Tag Archives: the Guardian

March 27, 2018 · 15:28

The Red Flags

Today is a day where we are overloaded with actions on parties, yet there is little evidence shown, actual evidence that gives light to the danger. So first we see Russia, the old red with hammer and sickle. First we see ‘Expulsions of Russians are pushback against Putin’s hybrid warfare‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/26/expulsions-of-russians-are-pushback-against-putins-hybrid-warfare), as well as ‘More than 130 people could have been exposed to novichok, PM says‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/26/130-people-feared-exposed-to-novichok-in-spy-attack-says-pm). These two matters are shown to us giving two lights. The first is “The expulsions of Russian diplomats on Monday reflect how widely Vladimir Putin has attempted to wage his brand of hybrid warfare and how many leaders and their intelligence agencies he has angered in the process. Even before the Salisbury poisoning, many governments had lost patience with Vladimir Putin’s grey war for domestic reasons of their own. Their response is not just an act of solidarity with the UK but a collective pushback“, I am not denying any of this. There are indicators that Putin has been waging ‘war’ for some time. There is also the larger indication that he is moving on several fronts and he is gaining field in economic options in the Middle East, whilst America has lost footing. The US needs to appease Saudi Arabia to the maximum degree to avoid the dangers of losing even more footing in the Middle East.

It is with “In Lithuania, the government found Russian spyware on its computers. As far back as 2007, Estonia suffered a three-week wave of cyber-attacks” we do get a first issue, as well as with “US and EU expel scores of Russian diplomats over Skripal attack“. You see when governments start to react with “in a show of solidarity” you should all be aware that there is a lot more going on. This is not some form of ‘conspiracy theory’, this is merely facts that you can check. How much solidarity was shown when we all got screwed over by the meltdowns of 2004 and 2008? The economic impact was shown in several countries. Of course not as massive outside of the US, but we all felt the pinch, millions of us. So how much solidarity was shown AGAINST Wall Street? Please show me the evidence, because for the most, these people might have lost their jobs, but left so wealthy that these men could go into brothels for the rest of their lives, shopping for virgins. So when it comes to solidarity, i have merely seen that as a government sham over the last 10 years. In addition, even if we acknowledge that the Novichok is of Russian making, there is evidence that it was not uniquely in Russian hands. In addition, there are clear questions regarding Vil Mirzayanov as well as some of his statements as I showed in the earlier presented blog ‘Something for the Silver Screen?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/17/something-for-the-silver-screen/) where I gave the readers “Regarding new toxic chemicals not listed in the Annex on Chemicals but which may nevertheless pose a risk to the Convention, the SAB makes reference to “Novichoks”. The name “Novichok” is used in a publication of a former Soviet scientist who reported investigating a new class of nerve agents suitable for use as binary chemical weapons. The SAB states that it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of “Novichoks””. Now we need to consider that both the OPCW and the SAB are incompetent beyond belief, or that we are now getting a collection of Fish Stories. They presented the statements in 2013. Now TASS (I know, not the greatest source of non-biased journalism) gives us “As far back as 1998, we looked though a regular edition of the spectral database released by the US National Bureau of Standards, which has spectral data on about 300,000 compounds and is regularly updated, to find an agent that caught our attention as it was an organophosphorate chemical. We understood that it must have a lethal effect. Now it has turned out that, judging by the name of that agent, it was Novichok A234. It has surfaced,” Igor Rybalchenko, chief of the ministry’s chemical laboratory, said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher news roundup on the Rossiya-1 television channel“. You see, this is something that could have been checked. Is TASS lying? If not than we get the additional of what some might regard as ‘fuck ups‘ by both MI5 and GCHQ. In that regard, the less stated involving MI6 at present the better. Now, that part could be easily verified, yet the US and the UK have not given any clear evidence, whilst several sources have clearly shown that Novichoks were out there. If any of the sources, that I mentioned on Novichoks (like Leonard Rink), are shown to be true than there is a larger issue in play. The issue is that some governments are in denial over the evidence and facts and that is a bad thing. Let’s be clear, that does not absolve the USSR (I love the old names) on many of their actions, it merely shows that painting everything with a single brush shows other levels of incompetence on several fields. Even if that was the Intelligence branch intervening for whatever reason, they went about it really bad and the wrong people end up getting scorched. It is the Guardian that gets credits here for asking the hard questions. With ‘UK’s claims questioned: doubts voiced about source of Salisbury novichok‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/15/uks-claims-questioned-doubts-emerge-about-source-of-salisburys-novichok) it asks the harder questions and in there we see the conflicts that Craig Murray brings. With ““There is no evidence it was Russia. I am not ruling out that it could be Russia, though I don’t see the motive. I want to see where the evidence lies,” Murray said. “Anyone who expresses scepticism is seen as an enemy of the state.”“. I am pretty much on his side on this matter. I found issues that gave rise to the blanket accusation within 30 minutes, perhaps better stated it took an hour because the OPCW documents read as smooth as sandpaper, more boring materials and meetings will seldom be read. Besides the questions from the Guardian, not one of the newspapers dug into the overkill matter. The entire exercise too overly complicated. I could have mugged, executed the two making it look like a robbery in mere minutes (excluding preparation time), it would be done in no time and no chemical risks at all, to no one. So as we saw PM Theresa May give us “More than 130 people could have been exposed to the deadly nerve agent novichok during the Russian spy attack in Salisbury, Theresa May said on Monday“, yet no one raises that it could be a mere individual or even the Russian Mafia. Two likely considerations in all this, and not one has raised that part. No matter how we see the opposing players in Special Forces or Intelligence. To set the stage of 130 bystanders getting in the crossfires is a realistic thing in places like Syria and Yemen, where there is open warfare, in places like Chantilly, Cheltenham, St Petersburg, or Lille is not where one goes playing like that. You see killing a target, a valid target is one thing, doing it whilst setting the stage for getting +100 plus knowingly in the crossfires requires an entirely different type of psychopath and governments tend to not hire those types in the first place.

That alone merely emphasizes the part that my view has been correct all the time. In addition to that, we still have seen no clear stated evidence on how it was done. The Scotsman (at https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/sergei-skripal-exposed-to-nerve-agent-through-car-vents-reports-1-4707852) stated “may have been exposed to a deadly nerve agent through his car’s ventilation system“, which they got from the US. You see, when we get ‘may have been‘ and ‘possibly‘, we need to realise that we are either kept in the dark, or they actually just do not know at present, which makes a case for blaming the Russian government a weird choice at best. And with every delay in this it merely shows that the entire mess is a lot larger, yet the media ignores that. I call that an actual problem.

I mentioned Lithuania earlier. Now, the following speculation does not absolve Russia, but when you realise that people like the Russian Mafia might oblige the Russian government at times, they are still in it for money, for simple profit and coin. So when we see: “In March 2016, Vladislav Reznik, a Deputy of the State Duma, has been put on the international wanted list and officially charged with membership in Tambovsko-Malyshevskie organized criminal group and money laundering in Spain. Reznik’s villa has been searched. According to the indictment, Reznik was among those controlling the gang operations and a member of Gennady Petrov’s business circle” as well as “€16 million have been received from the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Lithuania, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Russia. On the other hand, monetary funds amounting to some $8.5 million have been transferred from his accounts to Russia, Panama, Cayman Islands, and U.S.“, we see that Lithuania has larger players in the fold. If it is a vessel for transferring funds, having their cyber infrastructure under attack seems to be an effective way to keep the eyes peeled in different direction (extremely speculative), yet in support there is also “In July, Russian hackers were blamed for a similar assault on Lithuanian government Web sites. In Security Fix’s account of that attack, I posted a copy of a congratulatory letter sent to nationalist Russian hackers by Nikolai Kuryanovich, a former member of the Russian Duma. The missive is dated March 2006, and addresses the hacker group Slavic Union after the group had just completed a series of successful attacks against Israeli Web sites“, which is a first link from a ‘gov.ge‘ site. Cyberwar – Georgia

In addition there is “The wave of attacks came after a row erupted over the removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, the Estonian capital. The websites of government departments, political parties, banks and newspapers were all targeted. Analysts have immediately accused the Russian Business Network (RBN), a network of criminal hackers with close links to the Russian mafia and government, of the Georgian attacks“, now remember that Tallinn is in Estonia, not Lithuania. Yet the methods that the Russian Mafia uses are quite often duplicated (an Amway solution) and that part is not so far stretched. It is another cog that is showing us on the acts of the Russian Mafia. The Russian government is not absolved in all this, yet Theresa May did not tell us: ‘we have strong indications that a member or Russian organised crime with links to the Russian governments are behind this‘. No! She went straight for the Russian government and offered no clear evidence, that whilst the clear evidence could be largely dismissed in most courts with merely the use of the documents of the SAB, the OPCW and the testimony of Vil Mirzayanov who seemed to be interested in upping the sold copies of his 2008 publication.

There are sides to my story as well, parts I am not happy about, parts that should be scrutinised, yet in all this, the current facts and statements seem to take down the UK case at present. More importantly it shows us that the US is also playing the fear game, it is now more afraid than ever that it loses more and more turf in the Middle East, whilst Russia is moving forward. That scares them more than anything, even more than any Novichooks (yup intentional typo) in play, especially when we consider the danger that these weapons are and additional could be down the line, is that not odd either?

Ready Player Two

And that is not the whole story. You see in all this the other red flag has a star and a crescent moon. Yes it’s everyone’s favourite humanitarian setting (or was that lack off?), it is Turkey. So when we are again treated to the marketing of ‘Turkey needs Europe, Europe needs Turkey‘, the people in Europe need to run to the Brexit, or any EU-Exit they can find. I stated it in a previous blog with ‘This relates directly to Turkey, because it shows the desperate EU trying to open a many doors as possible‘. I did that in ‘A changing language‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/02/15/a-changing-language/) well over a month ago. Now we see “Turkey is not doing very well economically, it needs outlets” said Lamberts, “and it is very clear that bad relations with Europe are harmful to Turkey, so somewhere on the economic level Erdogan needs Europe and Europe in fairness needs Turkey“, which Euro news gave us yesterday. So we see how Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian Green MEP is willing to throw values overboard, the economy does not allow for any humanitarian values. So when I see any journalists hiding behind ‘constant attacks on transgressions of human rights‘, whilst attacking governments making any kind of economy based deals. Can they just kindly go fuck themselves? When we see the Turkish joke evolving on the EU field, no journalist gets to use the ‘Human Rights‘ card for a long time to come. If you want to do that, go visit Turkey and protest in front of those prisons that have journalists locked up for life. Until you can make that change there, do not come crying on other shores. If you need actual Human rights issues, then perhaps turn to Canada where we got “A French waiter who was fired for his “aggressive, rude and disrespectful” manner has claimed compensation, insisting that his behaviour is not unusual, but that he is simply French“, that is the story of Guillame Rey from Vancouver Canada. that is where the Human Rights have gotten us and that is a real win for the ‘15 children that were killed in an airstrike as they hid in the basement of a school in the town of Arbin‘, yes a real humanitarian win in this. So even as the financial Times reported less than 2 hours ago “The EU said it failed to win a pledge from Turkey to free journalists it has jailed and improve other rights for its citizens but that it will maintain talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after their first meeting in almost year“, we see no place stating that turkey will not become a member of the EU. It is another side where the gross negligence of evidence is taking the toll of our humanity. So as the President of the European Council Donald Tusk gives us “Only progress on these issues will allow us to improve EU-Turkey relations, including the accession process” (at https://www.ft.com/content/dbefa9e6-313d-11e8-b5bf-23cb17fd1498), so I am proven correct yet again, they merely need to push the EU deeper in debt, which according to Bloomberg is coming for certain through “Draghi’s call for patience and persistence in delivering stimulus, suggesting bond-buying will be extended beyond September” or set the stage where the so called Humanitarian principles are ignored, which has been the case for close to a year. It has only strengthened my view that the UK is a lot better off outside the EU, because this entire EU mess will collapse onto itself and woe to those who are left behind paying for it all. It could set back the economic markers for close to two generations in Europe, which should scare anyone in the EU.

The last red flag is North Korea (it has blue too)

I mentioned it some time ago. The entire Sony mess and blaming North Korea was never really resolved. So when I got the news from ABC stating “Secret intelligence documents and photos unilaterally collected by the U.S. military were among the stolen cache of South Korea’s classified documents by North Korean hackers, but the totality of what was stolen remains unknown“, we should be starting to get careful. you see it implies one side, but to my view it gives an entirely different issue. It implies that North Korea is a capable cyber operator. Now, we know that one can do plenty of damage with a laptop (like in the movies). Yet when you see these pics you wonder what on earth is going on, because we now get the speculated but believable view that ‘the US gave documents to an ally that does not have its basic cyber protections in place‘, that is a very different kind of cheddar, isn’t it? Now, I have seen a few pics where the computers look a little more advanced, but nothing that an actual gamer would still be using two years ago. And that is the foundation of their hacking? Let’s be clear, there are situation where you can hack with a 10 year old laptop, but you need skills, you need access to documentation and the ability to get past the firewalls and past sniffers and network monitors. They do exist, yet that requires an equal incompetency on the South Korean side, a part that we are also ignoring, the use of Common Cyber Sense.

You see, when you get “Malware contamination of the intranet server of the cyber command that occurred in September last year was confirmed by the South Korea’s Defense Ministry in May but this is the first glimpse of the scope of the damage“, there is another layer in place, one that does make sense. Some of the European, Russian and optional US hackers are selling their stuff to North Korea. That is a very possible scenario, but in that case both the FBI (if the US was involved), as well as the CIA failed in their tasks. Perhaps better stated, the CIA seems to be unable to thwart North Korea from purchasing cyber hacking software from making it to North Korea, which is equally a failure on several levels. It is unfair to blame merely the CIA. It is fair enough to add the earlier avoided MI6 to the mix as they should have been watching that danger, because if these hackers can get to South Korea, they could in theory hit the UK in equal measure, the evidence is there. Even as we agree that North Korea does not have the skills (my personal belief) to create something like Wannacry. I already went there to some degree in ‘In light of the evidence‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/05/28/in-light-of-the-evidence/), the evidence given was compelling that was given by ICIT. In addition we had ‘when IBM cannot give view of any mail that propagated the worm’, which also takes North Korea out of the loop, yet they could have acquired the software. So even as the largest cyber player like IBM remains in the dark, there is still evidence that it was North Korea? That view was only enforced when a Dutch media team went to North Korea a few years back. In some places their cameras were locked up because no photographs were allowed. Yet most had them anyway, because the North Korean officers had no idea what a smartphone was and that it was able to take pictures. The Dutch NOS showed it on Television, so that is the place that hacked into South Korea, the birthplace of Samsung? It is not impossible and was never denied by me, but it was so extremely unlikely that unless clearly proven with evidence considering it was utterly impossible to the common sense mind. Yet as the source is not in North Korea, hunting that source down is more important, because the next time it will not be some version like Wannacry 2.0, it could be Stuxnet 7.1 and as the UK has 15 reactors and the US has 99 reactors in 30 states, it seems to me that waking up both MI6 and the CIA to actually get to the bottom of these North Korean ‘praised’ cyber skills and find out where those skills actually were (read: came from), because not doing so is a much larger issue. I hope that the South Korean bungle of their network security constitutes as at least some level of evidence.

Three red flags, none of them are innocent, I never implied that, but as we are changing the play, the marketing vibe and the need of what is real we need to carefully weigh what the media gives us and what those giving the media are actually after. I have seen enough evidence thrown about and have been able to ask questions to the extent that gives rise to many question marks and whilst some media are playing the emotional waves, some are seeking clarity and that clarity gives us additional options and views that we did not consider before. People all over the world are told to jump to the left, whilst there is no evidence that anything form the right was going to hit us in the first place, which makes us wonder why they did not want us on the right side to begin with.

These red flags are important, because even if we had any faith on the Russians trying to attack us, we need to consider that Cambridge Analytica is an English firm and even as Fortune now reports “A non-partisan watchdog group has filed complaints with the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission alleging that the data firm Cambridge Analytica violated U.S. election law by having foreign nationals involved in the decisions of political committees“, we see that it was a British firm who scored that job.

So it is possible that the people in Moscow will be treated to a comedy in 22 hours, it will go something like “TASS Is Authorized to Declare that the accusations against the Russian government and its people were propagated by an English Firm“, in this I used part of the 1984 Soviet spy miniseries directed by Vladimir Fokin, because even with my weird sense of humour it seemed important to give it an Orwellian sling. Perhaps you should check out his new book. It apparently deals with life in the US after a presidential election.

 

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March 23, 2018 · 10:27

Pinata whacking Couper

There is a little mean streak in me, you see, it started with Tesco, and it actually started a little earlier. But the gist is that when it concerns PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) I tend to take a swing at them whenever possible, I just roll that way. So there I was looking at ‘PwC charges more than £20m for first eight weeks of Carillion collapse‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/21/pwc-charges-20m-eight-weeks-carillion-collapse-final-bill) when I realised that when I wack those boys I usually have good reason and supporting documentations to test my latest sledgehammer on a member of their board of Directors. In this article, when I saw “MPs have accused the accountancy firm tasked with salvaging money from Carillion on behalf of its creditors and pensioners of charging “superhuman” fees, after it racked up a bill for £20.4m in eight weeks” it took a mere 3.2 seconds from spitting in my hands and getting ready to swing that hammer at Kevin Ellis (yes all the way from Sydney, my arms are that long). I held off and went ‘wait a minute!‘

You see, I always had as I saw it good cause, but who are these MP’s thinking that they have good cause? The first is Rachel Reeves, the Labour MP in charge of the business select committee. So she mentioned that ‘superhuman’ part. What does she know? The Wiki claim states that she is an economist. So how much does one charge for 112 consultants? You see at £199 an hour we get £891K for these people working a mere 40 hours a week. As it is the UK, they are more likely to work 60 hours which gets us at flat rate £1.3 million a week which leaves PwC with an overhead of a mere £100K whilst I have not taking into account any additional expenses and they tend to get high. I reckon that these people are likely to make a lot more than 60 hours a week, that is the result of “£2bn to its 30,000 suppliers” and as the article states “a week to employ 112 staff to keep the company running and to honour government contracts” we do not see the inclusion of any additional staff that was not hired and that is still assigned via PwC. So that took a mere 6 seconds to realise that I was not getting to whack Kevin Ellis. Leave it to a Labour MP to spoil a perfectly lovely Friday morning feeling. Now, let’s also realise that my calculations could be way off, there are so little actual facts in the article (I am not blaming the article here) that there are hidden traps all over the place. I think that Rachel should have gotten up from the right side of the vibrator that morning, as we need to realise what an amazing mess Carillion is. The oversight had fallen short on so many sides, with the mention of pensions and a shortfall that is close to a £1,000,000,000 should be a much larger issue and the fact that this had fallen short implies a level of what I regard to be criminal negligence that is unheard of. We merely need to look at ‘Carillion’s pension crisis defies magic legal cure‘ (at https://www.ft.com/content/5041d10e-1a1c-11e8-aaca-4574d7dabfb6). So when we see “Yet in the seven years before its collapse, Carillion made contributions to the fund of just £280m while paying out dividends worth more than £500m“, my first idea is to look at the auditors and the accountancy firm. So how much overview did Rachel Reeves give regarding KPMG? We get part of this when we see ‘Why didn’t anyone working with Carillion say it was going to fail?‘ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/carillion-kpmg-auditors-audit-hbos-financial-crisis-self-regulation-deloitte-a8185356.html). Here we see: “In March 2017, the giant audit firm KPMG signed off on the annual accounts of the construction giant-cum-outsourced services provider Carillion, saying they gave a “true and fair view” of the state of the company’s affairs. For this work, KPMG received a fee of £1.4m. This followed £1.4m of fees recouped the year before. In fact, KPMG had been Carillion’s auditor every year since it was founded in 1999. You don’t need to be an accountant to work out that that adds up to a very lucrative client relationship” that whilst we get the news that a mere four months later “its contracts to provide services were worth a remarkable £845m less than they had previously been valued on its books” that is an amount that exceeds whatever Richard Branson has in his wallet on his best days, so how was this overlooked? So as Rachel Reeves was kind enough that the value of KPMG is not good enough to audit the contents of her fridge, she should also be aware that this entire audit is not merely the outstanding invoices, there is a decent concern that the audit of KPMG has been unable to correctly assess issues for 17 years. So there is a real need to set up the correct framework to be able to take a long term look to the matters as well as the ability to set the right data dimensionality so that the data does not need to migrate over and over as more is found. I would think that an MP who part of the ‘the business select committee’, as well as a graduated economist would know that. You see as an experienced IT worker and a data analyst, I saw that coming a mile away.

So here I am partially standing up for PwC (so how fucked up will my day become?), news at 23:00. So when we get back to the Financial Times article and we see “As a House of Commons report has noted, Carillion’s growing borrowings were not used to invest in the company. In fact, while the group’s debt rose 297 per cent between 2009 and 2017, the value of its long-term assets grew just 14 per cent“, can we agree that there is a side that is terribly wrong here? These matters should have been clear in the KPMG reports, which now clearly overthrows the statement “they gave a “true and fair view” of the state of the company’s affairs“, I think that we can all agree that this part has been debunked in 30 seconds flat. In addition the Independent gives us “Moreover, KPMG was not the only auditor of Carillion’s numbers. Its 2016 report relates that it had a special “internal” auditor too, in Deloitte, with which it worked even more closely than with KPMG. So why didn’t Deloitte pick up on the dodgy contract numbers?” For me that is an interesting side as I have never seen anything dodgy in Deloitte. The fact that they might be part of the mess (unlikely though) is also cause for concern. More important, as I personally see it, it will be up to PwC to get that part out in the open. What was the exact assignment of the internal auditor, what data was presented, what data was accessed and used and who was part of the entire reporting stage of this internal audit? It would show more players in all this and could optionally give a better path in seeing the navigations that the decision makers in Carillion were involved in.

That is a part that we need to realise and consider.

There is another concern that the Independent brought to light. With: “Previous probes by the FRC have produced nothing but clean bills of health for auditors. “In nearly every major financial scandal we’ve had since the financial crisis, the FRC decides none of its charges have done anything wrong,” notes Jim Armitage, city editor of the Evening Standard. Worse, these rulings come with no reports or published evidence, making a mockery of the FRC’s claims to “promote transparency”” we might think that it is merely the FRC, yet what Wall Street taught us is that the entire 2008 joke gave rise to an 8 trillion write off, whilst no actual laws were broken, or at least none that could be proven, so in that regard, if that happens again now, we can clearly look at the House of Lords, point fingers and tell them to improve laws immediately and hold any MP and minister accountable for naming and public shaming. It might work, but I doubt it. You see, until there are large and unforgiving prison sentences, whilst also remove all the rights of ownership to those involved in Carillion, nothing will change. I have seen people setting the ownership of their large estates to their wives and then deny that they had any outstanding financial responsibilities in more than one country. Until these matters are settled this game will continue because greed will always win in the end.

So when we get back to the initial article we get “Kelly, who said his personal rate was £865 an hour, said PwC’s costs would gradually fall as more parts of Carillion were sold and staff from the accounting firm stopped working on the project. He said the firm initially had 257 people working on Carillion, with a bill for about £3m for their services in the first week after its collapse“, we see where part of the costs went to, so as my calculations was based on smaller settings we see how easily these costs were attained and the end of it is not in sight. Rachel Reeves should have seen this clearly as she had access to data I still have not seen. I think it is much more interesting to look at “Finance director Richard Adam, who retired in December 2016 after nine years at Carillion received almost £1.1m in salary and bonuses in 2016“, which we get from the BBC. So if we get to see the wrongdoings of Richard Adams, this is a reasonable speculation as the entire mess goes back a lot further than 2016, will we see these same MPs demand the auctioning of the goods of Richard Adams to make up for the losses of Carillion? You see the article stated MPs, not singular. Rachel Reeves might have been the visible one, but I want to see all those names, because when we consider the BBC news (at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42703549) as it gives us:

  • The £350m Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Sandwell: opening delayed to 2019 due to construction problems.
  • The £335m Royal Liverpool Hospital: completion date repeatedly pushed back amid reports of cracks in the building.
  • The £745m Aberdeen bypass: delayed because of slow progress in completing initial earthworks.

We need to ask questions on several MPs all over the field, all over the UK apparently. These three alone show a £1.3 billion issue are so out in the open that these three alone will constitute evidence of a much deeper required accountancy dig. Three issues shown last January and these three alone gives rise for me to think that PwC will be able to charge a lot more and in addition, the entire settling and selling could take a lot longer than some expect it to take. So these elements are the setting for additional costs, so those MPs might claim that there is a case of ‘milking the Carillion cow dry‘, but they better be ready for me to take a look at more than these three projects, because I will ask openly on their failings to get a handle on matters, because I am 99% certain that these three projects alone will lead to a dozen others all over the UK and if there are no clear memo’s from those MPs in regards to Carillion, they will be named openly to give rise to their shortcomings (perhaps also what was between their legs), because if you do not have the balls to go against the larger players, you should not be in office at all. Yet, that might be merely my warped expectation of elected officials.

Carillion is a clear mess that had been going on for a much longer time than some expect. You see, that part is seen in ‘cracks in the building‘, ‘construction problems‘ and ‘slow progress in completing initial earthworks‘ it implies optional failings going all the way back to the foundation of the works that were possibly never correctly done in the first place.

So I might still end up treating the bosses of PwC UK as piñatas, but at present there are plenty of other targets and so far (remember I say ‘so far’), in this particular case PwC seems to be in the clear (darn!).

 

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March 22, 2018 · 10:26

The additional word Analytica

When we hear ‘Cambridge’, we consider a place of reverence. Cambridge, a place where science is academically pushed to new borders! It has been around for 733 years. In that time we saw Lord Byron working on Satires and poems. In 1812 Charles Babbage started the design of a calculating machine, he never finished it, but his work would later herald the modern computer. In 1903 Bertrand Russell publishes ‘Principles of Mathematics’ and ends up with being part of the ‘Principia Mathematica’ it takes people a decades to comprehend the genius and he ends up with a Nobel price. Other members will get similar laurels for working on the electron, X-ray diffraction, someone proves that vitamins are real and the atom gets split. there was Professor Stephen Hawking, who did have a sense of comedy (according to many sources), not very mobile, yet ends up giving us academic work on Black holes, the big bang theory (not the comedy) and gives us the a founding realisation on the origin of the universe and only recently do they were able to identify gene causing diabetes and high blood pressure. So we should see it as a place of academic goodness. Yet when you take ‘Cambridge’ and you add ‘Analytica’ you get a synonym for ‘Despicable Sewage‘.

So as we are treated just over an hour ago to ‘Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg finally addresses Cambridge Analytica scandal‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/21/mark-zuckerberg-response-facebook-cambridge-analytica) we can clearly see that things are escalating as Mr Zuckerberg himself is taken off the moth balls to remedy the situation. So when I see his response ‘we made mistakes‘, my initial response is ‘You think?‘

When we are treated to “The Facebook CEO broke his five-day silence on the scandal that has enveloped his company this week in a Facebook post acknowledging that the policies that allowed the misuse of data were “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it”” my initial worry is that he does not comprehend the scale of the issue. It is not merely the misuse of data, basically personal data of 50 million people, a lot of data on these people is now out in the open. When you have the data of 14% of your population you have the means to forecast, the options to set the marketing push on a national level. That amount of data would allow places like Walmart to set the need to satisfy 90% of the population need and cut out the loss making products overnight. You see, when you take the concept of a good article, a average article and a bad article, we often get all the good articles and a chunk of average articles. This is the risk the business has, they all have it and we can predict this to some extent. Now we get more data and now with that data we see a group of people that are classified for a certain category as ‘Not caring’, they have no interest at all. Knowing this allows for the setting of a ‘true view’ on the articles so we get a sharper view, we take the population, we take out the non-carers of that product, and suddenly we end up with a list of the products that are all classified as good.

Now how does that work?

You see, sometimes we are driven by internal motives, motives we do not tell Walmart, but we might tell others on social media. Now consider for example that a Catholic will never buy a certain brand. A naturist will never buy certain chemicals and a tech-lover will never buy certain brands. There are dozens of these indicators and Walmart, if they had that data can now see a pattern, even if they only have the 14% view, the pattern once seen can lead to a national view. As a wild example I give you: ‘A Catholic techie will always buy a Manfrotto camera stand‘. So now we have a specific product that would do really well in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. So not only can it decide to dump the inferior camera stands in those places, it could essentially also raise the Manfrotto price by $2, so less overhead and better profits. This is merely an example, but the pattern is clear and as places like Walmart have such data they can now directly target their audience and streamline what they carry per location. So not only do they get a better business setting, by marketing directly to certain groups they get a much better result on the same marketing cost. So their marketing costs remained the same whilst getting up to a speculated 30% of better results.

This is a given setting in analytics (and Market Research). It has existed for decades and Mark Zuckerberg is a clever boy, so he knew this. The setting as shown in the Guardian is debatable at this point. You see, debatable because Mark Zuckerberg knows the value of data, there is no way that he does not know that. So the last thing he wanted to do was hand out data, lose control of the treasury. He lost control as the data is out there now, and as the source has been shared for what I believe to be at least three times over, that data is now no longer containable. That can now be seen as a direct loss for Facebook.

In equal measure we need to look at “We know that this was a major violation of peoples’ trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it”, a quote that came from Sheryl Sandberg. You see, I think that the matter is more serious and more dangerous. We see that when we realise that ‘we didn’t do enough to deal with it‘, there is a data quality loss, a data containment loss and a lack of technological oversight. This is not a new given and even as Cambridge Analytica took it to a much larger setting, they were not alone. I myself almost tried a game once, yet when I saw it wanted my ‘religious preference‘ I decided to have an issue with a game firm that is concerned with my religion. I don’t have any, but that had absolutely no bearing on the game. That made me suspicious and I decided not to install the game. There has been a flaw for the longest of times. That flaw goes all the way back to Zynga’s Farmville. When they started to demanded ‘gifts from friends‘ to progress to some extent in the game, it was not a novel thing (well it was), it was a marketing setting that either you pay for the next item (with buyable currency), or you get your friends to play the game and give it to you, so we saw groups of people all linking, whilst their only link was the social setting of one game and Zynga ended up with the data (to some extent). That requirement is not what I see as ‘social growth’, it is in its foundation a dangerous place because it allows paedophiles access to younger players, it allows white supremacists to hide in a social flock whilst the others in the flock had no idea that the herd is not just made up from sheep, it also contains wolves and other undesirables. The problem is that as long as nothing happened no-one would care and that has been a dangerous game to play. Facebook loved the concept because it grew communities beyond their wildest dreams, but it also gave us groups where we still needed to be careful what data got out, yet the people at large are not careful with their social data. That has been seen since 2011 as Prostitutes were found by several media publications to use Facebook as a customer recruitment system. Now, I don’t care what these ladies do, yet as we have seen that recruiters and HR are using Facebook more and more to ‘judge’ potential employees (and one should never talk to a ‘lady of the night’ in social circles), we see that Facebook has become a monster of abuse and that monster is valued for data, so as more and more data is added, more and more people end up getting wrongfully tainted in a colour that was never them.

So when we see “The CEO also pledged to investigate and audit apps that accessed large amounts of data from Facebook users prior to changes in its platform in 2014, and said that it will inform users if their personally identifiable information was misused by app developers“, we need to realise that the foundation of Facebook apps is a much larger problem, it is not merely about the data they can access, it is the issue we see when the app data itself is open to mining. You see it is not merely “Facebook will investigate all apps that have access to large data and ban developers that misuse identifiable information“, how about apps that merely collect a small amount of data. Now consider that they link the use of apps (like for example Farmville, the Pioneer trail and Cafe World). Now let’s be clear, I am not accusing Zynga of doing anything wrong or illegal. But those three apps allow for ‘free’ currency, when you hit a target in the other game, people start to get very motivated to play 3+ games from the same makers, as it allows for that currency that is not usually free. Consider that each app has 5 demographics and perhaps 3-5 additional stats and these three apps all have 3-5 different stats. So as hundreds of thousands are playing all three apps, the developer suddenly ends up with a much larger pool of data than ever before. Now I use Zynga as it also has real-money gambling games. Now consider that they now have more and more markers on people who gamble. It is the wet dream of any Las Vegas entrepreneur to get that much data on their users, a way to classify those who are more likely to spend more on gambling. This was a setting that has been known for a long time and there is no way to tell how far people ended up being pushed into gambling. I have seen and learned that greed is eternal, so in that regard there is all likelihood that Mark Zuckerberg had to be aware to a much larger extent and that the mistakes made were a lot more than ‘excusable’ and it is one that cannot be solved through apologies and better oversight. Because when we cut those developers off from the data, what are the chances that 70% moves elsewhere? Data was the treasure trove and too many have been dipping their toes in the water. The damage is much larger and even as Cambridge Analytica made it visible to the masses, the issue has been there for a lot longer, the question becomes who properly looked at it. Also consider that games like Farmville had well over 60 million users every month, so how much data made it out of Facebook?

I reckon that no one will actually know that part, but the issue is also how this simple given remained off the radar of so many for so long. I wrote about the sharing of data as early 2013, sharing at the same time my thoughts on how all the NSA data issues were merely hypocrite. Well, now that the fence is gone, good luck containing the sheep, because I expect to see a lot more ‘revelations’ over the coming months.

 

 

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March 18, 2018 · 14:35

How Facebook data flows

This started just 4 hours ago when the Guardian gave us ‘50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election). Even when we see “Whistleblower describes how firm linked to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon compiled user data to target American voters“, we tend to wonder, because me getting any data from my own account in Facebook is a stretch under the most optimal of conditions. So when we see “how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements“, so in all this I am not saying it is not possible and that it did not happened. The video that the Guardian offered, the interview with the whistle-blower is nice, but it is quite something else. You see, what I got out of that interview is not answers, but questions. So when I heard “grossly unethical experiments” and “you are playing with the psychology of an entire nation in the context of the democratic process“. Here I wonder (for a mere moment) if something wrong was done at all. This is social media; social media is something that has no boundaries and no actual setting of limits.

We tend to set the bar of any social given at whatever level it should be according to us, but in reality, there is no social setting, not until enough people complain. I have seen many apps that are out there that do not only want your name, gender, age and so forth. They also want your religious and other settings and most people are happy to click ‘OK’. So this is something we are walking into and the given stupidity of many Americans means that a free game is something that comes for free and whatever it stated with the ‘allowed access to‘ is pretty much ignored, especially when the people around them state that it is a very cool free game. So when I see “built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”” we see that Robert Mercer has found a business model that works. The question merely remains on how that data was captured, if it was through ‘cool apps’ there is little that Facebook can do, unless it has exact legislation at their fingers to state that the law was broken. Yet in all this the fact that this happened in 2014 and that the Guardian (and the Observer) had the scoop 4 years later gives rise that the farmed data is not merely still in use, it is actively used for whatever endeavour Robert Mercer has in play to gain maximum profit, because that is what a billionaire does. So when we see “Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals” the outrage should follow, but with ‘it failed to alert users‘ implies that Facebook did not care about the users, but about the business model, as well as ‘took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information‘ gives rise that their data was merely secure enough and no actual loss was found, that is the view we get when a firm where data is their direct market value data and ‘secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals‘ was not done. It is actually that simple, those who claim it not to be are merely hiding in the margins, hoping to strike it rich themselves, because that is what the data of 50 million people offers.

It goes further when we see the NY Times claim. With ‘How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions‘ (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html), we see “During a week of inquiries from The Times, Facebook downplayed the scope of the leak and questioned whether any of the data still remained out of its control. But on Friday, the company posted a statement expressing alarm and promising to take action“, not only does it imply that the data is beyond their control, it gives rise that others have access to it which is more alarming. The Facebook system has failed its members to the extent that their privacy did not exist for close to 4 years. So how much data have you shared in the last 4 years thinking it was only for your friends?

In addition, the claim we see in the NY Times “Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and other officials had repeatedly denied obtaining or using Facebook data, most recently during a parliamentary hearing last month. But in a statement to The Times, the company acknowledged that it had acquired the data, though it blamed Mr. Kogan for violating Facebook’s rules and said it had deleted the information as soon as it learned of the problem two years ago“, when combined with what the Guardian is giving us is a rise to the setting that both Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica and the speakers of Facebook are both incorrect, insincere and without any doubt cause for great concern and so far the Facebook users are in the dark on a near global level.

I can applaud Robert Mercer to some extent, you see with “The conservative donor Robert Mercer invested $15 million in Cambridge Analytica, where his daughter Rebekah is a board member” we see one side, the other side is that all things being equal the return on his investment is close to five-fold, making is a wise investment when the goal is merely $$$$.

In all this we can give the Facebook users the bird, not because we hate them, but for years I have spoken out clearly that these users are all about stating ‘privacy’ no the NSA whilst at the same time sharing indiscriminately on social media like Facebook, whilst not comprehending the system because it was ‘free’. This is the direct consequence and these users will be used again and again because that is what they signed up for. So when Robert Mercer is offered a $25 million deal with an international IT firm like Vintage Alternating Java Academy or Medicinal Office of International Studies, we will see a CEO who will happily oblige, yet have you figured out yet where that data ended up? That is how the game is played, so when they cannot sell the data and the firm gets taken over by a Chinese multinational, do you think that the data stays in that one place? This is what you all signed up for. You might be in denial and you might state that it should not happen, but the law is very easy on what should happen and what is legally possible, the ‘should happen‘ group loses without a moment’s hesitation. The only part that I am not getting is what I would personally describe as ‘the Facebook level of ignorance’. You see, either some players were intentionally extremely stupid, or they were in on it form the beginning. They were in on it as they did not address the flaw they had exposed themselves to and they thought they had stopped the fear for 3 years, but now as we see merely two days ago, over three years after the fact has happened “a Russian-American academic, from Facebook. “We will take whatever steps are required to see that the data in question is deleted once and for all — and take action against all offending parties”“, as well as ““This was a scam — and a fraud,” Paul Grewal, a vice president and deputy general counsel at the social network” they are now realising that they set themselves up for a much larger negative boost. You see, when these 50 million users find out that they have been had, will they remain with Facebook? So what happened when the global wave starts and Facebook optionally loses 10% users, how will they sell that? It was the short-sighted prospect of meeting the sales needs and targets that got them in hot water. That is the foundation of the loss they set themselves up for and in all this, Americans far and wide have given their privacy up for a much larger extent that they realise and this path will take at least a few weeks as Facebook is setting all their guns to downplay any information that the public is exposed to.

So as we are ‘exposed’ to ““Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do,” Mr. Grewal said. “No systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.” Still, he added, “it’s a serious abuse of our rules.”“. So is that true? You see the data shows that he is not truthful, because if that was an actual setting than Facebook would have had their own cloud for analytical solutions that did not require the export of data, but we see that this did not happen. So as we see the altered statement of ‘No systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked‘, we could paraphrase this into ‘we voluntarily handed over the data to be used outside of the Facebook system‘. So does this make Robert Mercer the most intelligent entrepreneur, or is he merely the first one who got found out. So when we take a look at the flowchart in the Guardian article we see that Alekandr Kogan is linked to Cambridge University, St Petersburg State University, the Russian Government, as well as Global Science Research (GSR), which he founded, we see the setting that as academics are all about reselling their solutions for maximised economic profit, we see that the link between GSR and SCL Election Ltd (which now links Alexander Nix, we see that the data has likely gone a lot wider than anyone expected and there we have the setting that Facebook and their position of ‘it cannot be used legitimately in the future and must be deleted immediately‘, when data is out there it is NEVER deleted, whomever thinks that this actually happens will be delusional at the very best.

So when we see “That to me was the most astonishing thing. They waited two years and did absolutely nothing to check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it back“, which we get from former employee Christopher Wylie, gives the rise of the delusional settings that are seemingly available at Facebook. This now gets us to the final part “Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a data protection specialist, who spearheaded the investigative efforts into the tech giant, said: “Facebook has denied and denied and denied this. It has misled MPs and congressional investigators and it’s failed in its duties to respect the law“. I personally see this as the fallout to keep the billions of advertisement revenue rolling, because the larger the revenue stake, the less oversight is given to that firm. That is a view we have seen with the larger players for close to a decade. So is anyone actually surprised to see the Facebook data flow far beyond the borders of Facebook?

We as users have merely ourselves to thank for the shortcomings that exposes our privacy all over the world making it non-existent.

 

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March 17, 2018 · 12:44

Something for the Silver Screen?

There is an issue in Europe, well, there are plenty of issues in Europe, but until now, I steered clear of one of them. Something does not add up and it is now more of an issue than ever before.

This trip started in the Washington Post, after I saw several articles in the Guardian. You see, with one article it has become something else and that is very much an issue. So (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-to-respond-very-soon-to-british-decision-to-expel-its-diplomats/2018/03/15/89e27b4a-2839-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html), we see ‘U.S., France and Germany join Britain in saying Russia likely responsible for chemical attack against former spy‘, the mere title. Now, I am not saying that this is not what happened, not even implying that it is some figment. Yet, why would we see ‘U.S., France and Germany join Britain‘? This is a simple murder, perhaps an assassination, or liquidation. Whatever word you use for the event, it does not matter to the person who got iced, he definitely no longer cares. But we, we should care, for us this entire situation matters. So when we see in the very beginning “formally backed Britain’s claims that Russia likely was responsible for a chemical toxin attack against a former spy living in England“, I personally am not convinced. There would have been any number of actions that would have resulted in the demise of that person. To get a gun is usually not hard if you know the people. There was a person in the 90’s that one could meet near Ilford, would be able to get a whole range of guns, no silencers though. Still for £350-£500 (in those days) you could get something not too fancy and it would clean the clock of whoever needed to be done. Just make sure you do not do it in the wrong place and upset the local family guy, because that tends not to work. Still, consider the ease of a mere gun against the dangers, the risks and the trouble of getting VX into the country, than getting it to the location. You only need to see the movie ‘The Rock‘ to know that it requires several things, a lot of it dodgy and that stuff is not that stable to begin with. Now, as we see that there was a nerve agent in play, so I am not opposing that. I am merely stating that this kind of work is odd to begin with. That is beside the point of any SVR RF, FSB or GRU member freaking out having to take that shit with them. It is not merely overkill; it tends to leave you without options if you fail at first. And ask any Murphy that your shit goes wrong the first opportunity nature gets their hands on you. It is a fact of life. So in that regard it seems to me that Novichok is a weird choice to use. This is also me stating that I have no evidence that it was NOT used. So when I take a little lesson in Novichok, I learned the following:

  1. At https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/CSP/RC-3/en/rc3wp01_e_.pdf, we see “Regarding new toxic chemicals not listed in the Annex on Chemicals but which may nevertheless pose a risk to the Convention, the SAB makes reference to “Novichoks”. The name “Novichok” is used in a publication of a former Soviet scientist who reported investigating a new class of nerve agents suitable for use as binary chemical weapons. The SAB states that it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of “Novichoks”” which they state on page 3 in paragraph 8. Now this is 2013 and this is 5 years later. Yet, as some sources give us that it was developed in the 70’s up to the early 90’s, it seems interesting that there was nothing on the matter 20 years later.
  2. Yet that same OPCW gave us in April 2011, two years earlier the two following parts on page 7 at 11.1 and 11.2. With: “This has been attracting increasing attention in recent years, particularly among non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Although very little information has appeared in the public domain, there have been claims that a new class of nerve agents, known as “Novichoks”, has been developed. In December 2008, a former defence scientist published a book, which included information on structures reported to be those of the new agents. Some of these structures meet the criteria for Schedule 2 B4 (S2 B4); however, all others are non-scheduled chemicals. The author claimed that the toxicity of certain “Novichok” agents may exceed that of VX“, something that should have woken up the CIA instantly, something deadlier than VX and no defence? There is no way that they wouldn’t have been chasing that, even if it was merely to find a defence against it.

So now we have the play to some extent in view. The BBC gave first view (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43377856) with “Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia“, yet it is the innuendo of News.com.au that takes the limelight. With “Investigators believe the nerve agent that poisoned former Russian agent Sergei Skripal was planted in his daughter’s suitcase before she left Moscow, The Telegraph newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources. Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre in the genteel southern English city of Salisbury on March 4“, so not only did they go the whole nine yards to get to both, the entire issue is that both could have been removed simple enough in Salisbury. The entire matter does not add up. Another source, The Jamestown Foundation gives us “Sergei Skripal (66), a former Russian military intelligence (GRU) colonel, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 for allegedly being an agent of the United Kingdom’s MI6 intelligence service. Skripal was convicted, in 2006, to serve 13 years in prison for treason. In 2010, he was pardoned, released and sent to the UK in a major spy exchange involving a big group of “sleeper” spies who had been arrested in the United States, promptly convicted and deported to Russia“, so if we accept these facts, than we see that he was shipped to the UK 8 years ago. So now we see such an overkill event? It does not add up!

This level of overkill implies (mind you I am saying ‘implies’) personal orchestration, this is a message, but for who the message is for (or ‘from’ for that matter) is not clear. There is enough evidence that the toxin was used, but there is a long road here. Even as we accept the Jamestown Foundation giving us “Other officials insist Novichok was never officially defined as a chemical weapon and was not destroyed, because it never officially existed (Interfax, March 14). Mirzayanov, who is apparently the main whistle-blower on Novichok, is being actively discredited by the pro-Kremlin press (Komsomolskaya Pravda, March 15). Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov categorically denied there ever was a secret nerve agent program named “Novichok in Russia or in the USSR,” while Russia has stopped all work on developing new chemical weapons and has completed the destruction of existing stockpiles. Ryabkov referred to Mirzayanov as a “defector,” who was not trustworthy (Militarynews, March 15)“. This now gets us to the crux of the matter. The whistle-blower Vil Mirzayanov is now living in the US. Now we get to the good stuff, which is given by The Guardian, the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/16/russian-spy-poisoning-attack-novichok-chemist) gives us ‘chemist says non-state actor couldn’t carry out attack‘, that is a notion I can very well agree with. In addition, as I stated earlier “the chemical was too dangerous for anyone but a “high-level senior scientist” to handle and that even he – who worked for 30 years inside the secret military installation where novichok was developed and gained extensive personal experience in handling the agent – would not know how to weaponize it“. If this stuff has been weaponised it would be a novel usage and also a very novel situation. The fact that the luggage went from Moscow without setting off any alarms, the fact that it survived the trip (you know how luggage carriers tend to be), as well as the setting that it went off at the time it did gives rise to all kinds of technological options. Still we have the setting of who would have done it. Mirzayanov supports this with ““You need a very high-qualified professional scientist,” he continued. “Because it is dangerous stuff. Extremely dangerous. You can kill yourself. First of all you have to have a very good shield, a very particular container. And after that to weaponize it – weaponize it is impossible without high technical equipment. It’s impossible to imagine.”” and let’s not forget the target, a former GRU agent who had been in prison for 4 years and then exchanged. It seems to me that it is not impossible that Russia was behind it, but I feel that the entire approach was too personal. I speculate that this was likely a Russian with a personal axe to grind, moreover this was a test-run (a mere speculation) and the person decided to go after the one person he had hatred for and in that regard going after the daughter made perfect sense, even more so as it would hurt the person he wanted to get to even more. So was this the case?

Now the last part is all speculative but it adds up, the effort shown for stuff that is still material for denial from the original whistle-blower giving us ‘would not know how to weaponize it‘, and that is from the person who actually handled the stuff. It is the very last part that also matters; with “Mirzayanov thinks the Salisbury attack was performed with a binary version of the agent brought through customs and automatically mixed at the time of the attack“, so two elements, mixing and distributing, such a device was not seen when the luggage got to the UK?

There are too many issues and even as I agree wholeheartedly on the message that Vil Mirzayanov brought to us, I am not convinced that this was some elaborate scheme from the Russian government. Sending any officer of the SVR RF, FSB, GRU or even the Voyska Spetsialnogo Naznacheniya to go shopping in London with the message “Oh, and before you fly back, would you kindly put a bullet in the back of the head of both Sergei and Yulia Skripal?“, a simple mandate avoiding well over half a dozen of cogs that could be clogged with mere sand at any given time.

That is why it does not add up. In hindsight there is one additional part. Is it true that ONLY Russia has that stuff? The entire matter when we see some papers where the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was to some extent in the dark 5 years ago. In light of Vil Mirzayanov moving to New Jersey in 1996, so 15 years later the OPCW is still in the dark? That path makes even less sense. In addition, the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) seemed to have been equally in the dark. From those parts alone, whilst one of the handlers was in the US for the last 22 years, the entire setting is a stretch. It does make sense that the US would have been part of the conversation, yet how do France and Germany fit in? Some presented unity on standing up against Russia?

There is little question on the timeline. So when we see the BBC (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43297638), they are found by a doctor and nurse at 16:15, both unconscious. So they had made it to the Malting’s shopping centre (or so the information implies). So when we learn “A police officer who was the first to attend the scene is now in a serious condition in hospital, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said“, which we get form the article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43323847) we should be able to tell more. But we cannot, the News is too chaotic, BBC, SBS and other reliable sources give us the snippets, but not an actual slice of the cake. The timeline implies that they were poisoned on the spot, the fact that Nick Bailey, a police officer who became unwell after taking part in the early response to the attack gives additional rise to the use of a toxin, but that implies that it was done there, on the spot. Even if the toxin was moved through touch, the speed at which Nick Bailey got it implies (speculative from my side) that the toxin worked fast, unless the location was less than a 4 minute walk from their house, that option would be taken away as the toxin would be pushed through the body via the bloodstream. In addition any longer would make the Novichok useless, nerve agents are that because they are close to lightning fast, even as we expect that the police officer was lucky and too little got to him.

Yet it was only a few hours ago that the Guardian is giving us a timeline (aren’t they just the best). So the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/16/skripals-poisoning-what-we-know-so-far) gives us a decent timeline. I particularly liked “most likely in powder form and the means of delivery could have been as simple as a letter“, so perhaps it might be: “most likely in powder form and the means of delivery could have been as simple as the restaurant bill“, you see the hour at Zizzi as well as the fact that they were found 40 minutes later. A nerve agent will work fast, really fast so the 40 minutes would have been a stretch no matter what, yet the fact when they were found and when they were overcome is not a given, so they could have been smouldering there for over 20 minutes. It equally gives rise that the longer they were there the less impact it would have had on Constable Nick Bailey, his luck I might add. The Guardian is now showing the issues I had and that is good (for me), so as I finalise reading that article, I see a number of issues and even as I had seen most issues, the one part that they aren’t giving us (as It was not part of the timeline) was seen in the in depth of the Independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-russia-nerve-agent-attack-spy-poisoning-sergei-skripal-salisbury-accusations-evidence-explanation-a8258911.html). Here we see: “Some analysts have claimed that Novichoks could have been smuggled out of chemical weapons and storage sites after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when facilities were abandoned by unpaid staff and security was low“, “if the precursor ingredients were smuggled out in the 1990s, stored in proper conditions and mixed recently, they could still be deadly in a small-scale attack according to some experts” as well as “In 1995, a Russian banking magnate called Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary died from organ failure after being poisoned with a military grade toxin found on an office telephone. A closed trial found that his business partner had obtained the substance via intermediaries from an employee of a state chemical research institute known as GosNIIOKhT, which was involved in the development of Novichoks” give us a few things. In the first that the experts are kind of clueless, we might be blaming Russia on all this and it might be true, yet the latter part that involves Ivan Kivelidi takes away the ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. The fact that this stuff is out in the open to some degree is a much larger issue and when we see “Leonard Rink, told police he had been storing poisons in his garage and selling them to pay off debts“, we see part that takes the Russian government optionally out of the equation and gives us the part I came with earlier “the entire approach was too personal. I speculate that this was likely a Russian with a personal axe to grind“, it fits the bill of the restaurant one might state, that is, if the timeline of the events and the timeline of the toxin can be proven, because both are the axial in the issue.

No matter how this plays out, this could become one hell of a movie and when we see it on the silver screen, will Matt Damon play the person with the grudge, or the scientist who initially played a role in developing it? However we should reserve the role of Skripal for John Larroquette, it will be nice to see him again on the big screen.

 

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March 16, 2018 · 14:45

The rocky road of Congress

There are issues all over the Middle East, and whilst saying that, we see that the UK and the US are now ‘caught’ with their fingers in the big pork pie.

The setting is best seen when we start with the Israeli Haaretz. The article (at https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/top-three-stunning-admissions-from-the-top-u-s-general-in-the-region-1.5910066) gives an initial view.

The title ‘Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia: Top Three Stunning Admissions from the Top U.S. General in the Middle East‘ sets the pace to the smallest degree and sets the topics to a much larger degree. So let’s take a look.

  1. Assad has won
  2. Iran deal should stand
  3. Saudis use American weapons without accountability in Yemen

Each of these three settings are partially a given. In the first we see that as Lt. Col. Dmitry Utkin has been successful in setting the pace and the plays that are about to follow. Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is linked in all this gives the push for Concord Management and Consulting as well as its subsidiary LLC Megaline, a large push for optional multi-billion dollar contracts. It is yet unconfirmed what exactly will happen, but the setting of the end of the Syrian war will have long lasting repercussions in the Middle East. It is also the first setting where there is a very clear indication that the influence of the US is declining. It will quite literally need to cater to the needs of Saudi Arabia for a much longer time to undo the damage that inaction has brought to the US. So whilst the world is getting torpedoed by news, fake news and gossip regarding to the US and the Internet Research Agency (IRA), there are more and more indications that LLC Megaline is moving beneath the radar to start setting up their infrastructures to grow close to 500% and become the construction facilitator primarily for Syria and after that who knows. Let’s not forget that the $500 billion required for NOAM will go a lot further than Saudi Arabia by its self can currently facilitate for. So as America has been making gruesome steps towards optionally fumbling the collaboration it had created and grown over 75 years. As we were treated earlier this week (at http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/378132-us-must-push-saudi-arabia-away-from-the-chinese-model-of-governance), so when we see “The widespread concerns are that Saudi Arabia simply won’t meet the stated targets set by Vision 2030. Facing a demographic tidal wave — nearly 45 percent of the population is under the age of 25 — Saudi Arabia needs to generate millions of new jobs to absorb a growing workforce it can no longer afford to subsidize through generous government handouts“, that whilst the US has been unable to even closely set its own agenda for, at times, no more than a quarter in advance at each stage and ending up missing their own forecasts by a lot, we see here that the vision that requires another 12 years is already set to fail, according to the Hill. Now, there is a clear setting that things have to change and there are changes coming, there are even more optional changes in the works as the EU has been playing the wrong settings to cater to the wrong people, in addition, the stress settings between Turkey and several European nations are now impacting a little wider than before. You might see this as separate and as acts they are, but the impact is much wider. France is getting less and less obliging towards Turkey in regards to the Afrin offensive, and the Turks are also getting less and less warm receptions from the Netherlands, so there are political stress situations all over the place. So as we now hear (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-turkey/swiss-investigate-alleged-turkish-attempt-to-kidnap-businessman-idUSKCN1GQ2UD) that allegedly accuses that “Turkish diplomats planned to drug and kidnap a Swiss-Turkish businessman as part of a crackdown after the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey“, we see a new iteration of cooling notions. These matters have an impact to a larger degree. You see, there is not just the Saudi issue, issues 2 and three all include Iran, not merely the nuclear deal, but the Houthi support that Iran is giving with the supply of missiles and other goods is still largely ignored by too many players. It is a setting of filtered views, trying to isolate the players and deal with one sided responses. It is the Yemeni setting that makes that utterly impossible. So as we see on one side “The Senator followed up, citing reports that U.S. munitions have been used against civilians in Yemen, she asked, “General Votel, when you receive reports like this from credible media organizations or outside observers, is CENTCOM able to tell if U.S. fuel or U.S. munitions were used in that strike?” “No, senator, I don’t believe we are,” he replied“, we are shown a one sided part in all this that a significant amount of acts was to act against the Iranian missiles as they were targeting civilian areas. That part remains unasked. So in all this, as we realise that Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of the smarter cookies in the US Senatorial jar of cookies, we need to wonder on her actions and her reasoning. The idea that the US (especially the democrats) needs the nuclear deal to hold, whilst we get (at https://www.ft.com/content/22845a20-27d2-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0) an accepted view from the Financial Times with “The US will on Thursday ramp up pressure on European countries to “fix” a landmark Iran nuclear deal that president Donald Trump has threatened to scrap“, with in addition “A state department spokesperson said: “This is a last chance.”” we know that the end is nigh for that bad situation. It is more than Israel wanted, the additional settings that we see is that the US has played a very dangerous game on the Turkish, the Iranian and the Saudi side, whilst there is enough indication that they never had the Trump cards to make it happen. That view is given more strength when we see “The senior US official said “it was diplomatic malpractice to exclude missiles from the original deal”, adding that long-range missiles are inherently associated with a nuclear weapons programme“. In that regard, it is not just the acts of the US, but the EU and UK players in all this will also be given the spotlight. As we see that things were missing, the hasty excuses like ‘there was no time‘, or ‘this was as good as we were going to get it‘ will hit back with enormous force as it gives more and more view that the initial views of Israel were correct. Now as there is an increased escalation with Iran, it is the view we see (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43419673) where we see “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told US network CBS News his country did not want to acquire nuclear weapons. “But without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we would follow suit as soon as possible,” he added“, which now gets us in that stage that comes with the Hollywood phrase ‘This shit is getting real!‘ It was the setting that Israel had dreaded for the longest of times and whilst that shit is getting real we see, or better stated, we should see that the escalated and unbalanced pressures are showing the EU as well as the UN to be set as paper tigers that have no power and in the end no options. It is like Reuters stated in regards to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, merely “a 47-nation human rights body that has no legislative powers“, yes that was a setting that really helped it all along, were they not?

It goes further than this

You see, some of the players are waking up (or so it seems), with ‘GOP leaders want to put off Yemen war powers vote’, (at https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/15/politics/yemen-war-powers-vote-congress/index.html), they realise that the setting is less clear, there are intricate settings that have been ignored by some of the players (read: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren), the issue is not how, what, when, where or why it was done. With “GOP leaders would prefer to put off a final vote on the divisive issue until after it can be more closely studied in committee” it is not merely a stalling tactic (stalling might still be a factor). The issues that Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren danced around are still very much on the table for the governing party and in all this it is also squarely on the plate of Mike Pompeo, who, if confirmed, as Secretary Of State, will need to make sure that his office does not become the SOS signal that breaks the loom before the strings in all this have been separated, untangled and isolated so that the matters do not become some Gordian knot that ends up pushing Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey over some edge, because these connections will set flame to the threads connected to others on the loom of diplomacy. Even as we are ‘treated’ to news items like ‘Iran-Qatar alliance deepens, says Iranian naval official‘ and ‘Iran stands with Qatar, says Guards official‘, the truth remains that a direct head to head with Saudi Arabia is one that Iran is reluctant to have, because when it comes to making choices between Saudi Arabia and Iran, there is clarity that the US, many European nations as well as Israel, pretty much none of them will support Iran, as the deepening cliffs are drawn between the EU nations and Turkey, the support it had with Turkey could essentially fall away further, and in that Turkey has been famous for merely supporting whatever pleases Turkey, getting in bed with Iran that deep is a choice Turkey will not be willing to chance. In all this Iran requires players like Qatar to make the blunders of setting themselves into a light of harm whilst Iran plays the ‘I know nothing‘ card.

A game that ends even before it starts in all earnest. So in that regard, the second and third setting we saw in Haaretz will have stronger impacts and the entire Yemeni setting will not be played out the way some would like that to be. that part was seen merely an hour ago when Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-yemen-mattis/mattis-dont-restrict-u-s-support-to-saudi-led-forces-in-yemen-idUSKCN1GS00N) gave us “Defence Secretary Jim Mattis defended U.S. military support to Saudi Arabian-led coalition forces in Yemen on Thursday as he explained a personal appeal to lawmakers who are considering whether to end Washington’s involvement in the devastating conflict“, and it is not merely in regards to support. When it comes to appeasing Turkey or Saudi Arabia, having strong ties with Saudi Arabia would be roughly 1,000% more important than anything else and not in the smallest regard for economic reasons. So as we earlier (in previous bog) saw that what is now stated by Reuters as “A bipartisan group of senators, Republican Mike Lee, independent Bernie Sanders and Democrat Chris Murphy, are attempting to take advantage of a provision in the 1973 war powers act that allows any senator to introduce a resolution on whether to withdraw U.S. armed forces from a conflict not authorized by Congress“, we see that congress might be having the right cap on whilst considering this, the cap would prove to be a massive blowback for Saudi-US settings in the Middle East for the longest of times. So as we might to some degree agree with “Lawmakers have argued for years that Congress has ceded too much authority over the military to the White House. Under the Constitution, Congress – not the president – has the authority to declare war“, we need to also see that the US has not declared war against Yemen, it merely is seeking to stop the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, a group has been firing missiles into Saudi Arabia as well as target commercial vessels off Yemen’s coast, 2 acts that should never have been allowed for in the first place. The US could have a clear setting in those two parts and as such a larger repair of status would be to be more vigorous in countering merely those two dangers anyway possible.

And in all this there is one final danger that the US desperately needs to negate and they do not have a lot of time to achieve it. You see as the Syrian issues are drawing to a close, it is not impossible that PMC Wagner would be growing its influence by offering support to Saudi Arabia against Yemen. You see, Iran painted itself in a corner by denying the weapons shipments to Yemen. In this the strategy becomes that either Iran walks away, or locks horns with Russia too. So as we see “The Iranian Minister of Defence Amir Hatami has denied the allegations about the presumed shipment of weapons to Yemen“, the door has been opened and now Yevgeny Prigozhin as well as Lt. Col. Dmitry Utkin could end up visiting Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, in his role of Minister of Defence and offer to solve the Yemeni issue. Should that happen, which is largely speculative from my side, the Russian delegations would receive a much larger opening of the door of opportunity in the Middle East as well as optional access to offer services towards NOAM, a situation that must be the stuff of nightmare legends for the US (as well as for the UK to some degree).

If that happens, it is expected to happen before the end of July, so we will know then and I could be wrong, but when it comes to business opportunity we have seen Yevgeny Prigozhin take the lane of opportunity in the quickest way and there is no way that he does not want a slice of that $500 billion Lemon Meringue Pie, or as he would be calling it the: Kremlin Profit Sharing Money Supply, a refreshing desert that is as rhymed as the Kremlin could get it with the available Horn of Plenty for all who agree there.

Do you still think that my speculation is that far off? I do not hope to be right, but knowing how the souls of greed move; the chance of me being wrong is declining really fast.

All because some of the players have (as I personally see it) their own ego’s and personal needs in the play and not the national needs they had to serve, the long term needs that is, because there is no doubt that some of these sparks are the direct consequence of short term thinking.

 

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March 11, 2018 · 14:55

The politics of denial

I started this last Friday, so as I started writing this, I got to do the clumsy thing and actually kick out the power cable, losing all I had written. It led to my own denial and anger, and it fittingly fits this. Now, as I revisit the issue I have on one side the pleasure of having ‘new’ data, and the displeasure of going over this, but I will a little later in the article as it actually has bearing on all this.

So these three senators have decided to see if they can break up their entire Saudi Arabian support system, which will work out swimmingly for the UK, but about that later. The three senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, Chris Murphy have started the US on a path, where the setting is that those three have introduced a resolution that will force the chamber to vote for the first time on whether the US should continue to support Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, a conflict that has led to the deaths of at least 10,000 civilians. In itself that is not the question, you see this is not whether what they do is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. As we see it in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/28/yemen-saudi-arabia-war-us-support-senator-push-to-end) we get ““This is about the process,” said an aide to Lee. “What decisions do we make for a country that has been at war constantly for almost 20 years? When do we say that something is worthy of intervening in and when do we make that determination? It’s about the how“, which is fair enough. It is a political decision in all this and we can view it from one side, or from the other side. But there is actually a lot more going on.

Part is seen when we see “Yemen’s conflict began in 2014, when the Houthis, Shia rebels from the country’s north, seized the nation’s capital and ousted the Saudi-backed ruler, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who lives in exile in Riyadh. In response, a Saudi-led Arab coalition began a bombing campaign in 2015, to restore the exiled government to power”, in all this, we might see these matters as separate, but they are not, they are very connected.

The first part is seen in the NY Times (one of many sources), on April 14th 2011 we see ‘U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings‘ (at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html), here we see “a small core of American government-financed organizations were promoting democracy in authoritarian Arab states“, as well as “as American officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections” we see that America never learned from its mistakes in Egypt, Iran and other places. Now, I have nothing against democracy, I grew up in that environment and we should all accept that, but is it that clear? These nations had a sovereign right, they decided not to be democracies and as some filled the heads of some people with the ‘golden dream‘, and got trained into the creation of flocks and let them flock to those Arab spring groups the damage ended up getting close to complete. What started in Tunisia in 2010, moved to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain, where we saw the unsettling of regimes, major uprisings and social violence, riots, civil wars and/or insurgencies. Places like Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Iranian Khuzestan, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan were not impervious either to some extent. So in the age of the fucked up Obama administration we saw the start of more violence and the death of close to a million citizens, yet the Democratic Party goes into denial at that stage, because they were not involved. Now, legally speaking there is absolutely no evidence that this was done with the blessing of the Democratic Party, or parties in the White House in that time. Now, it might exist, but I have not seen it. In addition as the NY Times gives us we see references to “the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a non-profit human rights organization based in Washington“, as well as “The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department“. So here we see the crux, these three senators want to set the how and the process, but their own system caused this and now they want it to go away. The US burned them self on Syria by standing at the sideline whilst we see that they caused it indirectly. Now as they numbers in Yemen add up, we see that the US is ready to get into denial fast. The issue is even more ‘hilarious’ when we see in that same NY Times article “Ms. Qadhi, the Yemeni youth activist, attended American training sessions in Yemen. “It helped me very much because I used to think that change only takes place by force and by weapons,” she said. But now, she said, it is clear that results can be achieved with peaceful protests and other nonviolent means“, so how peaceful did things go in Yemen, and how peaceful did those 10,000 citizens die?

I am not implying that Ms. Qadhi was involved in any of that, but for aspiring autocrats the notion of destabilisation breeds opportunity, which is pretty much what we are seeing now; with splintering in Yemen the damage is actually increasing with Iran, Islamic State, Ansar Allah playing their part. As the BBC reported in February 2015 “But as the interim government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi stalled in early 2014, Ansar Allah launched an aggressive military campaign in the north, defeating key military units allied to Gen Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and the Islah political party” so how peaceful should we see this ‘aggressive military campaign‘?

And that is not even the beginning of the issue. The NY Times give us in conclusion “we appreciated the training we received through the NGOs sponsored by the U.S. government, and it did help us in our struggles, we are also aware that the same government also trained the state security investigative service, which was responsible for the harassment and jailing of many of us, said Mr. Fathy, the Egyptian activist“, which now reads that the US government was selling short and betting on both sides of the event, like an arms dealer providing both sides with the latest creation in the effort to end the lives of those on the other side of the equation.

It gets even more disturbing when we see the Telegraph (UK) give us (at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/bahrain-wikileaks-cables/8334643/GUARDING-NDIS-FLANK.html) the part where there is a dis-proportionality in all this making the issue even more toxic and dangerous. That part is seen in “Al-Hamer promises to be a cooperative partner for emboffs and, we judge, will support NDI programming so long as it does not disproportionately benefit Al-Wifaq and other opposition political societies. He is somewhat favourably disposed towards the U.S. — all four of his children study in Boston or Austin, TX — and his wife, Afnan Al-Zayani, is a MEPI grantee. Al-Hamer’s chief focus will remain his job as the King’s media advisor; he will likely leave BIPD strategy and operations to other members of the new board of trustees and to Al-Khayat and his senior staff. Emboffs will engage with Al-Khayat and board members such as Al-Otaibi, and will remain alert for any signs of BIPD or GOB discomfort with NDI in an effort to avoid any repetition of the controversy NDI encountered in 2006“,

Finally the NY Times gave us: “Hosni Mubarak, then Egypt’s president, was “deeply sceptical of the U.S. role in democracy promotion,” said a diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Cairo dated Oct. 9, 2007“, which took roughly 3 years, 4 months and two days until that same democracy promotion scheme got rid of him and his presidency on 11th February 2011.

Now we see that the US is adding to its own misery. As it had lost any credibility it has, we see that three senators are setting the stage where the US could lose even more. We see that (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/06/the-global-economic-switch/), the issue of Saudi investments are now bubbling to the surface. Not just some need for a desalinisation plant. No this is a setting in excess of 500 billion and as the US government is trying to make a play for some parts of that, we see three senators trying to get on a high moral horse and change the setting of support to Saudi Arabia. So as they hold the high moral horse and stop any actions to take place, how would Saudi Arabia react with their “the half a trillion dollar NEOM“, the massive growth in dependency and requirements for technology will take a nice seat where these actions might result in Saudi Arabia talking to British Telecom and Verizon might end up sitting at the side of the road. What was a near equal race between the two for the graces of 5G opportunity is now a race where Verizon could in theory end dead last. Cory Booker the Democrat senator for New Jersey is just going to love all this or not?

The problem is that this should have been about the morality and not the cash, yet that is what politics in a bankrupt state has been reduced to. Now as we are seeing all that good news in regards to the US economy. Most ignore the other side as “Toys “R” Us may be planning to liquidate its bankrupt U.S. stores, according to a report by Bloomberg News. The retailer, reportedly, has not found a buyer or secured a debt restructuring deal with its lenders” (Source: CBS), in addition the LA Times gives us “The downfall of Toys R Us can be traced back to a $7.5 billion leveraged buyout in 2005, when Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust loaded the company with debt. For years, the retailer was able to refinance its debt and delay a reckoning. But the emergence of online competitors, such as Amazon.com Inc., weighed on results. The company’s huge interest payments also sucked up resources that could have gone toward technology and improving operations“, the interest payments, the issue that several larger players face, with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft being likely the only exceptions, we still see the growth of debt where these larger players are all fending off the inevitable. Gun maker Remington and guitar company Gibson, two iconic companies, neither made it out and are now in the bankruptcy setting, and they are not alone, so as they vanish thousands of workers will be in the need of finding new jobs and possibly even resettling in another state changing state pressures on the support systems that were in place, because those people made products that needed shipping, they had infrastructures and shops depended on these thousands, they are most likely to move and as that happens more pressure is exerted on others.

Is that all relevant?

Only indirectly! You see it is part of a pattern. The US has pushed the media to be in denial of the debts and the costs of these debts. So when we consider that Intergovernmental holdings stood at $6.3 trillion, giving a combined total gross national debt of $19.8 trillion or about 106% of the previous 12 months of GDP, with 45% that the public has is owned by foreign investors, the largest of which were Japan and China each having a little over a trillion of that debt. So even at 1% the debt is a large issue, even as it slowly decreases, two of the 32 nations should be getting $10 billion each and that is merely the interest and that is if it is only 1%, it is unlikely to be below 4%, so the US has to come up with well over 250 billion and that is beside all the normal expenses they have. It only takes one negative event to push them over the hill and more than one is coming, in addition the US desperately needs part of the economic $500 billion windfall, and that is likely to become the diplomatic debate that the State department will be confronted with. with the debt adding well over $240 billion in the last 11 months the forward momentum is not there at present (it was earlier than that though), we see that the US has issues and dilemma’s to deal with, only one of them is Yemen and several are with Saudi Arabia, a nation they need to be friends with for all the reasons they can muster.

So as we look at Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/180310204215697.html) where we see “A military solution to the conflict in Yemen will be a disaster”, said al-Hamdi, a former member of the Yemeni parliament who was ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2009 until 2014“, we might give him the benefit of the doubt, yet is that true? You see “History is repeating itself. There is a history of Saudi intervention in Yemen, from the revolution in 1962 to the 1994 Yemeni civil war,” said al-Hamdi at the event, which was hosted by the Cordoba Foundation and titled Yemen: War, Politics and Human Tragedy event. “Yemen is being destroyed. A nation is dying,” said al-Hamdi“, yet we already know that it was the Yemeni president that was requesting assistance, there was an uprising and that started the current situation.

You see, what we do not see form any source is that when I look into Abdulrahman al-Hamdi, I find very little. I did find “Abu Salim mayor Abdulrahman al-Hamdi told Reuters that the unusually intense fighting that erupted last Thursday was triggered by members of competing armed factions capturing each other“, which is what Reuters gave us in March 2017 (might not be the same person), so the only other articles are from the last hours. Consider an ambassador that fell from all the news channels between his non-working status between 2014 and 2018, almost a death sentence. So is this ‘high morality‘ his way to get back into politics? Back in the news merely because it is convenient for some of the players, that is how I personally see it.

Back to the beginning of me

Now I get to go to the part I mentioned in the beginning. You see there was a small accident on Friday and I lost power and as a result my article was gone, I had not yet saved it. Now, I could have gone back to it all and rewrite it, but after 2,000 words (roughly) I felt a little drained and extremely agitated with myself. Kicking out the power cable is my own stupidity and it was on me and me alone. Perhaps you can relate? Consider that you leave home, you get to the train station and it is there that you recognise that your wallet is still at home. Now, this is not a biggie, we have all had that moment and it is that moment that you realise that you have to do that 15 minute walk twice more just to get back to the start. That is when your nerves hit you and I have resolved it to walk twice that much to the other station because the repetitive feeling falls away and weirdly enough the anger subsides quicker (no idea why though). I know, it is irrational but that is how my brain at works at times and we all have some kind of quirk like that. That quirk is shown in more clarity when we see the impact of the US Arab spring and the subsequent actions of the US. They are now trying to change it all because the death list that the US aided in starting the death counts in Syria, Yemen, and Libya to name three is also opening the wounds towards the Iran and the CIA-backed 1953 coup that ousted democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Some are asking if the US will ever learn its lesson in this regard. Others are wondering how deep ‘Christian bitching fish wife fairy-tale mongering‘ goes in regards to the intervening actions in Middle Eastern rule and politics.

The end is nowhere near the end and it reflects also directly towards Syria, as we see “The UN secretary general has described the situation in eastern Ghouta as “hell on earth” and the body’s high commissioner for human rights described the military offensive as a “monstrous annihilation”“, in that it ended exactly as I expected it to play out. so as we see “The report from the UK-based human rights group, which said both Douma and the smaller nearby town of Harasta were surrounded and cut off, was disputed by locals, but such an outcome seems inevitable in any event as the regime presses its advantage, backed by both Syrian and Russian airstrikes“, so as the Syrian situation draws to a close we see that both US administrations have failed the Syrian people and as that population has been culled we see that the docile remaining part will become the sheep that the Syrian president needed them to be. In all this the profile of Russia is now further up and the US diminishes in parts of the Middle East, so alienating Saudi Arabia is likely the worst choice that America could make. Fortunately the UK still has a large opportunity there, but in all, as Saudi Arabia wants more options, the doors will open further for Russia. That was seen last week at CNBC as they gave us: “The agreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut back on oil production has boosted oil prices and is now the foundation for a broader relationship“, even as Saudi Arabia is pushing for less power on oil, they still want the best price possible for what they have, a mere business approach to a commodity. In addition, less than a month ago we saw Bloomberg report that the liquefied natural gas (LNG) options, is  new field for Saudi Arabia to do in conjunction with Russia as we got “Russian gas producer Novatek PJSC and Saudi oil giant Aramco agreed to consider teaming up on Novatek’s Arctic LNG-2 project“, so we see growth on economic options for Russia as America has been closing its own doors, or to some extent, they are getting closed by Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy for whatever reasons they had.

It is now becoming a stronger imperative to find a path forward. Not merely in regards to Saudi- Us relationship, the issue of Yemen and Syria will plague us for decades to come, even if it is settled overnight (which is not ever happening), the cleaning tasks as well as finding a longer term solution for Humanitarian solutions can only become successful if the players enable Saudi Arabia to take the lead for ending the Yemeni crises. For Syria it is likely too late, as Russia is completing ‘its’ mission (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/02/24/losing-values-towards-insanity/), where we see in ‘Losing values towards insanity‘ the quote “With these two gentleman owning 50% (actually more than that) into LLC Megaline, with Megaline receiving a large chunk of the capital construction contracts for the Russian military we see that link. When the dust settles, Assad will need to rebuild, and they will be the front player and possibly only consideration on a nation needing to be reconstructed. So now how weird are their actions? Both Yevgeniy Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin are now perfectly placed to rake in billions and in that regard we get back to the options for the dying in Syria; they don’t get to have any” a mere two weeks ago, now shown to be more accurate than anything else published. The media could have seen this coming with a ruler and an abacus, no high mathematical forecasting required.

So as we see the outrage on Yemen from all those seeking the limelight, I wonder if anyone will ask them the question, what exactly did you do for those Yemeni’s over the last 4 years? The list of activities might not add up to much, that is how I saw Abdulrahman al-Hamdi, because if you seek him on Google for the last year, he shows up once, just once for the Al Jazeera event 6 hours ago, that is also the next issue that both Syria and Yemen face, those who merely talk to get a seat on the table, because soon there will be money available and now they all want a seat at the table, it is the politics of denial, to only get there when the going is good.

 

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March 1, 2018 · 14:49

The failing Mario Draghi Kart

Just yesterday, the Deutsche Welle (at http://www.dw.com/en/eurozone-economy-still-requires-stimulus-ecbs-mario-draghi/a-42751327), gave us that the ‘Eurozone economy still requires stimulus‘, so after these years the stupid and the rich still will not learn and the people are about to pay for it dearly. That is, not the UK, they might have gotten out just in time, if they don’t add delay upon delay. Even as we are sussed to sleep with: “The bank is gradually reducing its bond purchase program but it may continue past September”, the people are sussed to sleep, in a situation, where they sleep on a luxury liner and it is going down. Like having a nice cabin on the Titanic and you decided to sleep in on April 15th and you did. You never woke up, you could if there was oxygen, yet oxygen is 3786 meters away, 3786 meters straight up!

So when we are pointed at the ECB’s asset purchase program, which began three years ago, and which has seen the central bank spend €2.55 trillion ($3.14 trillion) to buy government bonds and other financial assets. The people are not given clarity on where that money went EXACTLY, in other news, that news we got months ago on Mario Draghi being a member of a very exclusive 5 mile high club. So when we got 6 weeks ago: “European Central Bank President Mario Draghi should give up his membership of the opaque Group of 30 consultative body because it risks hurting public confidence in the ECB’s independence, the European Ombudsman said on Wednesday“, how come the near entire bloody media has not followed up on this? After that one day it was silenced, the ECB will not respond, Mario Draghi apparently keeps on getting away with whatever he needs and there are no questions, not even on an international level which is unsettling in so many ways as it leaves us with the indication that the media may be as unreliable as the politicians they are reporting on.

A program that has sunk 3 trillion dollars and everyone is just stating that the economy is great, yet nobody is asking the number one question and that is ‘How will we pay it back?‘

The theory of printing money

Mario Draghi, president of the ECB has profiled his place and his ‘bank’ as awesome, marketing on a near supreme level, like a politicians stating on how honest he is. Excellent standards, great breeding and stellar academic excellence, and you know that expression about a story being too good to be true?

So they have their ‘Quantative Easing’, they use it to buy government bonds and other financial assets. The purchases have helped keep borrowing costs low, which in turn have boosted spending and investment in the Eurozone economy. But is this true? You see, there are now two levels of problems and dangers. When we consider that the bond is a debt security, under which the issuer owes the holders (so the government that issued the bonds now owes the ECB), a debt and (depending on the terms of the bond) is obliged to pay them interest and to repay the principal at a later date, termed the maturity date.

So over $3 trillion is bought from these governments and those governments are paying the ECB interest until they pay back the amount at the date of maturity (could be up to 30 years). So basically they are pushing massive debts forward, it is almost like the Greek debt mess, but now close to 173 times more intense in regards to the outstanding amount. The current makers in charge get a free pass and leave the mess to the next person whilst they enjoy the millions they earned as well as the multimillions they got by being a member of an exclusive group of 30, as they get the results before any other publication and they get to the cream all without ever running the risks other ‘investors’ face.

So whilst everyone sees the interest only part, we are kept in the dark on the fact that an additional $3 trillion would be outstanding and with the UK out of play, the other nations will get to pay for it all, so when we consider that last week nations like the Netherlands told the EU that they want a freeze on EU contributions, so now we read: “Rutte has said he does not want the Dutch contribution to the EU to increase, despite the European Commission’s call for higher spending on climate change and border controls, and the gap left by Britain after Brexit. Like the Netherlands, Britain is a net payer into the EU’s coffers and will leave a large hole when it pulls out. The Commission wants to fill the gap through a combination of spending cuts and higher contributions, something which the Dutch strongly oppose” (at https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2018/02/dutch-prime-minister-begins-campaign-to-freeze-eu-contributions/), what no one is looking at, or mentioning is that the outstanding $3 trillion is going to be an additional matter to deal with, even if that is placed in a very separate part of the books. Payment will be due!

So as they give the mention how Brexit will be one reason to increase payment, the absence of the QA plan and outstanding amount remains unmentioned, it is an impact, but that is exactly why the UK got out in the first place. In this the contribution for the Dutch will go up by $4500 per person, so where is that coming from? Now consider that the impact of the matured bonds will be massive for the positive contributing nations, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark and Austria would end up getting a blow to their budgets unlike any they have had. The question becomes how intense depends on certain elements. So when we consider the bad curve. So, when the bonds bought reduce in value by 30%, the ECB is not hit, it might lose the value, but that means that the government it was bought from ends up with a smaller invoice to pay, and the losses for the investor (the ECB) loses 30% of their investment, now the EU nations as a bloc will have to come up with that money. So depending on where it was invested in, that government get to laugh as the other EU members need to pay for the ‘losses’, which amounts to the positive paying nations. This is one of the foremost reasons why I was all for the UK getting out as soon as possible. So these nations could end up paying an additional $1 trillion divided amongst them. So how was this ever going to be fair? Of course that is if the value of these bonds depreciates, if that does not happen, than there is no additional issue, but the fact that the outstanding amount is still due for payment and in light of the bulk of these EU nations not being able to keep a decent budget and almost no ability to pay such amounts does not help us in any way in raising confidence in regards to the EU moving forward. Greece is to the smallest extent some indication, even as many sources are positive, I have an issue with “The 2017 primary balance target of 1.75 percent of GDP is expected to be reached with a significant margin. For 2018 the primary balance target of 3.5 percent is considered achievable“, so there are two parts. The first is the use of ‘expected to be reached‘, margin or not, these numbers are not yet set in stone, so there could be a bad news cycle. The second part is ‘target of 3.5 percent is considered achievable‘, which means an almost 100% increase towards the positive result, which has never been realistic. Even as the unemployment numbers are down from 27% a few years ago, to 21%, this still implies that one out of 5 is without a job, that means the stresses on the Greek infrastructure remains and it will remain for several years to come. So when it comes to the larger nations, Spain, Italy and France are still a downward drag here in regards to the overall EU and their drag is draining their infrastructure and options towards pushing the EU economically forward, some others like the Netherlands and Sweden are ahead of the curve, but we forget that they are merely 26 million, whilst the three dragging us down represent close to 185 million people, in that regard we forget the weight that the larger nations have. So in that both the UK and Germany are the positive sides, but the UK is leaving and adding Germany only gets that group of 3 at 50% of the ones slowing the EU down, so even as the slowdown is a good thing, it is still a negative result in the end. So it is in that light that there is a growing risk to the entire Quantative Easing plan that Mario Draghi gave the EU and even as they are all on how ‘the economy is so much better‘, I agree that compared to two years ago, the people are more positive and jobs are getting better, yet this has been at the expense of unrealistic levels of spending and there is no given on when that will be resolved, so those people have a $3 trillion bill hanging over their heads.

You see, part of the problems is infrastructure, EU infrastructure mind you. So as the Australian Financial Review (at http://www.afr.com/news/economy/monetary-policy/mario-draghi-keeps-focus-on-monetary-accommodation-20180226-h0wos8) gave us “Draghi did address a question on why ABLV Bank received emergency support from the Latvian central bank before the ECB declared it failing or likely to fail. He said that the Emergency Liquidity Assistance policy – under which national central banks rather than the ECB decide to provide support to troubled lenders – is a “remnant of a past time” and should be reformed”

Say What?

So basically a bank got support from its national bank, whilst the ECB had it as ‘likely to fail‘, so is this how Quantative Easing is ‘miss-spent’? It is not completely clear or fair to state it in that way, yet when we see Reuters with “The ECB said at the weekend that privately held ABLV is likely unable to pay its debts or other liabilities as they fall due. “We believe our bank will be able to settle with all of our clients in full,” ABLV, Latvia’s third-biggest bank by assets, said in a statement. “Voluntary liquidation is an important condition for it – the process has to be done as professionally and as transparently as possible, given the history of Latvian insolvency and liquidation processes”“, yet in all that is there any mention whether that included the emergency support funds? The text does not include that part, so that is money down the drain. That whilst it is not the only scandal that Latvia faces. If we consider the Stratfor view (at https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/what-watch-two-banking-scandals-unfold-latvia), we see “On Feb. 17, the Latvian anti-corruption agency detained the head of the country’s central bank, Ilmars Rimsevics, after Grigory Guselnikov, the Anglo-Russian owner of Latvia’s Norvik bank, accused him of taking bribes. Rimsevics has denied any wrongdoing, and Latvia’s Defense Ministry said that the allegations were part of a “massive information operation” by an external actor. Latvian Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola said that the corruption allegations would be investigated“, as well as “a report issued Feb. 13 by the U.S. Treasury Department detailing the results of its investigation that found ABLV had facilitated transactions linked to “large-scale illicit activity connected to Azerbaijan, Russia, and Ukraine” as well as activities circumventing sanctions on North Korea. In the wake of that report, significant assets were withdrawn from ABLV“. Now we can see that for what it is, yet we also get “the ECB’s Single Resolution Board has rebuffed ABLV’s efforts to seek financial assistance, determining that shoring up the bank “was not in the public interest.”“, so in light of the mention by Mario Draghi with ‘under which national central banks rather than the ECB decide to provide support to troubled lenders‘, I see it as instead of money wasted from the left trouser pocket, it came from right cheek pocket. How does that solve anything? The fact that the trousers came from the old tailor, the fact that the damage was not contained and allowed certain parties to take their cash out of Latvia is still cause for concern for those wearing the trousers.

That reflects also when we add the Greek issue that is playing right now with “the resignation on Monday of economy minister Dimitris Papadimitriou and his wife, the alternate labour minister, Rania Antonopoulou. Antonopoulou gave her notice after it was revealed that she had accepted €23,000 in housing benefits at a time of immense hardship for Greeks” (source: the Guardian). The issues playing do not seem like much, but it is like mopping the floor in a room where the water main has burst, it is close to pointless. In all this, especially when we hear Alexis Tsipras come with ‘praising the couple, in a speech late on Tuesday, for the “sensibility” they had exhibited in stepping down‘. To me it reads like ‘I am happy you vacated the premises as the people now know what you did and they are angry, thank you for that!‘ Is there any way that the Greeks are not getting fuming mad on that issue?

That is the part that does matter, because that is linked to whatever bonds were purchased, where they were purchased and how much is in play. We see none of that; merely that the invoice at present is set at 30 billion Euros per month, down from 60 billion per month earlier and 80 billion per month before that. So there is no way to tell how unrealistic my 30% loss is, it could be as low as 1% or as much as 41.3%, there is at present no way to tell. It is a long term gamble instigated by those in power now and left to solve for whoever gets to hold that seat when those spending’s mature and payment is due. Yet the chance of breaking even (best case scenario) is almost statistically impossible and no one has answers how to deal with it the moment it happens.

Can the Draghi failing be proven as a failure?

That remains the main event in all this and the fact is that the proof is nowhere near complete because the transparency in the spending and the path to repayment is missing. The fact that the money is printed and that the payment of the printed money is due at some point is not dealt with, by none of the media. Is it because it is not due now, or are we kept in silence because it stops us from asking questions? Perhaps like the elite group of 30 bankers, only initial questions are allowed and no response will be coming. That are merely factors in all of this and it does NOT sets any premise to the failure or success of the acts by Mario Draghi. Part of it is shown by Bloomberg a mere 15 hours ago, as they gave us: “The rate of price growth slowed to 1.2 percent this month from 1.3 percent, dropping to its weakest since 2016. The core measure was unchanged at 1 percent. The figures follow a series of releases that have checked the economy’s thundering momentum at the start of 2018, which had emboldened policy makers who want a faster unwinding of the central bank’s crisis-era monetary stimulus“, so even as that is not evidence, it seems to me that people are stalling and delaying stopping the QA wave, until the QA wave shows a positive. It is like watching a person throw more and more money in the pokeys until that person breaks even. In gambling terms it is watching a fool bleed dry. Even when we accept that a pokey returns 90% over its lifetime, that means that at the very least there is a loss of 10%, even if that person is getting lucky, the small wins are still used up whilst the player is trying to break even and in the end that money too is gone. That is how we could see the QA program to go and if that is true, a loss of 41.3% might have been optimistic, but it remains speculation. The article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/slowing-euro-area-inflation-helps-draghi-push-back-exit-debate) now gives the other parts I mentioned earlier too. With “consumer price growth almost halved in Italy and slowed in Germany” giving the line I had that with unemployment in Germany being an asset, but this slowing and 50% less gives rise to more without a job, or halted in economic growth for Italy, whilst Germany is halting to some degree their forward momentum, which translates in upcoming bad economic news cycles, or better stated less positive ones, so how will that impact the outstanding $3 trillion? The impact is only seen when that amount is due, but the impact will be there and those who pushed it onto us will no longer be around and they end up washing their hands off the dangers and leave us to pay the outstanding invoice, it makes for the most dangerous of market karts.

With ‘Buy now and pay when we make the most profit!‘ is an economic standard that has never been good commerce, or realistic for that matter; but that is exactly what Europeans signed up for, and the people in Europe end up not getting a say in the matter. That is the issue I opposed all that time and that is why I hope that the UK got out in time, because that part will drag the EU economy down to a degree it has not seen before. The only worry is what happens when that issue hits the European tax payers, because it will! No doubt about that!

 

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February 24, 2018 · 12:32

Losing values towards insanity

Even as we see more and more anti NRA actions and other actions that are indeed positive geared towards making schools ‘safer’, there are now also people who are trying to cash in quick, school safety is an exploding business and some should be ashamed of that. Yet it is not about that, it is not about the schools. It is about the children. So tell me, how come that these 17 American children, are seen as more important as the 101,500 civilians killed in Syria. The total amount of civilians killed is close to 1/3rd of all casualties. In one week, we see 13 children and 10 women all killed. Not much noise there, is it? So when we see that the UN Security Council failed to agree after a second day of intensive talks on a proposed 30-day ceasefire across Syria to allow for emergency humanitarian deliveries and medical evacuations. How much as a failure should we regard ourselves? How we pat our backs by stopping Hertz discount to NRA members, not the people at the NRA, merely the members of the NRA. The utter ridicule that people are setting themselves up to be for hating people who like guns, for going after targets for the mere pleasure of ones ego, that whilst the UN is failing hundreds of thousands of people. So as we see “The talks at the UN headquarters in New York followed an appeal by French and German leaders to Vladimir Putin, asking for Russia to stop blocking the measure’s passage, pointing to the dire situation of the trapped civilian population in the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/23/macron-merkel-urge-putin-back-ceasefire-syria-eastern-ghouta), the infuriating part is that I gave rise to this on October 17th 2016, so 16 months later after I wrote: “I reckon all the players know that, yet, having long conversations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose only concern is to stall so that the population can be made extinct before the resolution passes, reads a lot more like the Friends edition of Pinocchio, than the original by Carlo Collodi” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/10/17/a-new-disney/), so here I present the first piece of evidence that the United Nations is no longer a functional apparatus. Because the evidence as given by the UN themselves (at http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.html), in its first article stating the purposes of the United Nations. Here we see in the first paragraph: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace“, I think that we can state for the record that the United Nations has failed the Syrian people in the most amazing way. that failure and the repeated stalling by one of its members (in both cases Russia) most people seem to merely turn a blind eye, look at the populist activities that will lead nowhere, merely harass and abuse people. Go after 5 million members who never fired their guns in any school or at any child. Think yourself clever and pat yourself on the backs because your non-actions will get another 50 children killed before the end of the month.

So as Al-Jazeera gave us ‘the meeting, however, has already been delayed multiple times as negotiations continue over the wording of the draft resolution‘ , we see that whilst people are trying to be clever about events more people will get killed. So yesterday (according to the AP) “Syrian government warplanes carried out a sixth day of airstrikes Friday in the rebel-held suburbs east of Damascus, killing 32 people, activists said, as the death toll from a week of bombardment soared over 400“, how many will it be today? The fact that according to several sources (Washington Post amongst them) we get: “the situation was complicated further by reports that Russian mercenaries had taken part in the attack and were among the dead“. You see, no one might cry about these mercenaries, but as they are basically not part of any army, they will kill first and consider asking questions later. More important, the mercenary firm Wagner, allegedly owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin is reaching out in other directions too. He is linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg. He has been indicted (at https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download) for his part towards violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere “with U.S. elections and political processes“, according to the Justice Department. Some state (not too reliable sources) that they are now growing in making botnets, not to spread issues, but to collect data. So, even as he is connected, he is growing data, knowledge and opportunity on almost a daily basis.

How does that connect to Syria?

Apart from the money he makes on the mercenaries and their actions, he is now in a position where he can set the foundation to get access to all the Syrian national data on almost all levels, whilst having a comfortable place to start collecting data on everything on all the nations bordering Syria too. This is not some cake walk or just fun. When we consider the WP on this, we see: “Wagner first gained attention for its operations in 2014 in Ukraine, where mercenaries with the group — mostly military veterans and ultranationalists — were reported to be fighting alongside Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country. The group was believed to have been led by Dmitry Utkin, who until 2013 had served in Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU“, do you think that billionaires, especially Russian ones are in it for the ego? No, he wants to grow, grow fast and in every direction. At least two other sources give us “A former lieutenant colonel and brigade commander of the Spetsnaz GRU detachment. The 700th Independent Spetsnaz Detachment of the 2nd Independent Brigade of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (Части и подразделения специального назначения (спецназ) Главного управления Генерального штаба Вооружённых сил Российской Федерации). These are not kids playing on the side of the road, these people tend to have very serious plans and when they are not connected to an official army they tend to get selfishly lucrative really fast.

That does matter, because professionals like that are not in it to kill civilians, yet they will kill whatever gets in their way or in the way of them completing their mission, so in this it matters what their mission is in all this.

There is a second part in all this and be aware that this is all pure speculation from my side. When we consider the Washington Post quote “Russian mercenaries had taken part in the attack and were among the dead — making it the deadliest U.S.-Russia clash since the Cold War“, so what if that is exactly what they want? What is a new cold war is their intent? As people are shouting and arranging all kinds of partially useless actions regarding 17 kids, in a nation that is basically beyond bankrupt, how much will it take to flame a new cold war, one where the US and NATO are on the roes due to lack of brainpower and resources. The technical advantage that the US and NATO had during the previous one is no longer there. You might remember stories of Russian men in ridiculous rain coats, having almost no knowledge of electronics. That time has passed and the US no longer has the options it used to have, whilst in addition they tied their own hands in several ways. At this point a cold war could end up being devastating to the west. In addition, when we are treated to both “The USS Michael Monsoor, the second and latest Zumwalt-class stealth destroyer, suffered an equipment failure that prevented the ship from conducting sea trials” as well as “It’s been more than a year since the Navy decided to cancel procurement of an expensive new ammunition for its Zumwalt-class destroyers, but the service is still pondering how to best replace the munition, a Navy official said Wednesday. In 2016, the Navy decided to stop buying the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile, or LRLAP, after discovering that its price had spiked to $800,000 per round. LRLAP was the only ammo developed specifically for the ship’s Advanced Gun System“. So not only are these ships dodgy (for now), they can’t afford the ammunition, it seems to me that (even though we know that the US navy is a lot larger) that we should see the developing issues as a worry. You see this all links back to Syria. Do you think that Russia is going to play ball when there is no need? A paper tiger is only scary for the time you do not know that it is merely a paper one. After that all bets are off and it is entirely possible that this is the gamble that resident Putin is currently making. If proven correct we will see all kinds of developments, not merely in Syria, but the Kurds will get more tank slamming by Turkey and the dangers of Iran v Saudi Arabia would become a likelihood too.

So back to Syria, as the WP gave us on Yevgeniy Prigozhin: ‘He now has a reputation as a man willing to do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dirty work‘. I think that this is the cost of doing business. I think that there had been a clear plan in place, even as I do not agree with Alexey Khlebnikov, a political risk consultant and a Middle East expert at the Russian International Affairs Council. He calls this a “double-edged sword”. The risk is almost negligible for Russia, even as we see the quote “details have trickled out in embarrassing ways“, getting captured is not an embarrassment it is merely an inconvenience. It seems that Yevgeniy Prigozhin is the creative side, when you take a High value target like Dmitry Utkin you get something else, on his level a person does not get to walk away, there is a tactic in play and whilst we stare at certain parts we all forget that a man like that over 25 years has created its own network of people and skills. It could be that Wagner will grow faster because of opportunities, but in which direction? That is a part we can see when we realise that smiley face Dmitry is also CEO of Concord Management and Consulting. With these two gentleman owning 50% (actually more than that) into LLC Megaline, with Megaline receiving a large chunk of the capital construction contracts for the Russian military we see that link. When the dust settles, Assad will need to rebuild, and they will be the front player and possibly only consideration on a nation needing to be reconstructed. So now how weird are their actions? Both Yevgeniy Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin are now perfectly placed to rake in billions and in that regard we get back to the options for the dying in Syria; they don’t get to have any. Whilst everyone is settling around clever text on how to word the phrase ‘cease-fire‘ in that timespan Damascus could be adequately be made devoid of life bringing the optional closure of the Syrian war with President Bashar Hafez al-Assad remaining in power. If only the US and NATO had actually acted in 2012, the picture might have been a lot different. Yet for now, up to yesterday 150 children, were killed in Ghouta, yes the loud actions on behalf of 17 school dead children from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida makes a lot of sense in a global perspective, especially as we see the shouting and actions that are partially senseless and baseless, all emotional outrage whilst none of them are on the failings of the ATF (not due to their own accord) and its legislation.

Just like Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief as well as the letter Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel sent to Putin on Friday said the continuing attacks on civilian populations represented “clear violations of international humanitarian law”, all actions that look nice when covered by the media, yet in the light of the U.N. Security Council delayed a vote on a resolution demanding a 30-day humanitarian cease-fire across Syria until Saturday in hopes of closing a gap over the timing for a halt to fighting, that whilst we hear that “after six hours of negotiations, Kuwait’s U.N. Ambassador Mansour Al-Otaiba, the current council president, told reporters Friday evening that members ‘are so close’ to agreement, and negotiations are continuing“, so there will be more killing and more bombing and more actions for at least 12 more hours. So how many children will die in the next 12 hours and how ridiculous does the man with the yellow card look with the text “NRA stop killing our kids”, an act they never did, an act they would never approve of or support, are you starting to comprehend the insanity of it all?

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February 23, 2018 · 14:02

In continuation of views

Today is the third and possibly the last part in the Florida shooting articles. This part got here because of an article in the Washington Post. I reckon that those who did not read it should (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/why-school-shootings-are-so-rare-in-israel-where-guns-are-such-a-common-sight/2018/02/22/1fce546a-17e3-11e8-930c-45838ad0d77a_story.html). It gave me info that did not surprise me, but it was still nice to read. Did you know that shootings in schools in Israel are unheard of? In a place where you see guns and armed uniformed men on the streets, that this is the place where things go wrong. Yet, you would be incorrect. So when I reviewed some of the views I illustrated yesterday. It was a nice relief that some of my thoughts and speculations were proven correct. With: ““The guards are there for other reasons, mainly terrorism,” said Amos Shavit, spokesman for the Ministry of Education. He said the guards stationed at schools are under the authority of the police. In large cities, he said, the police and the local authority carry out security patrols around the educational institutions throughout the school day. There are no metal detectors or special door locks on classrooms. And, by policy, teachers are not armed“, it is all dealt with by professionals, as it should.

So as we see: “According to data from Israel’s Ministry of Internal Security, which registers all gun owners, about 260,000 Israelis, or about 3.5 percent of the population, have permits to carry firearms. Half of the permit holders are private citizens, and the others work for security firms” we see an optional clear case for better gun control, Israel is only slightly larger than New Jersey, the US being 450 times the size of Israel needs to be taken into account. Israel is close to the size of the Netherlands, another place not smitten with large space. Israel has 8.5 million people versus 325 million in the US. You think that this does not matter, but it does, especially when we consider people per square mile which is 320 people, a density 10 times higher than the US, you see people density has often been identified with crowd stresses and quick rising agitation levels. In all this, there are more factors, but these were the main ones and in that environment, school shootings are an event the Israeli children do not have to deal with. Then we see something that should wake us up. The Israeli population pretty much all get some form of military training and with “They are taught how to handle a weapon and how to respect a weapon,” Perry said. And, he said, “it is very, very hard to obtain a weapon in Israel.”” we see the part that matters. As I stated it in different ways here we see ‘how to respect a weapon‘. A weapon is for the most a tool, it serves a purpose, now some use it for shooting pieces of carton (targets), yet it is in its foundation a tool to end lives. It does not matter whether it is an animal or a person, when we use it; we are enabled to end the life of a target. A sword, a bayonet and a canon, all tools designed to kill; we need to respect that part. Now, we might use if for sport or for competition, but the foundation of the skill was to be able to end lives, in that it does not matter whether it was to stay alive, to protect your family or to protect others. We tend to walk around that part too often. We trivialise police officers at times as they carry their guns. But they were trained to kill dangers, to the lives of themselves and the lives of the civilians around them. Now, this does not mean that they shoot to kill, it merely means that they have the tool to do that, so the skill of aiming, the skill to properly use a firearm is increasingly important. They were trained with the purpose to protect lives, not to take them away. The article adds its views with “Residents of Tel Aviv, for example, are unlikely to receive gun licenses, whereas Israelis living in border areas or in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, places where they could be targets for Palestinian militants, are more likely to be approved for gun licenses“. The final part is the bacon on the sandwich, but not part of the causes we see, or so I believe. With “her research showed that Israel ranks 81st in the world for per capita firearm ownership, with less than 1 in 10 Israelis owning firearms. The United States, with one firearm for every person, ranks first“, in this Janet Rosenbaum, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the State University of New York Downstate in Brooklyn was looking at the difference in homicide, but here we see the strain where I start to disagree. You see in social science views the USA has a flaw, a massive one and that is as I personally see the larger cause of it all. I have seen and witnessed Americans in action (and in non-action) in several walks of life. The entire problem starts in school, almost in primary school. The USA has had a forever growing stigma towards being first, being the best. Now, I am all for a competitive view and those winners are at times heralded, admired and idolised. I have no issue with that part, so as we see the movies and the news on how those ‘great’ football players get to have sex with whomever they want, whether the woman likes it of concedes to it, or not. This is seen in the Arizona Central and several other sources with: “Hamilton High School administrators knew of multiple allegations of sexual assault involving the Chandler school’s football players and repeatedly failed to notify authorities, according to information found in hundreds of pages of police documents released Thursday“. Not only does it happen, we see police reports that the authorities in school are condoning that behaviour. With the quote “Some students aware of the alleged sexual assaults did not appear to grasp the seriousness of the incidents, often using a joking tone about what they saw as a team initiation“, we see the unbelievable truth in how far the USA s failing its children. On the other side, we see those who fail to some extent those requirements of excellence, like any population will, but in the US those in the lowest 30%, especially if they are not athletes become legitimate targets, pariahs and outcasts. It does not matter how clever they are, they fail the social threshold and the athletic threshold and they become targets. This is the setting where the issue comes and it becomes even worse when these children are already receive some form of counselling or are on medication. The Columbine High School massacre, the Virginia Tech massacre, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting all fit the bill to some extent. The last one is important, because it is the one odd duck out. We are shown degrees of isolation from and/or towards the perpetrators in the other ones, within the Stoneman Douglas High School, there is evidence that people had gone out of their way to include Nikolas Jacob Cruz within their community. The second adoptive parents after he lost his adoptive parents, shows that this community was pretty strong on inclusion. That is why the setting is weird.

I am not blaming mental health or medication on issues. Even if that was the case to the larger extent, I believe that the environmental pressures of being the best, being number one are causing way more damage than we are aware of. Actually, that is not correctly phrased. I believe that the stigma against those who cannot make the top levels is a lot more damaging. Now, in the end the perpetrators are the ones to blame, they decided to take the lives of others, yet there is a part in me that wonders whether social changes in the US would enable a much lower stressful and less combustible setting. I know that other nations have much stronger gun laws, yet Norway had to deal with the acts of Anders Behring Breivik in 2011. This does not compare to the school shootings, but the setting is that if Norway can get the unfathomable acts of a lone wolf to this degree, how much danger is the US in? You see, that is a long term issue and to resolve those dangers, we cannot merely point at the police department, the FBI and other players. It is becoming more and more important to change the board of the game and allow for larger changes that can be implemented. Both the shootings and the sex romps that are occurring in US High Schools and universities show evidence of this highly need change. And if that is not enough there are football coaches who dip their feet in the sexual waters and if they do not, in at least two cases their wives did.

We see more and more events like that make it to the courtrooms, there is still from various sources the alleged and likely issue that at least three times the known amount of victims, issues and events remain unreported. I believe these issues are directly linked to this all and even as the people want stricter gun control, there is no way of telling how long that takes, or how successful it will be in the US over the longer term. There is currently enough aftermath evidence that an environment where the pressure bar is lowered, a lot more people will not be in the stressful stage where their personality literally explodes in the faces of others not unlike a shotgun, in that I am personally close to absolutely certain. You see, during my law studies, I got to see loads of footage of the Columbine shooting, the Zero Hour Massacre at Columbine High (2004) gives a lot of facts and information that supports my view, in addition, further materials on YouTube (not the most reliable source) gives additional information that pushes the idea that social changes in US schools become more and more important. In this there are two additional views (read: movies) that count towards Columbine.  The two movies are Bowling for Columbine, the anti-gun movie by Michael Moore, and weirdly enough I’m not ashamed. In both we see the expected views on gun control and in I’m not ashamed we see the confirmation of bullying (not the central point of the movie though). Yet they both show something different in support. We see how Michael Moore gets the limelight in every way imaginable, whilst even Google allowed itself to be used in blocking the trailer for no less than 11 months, which gives added view that only some views in regards to these events are ‘tolerated‘. The papers gave the movie for various reasons mixed reviews. It is of course in the eyes of the beholder how a movie is seen and in that I am fine with that. There the LA Times gives us “a refreshing lack of moralizing here, and a welcome emphasis on accepting people for who they are“, it is an interesting view, especially in the view of social changes that the US desperately needs. Forbes also had good things to say and that is nice, some negativity was seen from the Guardian with “To use the senseless death of a school shooting victim to promote one’s warped political agenda is, to use a trendy term, deplorable“, I do not disagree that it is a valid view, yet as we can see, that is the actionable life of politicians as we have seen them in pretty much EVERY school shooting, so the Guardian was catering to the obvious here. The BBC gives us (at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180219-toxic-perfectionism-is-on-the-rise) that the age of Perfectionism has very dangerous downsides. They rightfully state “the thing about perfectionism. It takes no prisoners“, it merely enforces 1% success and 99% failure, which is a very dangerous setting and the US schooling system (actually most schooling systems in that regard) show how dangerous it is. In this it is the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo who gives us something much better. He strives for excellence, not perfection: ‘I am not a perfectionist, but I like to feel that things are done well‘, as stated in the BBC article. They also give us: “research shows that maladaptive attributes like beating yourself up for mistakes or feeling like you can’t live up to parental expectations make you more vulnerable to depression, some other studies have shown that ‘adaptive’ aspects like striving for achievement have no effect at all or may even protect you.” that part is actually the key in this. In my view, I refer to the Lord Baden Powell setting. Apart from him being the creator of the boy scouts. He gave us a setting to work with. He gave us “Leave this world a little better than when you found it”. It is a line that has been in my inner core for all of my life. I live by it because it does not require you to fix everything; it does not require you to reach for the unreachable. It merely tells you to do something realistic and in that it opposes perfectionism as perfectionism is utterly unrealistic. In that the US Army has always had a great line. With ‘Be all you can be!’ it opens the door for you to move forward in ways you can and it challenges you to never stop moving forward. That is a great setting for anyone to be in. Learn your entire life, learn more and more skills, and create your own abilities moving forward. It pushes a person, but pushes that person in a realistic achievable way.

It is education tempered through realism, some will go further than others, yet that is the reality of life. The dangers of perfectionism go way beyond normal standards and they are seen even more clearly in Japan where going back to school makes suicide statistics spike, there we see the dangers of perfectionism. Not doing your exam well and bullying when they perform poorly gives another view, not those lashing out decapitating students and teachers. No, they see it as a failure of self and a shame to their family and end their own lives. Some studies show that the suicide of those between 10-19 years is on the rise and the suicide rate in Japan is 60% higher than the global average, with one source stating 70 suicides a day. That gives additional rise to the dire need of changes, both the US and Japan shows the need for a different approach to education. Pressures and social needs are in the wrong segment of importance, whilst the need to score better and better is set unrealistically high in both nations and they are not alone. In the UK it seems that unrealistically high pass grades are needed to get into the better universities and the better faculties like Law and Medicine. The question becomes more pressing as getting to these places is almost too unrealistic on a young age, how can the youth ever be better prepared for a realistic contributing life if they are written off as not good enough long before the brain is at peak performance? To some extent we can see that athletic abilities can be seen earlier, yet the focus to train is gained often much later in life. Now, that does not mean that you can start to get into shape to become a quarterback at 25, whilst entering the NFL at 34. Yet oddly enough the brain has the ability to do just that for more than merely academic fields. In addition, this only happens in a positive environment, both elements are increasingly rarely seen in both Japanese and US schools, making the issue a growing one.

It is in those setting that it is equally important to dim the stresses that we see in schools and universities, especially as it is seen in the US. I am absolutely convinced that at least two of the four mentioned school massacres could have been prevented in a different social setting. I absolutely refuse to give any of the perpetrators a ‘free pass’ on what they did, they are accountable for their choices, but I do believe that an optional other path open to them could have resulted in a non-fatalities path. In equal measure the information as I have been able to read it gives little to no faith that more could have been done in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, too much ‘evidence’ had been shown from several sources that this would have happened no matter what, making the dropping of the ball squarely in the FBI corner (to some extent).

In the end there is one additional need to look at the NY Times. you see (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/politics/trump-atf-nra.html) we see ‘In describing its own shortages, the A.T.F. says it remains unable to fulfil even basic regulatory responsibilities, including inspections of firearms dealers’, so apart from the loophole that I discussed yesterday, none of the administrations (the last four at the very least) have done ANYTHING AT ALL to give the ATF the teeth they needed to do something. So as all the media is crying like little bitches on how we need gun control, the German source yesterday and today the NY Times are the only ones giving us the spotlight that the ATF needs a budget twice the size it has now to start getting things done. So as an official at the Justice Department said “the administration was interviewing potential A.T.F. directors but did not know when that might result in a nomination”, which is nice to hear next to the additional fact that the ATF has been without permanent leadership 8 of the last 12 years. So when you see that, how hollow were the promises by former President Barack Obama? You do realise that ATF stands for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. At present we might just call it the AT (Apsens Temperatio), formerly ATF. So even as they are, as stated by themselves under the jurisdiction of the Gun Control Act, National Firearms Act, Arms Export Control Act, Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and other Federal firearms and explosives laws and regulations, they don’t have the resources to actually do that. Perhaps I should apply for a job there, you never know, with the shortages they have, I might just replace Byron Todd Jones as Director of the ATF by the time he retires in 2022.

Weirder things have happened!

 

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