vocal lately about how France and other E.U. countries should close up the loopholes that Apple and other tech companies have been able to use to move their earnings around to more tax-friendly countries, such as Ireland and Luxembourg“, is it a first indication that the French economy is in a much worse shape than expected? The fact that Tim Cook is visiting Élysée Palace not because President Emmanuel Macron is buying his wife the new iMac Pro (an assumption from my side). I am not thinking the worst of the French president, but the issue is questionable, especially as Apple is about to open a massive site in the Battersea Power Station, so as Apple (as I personally see it) is trying to spend the money twice, once by spending it in London and the second time by getting tax deduction for the amount just spend in London so he can get a second building for free in Paris.”

This doesn’t make you stupid, but the larger setting that we see in the newspapers and in this case ABC News who (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-23/jeffrey-bezos-lavish-wedding-in-venice-why-people-are-protesting/105445512) gives us ‘Jeff Bezos is getting married in Venice. Here’s why people are protesting the wedding’ where we see that “One group has plastered banners on the Italian city’s famous Rialto bridge reading “No space for Bezos!”” I think it is utterly BS that anyone would disrupts another man’s wedding (the wife’s anyway), We might take the setting of that is in their hearts, which is “Activists are protesting billionaire Jeff Bezos’s wedding in Venice with calls for a global billionaire tax.” That is what makes them utterly stupid and the amount of stupid people are not to be underestimated. You see the media is fueling that and they go about it like “You need to have your say” even though it will never matter as that is what they are about. Appeasing the shareholders and stakeholders who are AGAINST fair taxation and taxing these billionaires is just not fair. You see, governments (America, EU and Commonwealth) are all about the ‘best’ deal and taxing that is against the need of these long time politicians. So they give you a ‘tax the rich’ stage which would never work and I have been saying this for the better part of a decade and now it is too late the shouting increases and that is where things go from bad to worse. Because the media is not properly enforcing you, keeping these shouters stupid. Because the media relies on these corporations for advertising and when they pay taxation, there is not enough money for advertising. 

People like Jef Bezos, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Ellison are billionaires as they implement tax laws to the letter. And that setting is where it is at. Governments have need to overhaul taxation for decades, basically sing President Clinton was in office and he left office in 2001. Even then the overhaul was essential. As such for over 15 years to stakeholders have benefited from the setting and as such the corporations too. Did no one ever considered that the dice were stacked against you when Microsoft and Apple became (multi) trillion dollar companies? 

We need the media to push for tax overhaul and they won’t because a shouting and cursing mass of people bring in more digital dollars and the flames is what they live off and as such you will never be correctly informed. And it is not merely America, it is a near global setting that hits the Commonwealth, The nations in the EU and Europe as well. And the lager fear is that if one does it, their business walks to another country and that is the setting that Ireland has used to it advantage. Unless there is proper taxation nothing will change and all of us will end up with nothing. As an example I give to you Netflix, who paid just $868,000 in tax in Australia in 2021, so as their profit went up by 49% from the previous year, their tax bill went up from from $554,000 to $868,000. Even though they have millions of subscriptions in Australia. We merely get “Australian Netflix users are billed by the company’s Netherlands-based entity. A Netflix spokesperson said: “We have filed our financial statements as required.””

The issue is the tax bill that governments allow for. Consider that Australian subscriber are ‘collected’ by a Dutch company on the other side of the freaking planet. So take a sip of air considering that the governments set out this tax avoidance setting (avoidance is not illegal, evasion is) and that is a setting that is done all over the planet. As such the BS of tax the rich needs to stop. These shouters need to put the limelight on the lawmakers. They needed to do this for well over a decade. 

As such pushing someone’s wedding in the nasty hatred lights is totally unacceptable. If Mr. Bezos can afford to give his new bride the dreamiest of all weddings and the mayor of Venice approves this, then why not? I would never consider this, but I never had access to 220 billion and even if I had this is not how I would spend it, but that is me. Born a miser and never rose above the wealth of a church mouse. I am in the same sloop that some others are and I know better then to shout at a meaningless futile cause. And the weird part is that when it all goes south, these people will still be shouting at the wealthy, all whilst the politicians have filled their pockets and have considered moving to a tax zero nation, living it up until the bulk of the people are dead 15 years later. For them it will be a problem solved setting.

So, consider who you need to look at. Not the wealthy, but the lawmakers who appeased the corporations and the people who got rich from them.

Time for me to consider a new weapon system. With Israel and Iran striking blows, there will be a small time gap when people will consider my stealth system to keep Iranian harbours empty and I think I can create more IP to give their armies a hard time too. I need to put my thinking cap on.

Have a great day.

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June 16, 2025 · 17:52

A Shakespeare saying

That is on the table and it started 3 days when I wrote ‘The changing of games’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/06/13/the-changing-of-games/) Here I showed the setting that Microsoft opened itself to and Denmark is not the only one. There is a larger setting that America is no longer the go-to guy for European business. It is not a setting President Trump was looking for, but then he never anticipated that Microsoft would back a solution (builder.ai) with at the core a stated 700 engineers. Trust me, it matters (trusting me is always up in the air). You see, Europe and other places are now suddenly reminded how Microsoft got to the top and innovation is not the first ‘setting’ that comes to mind. Netscape and the Wordperfect corporation comes to mind in the first instance. You see, I never got to the top of anything. In part because I never heralded the limelight, in part because the people who got there feared me. I don’t back down (ever) from the setting of supporting solutions for good instead of what was politically convenient. And I am not alone., thousands of tech support and customer care people are n my side and they can now dish up the past and hit certain players where it hurts. 

So now we get to TechRadar and its slightly taste adjusted setting. The story (at https://www.techradar.com/pro/denmark-wants-to-replace-windows-and-office-with-linux-and-libreoffice-as-it-seeks-to-embrace-digital-sovereignty) gives us ‘Denmark wants to replace Windows and Office with Linux and LibreOffice as it seeks to embrace digital sovereignty’ a mere 18 hours ago. It has the byline “Denmark bets big on open source revolution and control”. You see, I don’t think it is a big bet. Since the end of the 90’s when times and budgets were good, the IT setting (not merely Microsoft) was to instigate an IT armistice race and those times are gone. So whist certain players went to the ‘safety’ on IT armistice, the governments merely accepted the setting that this is how it was supposed to be, never realising they had other chances. And as I personally see it Microsoft turned that tap off towards others and redirected it to themselves. This is basically how multi-trillion companies are made. Yet the underlying setting is that there was always a larger field and Microsoft was not it. Or better stated Microsoft was not alone here, they merely tempered the setting for themselves, as this setting was never anticipated. A President that shallowed expenses and a larger premise to self. So whilst Denmark was being treated that America wants Greenland as allegedly houses a wealth of minerals, Denmark decided to look what could be done and so they did and in the process woke up Dutch politicians as well. So here we are seeing “Denmark is embarking on an ambitious effort to reduce its reliance on proprietary software from foreign tech giants by transitioning its government systems away from Microsoft offerings Windows and Office 365. The Danish Ministry of Digitalization reportedly plans a phased migration to Linux operating systems and LibreOffice for office productivity.” And as I personally see it, TechRadar is adding the ‘ambitious part’ for non-sentimental reasons. This setting was thwarted by Microsoft in the late 90’s and now they are less likely to succeed as the political field has changed. As I remember open Office is still a direction that is open. As Microsoft closes sluices they couldn’t close them all and now these sluices are the key to lose dependency to Microsoft. And here we see “The core objective, according to Minister Caroline Stage, is strategic: to safeguard Denmark’s digital infrastructure from the uncertainties of geopolitical tensions and the risk of disrupted access to US-based services.” Which is massively bad news for Microsoft because this is the one instance where they never had to protect their home guard before and here those tech support and customer care people will side with Denmark. The people Microsoft cut loose and away as it they didn’t see eye to eye to the larger need of Microsoft, those people will laugh out loud to the lacking needs of Microsoft minded people. In retrospect I saw this coming, but not in this form and not to the degree it will be hitting US-shored businesses. As such we get a few more settings, they all sound bad for Microsoft and it will enhance the needs of IBM and Oracle as they seek European sides to their business. And as we read in, we see the third player to this event. It is shown with “Denmark’s initiative is not without precedent. More than a decade ago, Germany, most notably the city of Munich, attempted to replace Microsoft products with Linux and LibreOffice.” And in that same setting, I remember that a France location had a similar idea, which is likely to have connections to Monaco and Luxembourg. As such Europe goes from 1 to 5 players and the impact on America will not be without consequences. And where TechRadar gives us, without sources “The Danish government, however, appears to be proceeding with greater caution. The rollout will be gradual, and the ministry has stated that it will temporarily revert to Microsoft tools if serious disruptions arise.” This part actually reads like a ‘divert or lose’ situation and Microsoft needs to take heed as this comes with a larger setting. You see, there is an upside for the Netherlands and out reflects back to the Wordperfect Corporation. America made Wordperfect a solution from Utah and it reflected that it was to be put down, but the Dutch had reasons for this solution. It was the first serious solution that perfectly converted syntax’s into Dutch and they had reasons to be proud as the ‘older’ reason is set to the proverbial English setting of 40,000 words and 800 exceptions to the Dutch setting of 800 words and 40,000 exceptions. You see, that was the larger conundrum and that small company in Utah figured the solutions out and that is the larger setting. Getting from Dutch to German, French and English is a breeze (as the depression goes) and after all these years. Did Microsoft protect that IP by paying for these fees year after year? I doubt it, Microsoft is at best a greedy user and it had cut off these fees after at least a decade setting them short by a decade at the very least and that is where these techies come in. They still have the bad feelings of getting cut short with the little retirement fees they were handed and they will massively support any anti-Microsoft feelings they see. So, when your birds come home to roost, they really will have a party.

I feel that TechRadar was ‘spicing’ it up with “Compatibility with Microsoft Office documents and user adaptation to a new interface may pose significant challenges.” I doubt it will be very hard. Open Office had things brewing in 2012 when they were the number one challenge and these files have not been upgraded much. The larger setting is in newer files that has solutions in place that old ones didn’t, but as far as I can tell aside from Excel files, most files can be ‘altered’ to another solution. Consider that Google Docs, Apple Pages and a few others have little to no problems to read word files. Google Sheets and Apple Numbers can for the most read Excel files and I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that Excel is way advanced to those two solutions, but with the gathered intel from them and OpenOffice there are little snags to be expected. When you see that and the joke that PowerPoint has basically become that most of this setting is close to academic. There is a chance that SAP will have to ‘shed’ its neutrality by claiming it is important for its SAP Dashboard to stay with Excel as it is ‘important’ (I merely think that XCelcius was the go to solution with Excel ad that is basically what SAP Dashboard is) and they will shed that when they see the damage they will do to themselves. As I personally see it Google Sheets could step in there. So as Microsoft will be losing 50% of their solutions, the larger demise will start. 

Whilst Wiki is not really a dependable source as it has no real academic value, it does serve its purpose and (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect) we get to see “In November 2004, Novell filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for alleged anti-competitive behavior (such as tying Word to sales of Windows and withdrawal of support for APIs) that Novell claims led to loss of WordPerfect market share.That lawsuit, after several delays, was dismissed in July 2012. Novell filed an appeal from the judgment in November 2012, but the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Novell sought review in the US Supreme Court, but in 2014 that court declined to hear the case, ending the legal action almost a decade after it had begun.” It isn’t what it states, it shows that the Novell vs Microsoft antitrust lawsuit gives Denmark the blanket it needs. I remember the massive setting the WP6 for Windows had and Microsoft used that to push its own solution (Word) and when we see this, we see that Microsoft has a government wheelbarrow (if that expression is still used) and as such Denmark has another handle to shed Microsoft (as have the other four). As I see it, in a decade the laws were meant to protect America solutions, and now we get the Canadian setting of Alludo. A Canadian firm no less and as Wordperfect is still under in France, another side opens up. And it doesn’t look good for Microsoft as the niches they created unite as one bubble against Microsoft and America. There is every chance that we will get to see new innovation but no longer in the hands of Microsoft and whilst this happens Microsoft loses market share after market share.

And as Windows support ends, the people considering shift will merely increase. As such after this I wonder if there is any case left for Azure. It makes you feel blue (and not in a good way) leaving larger gaps for players like Oracle and AWS to step in. Yes they are American, but they at least have had the good of any corporation in view of the needs of their solutions and that is where Denmark might make choices as long as these two have European clouds in mind. As fast as as I see it, they do and as Europe shift, the Arabian peninsula does to.

As this happens in my lifetime gives me a tear of joy. They say pride cometh before the fall and as I see it Microsoft will have a long way to fall down (the boom of impact might be the first boom that is globally felt and heard) as such there is a lot to be seen and soon as Satya Nadella gives ‘us’ the need for ‘friendly cooperation’ will be the first setting that is laughed away by some, but when the company is seen as ‘in danger’ it will be the first massive hit to any American operation and that will set a larger scene (what that scene is, I have no idea. As I see it, this has never happened before) and as Microsoft goes, Apple will shortly follow. It quite literally will be left without option.

So have a great day and if you are in Abu Dhabi, enjoy the Chicken Shawarma as it is lunch time there now. Have a fun day

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September 16, 2023 · 02:30

Sentimental Journey

I just had one. Not the one you think. In the 90’s movies and games were relatively expensive in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands a company named Homesoft had control of video games, and as such in 2000 I got Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and Diablo 2. One for the Dreamcast and one for the PC. The ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich (plus train to London) was around $59. The two games in the UK saved me around $40, so for $19 I went to London for the day, bought the 2 games (and a few other items) and took the night ferry back. 

I was able to upgrade to a cabin for around $30 more. It was the cheapest weekend trip and I got to walk on Regent Street, Picadilly, went to the Virgin Megastore and did a few other goofy things. I spend the day in London (from around 09:00) and for one day I felt like a king until the train around 17:00 took me back to Harwich for the night boat back to the Netherlands. 

This sentimental journey was recalled through the Khaleej Times who (at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/uae-iphone-pre-booking-draws-shoppers-from-india-pakistan-europe-to-dubai) gave me ‘iPhone pre-booking draws shoppers from India, Pakistan, Europe to Dubai’. It is here that we get “In places like India and Pakistan, iPhones can be quite expensive because of the taxes”. OK, I get that. Yet I am a little surprised that people from Europe are equally signing up for that, as we are given “A European tourist arrived in Dubai last week to get his hands on the new model. “There’s a big demand for iPhones in my country and I can get them at a relatively cheaper price here.”” It all makes sense, but I was unaware that it pays to travel to get the iPhone cheaper. It was around 6 years ago when I was ready to upgrade my old Huawei but the mobile stores did not have the 64GB edition, only the 32GB edition. Even thought here was a 64GB edition in existence. I speculated that the mobile providers wanted people to upgrade their phones every year, which would not be initially needed with a 64GB phone. In the end I found a way around it and now I rely on my Google Pixel to get me by and so far it has not let me down. The iPhone is not the cheapest and the iPhone 14 pro max is $2100 here, so I reckon that if we can get it at least 25% cheaper in Dubai it starts making sense. A flight from Sydney to Dubai (with one stop) is $961. The iPhone 15 Pro max is in Dubai $2155. You think it is the same and it is at present (I gave the 14 price as that is in the shops). You can preorder it for exactly the same price. So from Sydney a trip to Dubai makes no sense. Yet in the Netherlands it is €1.479,00 which comes down to $2,450.74 with an additional flight of around $500, so it is not that cheap, but you do get an iPhone on day one and the difference almost makes for the flight. So the math works out well for some and a little less for others, but if you have to have that version 15, a flight to Dubai suddenly makes a lot of sense. You could see it as a cheap short vacation to Dubai. When I was going over the text and I was doing the math my sentimental journey came back to me. Especially Diablo 2, which ended up giving me a massive amount of joy for a very long time. So when will people consider getting their new MacBook Pro or MacBook Air in Dubai? When you do the math, these additional items make for a free trip. A simple MacBook Pro (€ 4659) ends up being $7717, in Dubai we get it for $6961, so now we are already breaking more than even with the flight. And customs can’t do anything, just put a local sticker on the top of your new apple and it is your own already owned MacBook Pro (with non UAE stickers on top). 

I have no idea how much the people save when they get the iPhone and the MacBook Pro, yet I reckon that some might save even more. Making this and perhaps others too a really nice deal. And lets be honest. When you can get exactly the same stuff down the road or in Dubai. Who would not be willing to fly to Dubai? Even if it is just to have a shawarma in the mall (not the worst reason to go to Dubai). 

At this moment I am just smiling. It was been 24 years and we still try to get the best deal for ourselves and in this case a little more than a good deal. I remember in the 80’s it was cheaper to fly to America to get a car there then to buy an American car in the Netherlands. I never got one, but that setting also (to some degree) applied to get a car in Germany (a German model), then commerce houses started to strangle parallel imports and with the EU that all stopped. I wonder what they will do next. You see they might safe in one side, but some aren’t paying taxes, so why not get it in a tax zero nation? I reckon that this could drive commerce up in Luxembourg and Monaco. And a flight from Amsterdam to Nice is $133 (with an additional train ticket to Monaco) now the math really tanks in your favour. The train to Luxembourg is around $55, so people have options. In this day and age when the bills bite saving is key and we all try to find a cheaper way, don’t we?

Enjoy the upcoming weekend.

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May 16, 2022 · 00:35

Is it news? Is it interesting?

Yes, that was the setting I saw today. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/may/12/lionel-messi-saudi-arabia-deal-tourism) gives us ‘Lionel Messi earned $122m last year. He still felt the need to take Saudi money’, well that is a first, when was that more news? And Saudi money might have an oily smell to it, but does that make it less acceptable? This is a world that is changing so fast that many feel (not entirely incorrectly) that more money becomes an essential sign. This is not about greed, this is about the cost of living taking a massive gander towards the unacceptably high. Yes, there are some ideas about when is enough enough. But even a person like Lionel Messi will need to cash in for as long as he can, because at some point, the well dries up and for football icons they tend to have decades ahead of them when that income well dries up. Lets be clear, they are all on massive incomes, yet they also have a larger spending spree due to social responsibilities, a side the media is always happy to remain silent about. So when I saw the article I went ‘Meh’, it is nice that someone has another income, in this case a Saudi tourist ambassador, but those are not that rare, are they. Many nations have one. In Australia a model got her fame with the line ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ We all respond to different stages and settings and Lionel Messi got this one. As such when I see “Simply put, Messi has enough money that his future grandchildren won’t need to work a day in their lives. He could have politely declined the Saudi offer and still lived out a very comfortable retirement.” I wonder where Karim Zidan gets his point of view. The cost of living goes through the roof and I reckon that by 2025 a lot of people will desire such an extra income, if not they will not be able to afford basic living needs. Now we can accept that Lionel Messi is not in that stage yet, but the events in Europe (Ukraine) implies that Europe, the EU and the US are facing all kinds of hardships and if some plans go through, the US will face its own hardships. You see, it is not merely enough to have cash, you need to have a larger stage of friends who will be there when things go wrong. As such Lionel Messi made his choice and I do not believe it is a bad one. So whilst we are given “Messi has effectively aligned himself with a regime linked to countless human rights abuses, including the infamous assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its devastating war in Yemen that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe, and its crackdown on intellectuals, LGBTI+ people, reformers, and women’s rights activists.” We are not given a few items.

  1. Yemen was taken over by terrorists, terrorists supported by Iran, we do not see that here, why not?
  2. The crackdown sound hilarious. So hilarious in light of all the abortion laws under fire in the US, there we see “A leaked supreme court draft ruling shows the US is set to end 50 years of a woman’s right to choose” as such I wonder where human rights are, I reckon they do not exist in the hypocritical setting of feigned christian believes. There is even a setting that over the last millennium, Islam was constant, Christian faith nothing more as a political vessel for those who needed power and those relying on faith to keep them in power. From a christian point of view there are issues with the Arabian nations, but culturally? Misplaced honesty in history has shown a greed driven extermination in the middle east that started on 18 Nov 1095 (council of Clermont) and did not end until 1291 (Siege of Acre) and even as we were told one thing in schools, we were never informed on the greed driven powers behind the crusades, including the Vatican seat. 

There is a lot more, but you can find that in other articles I wrote. Are there issues? Yes, there are and there always will be, but the first step in opening dialogues and starting conversations. A person like Lionel Messi is such an optional enabler. So there is no real surprise when we are given “In Messi, the Saudi government has a premier athlete with a built-in audience and platform ready to be utilised for political gain. While Messi was once lauded for his humanitarian efforts with Unicef and his own charitable foundation, his recent alignment with Saudi raises concerns that he is willing to blatantly disregard human rights in exchange for lucrative deals with brutal dictators.” Yes, and we take a closer look at “he is willing to blatantly disregard human rights in exchange for lucrative deals with brutal dictators”, I wonder who is looking into the abortion issues in the US, the long lasting stage of inaction when it came to wealth in Luxembourg, or the inactions of Strasbourg when it came to a whole range of issues. And when we take a gander towards places like “Global Corruption Barometer EU: People worried about unchecked abuses of power”, we see that the media stays interestingly quiet, all making waves in one direction (rich people with planes) whilst the larger issue is ignored (147 facilities create 50% of all pollution) in at least two events (by the Guardian) the EEA report was muzzled and ignored. As I see it western logic is faltering and it keeps on faltering, too many ego’s and not enough common sense. We might consider that Messi is the only one showing common sense, but that would be too much, would it not?

Is Saudi Arabia perfect? No, it is not, but at present not many nations and almost non in the EU can make that claim. I reckon that New Zealand is the only one who can make the claim of being close to perfect and I am Australian. There are ways we work and ways we think, but it is not on others to copy our way of working, and the abortion issues in the US are clear evidence of that. The misrepresentation by the Vatican is evidence of that. It seems that we need to adjust our vision too and to a much larger degree, but in that I could be wrong.

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March 6, 2022 · 03:13

The intelligence nightmare

Yes, that is how I see it. You think that you have seen it all? It is about to get worse and the BBC actually is showing us the start of it. With ‘Thousands of pro-Russia Serbs march in Belgrade’ we are merely scratching the surface. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60630351) does not give much, but it gives us “Friday’s march was a show of support for Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine. Serbia has religious, ethnic and political ties with Russia that have existed for centuries” You see it is a lot worse, Serbian arms dealers are all over Europe. Paces like Rotterdam, London and Paris come to mind, but there are more and now as we see all the pro Russian events starting, we see a stage where Serbs could destabilise most of western Europe. They can fuel lone wolves tying hands all over the place and they sit back and watch the chaos unfold. A setting Moscow really likes. So how speculative is this? Well the issues with arm dealers in these three places alone are worrisome and they have been for the longest of times seeing a lot more visibility in 2020. Now with this BBC article it is still speculative to connect the two, but I am not sure that it is merely speculation. There have been issues for the longest of times and it is merely brought to the surface and a more visible pedestal now. 

The problem is that a lot was not monitored for the longest of time and now the intelligence organisations are lacking information on too many sides. Some sources (unconfirmed ones) give rise to activities in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg, USA, Norway, Montenegro and Austria. Do you really think it is all speculation? They have been busy under nearly everyones noses for over a decade and now that Russia is pushing the buttons, some are claiming allegiance, some are waking up and some are set to set Western Europe on fire. Which is which? I cannot tell, but there are connections on all kinds of levels. Did no one consider why Russian weaponry was relatively easy to get in Amsterdam and Rotterdam? In 2020 the Times gave us “While Serbia had a glut of Cold War-era stockpiles and a robust but underused defence industry, the Iraqi government was ill-equipped to battle an insurgency. So in late 2007 the two countries struck a £190 million deal to bring Serbian assault rifles, machine guns, anti-tank weapons, ammunition, explosives and other ordnance to Iraq”, I personally believe that these pipelines were there to also get Russian weapons into Iraq, and not merely the ones they have, to a larger degree the Russians provided hardware and that sets a new station, the station of storage. The Netherlands has been (for the longest time), a transitional port of arms, but there is also the speculation (never proven) that at times a container was ‘misplaced’ and ended on Dutch soil, a container filled with arms. So, how much of this is speculation? There is a fair amount of it, but I worked in the harbours of Rotterdam, when I was young and gullible, so anything is possible. Yet in this day and age, when serbs are ‘proclaiming loyalty’ do you want to take that chance? I will let you figure it out.

And whilst you do the Intelligence organisations of Europe will have to take a harsh look at what they have on the Serbs in their domain, because they really do not get to have a choice in that matter, not anymore.

And me? I have found a few more cogs to add to the previous story, I like to remain creative.

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September 23, 2021 · 19:00

Wake up or slumber more?

Yes, we all have that at times, the smallest doubt we give ourselves “Shall I slumber just a few minutes more?” We are allowed it, we were so clever, we set the alarm clock to 30 minutes early and we ignore the first alarm because we had 30 minutes left. At times that is the best sleep time of the night, to know there is 30 minutes left. And I feel the same way, yet I feel that this is the time to realise that the alarm went off a week earlier and we kept on slumbering a little more and a little more and now we are out of time. We are awoken by two articles, not related yet linked. The first is the Guardian who gives us ‘anti-vax radio shows reach millions in US while stars die of Covid’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid) we are told that Phil Valentine was anti-vaccine, he even plagiarised the song Taxman and made it his own. We are also introduced to Marc Bernier, Dick Farrel and Jimmy DeYoung. Yet, we need not worry, they are all dead now, they all died of covid and the millions of ‘fans’ they had, a lot of them will be dead soon too. That is the natural selection we are part of. And it is then that the claim “Media watchdogs suggest that some basic level of responsibility to the public should be required to keep a broadcast license” seems to seep in, but it is already too late. Even as some of the exploiters are realising that things are going overboard, they forgot the basic rules of the game, to gain riches you need a population and that population is now becoming redundant. Local radio hosts ignored by the big players, but the people are local people, they are the foundation that the US stands on and it goes way beyond USA, believe it. The stakeholders are the first and the direct franchisers of levels of exploitation and they are now seeing the impact I warned for for well over a decade. You can live on the premise of fooling people, but the strongest reality has now and always been “You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can never fool all of the people all of the time” and that is now pushing towards a reality the exploiters never realised. They realise it first because they need a population and it is dying, with 697,000 dead in the US and an expected 100% rise between now and February 2022 the numbers will take a massive offset. 

So how did I get there?
There are three elements driving it. The first is the Delta variant, the second is the anti-vaccine movements and lets be frank ‘stupid’ people driving anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiments and the third one was given to us by Jenet Yellen giving us a mere two days ago that the US is in danger of defaulting on the US loans in October, the first time in history, all whilst investments in retirement funds are stopping. The three together giving us the waves that follow, waves in hospitals losing funds, funds in resources slowing down, so as hospitals are filling up and in June AP News gave us ‘Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated’, so as the hospitals are full, the unvaccinated die and more will die soon enough. The unvaccinated take up 98.9% of ALL the COVID cases, the vaccinated a mere 1.1%, the difference is that staggering and as the people are embracing stupid anti-vaccine hosts, they follow those people to their grave, quite literally and there is an upside, it will end unemployment in the USA, it will lower unemployment in the UK, Europe and Australia. 

So whilst people are ‘listening’ to some media watchdog, I need to warn you that they have been sitting on their hands for way too long. I alerted the people to hold media accountable in 2011, that was 10 years ago. 

So how is this connected to the second story?
The BBC is the one giving us ‘Covid vaccine stockpiles: Are 241m doses at risk of going to waste?’, so if we consider “The UK promised 100m of that pledge, so far it has donated just under nine million”, we can consider that they did nothing wrong, we can consider all kinds of things, and considering is perfectly fine. Yet there is a larger stage where they did nothing wrong and there is the rub, over a year, less than 10% was donated and the media let it slide, until people start realising that the media adheres to share holders, stakeholders, and advertisers. So who stopped it, or perhaps better stated, who silenced it to a mere whisper? 

And no one is looking into these stakeholders. So whilst we look at crowd after crowd we see more and more, but the three stages, the ‘normal’ people, the anti-vaxxers and the people in panic is now a larger unstable mix. The normalised people are a massive minority and the other two shouting are ahead of all, yet they are now dying and as anti-vaccine versus panic people are in a mix, we see that they all become panic people and they seek a solution but the hospitals are full. The nursing staff (doctors too) are tired and sick of them all so all these panic people have no one to turn to, merely their own undoing and that is the good news. 

Why is it good news?
In the first governments will have to act, so whilst the UK is dealing with Insulate Britain activists we see the tart of a new age, an age of draconian laws, a stage that follows when resources are dwindling down, and these two nations are not alone. France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA, Australia they all have to take larger steps in changing direction and this is the stage most of us did to ourselves and the media was kind enough to help, all whilst their stakeholders are running for the hills with a bag full of money. They are now trying to find a place where they can be relatively safe, that is, until the limelight hits them and their actions.

And it is escalating, as some are all about hating the rich and taxing the rich they still fail to see the larger problem. Governments are to blame, they REFUSED to properly adjust tax laws and that has been the case for well over 2 decades. Did you think it was different? Amazon was given the headlines “Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020, despite lockdown surge the firm’s Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss”. Amazon is not breaking the laws, black letter law states what they are allowed to do and they did so, they never broke the law, governments let them off the hook again and again for over 2 decades and it is happening globally. As such the phrase “Kill the rich” should to be “Kill the exploiters” and that list is a hell of a lot longer than you think. The stakeholders have now become afraid that in the 11th hour their gig is up and they are hoping to score one more time before the gig is up forever.

And in this COVID is ending their song sooner than they had hoped. Yet it is a dangerous stage. We see that typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Yet in this list we see no facilitators or lobbyists, these exploitive players aren’t on any list, they are couriers from corporations, yet never in service of them, they are only in service of themselves and now when we consider the Economist on July 17th (at https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/17/the-republican-anti-vax-delusion) we see “Populist conservatives are to blame”, yet is it that simple? Populistic people are easier to control as they need a place to voice ‘issues’, yet stakeholders see that these are groups of people easier to exploit too and there is the problem, so whilst we see the ‘Trump’ example which could be true, there are more players in that stage and those players all hate the limelight, as the populists love the limelight, they get it all and as such the stakeholder now seen as a lobbyist fades into the shadows. A game played for a long time and now that the fallout of their actions are backfiring their need to vanish becomes increasingly important. And when you think that this is out of thin air? Consider that the United Nations reported this in 2013, which was based on Constantinides et al, 2007. There is now a stage where stakeholders saw a portal to use media to set a much larger stage to fulfil corporate needs. It is given as “The rise of social networks has changed both the way we communicate and the way we consume information. Even within the relatively recent internet era, a major evolution has occurred: In the initial phase known as Web 1.0, users by-and-large consumed online information passively. Now, in the age of social media and Web 2.0, the internet is increasingly used for participation, interaction, conversation and community building”, a stage we have been seeing for over a decade. A stage driven by populists to become internet influencers and the stage of “community building” will be transformed into “sheep herding of the easily adapted” that is the stage we now face, and if you think that they can be changed, you would be wrong because it is already too late, the people saw the Yellen message, they see the overfull hospitals and the anti-Vaccine group is not becoming a panic group and those people listen to no one and it will be fuelled by ‘241m doses at risk of going to waste’ soon enough and the stage does not end there. So when the US (and other places) run out of vaccines the panic driven people will escalate and with statistics that 98.9% of all deaths are unvaccinated ones the state of panic is close to complete and in winter when isolation adds to the issues panic will reign on a global scale. So when you are in bed slumbering to get to the office and you consider taking a sickie, also consider that this is the one sickie you should not have taken. The safe zone is miles behind you and there is no hospital left in front of you and that merely fuels the panic. So when we take notice of “Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages” consider that this is not an American or a Florida issue, it has become a global issue. London gave us all (earlier this year) “London hospitals would be short of nearly 2,000 acute and intensive beds” and when we realise that millions more will die and that this issue has surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic numbers and estimates, consider that it will get worse, a lot worse. The last one is my speculation but the numbers are fuelling my point of view. So will you take a longer slumber? It is your choice, and if you are dedicated anti-vaccine person, the queue of Hades awaits. Feel free to oppose that view, it is your right, yet India a mere hour ago reported ‘India reports 26,964 new Covid cases’, which might be true, but the other numbers cannot be true, there is too much of a sliding scale in play. So how fast will the US emulate India? I honestly cannot tell, but the numbers show a grim reality and in the end the games that some people played will burn the soil in front of them, that is the realisation that history gave us. So do you really want to slumber a bit longer?

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September 22, 2021 · 15:30

Wake up or slumber more?

Wake up or slumber moreYes, we all have that at times, the smallest doubt we give ourselves “Shall I slumber just a few minutes more?” We are allowed it, we were so clever, we set the alarm clock to 30 minutes early and we ignore the first alarm because we had 30 minutes left. At times that is the best sleep time of the night, to know there is 30 minutes left. And I feel the same way, yet I feel that this is the time to realise that the alarm went off a week earlier and we kept on slumbering a little more and a little more and now we are out of time. We are awoken by two articles, not related yet linked. The first is the Guardian who gives us ‘anti-vax radio shows reach millions in US while stars die of Covid’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid) we are told that Phil Valentine was anti-vaccine, he even plagiarised the song Taxman and made it his own. We are also introduced to Marc Bernier, Dick Farrel and Jimmy DeYoung. Yet, we need not worry, they are all dead now, they all died of covid and the millions of ‘fans’ they had, a lot of them will be dead soon too. That is the natural selection we are part of. And it is then that the claim “Media watchdogs suggest that some basic level of responsibility to the public should be required to keep a broadcast license” seems to seep in, but it is already too late. Even as some of the exploiters are realising that things are going overboard, they forgot the basic rules of the game, to gain riches you need a population and that population is now becoming redundant. Local radio hosts ignored by the big players, but the people are local people, they are the foundation that the US stands on and it goes way beyond USA, believe it. The stakeholders are the first and the direct franchisers of levels of exploitation and they are now seeing the impact I warned for for well over a decade. You can live on the premise of fooling people, but the strongest reality has now and always been “You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can never fool all of the people all of the time” and that is now pushing towards a reality the exploiters never realised. They realise it first because they need a population and it is dying, with 697,000 dead in the US and an expected 100% rise between now and February 2022 the numbers will take a massive offset. 

So how did I get there?
There are three elements driving it. The first is the Delta variant, the second is the anti-vaccine movements and lets be frank ‘stupid’ people driving anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiments and the third one was given to us by Jenet Yellen giving us a mere two days ago that the US is in danger of defaulting on the US loans in October, the first time in history, all whilst investments in retirement funds are stopping. The three together giving us the waves that follow, waves in hospitals losing funds, funds in resources slowing down, so as hospitals are filling up and in June AP News gave us ‘Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated’, so as the hospitals are full, the unvaccinated die and more will die soon enough. The unvaccinated take up 98.9% of ALL the COVID cases, the vaccinated a mere 1.1%, the difference is that staggering and as the people are embracing stupid anti-vaccine hosts, they follow those people to their grave, quite literally and there is an upside, it will end unemployment in the USA, it will lower unemployment in the UK, Europe and Australia. 

So whilst people are ‘listening’ to some media watchdog, I need to warn you that they have been sitting on their hands for way too long. I alerted the people to hold media accountable in 2011, that was 10 years ago. 

So how is this connected to the second story?
The BBC is the one giving us ‘Covid vaccine stockpiles: Are 241m doses at risk of going to waste?’, so if we consider “The UK promised 100m of that pledge, so far it has donated just under nine million”, we can consider that they did nothing wrong, we can consider all kinds of things, and considering is perfectly fine. Yet there is a larger stage where they did nothing wrong and there is the rub, over a year, less than 10% was donated and the media let it slide, until people start realising that the media adheres to share holders, stakeholders, and advertisers. So who stopped it, or perhaps better stated, who silenced it to a mere whisper? 

And no one is looking into these stakeholders. So whilst we look at crowd after crowd we see more and more, but the three stages, the ‘normal’ people, the anti-vaxxers and the people in panic is now a larger unstable mix. The normalised people are a massive minority and the other two shouting are ahead of all, yet they are now dying and as anti-vaccine versus panic people are in a mix, we see that they all become panic people and they seek a solution but the hospitals are full. The nursing staff (doctors too) are tired and sick of them all so all these panic people have no one to turn to, merely their own undoing and that is the good news. 

Why is it good news?
In the first governments will have to act, so whilst the UK is dealing with Insulate Britain activists we see the tart of a new age, an age of draconian laws, a stage that follows when resources are dwindling down, and these two nations are not alone. France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA, Australia they all have to take larger steps in changing direction and this is the stage most of us did to ourselves and the media was kind enough to help, all whilst their stakeholders are running for the hills with a bag full of money. They are now trying to find a place where they can be relatively safe, that is, until the limelight hits them and their actions.

And it is escalating, as some are all about hating the rich and taxing the rich they still fail to see the larger problem. Governments are to blame, they REFUSED to properly adjust tax laws and that has been the case for well over 2 decades. Did you think it was different? Amazon was given the headlines “Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020, despite lockdown surge the firm’s Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss”. Amazon is not breaking the laws, black letter law states what they are allowed to do and they did so, they never broke the law, governments let them off the hook again and again for over 2 decades and it is happening globally. As such the phrase “Kill the rich” should to be “Kill the exploiters” and that list is a hell of a lot longer than you think. The stakeholders have now become afraid that in the 11th hour their gig is up and they are hoping to score one more time before the gig is up forever.

And in this COVID is ending their song sooner than they had hoped. Yet it is a dangerous stage. We see that typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Yet in this list we see no facilitators or lobbyists, these exploitive players aren’t on any list, they are couriers from corporations, yet never in service of them, they are only in service of themselves and now when we consider the Economist on July 17th (at https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/17/the-republican-anti-vax-delusion) we see “Populist conservatives are to blame”, yet is it that simple? Populistic people are easier to control as they need a place to voice ‘issues’, yet stakeholders see that these are groups of people easier to exploit too and there is the problem, so whilst we see the ‘Trump’ example which could be true, there are more players in that stage and those players all hate the limelight, as the populists love the limelight, they get it all and as such the stakeholder now seen as a lobbyist fades into the shadows. A game played for a long time and now that the fallout of their actions are backfiring their need to vanish becomes increasingly important. And when you think that this is out of thin air? Consider that the United Nations reported this in 2013, which was based on Constantinides et al, 2007. There is now a stage where stakeholders saw a portal to use media to set a much larger stage to fulfil corporate needs. It is given as “The rise of social networks has changed both the way we communicate and the way we consume information. Even within the relatively recent internet era, a major evolution has occurred: In the initial phase known as Web 1.0, users by-and-large consumed online information passively. Now, in the age of social media and Web 2.0, the internet is increasingly used for participation, interaction, conversation and community building”, a stage we have been seeing for over a decade. A stage driven by populists to become internet influencers and the stage of “community building” will be transformed into “sheep herding of the easily adapted” that is the stage we now face, and if you think that they can be changed, you would be wrong because it is already too late, the people saw the Yellen message, they see the overfull hospitals and the anti-Vaccine group is not becoming a panic group and those people listen to no one and it will be fuelled by ‘241m doses at risk of going to waste’ soon enough and the stage does not end there. So when the US (and other places) run out of vaccines the panic driven people will escalate and with statistics that 98.9% of all deaths are unvaccinated ones the state of panic is close to complete and in winter when isolation adds to the issues panic will reign on a global scale. So when you are in bed slumbering to get to the office and you consider taking a sickie, also consider that this is the one sickie you should not have taken. The safe zone is miles behind you and there is no hospital left in front of you and that merely fuels the panic. So when we take notice of “Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages” consider that this is not an American or a Florida issue, it has become a global issue. London gave us all (earlier this year) “London hospitals would be short of nearly 2,000 acute and intensive beds” and when we realise that millions more will die and that this issue has surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic numbers and estimates, consider that it will get worse, a lot worse. The last one is my speculation but the numbers are fuelling my point of view. So will you take a longer slumber? It is your choice, and if you are dedicated anti-vaccine person, the queue of Hades awaits. Feel free to oppose that view, it is your right, yet India a mere hour ago reported ‘India reports 26,964 new Covid cases’, which might be true, but the other numbers cannot be true, there is too much of a sliding scale in play. So how fast will the US emulate India? I honestly cannot tell, but the numbers show a grim reality and in the end the games that some people played will burn the soil in front of them, that is the realisation that history gave us. So do you really want to slumber a bit longer?

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June 19, 2020 · 01:39

Contemplations

We all contemplate, we consider, we weigh and we make decisions after the contemplation. Yet it is not always that simple, at times the contemplation comes after what preceded. I cannot continue my novel until the laptop arrives, and even as it is completely unrelated to the idea I had for an optional TV series, the idea is still sound, as such I am considering whether the elements in it can be added to my novel, I am only at 60,000 words, it is something that I have to contemplate. We all have similar issues, it is notalways about writing, or playing a game, some contemplations are serious, some are not, yet they too tend to refract into serious parts of our lives, even if we are not initially aware of it. 

It is not the only thing that I am contemplating. I have seen over the last few days all kinds of messages, ‘tweaked’ advertisements and messages of a sort on how we can change business decisions after the Coronavirus. I am baffled on the premise of ‘new approaches to business’, I am willing to accept that new business is where you find it, yet the oversized issue is misreporting, mismanagement of government funds and mismanaging of attempts to look cool, all whilst we know that actual scientists need actual time to investigate. The greed driven elements before the Corona situation had created empty shells with the idea that some time in the future it would fix itself, all whilst those elements knew perfectly well that these things never fix themselves, they are merely pushed onto the next administration. An abuse on a global scale and the people see the impact now, they now get to live in a new situation and they elected the people that put them in that position. These governments never went out to muzzle the EU to the degree needed, as such well over € 3,000,000,000,000 in debt, as such the EU had no reserves left for what is coming now. And it did this after it was clear that the first trillion did not do what they hoped, yet they wanted it, because money has to roll and as such another stint of spending became the concept of normal. All this, whilst the proper stage of properly setting up tax laws for corporations have never been done, delayed decade after decade. All this whilst the EU had no issues to reject (in November 2019) any move to show names of those using tax avoidance a stage where the people would see the proposed situation where firms had to reveal profits made and taxes paid in EVERY EU nation they operated in, I reckon that the FAANG group has powerful friends all over the EU, and these 12 members should be looked at with a lot more scrutiny. The FAANG group is avoiding an estimated $500,000,000,000 a year, as such the irony is laughable, it would have paid for the issue they face now and in that same setting education and housing in Europe would be close to fixed, a stage history never had before. Yet, those with a low tax shelter option were happy to reject, they included Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic. We all see the damage, but we are all so relieved that Apple is now a $1,500,000,000,000 company, Yes, at what expense? It is food for contemplation.

So as we see not on how we can work from home and what we need to do it properly, I wonder what happened to all those tax reductions in the 90’s so that we could work from home, there is an apparent lag in what was regarded as enough and is now showing to be inadequate. So whilst some applaud ‘EU did not witness any major internet congestion’, it comes without the mention that Netflix and YouTube slowed down services to avoid congestion, apparently full services are not possible, but that is a story for another time (in the very far future if it was up to them). So whilst BEREC (an EU regulator) was all about the reporting mechanism to monitor internet traffic, we see that I gave you the links yesterday to other people who see that most of them cannot even report the amount of people getting the Coronavirus and optional those dying from it. As such we see another optional example that human lives matter less than any danger to what is laughingly called ‘the economy’, weird is it not? 

OK, I agree that one is not the other, but it seems that when the economy is in danger a whole additional range of support services come into play, when the lives of people are on the line, this support is seemingly missing. The EU shows even more signs of lag on different levels. In other news (as stated in my previous blog) we see Humanitarian actions that are empty and other pacifist actions that are useless, yet their actions pushed close to $13,000,000,000 out of UK and US hands and handed it to both Russia and China, in addition there are several damaged deal thatSaudi Arabia had with Germany, but I have no numbers on that. So whilst I am not anti-Humanitarian, I am a pragmatist and it seems that hollow actions are just that hollow in a time and age that none can afford, even now, we seem to be utterly anti-Saudi Arabia, yet there is no factual reason to do this. In opposition we see that the actions against Iran are close to non-existent, all whilst Forbes reported yesterday that there are 100 new naval vessels in Iran, it seems that there is a lot to contemplate, especially as some EU players are hiding behind the Nuclear deal like it is a Santa wish list, all whilst we see from several directions, some less than a day old ‘New tensions dim hopes for salvaging Iran Nuclear deal’ and ‘New IAEA report is reminder of old problems with the Iran Nuclear Deal’ a stage that shows that Iran does what it pleases and takes no time to be civil about it, when it is conventional it is one thing, the nuclear side is a direct threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia and the EU players are willing to burn those two elements if they look better, because Iran will make some bullshit excuse on how it was not their fault, that it was a fanatic and they possibly misjudged the situation and those European players will all nod in agreement, their pockets optionally lined with income never earned. And we are all letting it happen.

It is perhaps our greatest flaw, we do not act when we should, we let greed driven motivations overwhelm our needs and we seek to blame someone when we all let this happen, as contemplations go, we have to think through a lot at present and we need to do it faster.

 

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December 19, 2019 · 15:08

Paranoid

OK, I admit it, I am calling myself paranoid (at present). You see, I have been looking at the news (nearly all news in Europe) and there is seemingly a low creation of rumbles going on. The strongest two are the Netherlands and the UK. The issue is not easy to explain, but I will. Corporations are in a frantic level of actions, Brexit has scared them and the unfolding of the EU is basically becoming reality. In a corporatocracy, that is a scary realisation, but they have an alternative. You see, the balance of the EU is not the nations, it is the two most powerful ones that set this tone. The difference is seemingly small but essential. Any nation can govern by the needs of its corporations, yet a monarchy has the responsibility to take ALL its citizens into account, a lot of issues would not exist if these monarchies did not exist. So the need of corporations is to destabilize and overthrow monarchies. In the end overthrown they might take their value and business interests, and those corporations do not care, they can tighten the screws and focus on the 80% that is consumer, not the 100% that is population. We have seen these acts in the US for the longest time in the Walmart family, not the strongest example, but the most visible one. They have spent well over $4,500,000 this year alone on lobbyists. Firms like the Alpine group, Capitol counsel, Cove Strategies, Ferox Strategies, Mehlman, Castagnetti et al and several more to represent their needs in political Washington. Let’s be clear, they are not breaking any laws, they committed no crimes, the Walton family merely uses the tools available to them to set the premise as powerful as possible towards THEIR needs. This is where the issue become a problem, as a republic driven political might adheres to the needs of a corporation, the people lose. In this the Walton family grows its wealth by a little over $100 million a day, some sources indicate that their total wealth grew by over 20% last year alone. That family has a wealth that puts the wealth of Bill Gates (Software Man), Jeff Bezos (the Amazon Boy) and Warren Buffett (Mr. Investment calling himself the Philanthropist Man) and their wealth combined to shame. That is the impact of a corporatocracy, when the companies rule a nation, their needs are set as the number one, followed by actual consumers and enablers as a second.

Poverty in the US might be the lowest in the last decade, but it is still set to 11.8%, in the Netherlands it is a little below 5%, that is not because the Netherlands is so rich, or their situation is so much better, it is because a monarchy looks at the needs of all its citizens (the rich, the poor the enablers and the non-enablers). So when I see ‘Money is the Achilles heel of a monarchy‘ (at https://www.nu.nl/economie/5991045/de-kosten-van-het-koningshuis-geld-is-de-achilleshiel-van-de-monarchie.html) with mention of “Alles samen kost het koningshuis daarmee op papier in 2019 bijna 36 miljoen euro” (All together, the cost for the monarchy are set on paper to be around 36 million Euro). Now in opposition I will throw that Robeco paid a new CEO €30,000,000 annually around a decade ago, so it seems a little farfetched to look at the cost of royalty, and we need to consider that a monarchy comes with cost, it is in part also the cost we pay to keep all citizens safe, in other settings this tends to be the consumers and rich people. 

The second large monarchy is the British one, even as we have a lot more to look at, I will not, yet I will highlight that the attacks on Prince Andrew were more than attacks. It was the need of media to get circulation and in the UK that sells, it is money. OK, I will admit that HRH Prince Andrew received some real bad advice from direction he was listening to, yet beyond that the man is under constant (and not just him in that family) attack, even today I find well over a quarter of a million articles (not just from the UK) with headlines like ‘Who’s your Prince Andrew? Ten signs one of your employees is deadwood‘ (Source: Smart Company, Australia). Titles like ‘surplus prince‘ and statements like “The total number of people in the world who believe his side of this super-creepy story is one. You’d ground your small kid for telling tales like: “I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when I was shot at … it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”“, from my point of view, the royal family is under non-stop attack by the media and haters. In the UK we see optionally one part that is an issue, their Monarchy is a lot larger, yet so is their population, yet the UK is a monarchy, both the Netherlands and the UK would not have made it to the place they are now if they were a republic, that much is almost certain. Europe has other monarchies, There is Denmark, Monaco, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain and the small ones Andorra and Liechtenstein. Norway is not part of the EU, yet they are so close to the Danish and Swedish families that they are part of the problem for corporations. Yet for corporations the Netherlands and the UK are the largest problems, they have strong political ties, they have well organised systems and they both have the ability to limit the actions of most corporations. 

Now, just to be clear, we see the cost of royalty (especially the Dutch one) almost every year (the Dutch are cheap as), yet the underlying story is still within me, there has been a larger attack on royalty in Europe and I personally believe that corporations are fuelling it through their links in the media. The attacks are subtle and for some reason two links I saw earlier this week are no nowhere to be found, the right to be forgotten is seemingly used to a wider degree (my speculation). More important, I believe that the Brexit delivery from Boris Johnson will open up a lot more than just the Brexit, at that point these corporations in denial realise that the overall force of greed will end in 2-3 years and when Brexit is complete there will be a larger need in the EU breaking it up faster. When we see ‘EU ministers opt to continue overfishing, despite 2020 deadline‘, we see more, we see a larger need towards greed and as we read “ministers ignored science and fought bitterly for their own vested interests” we see some of the signs that the EU has ended, the fact that they knowingly, willingly and intentionally ignored “By 2020, all quotas were meant to be based on a maximum sustainable yield – the most fish that can be caught without damaging the ability of the species to recover itself” should be regarded as evidence, I personally stand by my original thought, merely end the lives ot 94% of the global population and the problem is solved (that did not take long did it?) The issue is larger and more complex ad as such my thoughts towards the monarchies can be seen as paranoia. The two nations (UK and Dutch) have all kinds of interactions and even as the attacks on Prince Andrew are actual attacks, they are often done by circulation desperate media, which is still a corporation, but it would be a twisted example. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I feel that there is a larger attack on EU monarchies, I will let you look at the evidence in your own newspapers and tally the articles that are an example. Oh and I am not dismissing the fact that there are other driving factors either, that was shown by the NL Times last April (at https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/15/dutch-royals-less-popular-among-young-people-study). Here we see: “Support for the Dutch monarchy among young people fell sharply over the past years. In 2007, 70 percent of Dutch between the ages of 18 and 34 were enthusiastic about the Royal Family, last year it was only 55 percent, according to surveys by Ipsos commissioned by NOS“, I wonder how the percentages fall when we tae that number and set it in two groups, 17-26 and 27-34. You see until 25 you have no need to take things into consideration (like retirement), after 25 you do and that is when people get to realise that a Monarchy is a larger economic umbrella than a republic is. Yet they also illuminate the other side “support for a republic with an elected president is not increasing much. In 2007, 14 percent of respondents supported the idea of such a government, last year it was 15 percent, according to the surveys“, I reckon that the people realise that their cushy life is over when it becomes a republic, but the Netherlands and the UK are too large spoils of war for the large corporations and it is my personal believe that they will not give up on rich grounds of that nature, the breaking of the EU will force them in that direction soon enough, in that regard I have absolutely no doubt, greed remains an eternal journey.

 

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December 13, 2019 · 12:21

Rise of the corporatocracy

Yes, there is a lot wrong in the UK, no one can deny this and an election does not tend to be the place to find out what is wrong, we all know that. The politician that kisses the baby on election week might be the one person who hates babies, it is almost a given, even as I illuminated the short sighted blunders of UK Labour, there is no doubt that all parties (i never investigated all of them) have shortcomings and they will all make carefully phrased promises that they can get out of the day after the election. It is not rocket science, they all entertain such paths and we basically live with it hoping that we over time make the right choice. I have always been a tory, yet I had no issues giving my congratulations to Chuka Umanna Yesterday on his LibDems standing which is pretty good. Yet for the most it is a better system that we have in Europe, so as I saw ‘‘Brutal, packed with untruths, uninspiring’: European press on UK election‘ an article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/12/brutal-packed-with-untruths-uninsipring-european-press-on-uk-election) I saw more, more than the headline and I hope others see it too. 

France

France gave us the quote “Boris Johnson: the liar weakening Europe“, Interesting is it not? ‘the liar weakening Europe‘ is a very distinct setting, a setting that happened BEFORE Boris took his present position, a setting that was decided on by voters and ‘weakening Europe’? Yes that is the worry of the corporations. You see With the UK leaving the EU the debt issues will rise to the top of nearly every nation in Europe, the UK has a much larger role to play and it wanted out. The stupidity of Mario Draghi will continue for at least 2 decades and the media is not ready to unite and state that these procedures and choices were a mistake, not or years. And for the longest time the EU was in a play where delay upon delay could keep the UK in the EU and that is now at an end and France will feel the pain of this decision, all European nations barr Germany, but they will all feel the impact and they are all scared and with them all corporations with European interests, now that the smoke is settling the plays become clear.

Germany

Germany is setting sights on Brexit, they are hoping for a Labour win because Labour is all about remaining in the EU, even as it is voiced as “A Labour victory would be a blessing for the economy. Because in the case of a victory, Corbyn wants to negotiate a ‘soft’ Brexit deal with the EU … which should be better for the economy than Johnson’s comparatively hard Brexit” I foresee a soft brexit claim, then a 180 degree on the exit and then a remain setting.

Spain

Spanish voices for the most seem to take the UK in an age of Trumpism and that is fine, it is not entirely incorrect, here we see the quote “Rafael Ramos, the London correspondent for La Vanguardia, filed a report from Tony Blair’s former constituency, Sedgefield. There he found Labour’s once impregnable “red wall” looking vulnerable, ” I had a similar view on ‘The speculative numbers‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/12/10/the-speculative-numbers/) three days ago. and at present the news is coming by that Boris Johnson will attain supremacy (not unexpected), yet also they give ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s election performance will be the worst by a Labour leader for more than 40 years. He will have done worse than‘, I made a similar prediction, although I never made any mention that it would be the worst in 40 years. 

However, the BBC forecast seems to think that it will be CON 368 – LAB 191 – SNP 55 – LD 13. They have much better predictive models, but I am at odds on the results for the LD, Chuka Umana might be the exemption, but I expected the LD to do much better, Yes I predicted a rough exodus of Labour members, yet I expected most of them to go towards an LD environment, not ending up in the CON field. People do not tend to go from Labour to Conservatives and visa versa, in this they would take an alternative and I expected the Greens to be the alternative choice in many cases, yet the numbers do not reflect that at present, and perhaps there will be an alternative reasoning, yet the view that I personally see is not the one that is shaping and of course, I need to ask questions of me and make alterations to me views after that fact. That is what happens, but I do not usually get it this wrong and even as the winner was never really in doubt, neither was the loser, but there is a midsection that (until the full picture) emerges over time and that one I saw change in a wrongful way, I admit that and now I have questions.

Russia

The Russian side is all about the collapse of the EU, they saw that coming and so did a few others, so the quote “Zhirinovsky was probably trolling, but the sentiment is real. Russia has largely welcomed the UK’s exit from the EU as proof that the European project is coming apart at the seams” is not that much of a surprise, we all saw the writing on the walls in Strasbourg

Italy

Here we see ““Socialism or Brexit? This is the Hamlet-like dilemma of the vote in the UK,” wrote Enrico Franceschini in La Repubblica on Thursday“, it is an important view, the Guardian is right, I never looked at it that way, but the danger of a two pronged solution and a polarisation of socialism versus reality is pretty much the core for the UK in the next 4-7 years. i voice it that way because the UK coffers are empty, there is a near immediate collapse of the NHS and the consequence is a struggle with socialistic views versus the reality that will bite everyone, there is no denying it and it will bite for at least 2-3 years, the fact that it will end the EU will also make for new truths to bare out, the EU is in a worse state and when that gets out the UK path will make sense and the EU will be in denial for a long time, its laws not ready to deal with Greece, with the debts of Italy and a few other things will surface, that reality will show the power of Brexit and corporations are afraid, their numbers and predictions will go straight out of the window, at that point the debts of the US and Japan will become very real. Their cushy jobs and fat paychecks end, it scares any board of directors based in the US, their life within the land of ‘milk and honey’ will become the sustenance of ‘water and bread’ that they pushed upon many others with the greatest of ease.

Netherlands

The Dutch view is echoes via the NRC, who has a flair for the dramatic, so when we see their quote ““poor on substance and rich in empty rhetoric” for an election that “could change the course of Brexit, and the country”” we see an actual truth, it is the reality TV of politics and it has been blazing for 12 weeks 24:7, I am not surprised to see this. I just now see the message (8 minutes ago) that Jo Swinson will lose her seat to the SNP representative, OK, it shows the growth for the SNP, yet I feel a little sad for Jo Swinson, she achieved a great deal for the LD in such a short time. We also see here that the LD will win 13 seats, that is more like it! I expected the LD to be a much larger winner, yet it could be a stepping stone for the LD for the next election, Labour is unlikely to fall into any line within the next three years, the could still remain the larger loser in the next elections, they only have Jeremy Corbyn to blame and he will get blamed, make no mistake on that. 

Scandinavia

They (the Guardian) and I might have left Scandinavia for last but they do bring an interesting point to the table. With “Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet described a country hopelessly split, and in multiple directions, leaving many voters facing “an impossible choice. How is a Conservative who wants to stay in the EU supposed to vote? Or a social democrat who believes Jeremy Corbyn is a leftwing extremist?”“, it was a fair point to bring, as a conservative I had no issues, it would all result in a stronger win for the Tories, yet I expected that some of those views would be the stuff for the LD to hunt for and bring those people into the LD field, apparently not enough was done there. Basically they all agree that the views in the UK are polarised, yet none of them take a deeper look at why they are polarised. The Greek setting changed EVERYTHING, without it Nigel Farage would never have sought the limelight, the EU through indecision only had itself to thank for that, the irresponsible spending by Mario Draghi (€ 3 trillion) is a much larger setting and whilst the EU went into managed bad news forms, we see a much larger failing in the EU, Farage started something that the people accepted, the EU is a waste of too many resources and the corporations paid to fuel it all are now in a desperate setting to avoid what comes next. Or did you think that a gravy train fuels itself? 

The UK is in a stage where it is almost desperate to seek its voice whilst the choir of 27 other voices are drowning out national needs. And when the UK does move, you will see a changing picture overnight of EU nations with towering debts, when the UK is no longer part of that, the debt stage will change and it will impact everything, that is the part that others seem to ignore, debt was, debt has been, there is no debt tomorrow, that is the wrong thought, debt must be repaid and when the UK leaves the debt picture changes and some banks will seek early payment on several debts. that is the reality of what they face. 

All this whilst the votes are still being counted in the UK.

I expect the managed bad news cycles to continue in Europe for a few days, the UK will have to lick its wounds, the Tories are up 51 seats (a lot more than I predicted), Labour is down 71 seats (I expected less worse) yet the confounding truth is that LD did not do as well as I expected. The stage is changing even further, as the WP gave us ‘Trump caves again to corporate lobbying pressure as he flip-flops on flavored e-cigarettes‘ (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/11/18/daily-202-trump-caves-again-to-corporate-lobbying-pressure-as-he-flip-flops-on-flavored-e-cigarettes/5dd2377d88e0fa10ffd20edd/), we see that corporations are stronger than ever, even as it is given in the age of Trump, ther power came from the last 3 administrations, those corporations are in the know in how much dangers they are as their votes are on consumerism and debt, debt they need to see continuing and that is now in danger, the UK elections is polarising that part of all this right now. And the part where we see this come to light was given to us almost two weeks ago when we were given ‘12 EU states reject move to expose companies’ tax avoidance‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/28/12-eu-states-reject-move-to-expose-companies-tax-avoidance), the article mentioned Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden and Croatia. And only mentioned Sweden’s express view “its government feared that the directive might water down their higher standards on transparency“, which entirely different from Ireland where we saw that the IFAC (Irish Fiscal Advisory Council) warning its government “the country’s economy has become so reliant on taxes paid by multinationals that half of all of corporate taxes paid in the nation come from just 10 global companies“, 10 companies setting the taste of 50% of all corporate taxation, so for those doubting the stage I had on Corporatocracy, consider the 12 countries blocking the view we would get and why. Although in this instance the 11 (taking out Sweden) is almost 50% of the entire EU, and corporations have a lot of power, also in the 15 not mentioned. Do you still think that the entire UK exit from the EU was a simple clear cut problem? I never claimed that, but I did make the claim that the UK is better out the EU than in and this election is the first step in completing that part, corporations be damned!

 

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