Tag Archives: President Trump

September 27, 2020 · 21:22

What is the law? 

That is the question I got myself wondering about. Now consider the law, the US and Commonwealth nations have common law, other nations like most in the EU have civil law, all nations that embrace the rule of law. I myself am largely in favour of the law (alas it does not suit me all the time, but the is life). So when I saw Reuters give me this morning ‘Democrats hammer Trump’s Supreme Court pick, say she could jeopardise Obamacare’. Yes, I get it, democrats are not in favour of conservative judges, the setting is however that the elected president gets to nominate whomever they want, yet it is the Senate that elects them by majority vote. In all this we see “Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and others in his party on Saturday blasted President Donald Trump’s choice of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, focusing in particular on the threat they said she would pose to healthcare for millions of Americans” (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-barrett-healthcare/democrats-hammer-trumps-supreme-court-pick-say-she-could-jeopardize-obamacare-idUSKBN26I00H). Yet here is the kicker, it seems that there is too large and too polarised a view in America for the situation to continue. Now, I have nothing against judge Barrett, I do not know her, and I don’t know any of the supremes, actually I knew one when she was a supreme (Diana Ross) and there is the case where I optionally know two judges, both named Dredd (Sylvester Stallone and Karl Urban). I will admit that I am making light of the situation (apart from the fact that I can), but consider the setting here. The nominated judge (at https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/barrett-amy-coney) gives us:

  • Law clerk, Hon. Laurence H. Silberman, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 1997-1998
  • Law clerk, Hon. Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court of the United States, 1998-1999
  • Private practice, Washington, D.C., 1999-2001
  • George Washington University Law School, 2001-2002; adjunct faculty member, 2001; John M. Olin Fellow in Law, 2001-2002
  • Professor of law, Notre Dame Law School, 2002-2017
  • Visiting associate professor of law, University of Virginia Law School, 2007

This youthful youngling of 48 summers has experience, as such she is eligible. And this is where we get to Jo Jo Biden. This is important as they claim “the threat they said she would pose to healthcare for millions of Americans”. Now, I am not stating that she is not, I merely wonder how a judge with so much years of experience might optionally invalidate a setting unless it is an illegal one. Let’s not forget the this is a supreme court judge, not the election of Judge Fish (again the Dredd connection). 

It leaves me with questions, one of them is what would be illegal about Obamacare? If the second president keeps on unravelling on what the previous president put in motion, how useless has the American legal system become? That is a valid question, is it not?

All this whilst the vote of confirmation has not passed yet and this is where the Democrats panel members get to ask all the questions that could interfere with the nominee being confirmed. The Sydney Morning Herald gives us (at https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/the-trap-democrats-must-avoid-in-the-supreme-court-nomination-battle-20200927-p55zm0.html) “Republicans want to turn the confirmation process into a grievance-fuelled culture war by portraying Barrett – a devout Catholic conservative – as a victim of left-wing bigotry. Democrats want to use the Supreme Court showdown to highlight the precarious status of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and elevate it as an election issue”, I believe that this is right on point. Yet when we look at this, would either ever elect the best nomination? Lets not forget, the even as we accept “There is no precedent for a US Supreme Court vacancy to be filled so close to election day”, the reality is “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”, this is what Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 states. There is nothing about how close to election it is. It is about the elected president of the United States, the constitution is actually that simple (no fish required). And none of it can happen without the consent of the Senate, and they are elected by who? Yup, you guessed it they are directly chosen by the people of the State, in this those 55% (the part that actually showed to the election) made their decision known and these senators, elected by the people will confirm (or reject) the nomination to the supreme court, but those parts are not really that highlighted by the papers are they?

Now, I will happily agree that I am not the greatest expert on the matter (apart from a master degree in law), but there is a lot we need to consider. How can the USA move forward when the setting is created that optionally the next term undoes the actions of the previous term? Is anyone considering that non-productive stage? Apart from the stage where we see the confirmation that the Affordable Care Act is in a precarious situation, implying that it was never properly set into law, and if that is so, whose fault was that? If we focus on the law, let’s make it about the law and there, the current president has been fortunate enough to elect 3 supreme court judges. The last one to do this was former President Reagan and he got to nominate 4 of them, just like former President Nixon, only President Eisenhower nominated 5. And so far, do the people of the USA have anything to complain about? Reagan nominated Judge Scalia, where some state that he was he was one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century. Nixon elected Judge Blackmun, who was seen as became one of the most liberal justices on the Court. He is best known as the author of the Court’s opinion in Roe v. Wade, which prohibits many state and federal restrictions on abortion. Then there was President Eisenhower who nominated Justice Brennan, and ended up being known for being a leader of the Court’s liberal wing. So when I see all the tears on a lack of liberal judges, I wonder how valid it is. OK, I have an actual life, so I did not dig into EVERY nominated and elected justice, yet I hope that I am raising enough questions for you all to wonder and lets face it, unless you went in and actually voted, you have no real right (unless you were younger than 18 during the last election). 

In the end, we have to wait and see, mostly if the confirmation succeeds or not, because that is the next step. Let’s wait and see, the next step starts on October 12th.

 

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September 25, 2020 · 18:27

The new disaster movie

Yup, we all have seen them, buildings on fire (Towering inferno), silly snappers with appetite (Jaws), Catching your stones (Deep Impact), shaking your love (Earthquake), warming up the neighbourhood (Dante’s Peak), or solving the greenhouse effect (The Day after tomorrow), yes we have more likely than not seen at least one of them, especially when we still have our 2012 diary set to that day in December. And we all love these movies, especially when it is a fight of man (or woman) against nature, the person becomes the automated underdog and we know the we really do not have a chance, especially those who remember Will Yun Lee in San Andreas. Nature is a bitch any given day of the week.

So what happens when we take the premise and really give you a nightmare scenario? The idea popped up when I was looking to the absolute lack of intelligence coming from the Oval Office. So when we got the quote “Well, we’ll have to see what happens. You know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster”, it was at that moment when I remember a situation in history, you might have heard of it, a guy named Nero and what he decided to do to Rome. It was at that moment when the mind started to think things through.
For your consideration

The setting is given to us in a stage where a person is opted to join Google and offers for sale all his 5G IP (let’s just pretend that is me, it is an ego thing) and it goes better than the main character ever considered. He is promptly paid the initial fee ($25,000,000 post taxation up front) and he hands over the IP, all of it and it is a winner, Google learns where they forgot to look and the main character gets a hell of a lot more than even he considered ($12B pre taxation), so as the IP becomes all Google, the main character heads for a nice early retirement with the largest golden parachute in history. Yet the people around him take notice, Russian organised crime, greed hungry bankers (a reference to HSBC) and they gang up on him, in this even American politicians and members of the CIA take care to snap up what they can and he ends up with nothing. This sets in motion a wave of rage never seen before and the silly criminals are all laughing, because they got the cash. But the creative mind goes to town and vows vengeance. He sets the stage with access to a larger NBC arsenal. Into the stage where he unleashes 13 nuclear sites, most of them near the spaces of the criminals, now suddenly everyone is crying like little bitches and how unfair it all is, but the main character is beyond caring, he sees the ultimate equaliser, it is loss, when the criminals and the corrupt are confronted with the loss of everything THEY care for, the need for a compromise by the criminals and politicians alike. He then sets on a larger binge, even as some think that they have a handle, he starts with the Nuclear bombing of Grand Coulee, Palo Verde, W. A. Parish, Monroe, Bath County, and Peach Bottom. These 6 changes the power options to the largest extent and no matter how great their protection was, having a 2 megaton bomb explode next to it renders such a place decently useless. At the same setting he sets of the 4 bombs near the goons responsible for being playing bad Santa to the main character, taking care of Chicago, San Francisco, San Antonio and Miami, the last to go off in Virginia setting the FBI and the CIA in a stage where they have nowhere to go. It is not the end, the Russian criminals are now in a stage where the law and a few hundred thousand Americans are hunting them down. As the rage in the main character goes on, we see the he had set the stage before the first nuclear bomb went off, where he had ‘liberated’ a few really nasty bedfellows. The bombs made reporting the issue a non-option, but as the nation is learning what had happened, the main character had seen everything taken away from him. He releases the diseases in Washington DC, Boston, Los Angeles and Jacksonville. The panic is now complete, as all plead for a compromise, we see the person put a gun towards his mouth, whispers ‘I will all see you soon’ whilst in the background a mustard gas bomb the size of a fuel bomb goes off, he swallows the barrel and pulls the trigger. We will vows that this will never be a reality, yet when we sit at home and we see ‘HSBC Stock Pummelled by Financial Crimes Report’ with the additional “hit by the fallout from revelations of the bank’s involvement in facilitating criminal activities” which happened three days ago. Crime and opportunity seekers tend to go after the people they think are weak, so what do you think happens when they go after the wrong person? This is not nature that you cannot stop, that opponent is still for the most predictable, it is the person that loses his or her mind, that person becomes unreasonable and unpredictable.

It becomes even more fun when we realise the HSBC was not alone, it is not. The Guardian reported three years ago ‘British banks handled vast sums of laundered Russian money’, am I still dreaming? Greed is like mother nature, it is predictable, and I do believe that insurmountable loss is the only thing the corrupt and the greed driven truly fear. The corrupt tend to think the it is for a greater good, you only have to blow away their children in front of a corrupt person to see their armour dent permanently. In that do you think that a person losing billions will listen to reason? Especially when government officials are involved? You might think that this will never happen, did you? But that is probably what you thought of banks as well. Greed has no limits, neither does rage and in this it tends to be a fight to behold, especially as unbridled rage equals a volcano or a meteorite that is on a path, neither of them ever wavers.

So yes, we can all agree with President Trump on “we’ll have to see what happens”, however do you want to be there when things go ballistic? I certainly don’t, but then this was merely a small movie idea, just like ‘How to assassinate a politician’, which I wrote about in ‘Sweden has it too’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/08/30/sweden-has-it-too/), I wonder if the people in the Critical Incident Analysis Group – CIAG (University of Virginia) the people who give us “But we are wrong about that. Mass shootings are not unstoppable, and there are people trying to stop them. They are not even inexplicable, because every time Trunk hears of one he understands why it happened and who did it”, I wonder where they were when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided to throw a little party at the Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. 12 students and one teacher did not make it out and there is every indiction that the damage could have been much worse. So what happens when you push a person over the brink, a person that designed a solution the 114 thousand people at Google had not considered. Sundar Pichai might be one of the 100 most influential people n the planet, but no one will blame him for not considering everything. So when the person with the one original idea goes nuts, what will the impact be? I believe it could be the disaster movie of the decade, a step on the chessboard that none of the hundred think tanks in the US can consider, they are not ready for the parameters and in that meantime the most damage is incurred.

Well, that is my sense of humour satisfied, have a nice weekend and sweet dreams, don’t think too much of the power station near you, any of them have at least 4 flaws that they all forgot to report on.

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September 22, 2020 · 23:46

Choices

We all see them, we all have them and we often have a feeling of polarisation when we are hit by them. It all starts with a tweet by George Takei. I greatly admire the guy, not in the least as Lt. Sulu on the Enterprise. The man is intelligent, direct and has (as I personally see it) ownership of the statement ‘Oh my!’ George has an impressive history as an actor and as a humanitarian. He is also an activist and all that does not break down in any way of the person he is. I have no problem s towards him as a person or as a republican, he is the kind of person that actually makes America great and we have to accept that. I have no issues with him and I have no issues with his stance against President Trump, even as I agree with him on this matter, no matter how republican I am, we need to be held to account for what we say and what we do and I believe the fits with the republican point of view.

So when I saw the tweet, I was a little miffed. You see, in the directness of the setting Senator Gardner is actually correct. When we look at the constitution we see “When a vacancy occurs, the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints a new justice”, it is however a little more complex. The president can choose whomever he wants, yet it must be settled through a majority in the US Senate. As such 51 senators need to confirm the appointment and that is where it gets to be complex. 

“Candidates are nominated by the President of the United States and must face a series of hearings in which both the nominee and other witnesses make statements and answer questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which can vote to send the nomination to the full United States Senate. Confirmation by the Senate allows the President to formally appoint the candidate to the court. The Constitution does not set any qualifications for service as a Justice, thus the President may nominate any individual to serve on the Court”, yet feel free to read up (at https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Nominations.htm). 

It is the series of hearings the are the big issue in most cases, yet here to President Trump has an advantage, or does he? To see this, we need to voice the opinion of an individual. This was done with “RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws”, the issue is not one I agree with, but that visibility will aid us. Some republicans and especially the pro-life people will want a different type of judge, they will have a polarising look at the entire situation, yet when we examine congress we get a grasp of PEW research (at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/18/three-in-ten-or-more-democrats-and-republicans-dont-agree-with-their-party-on-abortion/).

No matter how we want to see the data, we need to see the top-line net numbers. In this only 64% of the Republicans agree with this stance. Moreover, the 7% of the democrats agreeing with the Republicans will not be enough to carry the call of a majority, the hearing will be on many issues, but as you can see depending on the hearing, there will be any number of issues that the senate will be dissenting on and the hearings will be a task on a few items and even as there is a Republican senate, it might not be enough for a few reasons. 

As a law graduate I have to believe in the process and the US has a larger process, as I see it the constitution sets a large protective fence around the nation of law setting and that is good, so as such the selection of any Supreme Court judge is a big thing, it will be a big thing for either side of the isle and it is the right for the Republicans to select one (for now) and if the US senate confirms the choice, it will be a one deal.

When we see “When a vacancy occurs, the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints a new justice”, why does anyone assume that the presently elected president would not try to select a Supreme? It is one of the greatest things any president gets to do. So for the Democrats it kind of sicks that the timing is off, but that does not matter, there is a vacancy, and this president gets to nominate the next one.

And before we give rise to the ones making noise on the fairness of it. Consider the this president got elected by the 55% the voted, if Demo(c)rats are so about the issue, remember, 45% could not be bothered getting out of bed to vote. That sucks doesn’t it?

So as we are confronted with the choices of people, we need to accept the we might not agree with all, but we accept the they have a right to chose. I might not agree with George Takei all the time, but his choices tend to be intelligent, as such I will take notice. So whilst we see all kinds of flames are started on Twitter and Facebook, we have to consider to reset a lot of them (99%) from the get go and learn what is involved with certain choices and nominations. Who of you knew of the hearings? Who knew that a nomination requires a majority approval? Who knew that the last one elected (also by President Trump) got there after a grilling that took 48 hours and well over 1250 questions. As such there is a stage we need to consider, if the last two were not bad choices (Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh), why is there so much opposition? We all accept that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an amazing judge and filling those shoes will be a hard task, but the rules of the game (the constitution) are clear, There is a vacancy and a nomination can be put forward, the vacancy happened in the age of President Trump and unless there is actual evidence that the previous two were wrong choices, we get to blame the US senate, I merely wonder who dug through those 1250 questions and came optionally to the conclusion of wrongful election?  

I made a choice, George Takei made a choice, Senator Gardner made a choice, the US Senate made its choice and President Trump made a choice. I am not wise enough to proclaim who was wrong, optionally none were. Could you be wrong?

This is the beauty of subjectivity, it is our right, it is the right of most people living in a free democratic world.

 

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September 11, 2020 · 20:21

The shores I see from here

OK, I am not beating around the bush, I have given my point of view on several matters and I have always stated that I have always been driven by evidence. As such I have opposed the views of Agnes Calamard, not for Saudi Arabia, but because of the debatability of the evidence, so as we now see ‘Trump boasted he protected MBS after Khashoggi hit: Report’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/trump-boasted-protected-mbs-khashoggi-hit-report-200910195007682.html), all whilst there is no actual evidence of the hit. Now, I get it, I understand that you would doubt me, I would doubt me as well, but perhaps the following will convince you. When we see the quote “Trump bragged that he protected the Saudi crown prince from consequences in the United States after the assassination of Khashoggi in October 2018, the news outlet Business Insider reported on Thursday. “I saved his a**,” President Trump said about the US outcry about Khashoggi’s killing, according to Business Insider, quoting from a copy  of Woodward’s book. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to  stop,” Trump said.” What do we see? Basically, the only action we see is ‘I was able to get Congress to leave him alone’, my question becomes, what evidence is there for congress to rattle Saudi Arabia with? When we re-open the report I spoke about yesterday we see at [6] “the Special Rapporteur was not provided with any information regarding the evidence they may have collected during this period.” Which is funny when we see at [8] “The Special Rapporteur found credible evidence pointing to the crime scenes having been thoroughly, even forensically, cleaned”, here we get the issue, they claim guilt on the setting that the room was clean, it is like you getting found guilty of killing your mom and dad because the house does not contain evidence of their death. OK, a small exaggeration, I get that, but the finding of guilt due to no evidence is the setting and she was kind enough to create doubt by ‘found credible evidence pointing to’, so the stage of ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ is avoided, added to the facts that there was no credible evidence that any order was ever given to kill Khashoggi and the Crown prince was roughly 12,756,587 meters away from the crime scene. Yup, that evidence is so overwhelming isn’t it? So how come this US president is that stupid to alienate his allies? And that is merely the beginning. As we are given “US and other foreign intelligence services have reportedly concluded that MBS directed the killing” we are drawn to the report that gives us at [39] “At some point, there comes a time when an intelligence service or operative simply has to make a stab at assimilating what all this means. There is rarely space for scrutiny from anyone outside the intelligence system”, which is interesting against the ‘concluded’ part earlier when it is about “make a stab at assimilating what all this means”, which is not evidence and is nowhere near ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’, did anyone consider this? The report has plenty of issues that could be speculative gems of fingering any party as guilty, but is that what a murder investigation is supposed to be about? And in this mess we see ‘Trump boasted he protected’? What is this, an episode of Comedy Capers? And the article goes on giving us “Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a team of Saudi agents while his fiancee waited for him outside the consulate building”, all whilst there was no evidence retrieved in any way that there was a killing and there was no evidence on dismembering, it is all speculation.

You see the claim of dismemberment implies that there is a body, there is forensic evidence and that is disputed in the report starting at [8], it is not about what might have happened, it is about what can be proven and there is no evidence, there is merely speculation through the expensive words like ‘credible evidence’ and ‘may have been collected’, the lack of ‘evidence that can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt’ and ‘collected evidence’ is missing making the issue moot and it makes the statement by President Trump one of the least intelligent boasts that any US president has ever made. But there is an upside, I needed EU 324,000,000 for a project, so I am willing and willing to offer myself as an in-between to other arms dealers to set up office with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as such I would be willing to find another party to offer the “$8bn in precision-guided missiles and other high-tech weapons”, let’s face it, fair is fair, right? Boasts on one side (especially those linked to a lack of evidence) should be countered by economic deals to other parties on the other side. That is what Wall Street taught us all and we are all willing to learn (especially when we earn a few coins), so that is that state of matters and I will be taking calls from the BAE as per direct. Raytheon eat your heart out!

Suddenly the shores I see from here don’t look so bad, what should I do, play hard to get? I think not!

 

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September 8, 2020 · 18:01

What are we fighting for?

It is a question we get to ask ourselves a lot, especially when we are serving. I served but was not confronted with that question, yet the line came to me in the Paul Newman movie ‘The Secret War of Harry Frigg’ which was a hilarious comedy and it introduced us to Sylva Koscina. The movie is not the issue here at present, but the line is. When the papers give us ‘US veterans and soldiers divided over Trump calling war dead ‘suckers’’, a setting that gives us “Donald Trump was struggling to retain support of active US service members, according to polls, even before last week’s bombshell report that the commander-in-chief referred to fallen and captured US service members as “losers” and “suckers””, I wonder how delusional he was when he gave us what he gave us. This is not some typo in the stream cast, it was a massive blunder, one that should never have happened. No matter how we see the wars that the US got themselves into, I a setting where almost 1.4 million people lost their lives going back to the Civil War, and in this, I estimate that roughly somewhere between 30-70 million people have a family member who lost their life in one of the wars that the US was a part of. So we have up to 70 million people that are in a rather large stage where the Commander in Chief of the US calls the people who died for their country ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’, so from my point of view that is a setting where the bulk of those people will not vote in whatever is in the White House at this time, and he only has himself to thank for that. Or as some will say, he got himself properly fired on that one.

And the news is not over, we see dozens of news media giving us denials, and fallout of the setting and there is more and more coming and all this 7 weeks before the election. As some see it, for Joe Biden Christmas came early, anyone who was on the fence on how to vote, with relatives who served in any US war, they are now going (more likely than not) Democrat, those who were deeply Republican are more likely than not on the fence, especially is they have relatives who served. If we go by the previous election with 128,000,000 voters, there is now a chance that from those, between 20%-40% is optionally not voting Republican, implying that the vote is more likely than not going to Joe Biden. 

It is not a given, I need to tell you that from the start, but his actions against the coloured (see any Black Lives Matter stage), the women (the ‘I grabbed her by the pussy’ statement), his attacks on Kamala Harris, now we get the Military statement, it adds up, it is slightly speculative, but except for the Klan and the ultra right, he basically upset every demographic possible. This relates to votes and all the votes voting ‘the other guy’ instead of him. I myself am for the most Republican in nature, but his setting is just too unacceptable to me and it has been so for well over 3 years. To be honest, I did not chose Hilary Clinton for the simple reason that she made a mess of Benghazi, it is the only reason why I did not select her (OK, she is not a republican, which was my my second reason). We have a setting that we have a liking for a side and I am not against Democrats, I am against the way they push certain matters. Let’s not forget that both sides did way too little in the tax laws setting, which is a first that needs fixing and after 4 terms, we need to fix it. I am not sure which sides picks it up, but big tech is much deeper in the Democratic pockets, as such less will be done in that setting. 

And this is not the end, this administration has made a massive mess of high tech and 5G, it gets to be a lot worse when we consider (2 weeks ago) ‘Europe’s 5G plans in limbo after latest salvo against Huawei’, and I believe that this is merely the start. We want to look at the headlines, but there is too much out there to support the stage that the media is being talked to by other parties. 

In all we speculate left, right and centre, yet the stage is not a given. Nokia is shouting on 5G New Radio, yet the stage that ZDNet gives us is “Standards for the first and second phases of 5G are moving towards completion, and early deployments can piggy-back on 4G LTE infrastructure. But there’s plenty of work to do before the technical advances in 5G’s radio spec can support new use cases”, as I personally see it, this is merely 4GLTE++, not 5G, and that is the larger stage, tomorrow Nokia is not even on par with today Huawei and the media is seemingly avoiding that issue. So as we get “If mobile technology were a long-running TV series, 5G is a mid-season reboot, with new characters introduced alongside the old, new plot arcs complementing existing storylines, and a publicity drive that rather overstates the case. However, the possibilities for future development are much enhanced”, I am remembering Adler (the typewriter) once decided to go into the PC world, it was early days and the 80286 became affordable, so Adler decided to enter the market with a 80186 processor, it was not a win. Having 4G LTE++ is a temporary solution, but in the end to get ahead the people will need true 5G, just like some telecom companies making a marketing claim of 4G, whilst in 2010 they could offer no more than 3.5G, and we are now seeing it again, but on a much larger stage. So when the people finally figure out that what is now Nokia, they will be on the slippery slope of what they cannot ski, but others can and that has been the issue from day one. I have nothing against Nokia, I have nothing against the others, yet the issue was that Huawei has a massive advantage and the stage is being set by a bankrupt America, an America who is afraid of what they are about to lose and they are using whatever they can to stem the tide and as the stages are washing away we will be given less and less facts.  So what are we fighting for? I honestly do not know what they are fighting for all whilst their IP is debatable. So as I am weighing the options available to me, I wonder where my IP will end, to be honest, if the money is there, I do not care (Deep Rising). In my case it is not greed driven, it is a drive towards those relying on bullet point presentations and making sure they miss out, even if I miss out on a million or two. If it allows me my house in a nice warm place, I am fine, it is optionally a stage where I say no to 5 billion when 500 million will ample suffice, the bullet point people will never get it, when is enough enough? 

It comes with the answer to ‘What are we fighting for?’, merely a corner of my choice in a place of my choice. It is a simple setting and one that those who embrace ‘Greed is good’ can never understand, because that is their weakness, just like loss is the achilles heel of the greed driven and the corrupt. Until they face the ultimate loss (the loss of what they truly love) they will remain delusional on what they can make happen. Only when they face it will they finally wake up, but if all goes to plan, I will be long gone by then. 

We all fight for something, and we are entering the stage where the truth is what the powerful say it is, it is no longer set to scientific measures, it is set to subjective terms, and that slippery slope is sliding, so answer yourself, what are you fighting for?

 

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September 5, 2020 · 15:21

It was never about you

We get it, some players work on a multitude of levels. That is fine, but when a company makes hay through marketing that they are all about the consumers and we get ‘Apple delays new anti-tracking privacy measures’, we see how (what I regard to be) deceptive conduct is the alleged foundation between a company and a $2 trillion company. There is no upside for the consumer, there consumer was entitled to protection and we get “Apple said the changes were being delayed until the start of 2021 to give app developers and websites more time to adapt their services”, which makes us wonder why Apple designed the anti-tracking part in the first instance, a solution made and delayed to give trackers another way to do so, does that make sense?

So if it is a setting and we get “once the change is implemented in 2021, it will be off by default and advertisers will have to ask permission to access it”, at what stage is it in our interest to delay the change? I get it Apple needs a stream of incomes and my personal view there is one in betraying your customer base, that is the simple setting.

The other quote that matters is “Facebook has warned that Apple’s privacy plan could make one of its advertising tools “so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14””, which is fair enough, but I reckon that this will optionally cost Apple a few coins. The question becomes: what is the cut-off point and what is the trade off point for Apple and what ‘enhanced security’ will remain for the consumers? 

I reckon that there will be a massive decrease in free apps, it is mere speculation but yes, as mobile data becomes less available the pool for free apps and games will decrease. And let’s be fair, these companies did nothing illegal, but in the end, remember it is not about you, it is about the money you bring in and when was the last time you got that advertisement properly handed to you?

And in this it is Apple who states ‘Think different’, which is what we are doing, we want to see what deals Apple is making with the advertisers, which is NOT illegal lets be upfront about it. As such when we see “It is a world of consumers only”, “The market stands on the shoulders of consumers”, “A life of consumerism revolves around all that you want” and “Markets are built as per the taste of consumers”. We are getting misinformed, the world today is monetary based, so it becomes about the enablers and actively those who push it. That realisation is key in today’s world, the temporary setting of consumers is yesterday’s news and we only move forward when we learn that lesson, until then we are marketing tools and spending fools (an exaggeration I agree). To get ahead of the game we need to accept that marketing will happen, data captures will happen, but we also need to agree that our data is not a third party tool to be handed around the campfire. We might have woken up in the age of Cambridge Analytica, but this stage was not new. A Dutch entrepreneur and politician named Luc Sala already gave visibility to this setting 25 years ago, I was not the first (and I never made that claim). So as the haves and have not people are being segregated, we see a new form of discrimination, not on sex, religion or colour, but on the setting and longevity of your bank card (and the Credit Rating connected to this). Not your credit card, debt is not the equaliser, it is a timeline of how long you can service the organisation that wants you to service them. It is the power of the bank card that makes you a ‘Have’ in their eyes and that is where all the data is priming towards, because the firm who has the data most complete to distinguish the ‘Have’ people, that will be the winner and the US has been in the running the longest and now that China is surpassing them, now they cry in every direction, but as the remarked the ‘status’ of their reason for crying, we merely see the BS that they hide behind, just like Colin Powell and his silver briefcase (Iraq anyone?).

And the US has another problem, the stage was partially going smooth that is until the 45th President made a mess of the entire setting and the entire playing field, not only did he set the stage to a visible perspective, in his utter lack of intelligence he set the stage on ‘national security’ and ‘China’ whilst the evidence would not support it and as this is getting more and more visibility, Huawei is gaining momentum outside of the US and considering that there are less than 350 million Americans, and a growing customer base outside the US surpassing billions of ‘have targets’, that is the stage where the US is losing grip, that is where a lot of the Have’s are. And the stage to find them will soon change, the stage will be about uniting those who have and in this the US is behind, and the lag is increasing. 

There is no stage to make any kind of a reliable prediction who will win, but as far as I can tell, it will not be the US. The stage in the EU is still fluid, several banks were in the running. I first took notice of Credit Agricole in 2018 in that regard. The quote “Acting within the framework of a regulated activity, we offer you and provide products and services requiring the collection and use, as data controller, of the personal data of individuals related to you (for example: employees, shareholders, agents, legal representatives, beneficial owners, family members, third-party representatives, etc.) (the “Data Subjects”)” is set to a larger stage and it is important to realise that Credit Agricole never did anything illegal or against the European GDPR. Yet I took notice of ‘the personal data of individuals related to you’ and I found a little more than bargained for. So when we realise that there is more to life than being identified as a consumer and that the truth, but did you consider that you are optionally set to a different spectrum?

 

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August 11, 2020 · 01:21

The 51st State

Consider that the US just grew a little, it seems that Canada has become the 51st state, Governor of that state is Justin Trudeau, that is until President Trump decides that he is not allegiant enough. How did I get here? A few sources are giving us ‘US court issues summons for Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman’, under normal circumstances there wouldn’t be a big thing. Yet consider the events, an exiled person moves to Canada, when we are confronted with “Mohammed bin Salman attempted to send Tiger Squad to Canada to assassinate al-Jabri, according to a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in August 2020”, so a person went in exile in Canada and now relies on US jurisprudence? And if you are in doubt, the other element is (rephrased) “allegedly attempted to send a Tiger Squad to Canada to allegedly assassinate al-Jabri”, so in the first it was an alleged attempt, in that case where is the evidence of the alleged attempt? What evidence is there to assassinate al-Jabri? Beyond that, why is this case not heard in Canada? In the second, it is my personal belief that Saad al-Jabri needs to get evicted from Canada into America, he is so sure of their legal system. And of course there is the stage where we need to investigate on why an optional case of alleged events in another country are being heard in America, is that not a question that baffles you too?

And it does not end there, the only additional information is given by Gulf News. I am making mention of it as I cannot vouch for the information. I am not willing to use merely one source because it fits my speculation better. Gulf News (at https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/report-fugitive-saudi-official-misspent-11b-in-government-funds-1.72662340) gives us ‘Fugitive Saudi official misspent $11b in government funds’, and lets face it, if I walked away with $11,000,000,000 I would move to Canada, buy the Edmonton Oilers, or the Calgary Flames, buy a nice mansion in either city, train to be their goalie and live the life until I die. It is a plan, not a plan everyone will embrace, but I like that plan, especially if I have that much money. Oh, and the quote gives is “Al Jabri, a 61-year-old with a doctorate in computer science, was the virtual No 2 in the Saudi Interior Ministry, which was run for years by Mohammed bin Nayef. Al Jabri ran a special ministry fund that mixed government spending on high-priority antiterrorism efforts with bonuses for himself and others, according to documents reviewed bio y the Journal and interviews with Saudi officials and Al Jabri’s confidants,” the WSJ report read”. In all this and in fact of tha accusation of corruption and through that (as well as) “spending on high-priority antiterrorism efforts with bonuses for himself and others”, who else was paid? So in this, how much investigation was done by the FBI, for did they allegedly acquire enough self-funding to be above the law? I am merely asking!

So in this universe where Canada is the 51st state of the US, and as we see a quote by the Wall Street Journal, how much investigation did the US do? How much investigation did the Canadians do? The are mere questions but they matter, even as the newspapers on both countries are all about “A former top-ranking Saudi intelligence official living in exile in Canada alleged in a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a team to kill him in 2018 but the effort was foiled by Canadian authorities” if those are the facts, what investigation was done by the Canadians? Consider that I would be angry when someone steals $1,000,000 from me (an amount I do not own mind you), so an amount that is 11,000 times higher will get the blood boiling in many persons. So in all this, the entire matter does not make sense, Oh I get the need to add $11 billion to my bank account, that makes sense, although I would hope to use my own IP to get there, then there is the stage where I doubt that it was about ‘assassination’ I reckon the Saudi’s want their money back, so there would be a stage of alleged kidnapping, not assassination. And lastly, I reckon that the US would love Saad al-Jabri to move to the US so he can spend $11 billion (minus addition taxation) freely in the US and the US is so bankrupt, they are willing to set the legal stage in their nation, a nation of laws they will claim. 

Yes it is a brand new day as we see the optional stage of laws to whitewash money that was not the property of the person white washing it. It is my point of view and some will claim that it is not a valid one, but consider, how many papers set the stage of making the money link in all this? That is the $11 billion dollar question of the day, have a great one!

 

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July 11, 2020 · 03:08

The image we are offered

Yup, it happens, we all have an image of a person. Not in any good or bad way, just an image of how we have seen him the most. In my case, this reflects on Eminem. The rapper has been part of my music appreciation life for around two decades. It started with the Marshall Mathers LP, which I bought because I liked the song Stan. The album brought a lot more than merely one song, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t get parts of it, I am not an American, the issues he sings about are issues I never witnessed or faced. I bought 4 albums and over the years I lost sight of his music. Not intentional, the world is filled with music and I try to learn as much as I can. So when I saw him looking like a F1 racer with beard and all, I took a step back. As I took note of ‘Eminem criticises non-mask wearers on new rap track’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/10/eminem-criticises-non-mask-wearers-on-new-rap-track-kid-cudi-covid-19) I learned of “Eminem has entered the debate about face masks in a collaboration with Kid Cudi, tackling an issue that is the subject of fierce disagreement in the US and UK”, and the lyrics are set to the spice of Eminem (read: less subtle in bringing the message) and as we see ““Bunch of halfwits up in office. Half of us walking around like a zombie apocalypse. Other half are just pissed off and don’t want to wear a mask and they’re just scoffin’. And that’s how you end up catchin’ the shit off ’em. I just used the same basket as you shoppin’, now I’m in a fuckin’ casket from you coughin’.”” Is the direct approach. They are not wrong, but the fact that this situation has been brought to rap and the Guardian voices that in another way by stating “Eminem’s lines are a long way from any that the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, would ever use but they articulate similar sentiments.” It is a global scene and in light of 200+ doctors now giving nice to the fact that Covid-19 is airborne sheds a different light on the matter. We see politicians making light (to some extent) of the situation, yet the story does not reflect the death toll. And team Eminem-Kid Cudi are alerting us to a much harder reality. So whilst we see a correlation between US and UK politics, we get to see  “Downing Street has faced questions about why more cabinet ministers are not wearing masks. There have been no public sightings of Boris Johnson wearing a face covering, while the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was pictured serving food to customers at Wagamama with nothing on his face but a grin.” If presentation is key in issues, we see the failing of politicians to a much larger degree and when the population starts taking heed of team Eminem-Kid Cudi whilst removing politicians from the circle of trust and belief, we could state that the shit has truly hit the fan. 

I applaud the move that these two have made, social awareness tends to be more easily embraced through music and the issue is important. And when we see the claims some people have made, it matters.

The first is ““The United States has done far more ‘testing’ than any other nation, by far!” Mr Trump said this on 25 March, when the latest official data showed that a total of 418,810 people had been tested in the US.” 418K over a population of 235,000,000? That is a little less than 0.1%, all whilst South Korea tested 0.7% of the entire population, as such South Korea exceeded testing by 700%, not a proud moment for the White House. 

The second one is important: “Mr Trump said he thought the true death rate, based on “my hunch”, was “way under 1%”.” That in a stage where 25% of all reported cases are in the US, whilst 136,000 people in the US died, a non-living rate of well over 4%, in this the White House was wrong by well over 400%, as such the numbers matter and as such the album, The Adventures of Moon Man and Slim Shady, will matter as well. We can throw numbers at you all night long, but the reality is that we need to take notice and we need to take action. And should you disagree then I say fine, do that, and if you die my value merely increases. We can go that way too, so in light of the stage where the words of a rapper actually have direct global meaning, we need to take notice of the casual approach that politicians have shown to have. 

This is not about bashing President Trump (a mere added bonus), the global political stage is weird and irresponsible as to how they perceive the state of the global stage to be, the fact that all these political ‘heavyweights’ are shown to be largely inferior to the Prime Minister of New Zealand (Jacinda Arden), a (rather small) nation that according to the Facebook Image is not linked to the rest of the world, should shows us all just how serious matters have become. 

We have ignored at the impressions of some people, whilst the stage was serious, it was deadly and that needs to be reflected, again and again like it is a lesson from the Teletubbies, as I personally see it team Eminem-Kid Cudi might optionally be a little late, but they are there a lot faster than some of these so called ‘serious politicians’, we the people have a problem and we need to realise it a lot faster than we are, our lives actually depend on it at present.

 

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June 9, 2020 · 21:11

Paranoia vs Delusions vs Megalomania

We all have that situation, Am I paranoid? Am I delusional? Is it me? We see these parts in ourselves, at least most balanced people have that side in them, it is part of the checks and balances we build within ourselves. So, when we see the BBC article only 10 hours ago stating ‘Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier’ we need to take a long hard look at the matters that play. TheBBC makes the endgame clear (just to cover themselves) with “The study has not been peer-reviewed”, yet that is merely the part that matters the least. A number of serious questions and levels of scrutiny are required on both Harvard University as well as Dr John Brownstein. Now, I am not stating that the study is wrong, I have not read it, as such I am in no state to comment on it, but I do have thoughts. The first is all that satellite traffic. We might throw that thought away, but I have other issues. For that we need to go back to 2013 (March and August) at that point we had issues with Chemical attacks in Syria and no one knew anything, not even the Americans, so they cannot identify a mass extinction event with Sarin, but they can give a larger view on the flu? Consider the idea that the US has been actively PROTECTING the user of a chemical attack, did you consider that? I had that thought the day it happened, but they all hid behind “The UN mission found the likely use of the nerve agent Sarin”, in all this we accept ’likely’? In that stage we now see all kinds of speculation by people a lot will not care about and I am the delusional one? Added to that the online surges? So what data is used, where did the data come from? Added to all this is the stage of the way it is presented, and linked to all this is data that requires a lot of scrutiny. Consider that someone makes a paper like this whilst we also see “But if the infection was present – undetected perhaps – some people could have been leaving Wuhan” all linked to people searching for flu symptoms? And someone made a paper out of that? 

I reckon it is time to massively scrutinize EVERYTHING coming from the US, yet too many listen to the words from Wall Street and they need a scapegoat or all these losses, all whilst we see that the lack of resources is the number two bad boy. 

Is China innocent?

I do not know that, and to be honest, I do not care. They had the Swine flu over there and a few other issues, yet it is and has always been clear that Wuhan was the start. The fact that the flu went to so many places left me puzzled from the beginning. I admit that I know nothing of Wuhan, as such I have no idea how much international traffic it sees, yet in february there was a clear picture and even then it took the media 10 days to give a clear Pandemic message, even though I had clearly shown that the dictionary meaning of Pandemic had already been passed and the global governments did close to nothing, their economies would not let them and now they are crying like little girls. All starting their own blame game. So whilst we are all looking at China (which partially makes sense) no one is wondering how governments and the people reacted when the WHO gave us all on January 30th “A Public Health Emergency of Global Concern”, yet what did the governments do? They underestimated the issue again and again and we see very little of that, do we? In this the South China Morning Post gave  “that China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17th”, we can set the stage that there was an issue earlier, but there is also the stage of identifying the disease and in all that the larger issues is not blaming China, as I personally see it the lack of actions by governments on a global scale is a much larger issue, with the winner being President Trump making wild claims going back to March 2020, instead of closing the borders he let it all happen and now we see that the US has an optionally underreported number of almost 2 million cases infected whilst over 111,000 people died of the virus, 111,000 people that died of the flu. In all that less than 50% in the US are registered recovered cases. I reckon that this so called paper on a virus with wild statements like “they could not always compare satellite images taken on the same day in consecutive years due to cloud cover in some of the photo’s”, as I would like to call attention to the 2013 fiasco where implied wind and optionally dust too prevented the Intelligence agencies of seeing what was happening, it made all the difference to the dead people. 

 

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May 31, 2020 · 21:49

Not the Country

Yes the day is growing dimmer and here I am daydreaming towards June 1st, the first day of winter in Australia. Yes, here we are considering the cold and in that stage the news made me rewatch Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Brazil. Thank god for Bluray at times. I saw the initial release in the cinema 35 years ago, it was an amazing piece of work and it adds up, it was never judged ‘relevant’ in the US, yet 20 years later it was as a cult movie judged as the 54th greatest British film of all time. In 2017 Time Out magazine saw it ranked as the 24th best British films ever. I always wondered how Robert DeNiro saw his role in this work. Yet let’s get back to the beginning where the bulk (mostly Americans)saw it as a not to be considered as a relevant piece of work and that is where we get to today’s BBC who gives us ‘Microsoft to replace journalists with robots’ , in light there we see “I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs – now it’s taken mine” yet the cornerstone here is that AI actually does not (yet) exist. We (experts too) seem to rely on the setting that AI is the field where “machines mimic cognitive functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as learning and ‘problem solving”, they currently cant, they merely follow a guidance path to make decisions yet new materials are not learned, it is added in scripts and data. New decision data is not added by the computer, it takes human interference, which means that any reference missed will be a larger failing in the AI and this is merely the beginning. The problem here is that the decision makers wont make any as such the AI field will be falling to a much larger degree. 

And now we see that Microsoft is relying on a field that does not really exist. The problem is not the delusion we observe, the problem is that they set a stage of optional scripting and machine learning as the default towards what is AI and AI is actually a lot larger. As such they will miss opportunity after opportunity, optionally we might see that the Toyota Isis, a large seven seater CVT automatic will not be found on Bing as it is terrorist equipment. And that is when we look at it with the funny glasses. The real danger is misalignment of different information, and that is merely a first. McKinsey and Company gave us in 2018 issues like: ‘Economies stand to benefit AI, through increased productivity and innovation’, so whose innovation? Which increased productivity? Is reality part of that situation? McKinsey (and company) seem to paint it as “Even in the near term, productivity growth has been sluggish in developed economies, dropping to an average of 0.5% in 2010-2014 from 2.4% a decade earlier in theUS and major European economies. Much like previous general-purpose technologies, AI has the potential to contribute to productivity growth” How exactly?  We see some conceptual babble, yet the direct impact is not there. Will shoes be sold quicker? Will there be more laptops sold? Not really, the consumers are not there, as such it is a machine that services no one. And since October 2018 there has not been much change. The difference between expected and factual is not a small leap, it is the size of the Grand Canyon. 

The promise of something that represents AI is still years away, but Microsoft is already laying off its journalists. I wonder whether this is about AI or about the setting of what some should not be doing. Just like President Trump who states that the WHO is no longer to be paid for all kinds of reasons, yet might it be possible that the US cannot pay the bill? It is merely $25,000,000,000,000 in debt. And that was before the riots and all these companies folding. Even now that the G7is seen as ‘outdated’ and other invitations are handed out, the stage is not the G7, the stage is that this would be about results and the new invitations will make the meeting, an expensive meeting about meeting and greeting larger economies and ‘their’ face value. So whilst we see the G7, the G8, the G20 and all these meetings, none of them are about stopping the US (and Japanese) debt. In all this, the people in the movie Brazil are getting the better deal here. We are heading to a cliff and there is no coming back from that. The Fiscal cliff that is and as we relabel things and call them other things and waste meeting after meeting on how to call things, things are not getting solved. I wonder if Russia, China and India are in similar stages. In all this there is a much larger game in play. It is a stage where I do not feel like Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) fighting a machine, I am nothing more than Mr. Archibald Buttle (Brian Miller) getting thrown from system to system on a mere typo, and that was without the AI that some call AI and is not AI, I reckon things will go increasingly worse for some soon enough. In this I wonder if the US will be around to see it happen, the riots are pretty interesting, the fact that the US police officers are holding international journalists at gunpoint is a first indicator that their centre is rather unlikely to hold. If you want to see just how weird the world could become, watch Brazil and see just how amazing this piece of work is, and lets not forget, this movie was made in 1985, 35 years before the insanity truck was driving around.

 

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