Tag Archives: the Guardian

September 19, 2019 · 12:22

Listen to Caesar

There is a lesson I learned a long time ago, the lesson was given in 59BC, the importance of the installation of defences against enemy retaliations. A lesson 2,000 years old and now we see that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not ready. We can argue how ready they were supposed to be, but the stage is clear, with the attacks by Iran, we see the beginning of an open war with Iran and Iran must be destroyed, we have no other option in this, they played the same game for too long and we have facilitated long enough.

There is an additional benefit for many in the west as well, as we are getting drowned by Corporatocracy, Caesarism opposes that and nullifies it to a larger extent and that is OK too. These corporations will get a direct impact on their bottom line towards government policy facilitation and the impact it has when an actual war is added to the mix.

The problem has become too large to ignore and even when we see people like President Trump shout (read: tweet) loudly, there are no actions, bankruptcy tends to do that, yet we can wage war on Iran. If we get Israel and Saudi Arabia on the path to attack, we will be almost there. Yes, we will get figureheads like Hassan Nasrallah make loud claims, yet like all those corporate types, he wants to shout, an actual full army carpet bombing them is not what he signed up for, he will want to hide behind any UN skirt hoping for talks, yet I think we can all agree that it is too late for that step.

Omar Lamrani, Stratfor’s golden boy (a strategic analysis firm) is correct, not only was the use and usefulness of drones underestimated, the fact that there was a 360 degree strategy in play, was equally not anticipated. For the longest time, there was a proxy stage in play, yet the timeline for Iran is ending, the nuclear treaty option they want to hide behind is falling apart in 40 days, 40 days is all they have left to play this game and without that treaty Europe and America will have to turn on Iran and that is what they still fear. As such a direct attack on Iran is what remains. Any person thinking that there is time for diplomacy is too delusional for words. All the papers are now on the stage where I was a week ago; my views have so far been close to 100% correct, in some cases a week ahead of several alphabet group players. I understand that the New York Times is still employing the stage of ‘Where the strikes originated remains unclear‘, I get that, but when we look at who could have done it and who don’t have the means and technology (optionally missing skill set too) at that point the list is reduced to one, Iran!

There is one part I had not considered earlier to the degree I see it, the New York Times gives us an indication of ‘Approx. orientation of impact points‘, it gives a larger credibility to my view of ‘painting the target‘, it implies that Iran had boots on the ground (read: tools in place) painting the target, most likely by laser giving the drone operators a clear target to head for, it gives a much larger credibility on the amount of drones, amount of hits and accuracy of hit targets.

In the Guardian article Becca Wasser, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation gives a good view too (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/19/how-did-attack-breach-saudi-defences-and-what-will-happen-next) the Saudi infrastructure that was perfectly workable in the past is to be considered a hindrance in this war stage. As the water and oil targets are shown to be visible targets the need for security changes for Saudi Arabia and as such the existence of Iran has become a clear and present danger to the world. The problem in all this is the question becomes: ‘Who is willing to stand with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?‘

I personally am sick of this Iranian bully, I am unwilling to facilitate to a bully, I never was willing to do that. In this case we agree with the stage of ‘a limited military response, delicately calibrated to deter Iran from raising the bar again without sparking an all-out conflict‘, yet the size of the stage is another matter, I would want to hit several oil fields in Iran, in my view the tactical attacks should include Gachasaran and Yadavaran. If the hits are precise and strong enough the Iranian economy would get a larger hit than they are ready for, more important, any loud noises and threats would give rise to making additional hits at Pars, with Yadavaran phases 2 and 3 out of commission for another 2 years will tighten the economic bolts for Iran considerably. I would hope to test and tinker my solution to sink the Iranian fleet (because I have a sense of humour), yet in all this I believe the message that we have had enough of Iran is clear.

Even now as we see that the EU members are holding off on blaming Iran of all this, all whilst the missiles and sophistication gives rise that they are the only remaining optional culprit (well, the EU could have done it, they do have the technology), we need to act. We see that EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini used the situation to create a photo op with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, yet I think it is too late for photo ops, do you not agree with that point of view?

I find the political position understandable, yet hypocrite, MI6, GCHQ, DGSE and a few other players have the intelligence that gives clear rise that Iran is the only remaining player, until last week there was room for doubt, the last attack was too complete and too high tech for Yemen or most other players and it is time to do something. Even as we agree with the quote: “Col. Turki al-Maliki told a news conference the Houthis were merely “covering up” for Iran by claiming responsibility“, we need to see this as a moment to act against Iran. and yes, we can the smallest degree agree with: “Saudi Arabia knows nothing about where the missiles and drones were made or launched from and failed to explain why the country’s defense system failed to intercept them“, indeed we do not know where they launched from, yet we do know who they were launched by, they were launched by Iran, or by direct guidance from Iran, it squarely puts the blame on Iran and that is where we see that Hesameddin Ashena, an advisor to President Hassan Rouhani is slightly too stupid for his own good.

I am merely baffled on just how desperate the EU is to give this much intentional leeway to Iran. Even now, merely 11 hours ago we see: ‘Belgium joins EU mechanism to trade with Iran‘, so even after the accusations without evidence against Saudi Arabia on the Jamal Khashoggi casse, we see ignorance and facilitation towards Iran with evidence, and if you wonder why politicians have less credibility than several drug dealers, here is the reason and the premise of that lost credibility.

There will be additional escalations over the coming week, yet I am not hopeful that the EU and US will find the courage to keep their word and deal with Iran, it is most likely to become a flaccid watered down response to a case that should never have been able to remain in play for this long in the first place. Even now we see the additional push from Germany to return to the nuclear deal table, the EU is that desperate to ignore facts and hide behind fairy tales. I wonder who the EU will blame when the first Iranian nuke is ready to be launched against Israel, how quickly some peace treaty will be stamped out and no one will deal with Iran. There is an 83% likelihood that such a nuclear event will end up getting labelled as ‘an unfortunate collateral event on Israeli soil’, exactly how long will such levels of danger be allowed to continue?

In addition, the tactical stage was used by Russia less than 24 hours ago through ‘the Saudis Should Buy Russian Air Defense Systems After Drone Attack‘, I wonder if that is so, there is a clear case that the current stage did not work as the premise of the current systems are not ready for drones, I wonder if the Chinese solution would work. I actually do not know, what is clear is that everyone is hiding behind every piece of useless data so that they can ignore the actual claim: ‘Iran has instigated an act of war!‘, it is a larger stage and in all this we need to accept that war is knocking on the front door of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the politicians on a global scale need to be held to account for what happens next and more important, they need to be held publicly to account for their inaction. I personally see it as a group of people who would have taken any turn to facilitate towards talks with Nazi Germany in 1939, I wonder if they realise themselves just how stupid their point of view is, the old accepted point of view: ‘If the answer does not match the policy, change the question to make it match‘, might be partially optional in market research, in policy that are directly linked to war it is another matter entirely.

The next week will be interesting in several ways and when oil prices rise another 10%-20%, remember, your inaction (read: the inaction from your politicians) created that problem.

 

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September 18, 2019 · 11:06

The Lie of AI

The UK home office has just announced plans to protect paedophiles for well over a decade and they are paying millions to make it happen. Are you offended yet? You should be. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/home-office-artificial-intelligence-ai-dark-web-child-sexual-exploitation) is giving you that, yet you do not realise that they are doing that. The first part is ‘Money will go towards testing tools including voice analysis on child abuse image database‘, the second part is “Artificial intelligence could be used to help catch paedophiles operating on the dark web, the Home Office has announced” these two are the guiding part in this, and you did not even know it. To be able to understand this there are two parts. The first is an excellent article in the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science), the second part is: ‘AI does not exist!‘

Important fact is that AI will become a reality at some point, in perhaps a decade, yet the two elements making AI essential have not been completed. The first is quantum computing, IBM is working on it, and they admit: “For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don’t have enough computational power on Earth to tackle them.” This is true enough and fair enough. They also give us: “it was only a few decades ago that quantum computing was a purely theoretical subject“. Two years ago (yes only two years ago) IBM gives us a new state, a new stage in quantum computing where we see a “necessary brick in the foundation of quantum computing. The formula stands apart because unlike Shor’s algorithm, it proves that a quantum computer can always solve certain problems in a fixed number of steps, no matter the increased input. While on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases” This is the first true step towards creating AI, as what you think is AI grows, the data alone creates an increased number of steps down the line, coherency and comprehension become floating and flexible terms, whilst comprehension is not flexible, comprehension is a set stage, without ‘Quantum Advantage with Shallow Circuits‘ it basically cannot exist. In addition, this year we get the IBM Q System One, the world’s first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use, we could state this is the first true innovative computer acceleration in decades and it has arrived in a first version, yet there is something missing and we get to stage two later.

Now we get to the Verge.

‘The State of AI in 2019‘ published in January this year gives us the goods, and it is an amazing article to read. The first truth is “the phrase “artificial intelligence” is unquestionably, undoubtedly misused, the technology is doing more than ever — for both good and bad“, the media is all about hype and the added stupidity given to us by politicians connected the worst of both worlds, they are clueless and they are trying being dumb and clueless on the worst group of people, the paedophiles and they are paying millions to do what is cannot accomplish at present.

Consider a computer or a terminator super smart, like in the movies and consider “a sci-vision of a conscious computer many times smarter than a human. Experts refer to this specific instance of AI as artificial general intelligence, and if we do ever create something like this, it’ll likely to be a long way in the future” and that is the direct situation, yet there is more.

The quote “Talk about “machine learning” rather than AI. This is a subfield of artificial intelligence, and one that encompasses pretty much all the methods having the biggest impact on the world right now (including what’s called deep learning)” is very much at the core of it all, and it exists and it is valid and it is the point of set happening, yet without quantum computing we are confronted with the earlier stage ‘on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases‘, so now all that data delays and delays and stops progress, this is the stage that is a direct issue, then we also need to consider “you want to create a program that can recognize cats. You could try and do this the old-fashioned way by programming in explicit rules like “cats have pointy ears” and “cats are furry.” But what would the program do when you show it a picture of a tiger? Programming in every rule needed would be time-consuming, and you’d have to define all sorts of difficult concepts along the way, like “furriness” and “pointiness.” Better to let the machine teach itself. So you give it a huge collection of cat photos, and it looks through those to find its own patterns in what it sees” This learning stage takes time, yet down the track it becomes awfully decent in recognising what a cat is and what is not a cat. That takes time, yet the difference is that we are seeking paedophiles, so that same algorithm is used not to find a cat, but to find a very specific cat. Yet we cannot tell it the colour of its pelt (because we do not know), we cannot tell the size, shape or age of that specific cat. Now you see the direct impact of how delusional the idea form the Home Office is. Indirectly we also get the larger flaw. Learning for computers comes in a direct version and an indirect version and we can both put it in the same book: Programming for Dummies! You see, we feed the computer facts, but as it is unable to distinguish true facts from false facts we see a larger failing, the computer might start to look in the wrong direction, pointing out the wrong cat, making the police chase and grab the wrong cat and when that happens, the real paedophile had already hidden itself again. Deep Learning can raise flags all over the place and it will do a lot of good, but in the end, a system like that will be horribly expensive and paying 100 police officers for 20 years to hunt paedophiles might cost the same and will yield better results.

All that is contained in the quote: “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking, and that means your algorithm could be performing well for the wrong reasons” more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree.

The article ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” which is true and more important, it is not AI, the fact that we were not really informed about, there is not AI at present, not for some time to come and it makes us wonder on the Guardian headline ‘Home Office to fund use of AI to help catch dark web paedophiles‘, how much funds and the term ‘use of AI‘ requires it to exist, which it does not.

The second missing item.

You think that I was kidding, but I was not, even as the Quantum phase is seemingly here, its upgrade does not exist yet and that is where true AI becomes an optional futuristic reality. This stage is called the Majorana particle, it is a particle that is both matter and antimatter (the ability to be both positive and negative), and one of the leading scientists in this field is Dutch Physicist Leo Kouwenhoven. Once his particle becomes a reality in quantum computing, we get a new stage of shallow circuits, we get a stage where fake news, real news, positives and false positives are treated in the same breath and the AI can distinguish between them. That stage is decades away. At that point the paedophile can create whatever paper trail he likes; the AI will be worse than the most ferocious bloodhound imaginable and will see the fake trails faster than a paedophile can create it. It will merely get the little pervert caught faster.

The problem is that this is decades away, so someone should really get some clarification from the Home Office on how AI will help, because there is no way that it will actually do so before the government budget of 2030. What will we do in the meantime and what funds were spend to get nothing done? When we see: “pledged to spend more money on the child abuse image database, which since 2014 has allowed police and other law enforcement agencies to search seized computers and other devices for indecent images of children quickly, against a record of 14m images, to help identify victims“, in this we also get “used to trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation to see whether they would help track down child abusers“, so when we see ‘whether they would help‘, we see a shallow case, so shallow that the article in the Verge well over half a year ago should indicate that this is all water down the drain. And the amount (according to Sajid Javid) is set to “£30m would be set aside to tackle online child sexual exploitation“, I am all for the goal and the funds. Yet when we realise that AI is not getting us anywhere and Deep Learning only gets us so far, and we also now consider “trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation” we see a much larger failing. How can voice analyses help and how is this automated? and as for the term ‘trial aspects of AI‘, something that does not exist, I wonder who did the critical read on a paper allowing for £30 million to be spend on a stage that is not relevant. How about getting 150 detectives for 5 years to hunt down these bastards might be cheaper and in the end a lot more results driven.

In the end of the article we see the larger danger that is not part of AI, when we see: “A paper by the security think-tank Rusi, which focused on predictive crime mapping and individual risk assessment, found algorithms that are trained on police data may replicate – and in some cases amplify – the existing biases inherent in the dataset“, in this Rusi is right, it is about data and the data cannot be staged or set against anything, which makes for a flaw in deep learning as well. We can teach what a cat is by showing it 1,000 images, yet how are the false images recognised (panther, leopard, or possum)? That stage seems simple in cats, in criminals it is another matter, comprehension and looking past data (showing insight and wisdom) is a far stretch for AI (when it is there) and machine learning and deeper learning are not ready to this degree at present. We are nowhere near ready and the first commercial quantum computer was only released this year. I reckon that whenever a politician uses AI as a term, he is either stupid, uninformed or he wants you to look somewhere else (avoiding actual real issues).

For now the hypes we see are more often than not the lie of AI, something that will come, but unlikely to be seen before the PS7 is setting new sales records, which is still many years away.

 

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September 14, 2019 · 11:33

That one sentence

You have all faced it before, the moment where that one sentence stops you in your tracks. I am not talking about the sentence a partner states when they come with ‘If you get naked now, we can have sex‘, most people jump at that point. No, it is the ‘if you value your life‘ moment. It is not always a threat, and more important, it is not a sentence that is an imminent danger to you, that would be a reaction as well, but one of another kind. It is the sentence that makes you realise just how dangerous the stage is. I saw one today that came from Warsaw. It was an opinion piece, but the issue is not that it was an opinion; the issue is that this opinion is shared and it shows just how essential Brexit is to the UK. Besides the two failed stimulus events and a new one rolling off the bankrolls as we speak, a third, or perhaps more accurately stated a second mistake in a three part plan that goes nowhere. We now get that sentence ‘The Financial Times editors, heads of German business and many economists argued that Germany should start spending which it does not intend to do‘ this sentence is dangerous and idiotic, there is no relief in spending more, there is no relief, not merely because a government spends more, it is idiotic because Germany has a debt that surpasses 2,250,000,000,000 €, more important, their debt increases almost €2,000 a second. So every person in Germany has a €27,500 debt to deal with. A nation in that position is not in a good place and needs to reduce debt, but the deception and the brainless issue is that Europeans are all in a stage to take on more debt, whilst the ECB is playing with trillions in stimulus. That danger is too large and leaving the EU is the only option to get a handle on the debt every European faces.

The danger that these exploiters face is that the UK can pull it off, and when the first economic victory is scored. all those EU members will stand still and look at how they can pull it off, the people behind the scenes, the people handing us this contrived stories will then have to report to the large corporations and the custodians of the European corporatocracy that they have failed and they will no longer matter or be considered valued. That is the larger game and whilst the UK moves closer to proving that point, others keep on fear mongering as much as they can for as long as they can. Yet the dangers are becoming real and they are increasing in visibility. The Local in Germany (at https://www.thelocal.de/20190913/should-germany-give-into-pressure-and-boost-spending-to-revive-europe) gives us: ‘Should Germany boost spending to help revive Europe?‘, yet its economy is slowing and they are close to a €2.5 trillion debt. Still, for the economic value of Germany it does not seem much, but it is not a multi-billion valued debt, it is a thousand times worse and people do not seem to get that this debt pushes nations towards a corporatocracy where the banks and corporations are in charge and that danger is not understood anywhere, except perhaps the boardrooms of the Fortune 500 and they are extremely unwilling to explain it to you. As we see the stage of corporatocracy growing, we should also notice the lack of media looking into that matter. I would state it is because the media aligns with Shareholders, stake holders and advertisers and corporations are in charge of all three. So in a stage where we see: ‘a day after the European Central Bank warned it had reached the limit of its powers to avert recession‘, we get two things. The first is the stimulus that is coming, and second German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz gets the news: “Germany faced renewed pressure on Friday to boost public spending and help revive a sputtering European economy“, neither will solve anything and there is now the crux, because if the UK exits the EU and gives a real first sign of improvement (which will be year 2 or 3 after Brexit), we see a change, Germany will anger to a degree not seen before and the German population will demand Gexit, AfD (Alternativ fur Deutschland) is already pushing in that direction, but it is not powerful enough, the first UK signs will push it to such a level that Gexit would optionally happen overnight. That is the problem for the fear mongering lot and they are scared because Brexit is still on the road, and the second problem is that it will bring a better stage to the UK, which also means that Germany will get out as fast as possible. At that point the EU can no longer continue, with three trillion in debt it will collapse. I had actually expected for France to leave as a second country, yet with France electing an investment banker, that danger was temporarily averted. Now as Brexit is in a higher stage the Germans start looking at the ACTUAL issues and FACTUAL problems and benefits that the EU leaving stages bring, it is the one part no one had considered to the degree they needed to. Fear mongering remains a virtual issue and the real facts are not in line with the fears created and now that this void is becoming visible, a lot more people are realising that they were played and that will give the entire EU collapse a speed boost, but in all this, it is the UK that pushes what happens next, that is why we see UK Labour cold calling on every door with some hilarious moments (at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9924096/homeowners-brexit-rant-terrorist-corbyn-democracy-labour-caller/). Yet they are merely stalling and buying time, at present Labour has no political power to their position, Jeremy Corbyn and his stupidity destroyed the Labour party, so he decided to openly support (read: hide behind) the remain groups. It is a valid strategy, yet the truth is also that more and more people are aware just how dangerous remaining has become and the British people have one full faith, they have full faith in Britannia and in that setting there is no EU, large corporations never understood that, it is not Wall Street, so they cannot comprehend.

So there we see it all and this all started with that one sentence: ‘Germany and others need to spend more‘ and when we see the debts rising and rising more and more people realise the one urging thought ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?‘

The smallest level of consideration would have been given if the second stimulus has shown levels of victory, it did not and now we have and a €3 trillion debt and no restored economy. The truth does not come from economy, it was Albert Einstein who gave us: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results every time“, it is the realisation of that truth that is now sinking in and spending more and more helps corporations, it helps banks, it does not help people, and that truth comes clear when it all collapses and all the pensions stop existing. That will be the next step and still the ECB will remain in denial, this entire matter is staged around organisations and gravy trains that have no bearing on our economic benefit or our economic long term stability. It serves them and the members of their teams, and more people are figuring that out.

As we are brought more and more revelations on how there will be a new recession, we see others come with news, fake news, bad presentations and so on. The Guardian in 2018 gave us: ‘We are due a recession in 2020 – and we will lack the tools to fight it‘, the recession is still coming, the tools are not there and more debt is coming in at the same time. This was always a formula for bad tidings. More important, it will hit Europe and the US both to a larger degree. It will not be a 2008 event, but it will be bad and as I see it, as Germany has the best economic position as their debt is merely 60% of GDP, they have the best chances to get through it all. The UK follows after that, yet they too will be hit and now we get the kicker, if Brexit has been completed, the drag, the huge drag that the UK would get because it had to tend to the 27 member states will no longer be there, so they can rise faster and sooner. That lesson, when we see that in reality will be the trigger for Germany, France and Italy to get out as fast as possible. It will end the EU, it will make a lot if issues messy yet it is only after that that a global economy can be grown in proper ways.

This was not a mystery, this was not a consideration and it was not a devil plan. It was merely that application of nature. Consider that any economy has high tides and low tides that is how it was, like the seas they have an influencer. For the sea the larger influence is the moon. There is nothing we can do anything about it, yet these tides are also regular, so for a larger part they are predictable. Now consider that tides fall away, on a planet with 24 time zones, we decided to place 4 of them in one group. Then we decided to nullify the tide (which was unnatural) and now we are all screaming that recession is our bane, it never was, economic cycles are as normal as the tides and we all face high and low, it is not something that corporations like and they designed a way around it. They failed, nature always finds a way and that is where they are now. They want to stall as much as they can and they are willing to sell 500 million people in the EU down the drain to keep their profits, and now as we all realise that these times have come and gone, and as we realise that debt helps them, it does not help us, people wake up and decide to find a way to end their struggle. It will be a long fight, but at present we could win it and end the EU cycle called corporatocracy, the nations, their monarchies and republics get to win. There will be a mess, it will not be pretty but it will get better.

So what one sentence woke you up today?

 

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September 5, 2019 · 14:50

The new politics

I still feel shivers lately when people like Jeremy Corbyn refer to the UK as a democracy. We could overly vocal voice that leaving democracy to an anti-Semite is slightly too uncomfortable. To illustrate this I refer to the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45030552), The quote: “In April 2019, the Sunday Times reported that Labour had received 863 complaints against party members, including councillors. The newspaper claimed leaked e-mails it had seen showed more than half of the cases remained unresolved while there had been no investigation in 28% of them. It said fewer than 30 people had been expelled while members investigated for posting online comments such as “Heil Hitler” and “Jews are the problem” had not been suspended. Labour disputed the reports while Jewish Voice for Labour, a newly constituted group supportive of Mr Corbyn, maintained the number of cases being investigated represented a tiny fraction of Labour’s 500,000 plus membership.” is central here. I would accept ‘the number of cases being investigated represented a tiny fraction of Labour’s 500,000 plus membership‘, yet in political places, this is too much headway and too much festering, as such there is a debilitating level of mistrust when these issues are not investigated, and with almost one third not being investigated, the issue is a rather large one. Then we get to BBC Panorama’s “Mr Corbyn’s communications chief Seumas Milne – had interfered in the process of dealing with anti-Semitism complaints“, which in itself is a clear indication that the stage is much larger than we are led to believe. The BBC In August 2018 gave additional visibility not merely to his links with Terrorism, the quote: “critics have pointed out that a photograph from the event appears to show him standing opposite the graves of Atef Bseiso and Salah Khalaf, two senior PLO officers who were accused of links to the Munich attack and were assassinated“, we now have two options. Either Corbyn was played, or he is too sympathetic towards terrorists, in either case this is not some path to peace as the quote: “he had attended the event in Tunis as part of a wider event about the search for peace” was given. So either he got played (which I would accept to some degree), or he has too strong ties to extreme anti-Israel groups, either way the man should not be allowed in UK politics.

This is not merely about Jeremy Corbyn; this is a much larger setting. The setting is European. You see there is a shift going on and it is a very dangerous one. The UK is and should always be a Monarchy, as a monarchy the UK looks after ALL its citizens, rich, poor, well off and anyone not well off. This is opposing the European model which is overwhelmingly a Corporatocracy, more dangerously, it has in the last three years instilled a much stronger stage of corpocracy and these two are not the same. Let me explain.

A corpocracy is a corporate bureaucracy, characterized by ineffective management (EU Gravy train anyone?)

This is important, because this is a very dangerous stage, it affects democracy and more important deflates the long term chance that any democracy can be effectively applied. This is pushed by three parts; corporations, interest groups and what I call the Jackal gang.

I do not have to explain the corporations. The interest groups is another matter, here in one example we see in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/04/no-deal-brexit-food-shortages-brc), in the example we get Andrew Opie, the director of food and sustainability of the British Retail Consortium telling us: “Our assessment is based on discussion with our members, who move fresh food every day, and the likely disruption“, as well as “We modelled that with our members who have told us there will be disruption to fresh food“, these statements were casually accepted. Yet WHO checked and critically investigated ‘We modelled that with our members‘, modelling implies algorithms, modelling implies a state of data analytics, dash boarding and optionally clear reports. Who checked those? Andrew Opie? He has one goal, to keep markings for his members as high as possible and Brexit gets in that way. He is not alone; there are dozens if not hundreds who have been playing that game playing the fear monger card again and again in the last three years. How much famine was there in the UK in the 70’s and before? This is not about supply, this is about expedited margins and the media is not telling the people this, they are not investigating this to the degree they should. The people are merely pushed into fear towards remaining in the EU and that gravy train is too expensive for all of us. The EU has well over €3 trillion debt and there is no path that leads to any exit, not for generations and this benefits the banks, it benefits the people on the EU gravy train, it does not benefit small businesses, it does not benefit the people and there is no end in sight. Brexit was the first clear step to make things better for the British people and the people in the commonwealth in the long term, yet the US, corporations and the IMF will not entertain it, they have too much to lose.

And this is not over, it is about to get worse. We see this in the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/0ff70e24-cef8-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f) even as it seemingly starts low key with “Christine Lagarde has called on European governments to co-operate more closely over fiscal policy to stimulate the stuttering Eurozone economy” which changes tune as we get: “aimed at rich economies like Germany and the Netherlands, she said governments who “have the capacity to use the fiscal space available to them” should spend on improving their infrastructure“, she did not mention some balance of infrastructure and reducing debt, no reducing debt is off the table. And as we get: “The central bank could “direct” its corporate asset purchases towards green bonds once the EU and other regulators have agreed on a common framework for green finance“, which is the foundation for another Stimulus, a plan that failed twice is now again being used to create more debt and pushing what seemingly was once a democracy into a corpocratic Corporatocracy, a stage where nations are no longer in charge, corporations are and we see that push more and more, the fact that freedom of choice in the UK is no longer honoured, as well as the fact that freedom of choice is now regarded as a natural disaster is a clear stage on that road.

Voicing it into a stage where it’s called ‘fiscal stimulus‘ creating the regard that the ECB needs to be to be ‘agile’ in facing economic trouble is merely a relabelled stage where Wall Street and its banks are deciding what Europeans and Brits are allowed to do and short sighted politicians are actually handing them the national keys to do just that. In the age of an aging population that is even more dangerous, for the mere reason that the debts cannot continue a stage of retirement, making the validity of aged people almost obsolete. Again this is all in the view of Corporatocracy; for them the bottom line is margins and profits, to get that 100% needs to be an enabler or a consumer, the rest has no value and we are pushing more and more in this direction.

The Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/lagarde-defends-european-central-bank-stimulus-at-hearing/2019/09/04/17abb148-cf10-11e9-a620-0a91656d7db6_story.html) gives us part of the Corporatocracy setting.

In the line “uncertainty over tariffs has sideswiped the 19-country Eurozone as businesses delay investments and new orders“, the fact that any delay has that much of an influence on American needy people is almost too unacceptable. This is more than just the ‘turmoil from the U.S.-China trade conflict‘. We can (speculatively) consider the line: “it could disrupt business dealings between the U.K. and the 27 remaining members“, which in light of “Britain is currently scheduled to leave the European Union. If that happens without a divorce agreement to smooth trade” is not about ‘smooth trade’ at all, this is about managed maximised margins, something Wall Street relies on very fucking heavily, so the entire stage where the new ECB ruler is not one of the other banks, but the previous sceptre wielder of the IMF is a much larger issue, it is also a case that the US is a lot more in charge of Europe that we think. Consider the amounts of debts and the fact that no one has that much money. A stage where two banks lend each other on paper $2 trillion, whilst neither has the funds. It is one situation that will lose control more and more and the important questions are not being asked. When we see Francois Villeroy de Galhau (Governor of the Bank of France), Klaas Knot (ECB policy maker) and Madis Muller (ECB policy maker) are a few of a growing group of people opposing stimulus (read: massively sceptical), whilst the one in favour (former IMF) is now President elect of the ECB. The one doesnot imply the other, yet the stage where we see “resumption of bond purchases now would be disproportionate to economic conditions” is merely one option, there might be more, but stimulus is what the US and a corpocratic Corporatocracy requires to keep the margins and the people get to pay that invoice. More importantly the lack of oversight and the lack of transparency gives sway for the ECB bank to do whatever it wants, whenever it thinks it needs to.

In what kind of a democracy did Europeans sign up for that?

Corporatocracy

I mentioned that in an earlier blog, it is a state where corporations decide on matters and that is what we see to the much larger extent at present. It is an age where social securities collapse, housing is close to redundant and the age of age discrimination is at an all-time high. All issues visible to a larger extent. I mentioned a few other parts earlier in this article and that is merely the beginning. I needed to make this mention because it is time to explain another phrase I threw your way.

The Jackal gang

This is a group of facilitators and exploiters. The Jackal gang is pretty much everywhere, the problem is that the intentional ones are not the same as the beneficiary players. Let me explain the difference. There are vultures, which are pure carrion eaters, they devour whatever is no longer living (or too close to death to see the difference), with vultures we see a group of people who drop down on companies pronounced dead, or basically no longer serving and they take the pickings. This is the foundation of Vulture funds as well, Argentina being an excellent example in the past and they are about to become a repetitive example soon again. The 2001 default is one stage where Vulture Funds swept in to get nice pickings. Let’s face it, the Argentinians decided to go this way (no one else was offering). Opposing the Vultures are the Jackals, they are like Vultures carrion eaters, yet there is another side, Jackals also take on the sick and the weakened, in a pack they can take down a larger opponent and because the opponent was not dead the pickings are a lot better. In this example the Gravy Train (a first class experience that is always on the road with all the amenities); the gravy train is a large behemoth, it has all kinds of connections. There are subsidised needs, there are research and grant needs and there are logistical needs as well as operational ones. In this stage we see the beneficiary ones; they are merely offering a service like a hotel, lunch services, dry cleaning and so on. They are merely services that a person needs to rely on, yet in another stage when it is a catering service that is ALWAYS called on, or a mother organisation that gets all the contracts, we see the Jackal group. These people are all linked in one way or another and that is how the Gravy train operates and there are large amounts of money involved. To get you a more apt example, we look at the ECB and its part in the Greek financial tragedy (definitely not written by Sophocles).

Here we need to consider that the Securities Market Programme threatens the ECB’s legitimacy as the potential fiscal role is an inappropriate activity for an independent central bank. Some actions are valid as well as appropriate. when we see “In the event of a wholesale creditor run based solely on self-fulfilling expectations, it is reasonable for a central bank to intervene and act as a lender of last resort to financial institutions that would otherwise be solvent” we see an appropriate act. Yet in case of “The failing of the institution is that it is not credible that it is willing to purchase enough of the debt to contain the run. Unfortunately, the ECB’s insistence on secrecy with respect to the programme is particularly damaging. It is widely believed that the average discount to face value paid for the Greek debt acquired (prior to August at least) was no more than 20%. The national central banks appear to have sought out the lucky counterparties. And, the ECB won’t say who they are or how much they paid” is a stage where there is no transparency, the gains are not disclosed, there is a failing on managing the debt and the matter goes from bad to worse (source: CEPR’s policy portal, Anne Sibert). The issue was also illuminated in ‘Buiter, Willem (2009), “Recapitalising the Banks through Enhanced Credit Support: Quasi-Fiscal Shenanigans in Frankfurt”, Maverecon, Financial Times, 28 June‘.

A matter that should have been dealt with to a much larger degree now as this goes all the way back to 2011, the fact that another stimulus is coming lacking transparency is a huge deal, it implies that trust in the ECB needs to be revoked and written off (read: discarded).

I grant you from the very beginning that the this is a very complex matter (and I am all out of Economic degrees as I never had one), yet I know data and a lot of it is not adding up, questions that should be on the front of everyone’s mind are seemingly not openly asked or the existence of the questions are denied. The entire issue of Brexit as it is playing out is less about democracy and too much about the politics of pleasing large corporations, there are too many questions and quotes are merely copied by the media and not questioned and that is a democratic failing of the largest degree. Jeremy Corbyn with: “Jeremy Corbyn became the first Opposition leader in history to block a general election on Wednesday night” (source: The Telegraph) might be the most visible example, but he is not alone, there are scores of MP’s playing the ‘remain’ card and as I personally see it they should all be investigated. Consider the direct description of treason: ‘the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by attempting to overthrow the government‘, is that definition and that is what we see here. It is the stage we see now and many sources in the media are all about ‘quoting’ and not about investigating, it is the failure that must be fixed. Well, perhaps the option is to award certain politicians with the William Joyce medal. I am offering the thought that Jeremy Corbyn is to be reviewed to see if he should get the first one, who is with me?

The new politics are not about claiming and presenting, but the need to show allegiance and give proper explanation on why exactly things were done. Would that not make political life a lot more transparent? The ECB could learn from that, so two herrings caught with one rod.

 

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September 2, 2019 · 11:23

Funny Money, Amusing Thickheads

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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August 27, 2019 · 11:44

Legally dopey dealings

We all know people who are out and about, some are out for dope, others are merely dopey. As such we have all kinds of checks and balances in place (or so one would think). It was there for a little surprising to see: ‘Johnson & Johnson responsible for fuelling opioid crisis in Oklahoma, judge rules‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/johnson-and-johnson-opioid-crisis-ruling-responsibility-oklahoma-latest). I was of the mind that this would not happen. Not because I like the firm, not because I like the product Pledge (for my furniture), and optionally I use other materials by Jay & Jay, I merely am unaware of it.

I am also not debating the events, or the guilt of Johnson and Johnson, I merely have a lot of other questions, questions that as far as I can tell are not answered. To get there, we need to see the accusation: “the giant drug maker helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic in the state“, first of all, there is a larger failing. When we focus on the ‘deadly opioid epidemic‘, we need to see that this does not go over the counter. So when we look at the words of AG Mike Hunter “a “cunning, cynical and deceitful scheme” to ramp up narcotic painkiller sales alongside other opioid manufacturers by using their huge resources to influence medical policy and doctor prescribing“, I wonder who these prescribing doctors were. Did they not study medicine? The fact that thousands of doctors prescribed opioids is a larger issue, it does not make J&J less guilty, it makes others a lot less innocent. J&J should not be standing there alone. The claim “selling as many narcotic painkillers as possible” calls for an inclusions of the doctors giving out the recipe and the pharmacy accepting that doctors kept on prescribing the drug. We also need to look at the FDA who approved the drug in the first place. Here we are looking at three guilty parties, with two groups consisting of thousands of people involved. Yet the article shows merely a J&J in the dock, having to shell out $572,000,000. This leads to questions that do not add up.

In addition we see: “Oklahoma resolved claims against Purdue Pharma in March for a settlement of $270m and against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in May for $85m“, it calls for additional questions and they are not given, it seems that the essential questions are not even asked in the article. Even the CDC has questions to answer. This part is given with: “Opioids were involved in almost 400,000 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention“, there is already a clear case on how these opioids were prescribed, yet we see nothing of that. And as the article continues with: “Since 2000, some 6,000 Oklahomans have died from opioid overdoses“, this implies 300 deaths a year and we see nothing demanded from doctors and more important on how dosage had this effect. All elements that might be attributed to J&J, but it took a doctor to decide on the medication, is that not the case?

The truth of that is seen at the very end of the article by John Sparks, Oklahoma counsel for Johnson & Johnson. “Not once did the state identify a single Oklahoma doctor who was misled by a single Janssen statement, nor did it prove that Janssen misleadingly marketed opioids or caused any harm in Oklahoma“, I would phrase it: “Not once were doctors and their pharmacies called to explain these numbers, the total numbers who got prescribed these opioids and not once do we see any alerts to the CDC on any of this“. The evidence in this is that the 22,500 overdoses a year should have rattled the CDC no later than 2003, so where are the actions shown that there was an issue? The American pharmacy system failed on several levels and even as no one denies that Johnson and Johnson had a role to play, the FDA and the CDC should have clearly intervened no later than 2005 that is seemingly not the case, because the cadavers kept on stacking for at least another decade.

It took me less than 600 seconds to see this truth; as such Mike Hunter is actually dealing with a massive systemic failure that goes all the way to his own office.

And as we read: “cunning, cynical and deceitful scheme“, it seems more apt to accuse the office of the Attorney General for inaction, complacency on a matter that endangered the lives of hundreds of his state constituents every year and his office has remained inactive for well over a decade, it seems to me that his office should equally be investigated for reckless endangerment of people. In all this the pharmacies and doctors need to be heard on how and why these patients were prescribed. My view was supported in July 2019 when we were told (by the Guardian) “The company has previously acknowledged delivering 5.7m opioid pills between 2005 and 2011 to the small town of Kermit, West Virginia, with a population of just 380 people“, this shows the larger extent of pharmacies and their distributors. More important, who was prescribing these opioids?

We can argue that Johnson and Johnson is guilty or innocent, yet the truth is that this reckless abuse system is a lot larger than the pharmacy creating the opioid containing medicine, it is a much larger greed driven setting and I believe that Oklahoma and specifically Mike Hunter failed the American people. He might feel all happy and joy joy that he won the case, yet I believe that it is merely part in covering up a much larger crime that goes all the way to the top of the CDC, as well as a national pharmacy failure. The article does not give us that, does it?

It gets to be even a little wilder when we consider a 1978 episode of Lou Grant (season 2 Episode 1 – pills). In that episode we get a similar setting, more important, in the dialogue at the end we hear: “246 kids went to the same three places. Druggists are obliged to report any doctors who are prescribing abnormal amounts of dangerous drugs, the state pharmacy board had not received a report from any of the three“, now I accept that this is the text from a TV series, a drama series. Yet the premise remains, is there a legal premise in the US (still) in place that this reporting needs to happen? If there isn’t why was this never done? The danger of substance use disorder has been around for decades, this failing cannot be held over the head of a pharmaceutical company. There is a clear indication of violations on local, state and federal level, it is a systemic failure and we might large applause that a large pharmaceutical gets the bill, but the failing is much larger and because of that there is an injustice in all this.

I believe that Johnson and Johnson has a much larger role to play and they are not innocent, yet the failing is systemic, as such there is every chance that their appeal will have large consequences on a national level in America.

I wonder if Ed Asner, Robert Walden and Mason Adams ever considered that they would be part of a stage where they pointed out a much larger American failing 4 decades before it went to court. I remember the series as I was almost 18 (just two years short of that) and It was my dream to become a wartime photo journalist (a younger Daryl Anderson). It was not meant to be, but I never lost my passion for photography.

This case is more than we see and I reckon that jurisprudence papers will soon enough fill up on the systemic failings that Mike Hunter is eager to avoid in the court room.

Even now, we see another article from the Guardian that is almost an hour old. There we see: “It was also revealed that Johnson & Johnson hired the consultants McKinsey, which recommended the company’s sales force should focus on doctors already prescribing large amounts of Purdue’s OxyContin”, there is a level of validity of looking into that practice, yet the part linked to all this, the doctors prescribing the medication in the first place, they had a duty of care towards their patients. A marketing strategy might be debatable, it might also be immoral, yet in the end the doctor is the one acting, so is the pharmacy handing it out again and again, where are they in all this?

It is in that article where we see a two sided issue (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/johnson-and-johnson-opioid-crisis-ruling-responsibility-oklahoma-latest), with: “Sabrina Strong, one of the trial lawyers for Johnson & Johnson, said the ruling was flawed. The company argued that the drugs it sold were approved by federal regulators and that they could not be tied directly to any deaths in Oklahoma”, we see that Sabrina Strong is opening two doors, one bad one. Yes, we can agree that they were approved; the error was ‘they could not be tied directly to any deaths’. Were all hundreds each year all vetted? That is the flaw, because that data could also reveal which physicians prescribed them and which pharmacies filled the prescription. That evidence was not covered by the media, and as this goes over almost two decades, how did the CDC cover this? 300 deaths a year in one state is too large to ignore, especially when it is part of a larger failing. That is the part that Johnson and Johnson have seemingly not covered. I feel certain that the appeal will cover it and it will make life for Mike Hunter a much larger problem than he realises.

 

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August 26, 2019 · 10:42

Bitches on parade

Yes, the time is now nearing. Bloomberg gives us (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-25/bankers-head-to-saudi-arabia-to-compete-for-world-s-biggest-ipo), and as it starts with “Global banks will this week start making their case on why they should be hired for what’s set to be the world’s biggest initial public offering“, we see an interesting shift. It is the initial public offering (IPO) towards Aramco and all the bankers are dressing up like they are the bitches on the Easter parade. The question is how will these American bankers be seen? Those who were eager to exploit their options; events emphasized via media friends these so called events of Jamal Khashoggi. Should they be allowed to make a bid? As Bloomberg informs us on “The oil producer was originally working with Evercore Inc. and Moelis, as well as HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley“.

Now let’s walk a little time line, Morgan Stanley chairman and chief executive James Gorman gave the people on January 24th 2019 (several sources) ““The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was utterly unacceptable,” Gorman said as he responded to questions on a panel“, yet actual and factual evidence was never presented, was it? Merely speculation on events and evidence that remains debatable. OK, I feel certain that Khashoggi is unlikely to be alive, but there is nothing pointing at ACTUAL evidence and the essay by Agnes Calamari never changed my position. Perhaps merely wrongly chosen words by James Gorman, which now implies he should not be part of this $100 billion+ windfall (I’ll take his place). Then we get to J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, he pulled out of the conference on October 2018, so he should be disregarded as well (I’ll fill in for him too). Now, HSBC Holdings Plc held their ground, in light of innuendo, the active use of implied events that remained unproved, HSBC Holdings Plc kept a straight wave; this was business, not emotion, so I say welcome HSBC (if I had a say in the matter).

And the story on Evercore Inc. and Moelis is simple, they blew their chanced way before July 2019, as such it seems that they are out of the picture too. I am of course willing (for a modest fee) to take any of those three seats, business is business. I have no idea what I would be doing, yet uniting with HSBC whilst we share 50% and I get a really nice retirement bonus to unload my part to them is not out of the question. This is a market worth well over 100 billion, I’ll be really willing to take a 7.5% part and hand the rest over to HSBC, I reckon that I am the first person in their history to hand them close to $40 billion for them being supportive to my needs, the average hooker gets $50 at best, so there! Oh, and I do realise that there are Chinese banks eager to take place, so it might end up being a three way split.

And a man like me has dreams, with that amount a nice house in belle air and a super yacht becomes an actual reality (yes, I am typing this whilst I am not awake at present). The stage for me is simple and clear.

For the other players the case is less nice. I believe that those being sanctimonious and hypocrite need to be held to account. There is a consequence to play certain games and resetting the ledger so that they can courtesan themselves into a market worth will over 100 billion is not that acceptable to me and it should not be acceptable to you either.

The entrepreneur gave us yesterday ‘Why Saudi Arabia Is Being Increasingly Seen As The Place To Be To Start A Business In The Middle East‘ (at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/338516), they are right, but they need to see the thorns that the roses bring. the article starts so nice with: “Alper Celen’s decision to trade his cushy job at the prestigious global management consulting firm’s Scandinavian offices for a move to Saudi Arabia to grow a start-up there didn’t make much sense to his colleagues“, yet these players need to realise that this is an Islamic nation, under Islamic law and etiquette. It is a lot more rigid than France is and I have seen a 6 figure Euro deal fall away because the salesperson accidentally used ‘pour toi‘ (informal) instead of ‘pour vous‘ (formal), the buyer walked away and went straight to the competitor. When it’s merely €100K most ‘big players’ will shrug, yet now the game comes in suitcases set to the billion dollar plus that game becomes a whole new dimension. The problem is that those you talk to are indifferent to the billions, it is their bread and butter for you it optionally is not. Those players in dime sized poker games are all willing to bluff like the cardinal for the large games, but a bluff is still a bluff, when you are found out, or seen as unworthy, you will lose a lot, you will lose it all and you might not have the means to get back from where you came.

Yes, you can win big, but the whole game is larger and there is every indication that the Saudi families have kept score on those rallying behind a journalist no one cared about, with a larger lack of evidence of any kind. Soon we see their move and their idea of the Easter Parade flaunting their dresses on Takhassusi St hoping that they are still regarded to be in the game and perhaps they are. I merely wonder if they should be allowed to be in there (HSBC excluded from this consideration).

Now that Vision 2030 is off to the races they all want in (as would I), yet in all this, after all they did and all that they connected to, should they be allowed to? We have to pick certain fights and that is fine, we have certain values which make us jump in certain directions and that is fine too, but to make a 180 degree turn when it is about the money, should we accept such a party in that event when there are hundreds who want to take a slice of that cake? I do not think so.

The events regarding the Saudi conference were larger, there was a distinct impact and as such those play that game should not be allowed to play when the large trophies become available. I lost my option to an apartment in Rotterdam because I did not have the right ‘friends’, OK, fine, but you cannot rely on me giving you a pass when you come knocking. It is then a tits for dad situation at that point and now that there are really serious gains, those people should always be disregarded.

I suddenly remember a quote from Age of Ultron; there we hear: “Keep your friends rich, your enemies rich and wait to see which is which“, well Saudi Arabia found that out, after they discovered that, they have no real need to keep the charade up, so as I personally see it, goodbye Evercore Inc. and Moelis, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley, it was nice knowing you. The nice part is that when they are evicted from the offer, they will have to reconsider the game they played, the media they embraced and the values that they gave to fattening the cow whilst ownership remained in the air. I actually love it when people get to learn a lesson by losing billions, it feels like that for one moment, one tiny moment the playing field was level for all of us.

The Aramco train is now officially on the road and we will hear a lot more in the coming month, I for the most will be most interested to see how much the Chinese banks end up with. And yes, I have woken up and I know that any chance for any of those billions were delusional at this point. Yet there is always tomorrow.

Hot News

In light of all this, Al Jazeera reported less than two hour ago ‘Houthis ‘fire 10 ballistic missiles’ at Saudi airport‘, at this moment, I see Arab News, Saudi Gazette and two more all having a version of that, yet nothing on the BBC, not the Guardian, not the Washington Post, not the LA Times and not Reuters. I got the news before all them and I have nowhere near their tools. So, are you still convinced that some people should be allowed at certain tables to fill their pockets whilst they shun the people whose money they want? And as we realise the quote “The rebels fired 10 Badr-1 ballistic missiles at Jizan airport, killing and wounding dozens, the group’s military spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday“, a quote made by Colonel Turki al-Malki, we need to see that US corporations are playing a convoluted game. Consider the impact that some have, do you think that when the newsgroups get wind that something really matters to the heads of these banks that they go to bed and sleep, not with 100 billion for grabs. The world media is all about fairness and then jinxes the game by taking balance away. From my point of view it is increasingly important that those players are denied a seat at the table (any table for that matter). Saudi Arabia needs to take a hard look at who they consider their friends. In light of all the unreported news of events by Houthi forces I feel more and more inclined to think that the US is turning into a player that no one should ever consider an ally, their only allegiance is to currency, I hope that the people who need actual allies realise that part before it is too late.

 

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August 24, 2019 · 12:34

From trade war to losses

Huawei remains in the news on an international level. Australia gives us ‘Huawei sheds 100 Australian jobs in the face of 5G ban‘ (ZDNet), ‘Huawei Australia says over half of jobs at threat due to 5G ban‘ (ITnews), and ‘Greece opens up to Huawei’s 5G ambitions‘ (ZDNet). For the most there is some level of balance that is going on. We see messages of reprieve given to the US on Huawei, yet the clear part is that there is no way around Huawei. Just like the 80’s when there was no way around IBM. I still remember those arrogant sales people. Whenever they could not answer a question with any clarity (which was more often than I was ever comfortable with), the response became: ‘Sir, we are IBM‘.

It is not limited to one company, CNN reports (at https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/business/china-tariffs-trade-war/index.html) “The US-China trade war ratcheted up yet again on Friday, with Beijing unveiling a new round of retaliatory tariffs on about $75 billion worth of US goods“, this round will hit “25% for vehicles or 5% on parts, and would take effect on December 15th. The new tariffs will target 5,078 products, including soybeans, coffee, whiskey, seafood and crude oil“, this war was a bad idea for America the moment they started it. Yes, there is an impact on China and there is an impact on Huawei. Yet the world cannot go around Huawei. The non-Chinese players were complacent for well over half a decade and the invoice is due, it is an invoice that a bankrupt America cannot afford at present. Moreover, the stage is now sliding away from the American market more and more. As Europe is seeking Huawei to instigate growth, America grows lag time losing momentum more and more. In Europe the issue is larger because it is not one EU; we are looking at 27 member states. The UK with BT gives us: “The investment bank also noted that the Conservatives have outlined an ambition for the roll out of super-fast fibre broadband across the whole of the UK by 2025 but it is not clear how it will be funded or what the returns will be for BT“, a technology years out of date, too much delays, politicising and now BT, a company that was once regarded as a company at the height of technology (some might remember the 80’s advertisement with Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor Who showing us a piece of fibre optics, transmitting the entire bible in one second), the message of advanced progress was clear. Yet in 2018 we see other messages ‘Why most of the UK doesn’t have True Fibre Optic Broadband‘, the setting is a disappointing one and there is a really nice explanation (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDp9-tSYpU0). The Dutch have KPN, an advantage here is that they managed to put 30% of the British population on 14% of the UK, so they have less distance issues. So even as Reuters gave us last April “Dutch telecom firm Royal KPN NV said on Friday it would select a Western supplier to build its core 5G mobile“, they will be digging a large hole for themselves. No matter who gets chosen, they all lag to a much larger degree the abilities that Huawei offers and that impact will only increase over time.

To see this we need to take you to a little math equation. An innovative technology gives you 10 years. Huawei has at present two innovations and three iterations lined up, which gives them 26 years (iterations gives one a mere 2 year advantage), which almost aligns as reengineering catches up three years annually. This gives us the number that others need to catch up to Huawei, who could in 2020 be technologically already at 2047. At present none of them have any TRUE innovations. As such the iterators will truly catch up in 2028 whilst that stage will be met in 2020 by Huawei. This is the largest danger for all the other players. In 2028 the 5G market will settle and they are all still catching up whilst Huawei rules the 5G on a global scale.

The math was important, because it also meant that I have until 2023 to sell my IP, at that point iterators will have found part of my IP and they can equal it to me by 2025. The math was everything and the math is not looking good for America or Europe. Those who embrace Huawei to some degree will get a much larger advantage. My IP was about pushing momentum and if that goes as I hope, the others will face a much larger setback, in all this a much larger part of cybersecurity will not work, or will merely delay the commerce. When was the last time you saw commerce seeking safety over revenue?

The fact that the Guardian gives us: ‘Apple warns new credit card users over risks of it touching wallets and pockets‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/22/apple-card-wallet-pocket-warning) gives a much larger issue. Even as we laugh on: ““Apple Card completely rethinks everything about the credit card. It represents all the things Apple stands for. Like simplicity, transparency, and privacy,” as the company said when the card was launched. Just don’t put it in your pocket.”

So when was the last time you went on vacation and you had to take care of all that for a mere Credit Card? What happens when there is damage to the card whilst on a business trip? Oh, and more interesting, what Forbes told us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/08/10/apples-iphone-faceid-hacked-in-less-than-120-seconds/#1c136a2421bc) with the title ‘Apple’s iPhone FaceID Hacked In Less Than 120 Seconds‘, it is the issue of greed versus Common Cyber Sense and CCS never gets to win, greed dies!

That will show in 5G within the first year and as such there is a lot less taken care of, and it was exactly why I am rubbing my hands, the more desperate they become, the more valued my IP becomes and in the end, my IP pushes commerce and safety in the same IP line. As an android solution I get to thumb my nose against Apple and iOS, it is too iterative to consider. I hope that Google wakes up, so far Huawei might be the only tender and that is just fine by me.

How do these relate?

The pressures that we saw when thatcher decided to stop Fibre, as she saw that BT got an unfair advantage (which is fair enough) too many players try to get part of the cookie for their minimalist services and it directly relates to the US. Their stage of Status Quo as dictated by Wall Street has stopped innovation. The boat that was not rocked was giving Wall Street the managed expected returns they vowed to get. Yet the other side is also a given. We see this as the senior people stayed where they were, stopping innovation too often because they were scared to make the jump, it is the principle that gave Google the growth they had, yet the linked headline (to the smallest degree mind you) ‘Americans Owe $1.6 Trillion In Student Debt – What Will It Take To Solve This Crisis?‘ close to an entire generation was topped to innovate, I grant you that not all are innovators, but the entire innovation cycle was missed. As such highly educated people got menial jobs and went in other directions, a decent amount of them disillusioned. There is a part that gives the concern of affordable higher education, yet there is also the path that those educated and ready were stopped their innovation; each of them stopping 3-7 fellow students to tag along in that innovation path. It is what I call, a non-proven given. It is hard to set a number to this and there are of course other elements (like the economic crash) all set through and connected to the actions of a few on Wall Street, that much we all agree on and whilst that path was set to non-motion, innovation was lost in almost a dozen industries, IT and telecommunication being the most visible ones. Patents are the most visible marker here, but not the only one. That part is making the US scared, not nervous but scared. Over the next 5 years 43 drugs will become generic, the patents expire, 28 of them this year. the world looks at the pharmaceutical patents because of the aging population, yet technology patents expire too and all of those not linked to renewed innovation patents will be collapsing, consider all that was patented from 1985 and 1999, all coming to a close some were just forgotten and not renewed because the technology was surpassed, yet there we forget that original ideas can be reengineered solutions, all up for patenting and that market is well over $100 billion. One consideration is shown (at https://www.dnj.com/story/news/2019/08/22/rutherford-county-jail-hit-lawsuit-over-patent-infringement-stealing-technology-smart-communications/2064500001/) where we get: “Smart Communications accused them infringing upon their patented technology that transformed written mail into an electronic version sent directly to inmates“, I merely wonder how we see that setting when we look at players like Perceptive software, Readsoft and a few other players. Readsoft became part of Lexmark and then Lexmark, the printing and Software Company, agreed Wednesday to be sold to a consortium led by Apex Technology of China and PAG Asia Capital, a private equity firm. Consider the placement of digital transfer, on an international level in the hands of a Chinese consortium. The NY Times took notice (at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/business/dealbook/lexmark-apex-pag-asia.html), for the most no one else did. They had no grasp of the power that the innovations were that Readsoft had. I worked with the materials; it was next gen software in 2003. Now consider that we think digital almost every moment nowadays, but there are decades of legacy materials out there and not everyone has the budget of the America alphabet group. In 5G that material needs to be digital or it will be lost. All these patents give advantage to the owner and stop others, having to re-engineer their idea again and again, that is direct currency and China has a much larger truckload of them with a later end date, even as Huawei is all innovation, they still need their patents and whatever innovation they launch next, they will need to have the patent in place. It stops all the other making the case that their advantage grows as the others forgot to get a workforce that is innovative in nature (Google is excluded from those losers). The innovator drivers are gaining momentum and over the next three years their advantage gets to grow.

That was always the advantage the innovators have and the iterators are starting to feel the pain. IBM, Microsoft and Apple might market their ‘innovation’ yet marketing it doesn’t make it actual innovation. Perhaps you remember the Verge last March giving us ‘Study confirms AT&T’s fake 5G E network is no faster than Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint 4G‘, marketing versus reality is often disappointing and the iterative technology firms are finding out the hard way that there is no such thing as marketing the reality of shareholders expectations.

We see that part ibn another field as Microsoft Phil Spencer gets to be quoted: “There’s only one new Xbox coming in 2020: ‘We are not working on a streaming-only console,’ says Xbox chief“, yet the end of the article gives us: “given the iterative nature of game consoles and the history of the business, we wouldn’t be surprised to see new versions of Project Scarlett in the coming years – it just sounds like we’ll only see one in 2020“, that is where Business Insider made the massive flaw one week ago. It is a flaw because if that was actually true the Nintendo Switch would exist, iteration would never have led to the Nintendo Switch, and not only is it beating all the records, it is also reducing the Microsoft Xbox One to the number three console. Projections are that Nintendo Switch will get to 50 million consoles sold before the end of the tax year, a lofty promise, yet that too shows the impact of innovation. In 2 years it equaled what Microsoft calls the most powerful console in the world and it took Microsoft 6 years to get there. Clearly power is not all it is cracked up to be. In addition, for the first time in history Sony is worried about how far Nintendo can get. Nintendo never wavered, they never lost their core groups, they merely added to them.

Innovation does that and innovation will push 5G in the same way, it seems that Huawei with its innovation has support all over the world on the impact of innovation and the funny part is that IBM and Microsoft used to be actually innovative, they merely forgot the sweetness of innovation victory, which is sad really. I gave mention to the Wall Street part in the Status Quo, yet they are not the only ones in that game and those who embraced that game held technology and innovation back to a much larger degree than you realise and that loss of momentum is a much larger issue in this trade war than anyone has considered.

 

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August 18, 2019 · 13:47

Government? Censorship?

We see it, we ignore it and others remain in denial. We are censored almost every day and we remain unaware. You see, the issue is not advocated as censorship. It is presented as filtered news, and it is not the same. As we looked Yesterday into the events surrounding Evgeny Lebedev, we see people like Jeremy Wright hiding behind “may have an effect on the Evening Standard and the Independent’s news agendas“, yet to what degree and in what direction, that part was not given, was it? In addition we were introduced to Nicky Morgan and the fact that this is now on her plate. Yet the issue of censorship is still here.

Bloomberg gave us: ‘Saudi Oil Plant Attacked by Drones‘ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-17/saudi-oil-plant-attacked-by-drones-but-production-unaffected) 11 hours ago. We also get: “Yemen’s Houthi rebel leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi claimed responsibility for the attack in a televised speech which was aired via the rebel-held Saba news agency. The Houthi leader said the group launched the assault on the oil and gas facilities with 10 drones. This was done to deliver an “important message” to the members of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, he said” yet no one is giving any explanation how Yemeni Houthi fighters got access to high end drones. 10 drones represent a significant investment, the Houthi forces have neither the funds nor infrastructure to acquire or built them, yet they are delivered, where from?

An attack that might be seen as a terrorist attack and the exposure is close to nil. We get the news from Arab News, from Al Jazeera. Yet the event that happened 11 hours ago, is still not covered by the BBC. They limited the Middle Eat page to the US Warrant to an Iranian oil tanker, then the news on ‘Rashida Tlaib rejects Israel’s offer of ‘humanitarian’ visit‘, which is a day old, the rest is 2 days old, or even older. That is the BBC now! We do see some news from Reuters and Haaretz, yet nothing from the other UK papers. Is that not weird? Is it so weird that Saudi Arabia wants to see more on the attacks on them? The UK is facing massive censorship and has been under censor’s scrutiny, yet the UK remains silent.

We see a little more when we face Al Jazeera who gives us “A Houthi military spokesman said earlier on Saturday that the group targeted the Shaybah oil field with 10 drones in what he said was the “biggest attack in the depths” of the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter” in the article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2019/08/drone-attack-yemen-rebels-sparks-fire-saudi-oil-field-190817132916661.html). The other non-given issue is that the Shaybah facility is really close to the UAE borders. A lot of issues remain, but the media to a much larger extent has decided to silence the news, they have decided to be Anti-Saudi Arabia. The fact that Houthi terrorist forces are sending drones into Saudi Arabia, drones that they cannot build and drones that require hardware that they do not have, cannot create and optionally cannot operate is a much larger issue, but the UK media remains silent on it. How weird is that? So here we see a direct first part where it makes perfect sense to be in a stage where they have an invested interest in newspapers that might now give voice to what is going on. If the UK really wanted an independent press, the people in the UK would have been given the complete story on Houthi forces and the exposure of Iranian funding would be out in the open, that is not the case and we should all wonder why that is happening. Oh, and I understand that there is more news in the world, I understand that there is only so much on what an journalist can achieve, yet a middle eastern section on the BBC with two articles from the last TWO days and the rest is older is a little too weird for words. The fact that this was an attack on Aramco with the linked fact that we see loads on Aramco, but the entire mess of the attack (and lack of results from the attack) is not shown in the Financial Times, or the Guardian, who was willing to report only a little under 6 days ago ‘Saudi Aramco ready for record $2tn IPO after first-half results‘ gives rise to censorship and one sided reporting. So when exactly did we find that acceptable from any independent news force? The numbers and the events do not add up.

Even the Deutsche Welle gives us (at https://www.dw.com/en/yemen-houthi-rebels-target-saudi-oil-field/a-50066244) “This is the second such attack on the Saudi energy industry in recent days and comes amid high Middle East tensions” Really? the second attack? When was the first and why do I see almost nothing on that, and basically nothing from the Western European Newsgroups? There is even more, the quote “The Saudi acknowledgement of the attack came hours after Yahia Sarie, a military spokesman for the Houthis, issued a video statement claiming the rebels launched 10 bomb-laden drones targeting the field in their “biggest-ever” operation” gives rise to all kinds of intelligence issues, the fact that certain players are leaving this in the shadow of their desk is a larger issue. It gives rise to the accusation that the CIA is still on goal to keep stability in the Middle East to a minimum. The fact that we see the (optionally boasted) claim ‘their “biggest-ever” operation‘, whilst Yemen has no infrastructure to do this, I personally doubt that they have the knowledge to fly these drones to their target, all issues involving Iranian support, optionally via Hezbollah, all ignored and all non-reported.

That is not merely censorship that is the stage of filtering events on the world stage and keeping them out of sight all together. Is this the EU play to keep news away so that they can have some empty nuclear deal afloat? All hiding behind some INSTEX tool (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), whilst none of it brings any revenue or actual trade, there is no positive side and when we investigate the Iranian events towards the Houthi forces in support of attacking Saudi Arabia, we see a diminished setting, yet the EU is still hiding behind the nuclear deal that was never a deal in the first place. And now we can optionally add the news filtering that Saudi Arabia is facing. All is not well and a lot of it is about to get worse, all for the simple reason that some people are asking questions now and a lot more will be doing so soon enough, at that point any election falls into the water in a stage where the UK government has only the spin tour of the next election to rely on and in addition the media will feel the pain too. When the people realise that there is no longer an independent press. It went out of the window when politicians decided to ignore the Leveson report to the largest degree. They made their own bed, enjoy the nightmare it brings.

 

 

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August 17, 2019 · 11:54

When it is the typeface

There is an expression that we all use; I used it as well, twice most recently. The expression ‘the writing is on the wall‘, which implies that “there are clear signs that a situation is going to become very difficult or unpleasant“, the stage to a specific warning. Yet I believe that the expression is further than that, I also see it was an approach of something inevitable, yet always in a negative connotation. So when I saw the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/16/independent-evening-standard-links-to-saudi-arabia-inquiry-blocked), where we are treated to ‘Court blocks inquiry into Independent and Standard’s links to Saudi Arabia‘, I saw something that has been given exposure before, yet I looked in another direction. And that direction is shown at the very end. The quote: “Since the investment was made the Independent has launched a range of foreign-language websites run by a Saudi publisher that uses its name, raising concerns about editorial oversight given the Middle Eastern kingdom’s poor record on press freedom“, it is here where I see that Jeremy Wright has another agenda. As former Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport of the United Kingdom he knows what is in play, but he is not telling us that, is he? I believe that the expression ‘the writing is on the wall‘ is one that is set in two places and they impact one another. Even when we get back to the origin of the expression, we see a shortening of ‘mene mene tekel upharsin‘, which is of Aramaic origin. Yet how was that staged? We see that some give us: “The point of the moral tale was that Belshazzar couldn’t see the warning that was apparent to others because he was engrossed with his sinning ways“. The subtlety of the biblical wordplay is now somewhat lost on those of us who don’t speak ancient Aramaic, yet a Daniel in a stage set to war could have translated it into its actual meaning: “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”

The problem is that the writer is assumed to be on a stage, and in that stage we see writing, we see the text, but we forget that text is more. It is a font, it is a size and collected we see a typeface. We are so used to take the newspapers and merely gobble up the text like it is an ASCII phrase, we forget that the stories are presented, the typeface presents this and newspapers have done so for well over a century. They have been in a stage where they represent themselves as neutral and authoritative, and this style of type has come to represent those attributes. Yet they have not been that for the longest of times, they have had an agenda for decades, WW2 started it and progressed through wars as they maintained facts under the air of neutrality, an air and stage they forsake long ago. In the end, the entire stage of ‘concerns about editorial oversight given the Middle Eastern kingdom’s poor record on press freedom‘ was never an issue. You see, the simplicity here is that people can always change papers. It is when that freedom is not trodden on; it is there that the old owners see the dangers. It is not about what is not presented, it is what is presented and how it is presented. The Russian Evgeny Lebedev, figured that out long ago and now he has arranged that Saudi Arabia and optionally more Middle Eastern players get a seat at that specific table.

The media silenced the truth of a lot of issues in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, now we get the stage where the people will get informed on a lot more of it that is the fear. When we hold a large candle to the media, we see the greed driven faulty and now we optionally see a new player informing all others and that rattled people like Jeremy Wright. We see the events in Yemen, we see a civil war within a civil war and the media is blaming Saudi Arabia to the larger extent, yet we are told half a story at best. Now we will face the stage where Saudi Arabia has a larger voice and it will be heard. The Independent and Evening Standard are too large to ignore and that voice will carry on an international level. And the court case gives us: “The judges ruled that while it was legitimate for the government to have issued an intention to intervene, the final referral should have been made by 1 July“, if there was a true danger the government would have acted sooner, they did not. Now they must face the events that two papers will get a lot more information and the previous times where the media initially disregarded missile strikes in Saudi Arabia will be ignored no mare. We can also question whether the media has failed its readers to a much larger degree, but that would be on the papers that are not the Evening Standard and not the Independent. The accusation is almost ludicrous, the UK has well over 14 larger daily newspapers, if there is real diminished freedom of the press, the other 12 take over and the value of these two papers fall to zero, after which a new owner will come and take over. As I personally see it, the entire oversight is a bogus issue, the fact that Saudi Arabia would now have a typeface that allows them to be heard is another matter, is it not?

So if the writing is actually on the wall, we need to look at the typeface used and who would place the text on the wall in the first place. And that is before we look at: “It was claimed in court that the companies were ultimately part-owned by a Saudi bank with close ties to the government” we can argue that the bulk of the newspapers are owned by banks with close ties to governments on a global scale, to me it all reads and reeks of a stage where the larger players are just too uncomfortable with Saudi Arabia getting a seat at the table, which is a whole new issue on discriminating elements. It is also the slow question that comes to the surface here. As we see: “A spokesperson for the news outlets said they were delighted by the outcome and that the intervention had been “disproportionate to the facts, unfair and a waste of public money“, as such, if we openly demand to see the costs involved for this case, will we be given the actual costs involved? If the UK had only 3 newspapers the stage would have made sense and more important, the chance that Evgeny Lebedev owned any part of it would be out of the question, but that is not the case. There are dozens of papers all over the UK, losing two would not be a huge impact and if Saudi Arabia intervenes with press freedom, a dozen of others take over on the spot diminishing the value of two newspapers, a temporary small market shift at best. A simple fact not given at all, so when we look at the typeface of it, what was this really about? Is it really about Freedom of the press, or is it about stopping Saudi Arabia from getting a larger international voice that is clearly heard all over the UK?

It seems to me that several players are not happy about that last option; we can now hold those players to account for news that was never given to us before.

 

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