Tag Archives: the Guardian

August 7, 2017 · 15:30

A legislative system shock

Today the Guardian brings us the news regarding the new legislation on personal data. The interesting starts with the image of Google and not Microsoft, which is a first item in all this. I will get back to this. The info we get with ‘New legislation will give people right to force online traders and social media to delete personal data and will comply with EU data protection‘ is actually something of a joke, but I will get back to that too. You see, the quote it is the caption with the image that should have been at the top of all this. With “New legislation will be even tougher than the ‘right to be forgotten’ allowing people to ask search engines to take down links to news items about their lives“, we get to ask the question who the protection is actually for?

the newspapers gives us this: “However, the measures appear to have been toughened since then, as the legislation will give people the right to have all their personal data deleted by companies, not just social media content relating to the time before they turned 18“, yet the reality is that this merely enables new facilitation for data providers to have a backup in a third party sense of data. As I personally see it, the people in all this will merely be chasing a phantom wave.

We see the self-assured Matt Hancock standing there in the image and in all this; I see no reason to claim that these laws will be the most robust set of data laws at all. They might be more pronounced, yet in all this, I question how facilitation is dealt with. With “Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner, said data handlers would be made more accountable for the data “with the priority on personal privacy rights” under the new laws“, you see the viewer will always respond in the aftermath, meaning that the data is already created.

We can laugh at the statement “The definition of “personal data” will also be expanded to include IP addresses, internet cookies and DNA, while there will also be new criminal offences to stop companies intentionally or recklessly allowing people to be identified from anonymous personal data“, it is laughable because it merely opens up venues for data farms in the US and Asia, whilst diminishing the value of UK and European data farms. The mention of ‘include IP addresses‘ is funny as the bulk of the people on the internet are all on dynamic IP addresses. It is a protection for large corporations that are on static addresses. the mention of ‘stop companies intentionally or recklessly allowing people to be identified from anonymous personal data‘ is an issue as intent must be shown and proven, recklessly is something that needs to be proven as well and not on the balance of it, but beyond all reasonable doubt, so good luck with that idea!

As I read “The main aim of the legislation will be to ensure that data can continue to flow freely between the UK and EU countries after Brexit, when Britain will be classed as a third-party country. Under the EU’s data protection framework, personal data can only be transferred to a third country where an adequate level of protection is guaranteed“, is this another twist in anti-Brexit? You see none of this shows a clear ‘adequate level of protection‘, which tends to stem from technology, not from legislation, the fact that all this legislation is all about ‘after the event‘ gives rise to all this. So as I see it, the gem is at the end, when we see “the EU committee of the House of Lords has warned that there will need to be transitional arrangements covering personal information to secure uninterrupted flows of data“, it makes me wonder what those ‘actual transitional arrangements‘ are and how come that the new legislation is covering policy on this.

You see, to dig a little deeper we need to look at Nielsen. There was an article last year (at http://www.nielsen.com/au/en/insights/news/2016/uncommon-sense-the-big-data-warehouse.html), here we see: “just as it reached maturity, the enterprise data warehouse died, laid low by a combination of big data and the cloud“, you might not realise this, but it is actually a little more important than most realise. It is partially seen in the statement “Enterprise decision-making is increasingly reliant on data from outside the enterprise: both from traditional partners and “born in the cloud” companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as brokers of cloud-hosted utility datasets, such as weather and econometrics. Meanwhile, businesses are migrating their own internal systems and data to cloud services“.

You see, the actual dangers in all that personal data, is not the ‘privacy’ part, it is the utilities in our daily lives that are under attack. Insurances, health protection, they are all set to premiums and econometrics. These data farms are all about finding the right margins and the more they know, the less you get to work with and they (read: their data) will happily move to where ever the cloud takes them. In all this, the strong legislation merely transports data. You see the cloud has transformed data in one other way, the part Cisco could not cover. The cloud has the ability to move and work with ‘data in motion’; a concept that legislation has no way of coping with. The power (read: 8 figure value of a data utility) is about being able to do that and the parties needing that data and personalised are willing to pay through the nose for it, it is the holy grail of any secure cloud environment. I was actually relieved that it was not merely me looking at that part; another blog (at https://digitalguardian.com/blog/data-protection-data-in-transit-vs-data-at-rest) gives us the story from Nate Lord. He gives us a few definitions that are really nice to read, yet the part that he did not touch on to the degree I hoped for is that the new grail, the analyses of data in transit (read: in motion) is cutting edge application, it is what the pentagon wants, it is what the industry wants and it is what the facilitators want. It is a different approach to real time analyses, and with analyses in transit those people get an edge, an edge we all want.

Let’s give you another clear example that shows the value (and the futility of legislation). Traders get profit by being the first, which is the start of real wealth. So whoever has the fastest connection is the one getting the cream of the trade, which is why trade houses pay millions upon millions to get the best of the best. The difference between 5ms and 3ms results in billions of profit. Everyone in that industry knows that. So every firm has a Bloomberg terminal (at $27,000 per terminal), now consider the option that they could get you that data a millisecond faster and the automated scripts could therefor beat the wave of sales, giving them a much better price, how much are they willing to pay suddenly? This is a different level of armistice, it is weaponised data. The issue is not merely the speed; it is the cutting edge of being able to do it at all.

So how does this relate?

I am taking you back to the quote “it would amount to a “right to be forgotten” by companies, which will no longer be able to get limitless use of people’s data simply through default “tick boxes” online” as well as “the legislation will give people the right to have all their personal data deleted by companies“. The issue here is not to be forgotten, or to be deleted. It is about the data not being stored and data in motion is not stored, which now shows the futility of the legislation to some extent. You might think that this is BS, consider the quote by IBM (at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/5things/entry/5_things_to_know_about_big_data_in_motion?lang=en), it comes from 2013, IBM was already looking at matters in different areas close to 5 years ago, as were all the large players like Google and Microsoft. With: “data in motion is the process of analysing data on the fly without storing it. Some big data sources feed data unceasingly in real time. Systems to analyse this data include IBM Streams “, here we get part of it. Now consider: “IBM Streams is installed on nearly every continent in the world. Here are just a few of the locations of IBM Streams, and more are being added each year“. In 2010 there were 90 streams on 6 continents, and IBM stream is not the only solution. As you read that IBM article, you also read that Real-time Analytic Processing (RTAP) is a real thing, it already was then and the legislation that we now read about does not take care of this form of data processing, what the legislation does in my view is not give you any protection, it merely limits the players in the field. It only lets the really big boys play with your details. So when you see the reference to the Bloomberg terminal, do you actually think that you are not part in the data, or ever forgotten? EVERY large newspaper and news outlet would be willing to pay well over $127,000 a year to get that data on their monitors. Let’s call them Reuter Analytic Systems (read: my speculated name for it), which gets them a true representation of all personalised analytical and reportable data in motion. So when they type the name they need, they will get every detail. In this, the events that were given 3 weeks ago with the ITPRO side (at http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/29082/ecj-may-extend-right-to-be-forgotten-ruling-outside-the-eu) sounds nice, yet the quote “Now, as reported by the Guardian, the ECJ will be asked to be more specific with its initial ruling and state whether sites have to delete links only in the country that requests it, or whether it’s in the EU or globally” sounds like it is the real deal, yet this is about data in rest, the links are all at rest, so the data itself will remain and as soon as HTML6 comes we might see the beginning of the change. There have been requests on that with “This is the single-page app web design pattern. Everyone’s into it because the responsiveness is so much better than loading a full page – 10-50ms with a clean API load vs. 300-1500ms for a full HTML page load. My goal would be a high-speed responsive web experience without having to load JavaScript“, as well as “having the browser internally load the data into a new data structure, and the browser then replaces DOM elements with whatever data that was loaded as needed“, it is not mere speed, it would allow for dynamic data (data in motion) to be shown. So when I read ‘UK citizens to get more rights over personal data under new laws‘, I just laughed. The article is 15 hours old and I considered instantly the issues I shown you today. I will have to wait until the legislation is released, yet I am willing to bet a quality bottle of XO Cognac that data in motion is not part of this, better stated, it will be about stored data. All this whilst the new data norm is still shifting and with G5 mobile technologies, stored data might actually phase out to be a much smaller dimension of data. The larger players knew this and have been preparing for this for several years now. This is also an initial new need for the AI that Google wants desperately, because such a system could ascertain and give weight to all data in motion, something IBM is currently not able to do to the extent they need to.

The system is about to get shocked into a largely new format, that has always been the case with evolution. It is just that actual data evolution is a rare thing. It merely shows to me how much legislation is behind on all this, perhaps I will be proven wrong after the summer recess. It would be a really interesting surprise if that were the case, but I doubt that will happen. You can see (read about that) for yourself after the recess.

I will follow up on this, whether I was right or wrong!

I’ll let you speculate which of the two I am, as history has proven me right on technology matters every single time (a small final statement to boost my own ego).

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Filed under Finance, IT, Law, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as AI, Alphabet, Asia, Cisco, Data, Data in motion, data in transit, Data warehouse, datafarms, google, IBM, ITPRO, Microsoft, Nate Lord, Nielsen, reuters, the Guardian, USA

August 4, 2017 · 12:16

Mouseketeers are Go(ne)!

Yes, we are today looking at the four small people who seemingly form the three musketeers thunderbirds style. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/03/four-men-given-life-sentences-for-plotting-lee-rigby-style-terrorist-attack) gives us a few items and it is interesting how the article does not mention certain items. They are Tahir Aziz, 38, Naweed Ali, 29, Mohibur Rahman, 33, and Khobaib Hussain, 25. Yet, ever as we see that they are from ‘the Midlands‘, yet we see no mention of any nationality. Is that not an interesting oversight? We see that two have met with Anjem Choudary, who is all about serving the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Yet here the Guardian remains down to the ground with a mere mention of Islamic State. The Daily Mail and the Stoke Sentinel are even less useful with their mention of ‘bought £20 samurai sword from Hanley sex shop‘, for the record, a samurai sword cannot be bought for £20 and the fact that a sex shop sold it is even more irrelevant. Here we ‘suddenly’ see ‘details’. The massive lack of facts is upsetting to me. The media is slowly becoming an increasing joke; in this even the Guardian needs to get scolded here! It is interesting as it was in equal measure that the opinion piece in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/07/anjem-choudary-hate-media-al-muhajiroun-london-bridge-terror-attack) gave voice to the issues with this certain social activist. It is the subtitle that gave us ‘Long before the attention-seeking al-Muhajiroun leader was linked to the London Bridge attack, Muslims despaired at the platform he was given‘. It is the start of the article that gives the goods that is one of many articles that tend to give the Guardian its value. With: “He wasn’t the infamous preacher of hate the media wanted him to be. He was a scrappy street agitator. Or, he was, until he got his big break“, we see that many see the difference, of what is truly an activist and what is merely a shouting bag of hot air. So as we see the four names with no nationality information, we see not merely the first issue, we see a collected set of facts not given to us, which in light of escalations in the middle east is important. For days we get the he said in Qatar versus they said in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt. These four might not even be any of those, they might be of Iranian or Pakistani origin, it is so interesting how the press suddenly forgot the catchphrase on people and the right to know. So even as “The UK Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express, the Daily Star and the Mail Online, tabloids prone to fits of sexism with some regularity. They all ran stills of Whittaker either naked or topless in earlier roles“, we see that according to what some laughingly refer to a journalistic integrity seem to regard the breasts of Dr. Jodie Who as ‘important facts‘ yet the full nationality (or nationalities) of the 4 with serious intent to blow people up, that part is not a given need, how revolting is that?

With the BBC giving us at least “They had attempted to join an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan in 2011“, we might imply (speculative) that they were Pakistani. Yet are they merely Pakistani with UK residency, or with Citizenship. These details matter! They matter because it gives light towards and weight into the issues of home grown terrorism. With their not so bright approaches we might not see them as actual dangers as assumed to be Lone wolf terrorists, but with the fact that plans were underway, there is a clear case. It is nice to see that MI5 was on the ball and prevented it all (which is always good to read), yet the issue remains that certain ‘unknowns’ should never be so. As for the upcoming political excuse that they might have been trying to protect ‘innocent Pakistani’s’ is not entirely invalid, but the people need to know where the dangers are coming from. Now in the end, there is not a lot that the people could have done, yet when we watch the news and we are confronted with the nations banned by the Trump administration, and in succession, when we learn that the many terrorists who made it to their intended nations of target are not from those nations at all. Pakistan was not on that list, was it? Neither is Egypt who still has their fair share of Muslim Brotherhood extremists and in equal measure the few people in Jordan who are now starting to embrace Islamic State? They have options to move to America, not getting banned at all. All this we see and none of it makes the news. I know it is important to see that the bulk of Pakistani’s are not extremists or have terrorist tendency. The issue is that the press is keeping us in the dark too often and they are losing both integrity and are no longer regarded as reliable when it comes to the news. In all this the politicians have their part to play as well and are directly responsible for some of it. If they had the balls to actually stop the tabloid from being GST exempt because they should not be regarded as ‘newspapers’ we might have seen an increase of reported quality of events and as such would have had a dampening effect on the levels of fake news and innuendo in their version of reported events (the version the tabloids give us).

The media has let the people down on a global scale and that has to stop!

At present several media sites are giving us more and more information on the fact that Islamic State is now trying to increase pressures by attacking the Iraqi borders with both Syria and Jordan, meaning that we all have additional responsibilities. As Jordan was one of the first and in addition has grown into one of the largest support pillars for Syrian refugees, we can no longer sit idle. According to the United Nations, the total number of Syrian refugees in Jordan has surpassed 5 million. The immediate danger is not merely disease, hunger and lack of basic needs to survive; it is the dangers that those joining Islamic State for merely a meal could topple the Jordan government in several ways. The moment that this happens Islamic State will be at the borders of both Israel and Egypt, whilst Israel will be required to send part of its army to the farthest region of Israel to protect Eilat, which would also place two basis of the MFO in direct danger. The Italian contingent who patrols the waters there could become a target as well as SCC4 a mere 8Km from Eilat could be changed into an Islamic State staging post, one that has a large radio at its disposal, so there are certain dangers to be reconsidered as I personally see it.

How realistic is all this?

That is the issue with the speculation I bring. As the news of Islamic State gaining strength in Jordan grows, that threat would be very realistic. So the direct need for the UN to step in and set a lot of goods to these refugees becomes increasingly immediate. In addition, the Jordanians have been under increased pressure to deal with the refugees (feeding them mostly), as well as the impact on their own storage of mainly water. It is high summer there now and water has always been scarce in Jordan. It is driving local tension up by a lot. Now, for those not in the know (a perfect valid situation) water was always a scarce item in Jordan, so the opening of the first desalinisation plant in Aqaba was a relief for the Jordanians, especially as the Jordanian population was set at 9.5 million, now add 50% to that population (the refugees) and you’ll see that water shortage becomes an almost immediate issue in Jordan. The UN has been trying to assign $4.6 billion for support to Jordan in January this year, that whilst some parties know that it is a mere 70% of what they need. In the end, I am not sure how much has been achieved, yet as the news made no report of any success, we can assume that to some extent there has been no success for now and to the larger extent, we see that there has been no achievements at all, which is an immediate issue. So it is not the worst idea to send 250 containers and fill them to the brink with C-rations. Now we have all heard the news on that history and I actually lived on those C-Rations for a few days (I enjoyed them). The issue is that there is no food (read: actually there is a large shortage); there is real hunger, so I would think that sending food that will not go bad immediately would be at least a first step to lower tensions to some degree. Now, I agree we can all do better, but at present NOTHING is achieved and instead of having the conversation again and again is merely a joke, something needs to be sent, it needs to be done now. In addition, getting 50 bladder tanks with water over there whilst we seek longer term solutions is also a requirement. All these actions show the refugees that even if not perfect, things are getting done (to some effect), which leaves the people with hope and that diffuses the Islamic State recruitment drive, which is what this was about. So as we see that the NY Times is stating that Climate change and the Islamic State are the greatest threats, one of them can actually be dealt with to some extent in the short term, so in this I now claim that I made an initial step to solve 50% of the World’s Largest Threats. I also designed the concept of a new video game, but that seems a little over the top after solving a threat the world apparently fears.

So even as the India West reported 2 weeks ago “Shivam Patel, a Hindu sympathizer of the Islamic State, has been arrested on charges of making false statements on his application to join the U.S. military. The Indian American told FBI undercover agents he wanted to do “something bigger, better, and more purposeful,” including “dying in the cause of Allah” to support the terrorist organization“, I found a simple way to deprive Islamic State from gaining a thousand of more recruits. In finality to get it actually done, some governments need to actually act on certain needs!

All this by being direct, outspoken and precise, all things that the articles regarding the 4 arrested terrorists is not being done by the media. As we see the list of newspapers grow whilst they all merely mention things like ‘UK Court Sentences 4 Men to Life Imprisonment Over Preparing Terror Attack‘, in one case I see “plotting “Lee Rigby-style” attack on police or military, referring to the murder of a UK fusilier, who was stabbed to death in London by two Islamist terrorists of Nigerian descent in 2013“, we see no such descent on the 4 perpetrators. Is that not a nice oversight, the fact that they ALL did it, whilst the verdict has been given, and the rest of their details are missing is a larger matter of concern.

You see, it is not merely about the ‘musketeers’ in all this. Like common cyber sense, people need to start evolving observational skills. You see, the need here is actually a double edged sword in more ways than one. For this I need to quote from the Israel Institute of Technology. With the course sharpening observation skills we see “Skill at discovering new ideas, and delivering them, may be one of the most important practical job skills, in today’s and tomorrow’s job market. Creativity is an acquired skill, one that improves with practice. This course aims to empower individuals who believe they have lost their innate creativity, because they, their employers or teachers prefer the three R’s: replication, repetition and rote, to innovation” we see that there is a need to become more creative all over the UK, whilst the skills would also be the way where we start noticing the things around us that do not make sense. The UK government is relying on https://www.gov.uk/terrorism-national-emergency/reporting-suspected-terrorism to get there, but there is a larger flaw in the path currently in place. Too often the people are not aware because they were kept in the dark. Now, this path will means that it comes with leagues of incorrect reports, but in equality reports would be coming from places that were previously not flagged by the Police and/or MI5. As I see it there is a growing need that students as early as Year 12 where they start to be taught the observational skills that could lead to unforeseen innovation, it is the one need the UK has an actual dire shortage of. I have always and will always believe that the true innovator is merely around the corner as he/she did not consider something. When we see people like Jack Ma, David H. Murdock and Richard Branson, none of them ended up with any A-levels, but they had an idea, they noticed a need and as such they got cracking and are now on top of the world. These are three extreme, there are thousands more who got to a much higher point than most of us (including surpassing me) because they were observant to the need of those around themselves. It is this skill that is actually not taught at all (or at times incorrectly), often because it is not a business subject, yet the art of observing is in the foundation of resolving issues on EVERY level. It is a skill that should be harnessed for the upcoming generations, because it is the first one that gets the bacon and the niche market. It is that growth that we need and as such, it is equally a skill that helps prevent the larger harm to others becoming a success by all the unknown upcoming musketeers that are currently still at large.

I would offer as a thought that if the data offered by the news and other sources can no longer be regarded as reliable; we will need to learn to find the truth, the data and the insight ourselves. This thought is merely a thought, yet it needs to be taken a lot more serious than you think. In finality that evidence is seen through the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/u-k-s-terror-insurer-says-new-threats-create-gaps-in-coverage), you see, as I see it, the foundation of a stable life is becoming more expensive. With ‘U.K. Insurers Told to Adapt to Lone-Wolf Terrorism‘ we see “the view of Julian Enoizi of Pool Reinsurance Co., the U.K. government-linked body that backstops insurers against terror-related payouts. The spate of recent attacks in the nation’s capital and the suicide bombing of a Manchester pop concert in May highlighted shortcomings in coverage that need to be addressed, he said” it partially makes sense, yet I remember that in my policy there is no payout due to damage from unlawful combatants (or a nuclear explosion for that matter). The quote “Broadening cover would mean higher reinsurance premiums for Pool Re’s members, which include the local units of every major non-life insurer from Allianz SE and Aviva Plc to Zurich Insurance Group AG” gives rise to issues like premium rises, because as there would be payouts to lost earnings whilst there is no damage is one that insurance companies are dealing with and in fairness it has in impact on them. So as we see that insurances are evolving, e ourselves need to bolster new skills, not in the least to alert the right parties to take action and prevent serious losses to ourselves. Is that not fair too? You see let others solve it all is fine, yet if you remains ignorant to the largest degree is your anticipation of safety through ignorance valid? It might have been in 1969 where the greatest danger for a man in a park was a confrontation with a woman seeking love and sexual satisfaction whilst sharing a joint, those days of innocence are definitely gone, yet to us, we have not been asked and educated to step up to the plate. Many merely limited to be trained for a workforce of deadlines and the facilitation of greed. Now we see that the removal of creativity and the contemplation on the paths of innovation come with a much larger deficit. We can no longer meet the changed need and we move into the blame game. We see people blaming the police, because it happened, they blame MI5 because there were signals, whilst the people tend to ignore the optional part whether Jeremy Corbyn could be a larger threat to the UK than Salman Abedi was. In the end, it will be for others to decide. Yet if the people had better observational skills, is there a decent chance that the police would have been better alerted to the danger that Salman Abedi became? If the UK is valued at 68 million people, should the thwarted danger be merely dependent on 127,000 police officers and the 4,000 members of MI5? Or is the increasing need of properly informing the 68 million people and teaching them how to spot danger a much better solution as the years pass us by? If the world becomes more and more polarised in the application of terror and mass casualty methodology, is depriving options not a much better solution? Consider the simplicity of fighting fire. You do that by removing the fuel (flammable objects), depriving growth by not allowing it to breathe freely (replace oxygen with CO2) or covering the danger (powder extinguisher), lowering temperature is also an option (drowning with water). There are plenty of options yet it requires a clear mind and a trained mind to act. As we get Jordan the water it desperately needs we lower the temperature and the stresses that come with it, as we make sure there is food, the flames of hunger remain absent and as we are trained to spot things we allow for the actions to come earlier and prevent the damage to us and what is ours (generically speaking). Yet trained to spot things is also at times dependant on getting all the information and getting properly informed, so now consider the newspaper title I mentioned earlier. The mention of ‘bought £20 samurai sword from Hanley sex shop‘, has a few more implications. When you consider the BBC (at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7331099.stm), the press did not inform us that any people from the shop were arrested, especially in light of “Legislation against selling, making, hiring or importing samurai swords in England and Wales has come into force. Those breaking the law face six months in jail and a £5,000 fine“, so as we assume that the sex shop did not have a receipt informing us that they sold Tahir Aziz a 24 inch Japanese steel dildo, can we assume more arrests will be made in the very near future?

I am merely posing this question for your consideration, have a great weekend all!

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Tagged as al-Muhajiroun, Allianz SE, Anjem Choudary, Aqaba, Aviva Plc, Bahrain and Egypt, BBC, David H. Murdock, Eilat, Hanley sex shop, Iraq, IS, Islamic State, Islamic State of Iraq, Israel, Israel Institute of Technology, Italy, Jack Ma, Jordan, Julian Enoizi, Khobaib Hussain, Lee Rigby, London Bridge attack, Mail Online, MFO, MI5, Mohibur Rahman, Muslim Brotherhood, Naweed Ali, NY Times, Pakistan, Pool Reinsurance Co., Qatar, refugees, Richard Branson, Salman Abedi, Saudi Arabia, Shivam Patel, Stoke Sentinel, Syria, Tahir Aziz, the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the daily Mirror, the Daily Star, the Guardian, the UAE, The UK Sun, Trump administration, UK Metropolitanpolice, UN, United Nations, Zurich Insurance Group AG

July 31, 2017 · 12:32

Knocking on the door of death

There is a time in anyone’s life when death comes knocking. For some it is in an early stage for others when the end of a long road has been reached and a few of the latter go that way after a rewarding life, being it material or spiritual. So when we see ‘The Greek government says the country has turned a corner, but that is not the experience of people on the ground‘ it is merely another step to an early grave for a lot of them. The Greek Debt is being disconnected, it is being misrepresented by government and media, and overall the people are only losing more and more at a steady pace. When we see the quote: “The worst is clearly behind us.” Panaghiota Mourtidou pondered the words with a gravity unusual for the jovial volunteer. Even now, several days after the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, saw fit to use the phrase, she still feels somewhat bewildered” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/30/greek-debt-crisis-people-cant-see-any-light-at-the-end-of-any-tunnel), the people seem to realise that they are being played. In the end Tsipras delivered on being as shallow and as deceitful as all the administrations before him. When we see the mention of the French-trained hairdresser who had paid into a pension fund for almost 45 years, we see the initial fallout “At first it was a fairly good pension at €1,750 a month,” she recalled. “Then it was cut to €1,430 a month and now its €960 a month“, it is a 46% drain on quality of life, it is merely slightly more than Australian welfare, it implies that people get to live of $5 a day for their goods and groceries, which is utterly inhumane and I think that Panaghiota Mourtidou and Alexis Tsipras are insane to give any voice to ‘the worst is behind us‘, there is a realisation that this is merely the end of the beginning. With a debt of €325 billion, and according to one source an interest that is set to roughly €600 per second, we know that this is before the last bailout, so it gets to be a little less positive soon enough. We know the Greece didn’t have any options, they all know that this would happen, yet the injustice that there has been no prosecution of the previous administrations must hurt the people a lot too. So when she voices the fact “Hopes of spending their later years in Crete have been dashed“, I feel for her, because at some point, that was my dream too and for a lot it was a decently realistic dream. In all this we see “raise the sort of money it needs to refinance its debt,” said Kyriakos Pierrakakis, director of research at DiaNeosis. “It will almost certainly need a new financial credit line, a bailout light, and that will come with new conditions.”“, as the risk grows the refinancing of debt is so hollow, as more goes into interest it all falls away and nothing is left. Now, we can agree that Greece or a larger than smaller extent did it to themselves, they did it in either ignorance or in spite of, the reason does not matter; the outcome would remain the same. As they had the option to get out of the Euro and default on their loans there might have been an optional new start-up, now we see that there has been almost no actual support and the Greek population will need to live with the consequences of ending empty handed, generations washed away without the optional memory, it might be the first time in history that the financial institutions have taken their goods, their savings and their memories, the harshest of conditions.

In all this, Kathmiri shows another side (at http://www.ekathimerini.com/220517/article/ekathimerini/business/prices-remain-particularly-high-in-greece), the quote “Eurostat data show that Greek consumers pay more than all other European Union citizens for their telephony and postal services, with price levels standing almost 40 percent above the EU average rates, and even higher than the rates in Switzerland“, the question becomes: ‘who is pushing this?’ When we see options from Vaya, TataDocomo and Amaysim in places as outlandish as Australia (a large island with at some places miles of stretches between each house), the option from the Greek government to open the option to other players so that some of the quality of life is not lost is one part, the other is to invite players like Google, so that the Greeks have some level of ‘free’ internet is not out of the bounds of thinking. The mandate for the Greek politicians becomes less waiting for the credit houses to throw them scraps; it becomes an issue to offer the Greeks some additional levels of options that floats the quality of life to the smallest degree. It is a simpler process than merely hoping for the economy to get better and to hide behind the falsehood of ‘the worst is clearly behind us‘, a statement we all know (especially the Greeks) is not true.

All this whilst Victoria Hislop produces an article a day earlier on ‘Patra represents the extremes of Greece – sublime and mundane‘, it is her view and she shows some of the remarkable places in Greece, in that she gives her views, with images of Saint Andrew, a breathtaking place. She voices how Patra is elemental in all this as a given need when one sees Greece. It is all valid, you see, the darkness of the debt is an internal one, driving tourists forward towards Greece is clearly another part. I fell in love with Crete when I originally saw ‘Who pays the ferryman‘, in the end I went to the places where it was filmed, and many other places on the island. I saw the relaxed Elounda, the bar where some of the episodes were filmed, but that was merely the beginning, you see, Crete had so much more, Spinalonga was the true treasure of historic events, the Venetian fortifications as well as the impact that the other visitors had to the place. Greece is more than the debt it has, but has been equally reduced to the debt. Yet in all this, what have the greed driven corporations pushed towards Greece in an air of support? Did we see Vodafail giving a sweet deal to the Greeks and create a long term loyalty plan? Ah, no, because they still have a net debt of £29 billion, which was up by 31%, whilst the executive officer Vittorio Colao lives of £6 million, amounting to £500K per month. OK, to be clear, I am not having a go at him, he might have been well worth every penny. It is just that I have been confronted with the Vodafail PR for a little too long and when the times are hard, they ‘suddenly’ retrench. This is a valid step for any corporation mind you, yet, if these players are so much about one EU, and using their influence trying to thwart Brexit whenever they can. Is that suddenly small minded local thinking not an interesting non-EU mindset? When we consider (at http://www.politico.eu/article/digital-single-market-mid-term-report-card-tktkt-percent/) we see the fallout in the corporate sphere. The quote “Thirty years after the launch of the EU single market, 20 years after its first work on launching a telecoms single market and 10 years after then-Commissioner Viviane Reding launched the digital single market idea, the Juncker Commission has only got one of its 35 digital proposals signed off so far“, it is clear evidence of the utter uselessness of a single market, it is evidence on the need and greed of large corporations, the maximisation of profit. In all this, I have stated years ago that pushing some of the services to Greece could have had a positive impact, an actual sweet deal for some of the large players whilst they moved away from expensive western European places, yet none of that was done, because PR was all about the visibility in Dynamic London. So how EU is that? I am all in favour of growing London businesses, yet when you consider £3500 per square meter on average for a company spot, and Greece can get you a large building at 1000x in a one time off option (not an annual fee), how expensive is London (or Amsterdam for that matter). In all this, pushing several call-centres to Greece and Crete could have had an impressive impact on the Greek economy, yet the large players never considered that (or optionally intentionally steered away from that option), it was not sexy enough. So after 30 years we see “Presenting its half-time report card Wednesday, the Juncker Commission acknowledged things need to pick up speed. “The work is far from complete,” said the Commission’s Vice President for Digital Andrus Ansip. Estonia will put digital issues at the top of the agenda when it takes over the EU presidency in July; as its longest-serving prime minister, Ansip is well-placed to leverage that push“, which does not mean that any of it will get done, pushing the weight to the next person, that is the mere realisation that the EU with their so called one market, their 20 gravy trains and a cost of existence that has surpassed the Greek debt in tenfold is showing us that not only is the EU a redundant thing, the fact that Santa Mario ‘spends way too much‘ Draghi is even more evidence as his €60 billion a month is leaving Greece out of any easing options, an equation that should warrant a lot more questions, yet the Financial times (at https://www.ft.com/content/82c95514-707d-11e7-93ff-99f383b09ff9), is showing how apparently, the recovery is slow, but real. That might be to some degree correct, yet when we see “Debt sustainability in both Italy and Portugal is very sensitive to economic shocks“, which is true, especially with the massive debts Italy has, In that that their interest due has surpassed €2500 a second, Greece is not a consideration anywhere, Greece no longer counts. The one quote that we see and require to consider is “Five years later it is clear the head of the European Central Bank was true to his word, restoring financial confidence and ending a crisis of sovereign debt through a series of extraordinary measures to support the continent’s governments and banks“, the first is was he actually true to his word? Is there actual financial confidence or is there an environment of governmental abuse and pushing the risks of the games some play and dangers they bring onto the population of these nations as debts keep on rising, as governments have lost all abilities to keep a proper budget? When we see the local news in the Netherlands with ‘De Nederlandse bank‘, the additional mentioning on how the Brits are all getting into trouble because of Brexit, the Flemish where we see over valuated housing issues rising, in addition, the large banks in Belgium have invested well over €40 billion in fossil fuels, this is an issue and an important one when we consider “Naast de schade aan klimaat, mens en milieu, erkennen steeds meer experten ook het financiële risico van investeringen in fossiele energie. Zo wees BlackRock, ‘s werelds grootste vermogensbeheerder, op het gevaar van ‘stranded assets’: fossiele energiebronnen of -centrales die in de komende jaren meer zullen kosten dan ze opbrengen“, which paraphrased translates as “beside the climatological damage, an increasing amount of experts are pointing at the financial risks of these stranded assets, Blackrock being one of the voices state that fossil energy sources will cost more than they will bring in revenue wise“, so not only are we watching €40 billion in bad investment, the dangers are that there are long term considerations in costs as well. Now in the end, this might have been the least of the dangers for the Belgium government, yet in that light it means that certain matters can no longer be maintained in the overall image. This is a very disturbing issue. All this links back to the options for Greece, when we see European governments make bad and expensive decisions, in addition as the governments in question seem to be creative book keepers, yet when we look at the risks given to their populations, the long term damage is one that seems to be spiralling out of control and none of these governments are making their politicians criminally accountable for any of their actions, how is there any chance of a surplus within the next two generations? That is a reality that should have been enacted for the longest of times, so as we see the impact of Greece as (partially due to their own acts) we see large corporations move out, more and more exploiting individuals move in for the kill and we see Alexis Tsipras and Panaghiota Mourtidou state that ‘the worst is over‘, how delusional is that?

In Belgium the newspaper ‘Het Laatste Nieuws‘ (at http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Binnenland/article/detail/3148452/2017/05/03/Belgische-staat-verkoopt-deel-aandelen-BNP-Paribas-Geen-onverstandige-zet.dhtml), gives us two parts. The first is “Belgische staat verkoopt deel aandelen BNP Paribas: “Geen onverstandige zet”“, The Belgium government is selling a stake (25% reduction) into the French group BNP Paribas. This international banking group employs over 180,000 employees in a little over 75 nations; they have assets close to €2 trillion and had a profit last year of €7 billion, so they are no small grocery on the corner of a village. This happened two days after “BNP Paribas Fortis zet parlementslid zonder uitleg op straat“, meaning that they ended the accounts with a member of parliament, this Member of Parliament has 60 days to push his accounts into another bank. Now the reasons are not linked as a given, yet when we see ‘what is the most upsetting is that neither the phone connections nor the office of the bank gives me any reason as to why this is done‘ (at https://www.demorgen.be/binnenland/bnp-paribas-fortis-zet-parlementslid-zonder-uitleg-op-straat-bc2612a0/). When we consider the other (translated quote “often it is about strict rules regarding ethics and battling fraud, e-Finance institutions are mandatory required to collect customer information and to report this. It depends on the type of customer and for politicians there are specific rules, they need to be updated more frequently“, now we can argue and speculate, yet the question becomes if there is a problem reporting within the bank, that tends to be not such a good thing and if this politician is not the wealthiest one, the juice might not be worth the squeeze, so in this age, as banks become more and more stringent into ‘adhering‘ to certain rules, it seems to me that this tends to be a first sign that the bank has certain stress issues it really prefers not to update too often. It is merely speculation from my side, yet when we consider that for the longest time, elected officials as customers were a positive impact on the PR of a bank, seeing the member of a Green party (usually the most innocent of political types) pushed away, I wonder what on earth is going on.

How these two relate?

That is not the actual question, but it is an important factor. The news (at https://www.febelfin.be/en/belgian-banks-are-doing-fine-first-sight-will-face-a-problem-profitability-near-future), gives rise to a KPMG report, which gives us “But the Belgian banks will have to take corrective measures to maintain this profitability while keeping solvability and liquidity at acceptable levels“, which in light of more frequent reporting might be an issue for these banks, as we see ‘higher costs due to increased regulation and tax burden‘, we need to realise that the banks are playing on ponds that are a lot more shallow than the people realise, even if the water looks clear and reflective as a mirror, it equally shows that beneath the surface there are optional hidden hurdles. I am not stating more options to get beached, more that the requirement to navigate a lot more to get into a forward placement; these two elements are not the same, but the return on investment is becoming a (much) larger effort. Now, as Belgium is economically in a better place than Greece is, it gives rise to the optional irresponsible dangers that Greece is willing to go to with the next selling of Bonds and with the dangers of added percentages on risk, the impediment of forward momentum is not an equal, but a more elevated risk for Greece (as they are all in one happy European Union), in the end the only thing it does is that it raises risk and debt for the mere depressing benefit of one mere interest payment to ignore, a mere 12 weeks of time. The KPMG report as mentioned earlier shows that so far the anticipated return on equity is falling to 6%, which is on par with the minimum requirements for 2017 at 8%, yet will fall another 2% over the next two years, meaning that the minimum required target will be off by 40% in 24 months, which is going to be a large impact on every bank who had set their targets accordingly. This leaves me to speculate that the banks will become a lot more creative by underplaying the dangers for now and as such, Greece will hit waters a lot rougher and more dangerous for the Greek people soon enough. Belgium is merely one example. Italy, the Netherlands and Germany will be facing similar issues. The last one (read: Deutsche Bank) with exists from Australian markets as it is transforming (read: or is that reinventing) itself. As players from the senior side are moving all over the world to other competitive players, we see that the Deutsche bank is moving in some direction. This is the explosive field we see and this is the market that Greece is trying to get into again in what I would call a far too dangerous time to play that desperate card. To me it seems irresponsible on several fronts, so the initial ‘the worst is over‘ could before the end of fiscal year 2017 become ‘we are hitting additional hard times, that could not have been foreseen and were outside of the scope of anything we could normally expect‘, when the Greek people see that statement come, I will happily remind you that this was not as unexpected and that I foresaw the dangers months before they played out, when that happens, the Greek population will need to ask themselves how they got played, how their quality of life was diminished by well over 50% and how it happened that none of the politicians involved ever got to face court and judges on any of that.

I do not pretend to know the markets or that I am some banker with the insight of ‘Nostradamus’. Merely a person applying common sense, 6 languages and the use of a spreadsheet, this is how I got there, with all of the degrees I do have, none of those are in economy. So when you see the ground fall away from you just wonder how the economists or the economic reporters did not see it coming as some of them move to other shores with their awesome savings, leaving the Greeks to fend for themselves, deprived of whatever they were supposed to have.

When death comes knocking, the type ‘A’ bankers, often viewed as impatient, ambitious and smitten with business aggressiveness, suddenly become the type ‘B’ individuals, all happily willing to step aside letting whomever are behind them take the plunge into purgatory first. This is how quaint the reality of life will end up being considered for all those who are watching it unfold from a distance (if they get to be lucky enough to watch it from a distance).

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Tagged as Aghio Nikolaos, Alexis Tsipras, Amaysim, Andrus Ansip, Blackrock, BNP Paribas, Brexit, Commissioner Viviane Reding, Crete, De Nederlandse Bank, DiaNeosis, ECB, Elounda, European Central Bank, Financial Times, Greece, Greek bonds, Green Party, Juncker Commission, Kathmiri, KPMG, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Mario Draghi, Panaghiota Mourtidou, Patra, Politico, Saint Andrew, Spinalonga, Switzerland, TataDocomo, the Guardian, UK, Vaya, Vice President for Digital, Victoria Hislop, Vittorio Colao, Vodafone, Who pays the ferryman

July 27, 2017 · 15:30

Mere consideration

An article was given today in the Guardian. We can argue in many ways, there is no ‘Yay’ or ‘Nea’, there is no setting that gives rise to anything wrongfully reported (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/27/cassie-sainsbury-to-serve-six-years-in-colombian-jail-after-judge-accepts-plea-deal). The question that formed in my mind was all about the previous part, all about the part ignored. The Daily Telegraph (at http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/cassie-sainsbury-worked-as-a-prostitute-former-colleague-says-shes-a-compulsive-liar/news-story/e3897bc910b3c4d5d7f97d6b8eb406bc) states “the 22-year-old was a former sex worker who spent months working in a Western Sydney brothel in the lead up to her ill-fated Colombian trip“, another source gives us that she worked for Club 220. It does not make an impact, what does give us the goods is that this 22 year old went to Columbia of all places. I have nothing against Columbia, I worked with the Colombian presidential guards in 1982, all dedicated to their nation, a little fanatic, but all believing in what they did. Yet as a tourist, Colombia would never be on my list. Rio might (not too likely), yet Buenos Aires definitely would be on my list. Still from Australia that is not the most affordable trip. The cheapest was $2400 return whilst Buenos Aires is offered at $1750, all this whilst Jakarta is merely $270 away. Now, she might not like Indonesia, that’s fair. Yet in all this, Colombia is not the actual most desired place to go to. Some, especially those with connections would feel different and that is fair too. In all this there has been very little reporting on the reasoning of the 22 year old and her choice of travel. So as the Sydney Morning Herald reports “The plea bargain was then explained: if the deal was accepted by the prosecutor, the defence and the judge, Ms Sainsbury would be sentenced to 6 years of prison instead of the potential 30 year sentence if she was found guilty” sounds nice, yet in all this, the deciding players behind this, the elements do not add up. How long until we get scores flying to Bogota, because the coffee is just so much fresher in the place where the beans are plucked. We need not wonder on the validity of choice, merely accept the freedom to choose. It is a point of view we can agree with to some extent, yet questions still rise.

Even as we seem to focus on: “the judge asked Ms Sainsbury if she had been coerced into taking the plea deal“, I wonder how a plea deal is coerced, is a plea deal not the best option she could have hoped for? Was the option to stay in prison for 6 years, or be forced into 30 years? It would be the other way round and as such, how much arm twisting would be required? When we see “Ms Sainsbury was caught at Bogota’s international airport in April, trying to smuggle 5.8 kilograms of cocaine inside 18 separate packages of headphones“, so how was this any good idea? To become an exporter of headphones, whilst JB-Hifi sells quality Sony headsets for $34 (and JBL for $50)? How was any of this a good idea? We know that according to urban folk tales that criminals tend to be not too intelligent, but this dim? Nope, I am not buying it! In addition adding 330 grams to a headset package; something like that gets noticed and real fast too!

In all this, the Daily Telegraph now becomes in addition a worry for Cassie Sainsbury in other ways too. We see this in the two quotes “a former colleague of Sainsbury, who told Nine News she worked with her at brothel Club 220 near Penrith, has accused her of being a compulsive liar who once pretended her mother had died from MS” and “The former colleague said she had donated money to Sainsbury to cover her mother’s funeral costs and was horrified to see images of her mother alive and well on television“. Another claim given is “According to the colleague, Sainsbury went under the name of “Claudia” and listed herself online as “19 years old … classy, fun and ready to please”“, which get us to the situation that if the reliability of the accused is found to be non-existing, there is the chance that the judge throws out the option of plea bargain as the defence of the accused was “she was “threatened” into becoming a mule by an international drugs syndicate“, if there was no threat, she becomes the instigator of smuggling for large profits and that sets her on that 30 year train ride to nowhere.

I found the quote “Sainsbury’s fiancé Scott Broadbridge maintained his partner was innocent during an interview with Seven’s Sunday Night program. He said she was employed by a mystery couple who paid her $1800 a week to travel the world to work for their cleaning business“, it is interesting as it is a better income than most people at ASIS get, and they get into a lot more hot water, being in better shape and having a near Olympian constitution and well above decent looks too, which applies to both the boys and the girls working there. All elements Cassie lacked (as well as other shortcomings in education and degrees), so which cleaning business is hiring people at almost $10K a month?

There is a level of befuddlement within me as parts of all these given items are accepted by media, the courts and apparently the gullible audience. In all this, the Sydney Morning Herald gives one additional Gem that the AAP seems to have missed. When we consider “Given that any amount over 5 kilos is considered “aggravated circumstances” and draws a higher penalty, Ms Sainsbury could be facing 30 years in Colombian prison“, so no matter who was involved, the issue of this element which could have been diminished by trying to smuggle 4.9 Kg instead of the 5.8Kg is showing to be an element, especially as the 18 headsets were already a joke, the difference of 50 grams per headset would still have been noticed, but overall, on the two elements (apart from the mindlessness of trying to personally export 18 headsets whilst you are competing against players you have no chance against), we see that there is an element of stupid greed coming in. When drug tourism relied on the elements of stupid and gullible (added with two tits and a vagina to make the package even more appealing), whomever was linked in all this, going for the lower threshold of staying below 5000 grams might have had another (read: better) impact.

This is not merely the limitations of a system, this is a different circus. The Australian Daily Telegraph is also giving us “Bogota hotel manager describes man whom accused drug mule says tricked her into smuggling cocaine“, in addition; the quotes given give additional light on the less factually given job with $1800 a week. The quote “Ms Hernandez saying she stood out at her hotel because she arrived without a reservation and paid for her accommodation only two days at a time“, would a ‘business‘ trip not be prearranged? How would the ‘cleaning business‘ continue without a clear itinerary as well as clear invoices? In addition to that, the quote which is seen in news.com.au “Earlier it was revealed the US Drug Enforcement Agency reportedly alerted Colombian authorities to their suspicions about Ms Sainsbury. “We found her because of an alert from the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency],” Bogota airport’s narcotics chief, Commander Rodrigo Soler, told News Corp Australia” the entire mess gets another image entirely. If the given is true, not only is the entire mess as I personally speculate it to be a farce, there is every consideration that she was a 5.8Kg decoy for other parties to get out without a hitch. Consider the facts. She got into the hotel on April 3^rd, left April 12^th and got arrested on the airport. So in 9 days, she got approached, likely after a few days the ‘coercion‘ was made so in less than 7 days, a infiltrated drug ring got data to the DEA, the name and details forwarded to other parties so she could be arrested. So someone gave up $20,650 in goods (Colombian value of Cocaine), which in Australia would be $1.74 million. Is that what really happened, or was the actual catch to send two additional models (or a couple) each with 2,450 grams of cocaine (total value $1.45 million), whilst the total venture costed $35.5K and three plane tickets. It could just be me, yet when we hear screaming of a high profile drug dealer being caught on boarding the flight those getting of the plane in Sydney might have a lot more smooth sailing.

In the end, there is a chance that she was merely the patsy in this endeavour, whether it was a willing one or a coerced one is hard to tell, however the evidence is not in her favour at present. In light of all this, when we go back to Chapelle Corby who had a bag and a boogie board and decided to add more than the weight of a boogie board in Marijuana in a place that hates drugs with a passion, now we see equally less intelligent acts by a person nicknamed in the papers as ‘Ccocaine Cassie‘, yes, if all hedge funds managers were only that stupid the economy would have been in a much better place.

In my view, we cannot oppose the fact that the bulk of papers are merely reporting on what the AAP is giving them (read: reporting should be copy and paste), yet the ‘articles’ left me with merely common sense issues on nearly every level. In all this I wonder if the court and prosecutor had done their due diligence in addition to all this. Should we have expected more from the Australian Associated Press? They report themselves to be the “AAP is the media company that businesses turn to for news, information and publishing solutions. With breaking news firmly at our core, our vast range of products and services help clients connect with and engage their audiences. AAP is your integrated, simple solution“, yet the AAP made no mention of the 5Kg threshold and what is the verdict on both sides of that isle. In addition, something that was not on the list is the question on how many trips Cassie had been on since she turned 18? I would love to know how she got to decide on Bogota without knowing where else she had been, as that stands to the character of the accused. In addition, considering that the weight of a headset is around 200 grams, replacing that with in excess of 150% weight in cocaine seems even less intelligent. When we get an overdose of details on the lingerie of Kim Kardashian and a lack of facts and evidence in a reported drug hearing, the lack of questions asked all over the place is a little too deafening to my liking.

In all that, the valid words of immigration minister, Peter Dutton as we hear “People need to abide by the laws of that country. If not, they will face serious consequences,” might be well, but it falls on the ears of those stating ‘who the fuck cares?‘

This directly relates to the lack of visibility we see given to the defence lawyer of Cassie, in this as I see it, only the International Business Times gave any level of visibility to Orlando Herran. Here we see what was given to 60 minutes. With “someone on Craigslist offering a loan and a trip to London, she jumped at the opportunity. However, the itinerary was allegedly changed to Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Bogota“, how was that missed and changed to merely ‘a global cleaning service‘? Does this impede the reliability of the statements of the accused even further? That would be for the court to decide, but overall there has been a level of skipping that is just way too weird. In this the evidence also not reported on was who paid for the flight? Was it in cash (where was it paid) or credit card? All evidence not shown to the audience by the media either.

In the mere consideration here I see a failing on several sides and in all this there would be the required additional forensic digital investigation regarding the Craigslist as well, as it could be useful evidence. This entire event has too many holes and several unlooked places, especially when you consider that the DEA had its own role to play in all this.

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Tagged as 60 minutes, AAP, ASIS, Australian Associated Press, Bogota, Bogota international airport, Buenos Aires, Cassie Sainsbury, Chapelle Corby, Club 220, Cocaine, Cocaine Cassie, Commander Rodrigo Soler, Craigslist, DEA, Hong Kong, International Business Times, Jakarta, Kim Kardashian, Los Angeles, Narcotics, News Corp Australia, Nine News, Orlando Herran, Scott Broadbridge, Seven’s Sunday Night program, Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, US Drug Enforcement Agency

July 26, 2017 · 13:58

Balloons a Pollo from Brussels

The guardian is giving us another issue a mere few hours ago. The article ‘Brussels attacks Liam Fox’s ‘ignorant’ remarks on chlorinated chicken‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/25/brussels-attacks-liam-foxs-ignorant-remarks-chlorinated-chicken-eu-trade-deal-us) is showing us that the UK Trade secretary has been stepping on toes, and off course, we get Brussels to scream fowl. In this the quote “lowering UK food standards to allow the import of chlorinated chicken from the US is an insignificant detail” we might argue that lowering food standards is never ever a good thing, yet in all as the EU is talking about optional UK food standards whilst even now dozens of people are getting arrested in regards to the production and sale of equine beef burgers. Now, they still have a case regarding the quality of food. I reckon that Liam Fox is making a few mistakes. Not merely regarding the Chickens. You see, getting chlorine chickens into the UK, creating an additional danger to the NHS and increasing obesity and Type 2 diabetes is not merely a mistake, it is more of a gastronomic blunder of poised proportions. So as we see a composed (or is that a decomposing) Liam Fox, trying to impress whomever he reports to with securing a quick trade deal, we see that the medication is a lot worse than the disease. When we take an academic gander to the cellulitis side of the equation, we see (at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5393257/), that the issue is not merely the swelling of egos, the issue as given in 2014 gives us “Recently, evidence has linked environmental chemicals with obesity, insulin resistance, and T2D. In January 2011, the US National Toxicology Program and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences held a workshop that evaluated the science assessing exposure to certain chemicals with the development of these disorders. A main conclusion was that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have generated particularly strong evidence as a risk factor for T2D in humans.”

This now matters as POP’s, or stated Persistent organic pollutants are an actual hidden danger. We get part of this from the youthful youngling from Oxford named Paula Baillie-Hamilton. In 2002 she came up with the hypothesis linking exposure to chemicals with obesity, and this premise is now gaining credence, as stated in the article. So, 15 years ago she got some level of evidence (or a hunch) that seen in the paper ‘Chemical toxins: a hypothesis to explain the global obesity epidemic‘ was to some degree ignored in early studies. The paper goes is a lot deeper (see the links earlier), in all the upsetting phrases ‘appetite controls‘, ‘alter developmental programming of the endocrine controls of metabolism‘ as well as ‘differentiation of adipocytes, resulting in obesity in the future‘. These are not mere quick words, these are upsetting phrases. Now, a little sidestep for the non-academics (and to clear the palate); in the TV-Series ‘Supernatural‘ which is hilarious and of course none of it is true, we see in the season 7, in the episode named “How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters” the premise ‘the Leviathan were working on a food additive designed to render humans complacent and mindless‘, now we can laugh about that, but here we see academic proof that even though we are not becoming mindless, that the so called appetite control, metabolism control and predestination towards obesity and type 2 diabetes dangers that could be a given are the consequences of POP’s (Persistent Organic Pollutants) which are very real risks, and even worse it’s the fact that there is an indication that politicians expect us to remain complacent about it. In part IV.b of that paper we see the question ‘Are obesogens unequivocally harmful?‘, mind you, the text here reads a little strange (mainly because it is an academic work), so when we see “if there is continuous excess energy intake, it will lead to consequent increase of fatty acid spillover into plasma and provide substrate availability for triglyceride synthesis in other tissues such as liver, skeletal muscle, myocardium, or even pancreas, increasing ectopic fat deposition, insulin resistance, and T2D” (T2D = Type 2 Diabetes), which reads to me like, if you continue eating, we get more fatty tissue and insulin resistance which gets us the Diabetes we never wanted in the first place. The claims here are not set in stone and there is a clear directive towards future research. In the conclusion we see “a growing body of evidence links T2D to background exposure to environmental chemicals, in particular chlorinated POPs“, so in this day and age of the NHS, Liam Fox decided to give the playing field to cheap chlorinated chickens. It is however not the only danger, as I exposed the world to certain events a few years ago. The US got into health hazards as the FDA decided to play stupid and hormonal treatments had not been properly vetted for long term dangers, in the end some were removed, yet others are increasingly not or badly examined. Now, we know that Hormones are banned in poultry, yet antibiotics are not. There have been health warnings on this all over the place, also in the US for the longest of times. I am speculating that the two together are potentially working together like a long term cocktail (Chlorinated POP’s & Antibiotics). So not only do US chickens promote the dangers of the population getting exposed to more and more antibiotics resistant bugs, the Chlorinated POP’s might leave us with even less resistance to fight these superbugs.

So, there is one side of the issue. Even as we agree that these chickens are a health hazard, the people are confronted more and more with the fact that they cannot afford to feed themselves at times and a 20% cheaper chicken will suddenly taste a lot better when you have to choose between the option of eating 6 out of 7 days, or have chicken twice a week and eat 7 days a week. You tell me what you would do. In addition, the quote “Fox accused the media of being obsessed with concerns about chlorine-washed chicken being sold in Britain, adding that “Americans have been eating it perfectly safely for years”“, we see that Liam might not just be ignorant, he might actually be stupid (which is still a valid condition to be in politics, US presidents have had that condition for decades). When we consider that well over 1 in 3 in the US is obese, in addition close to 10% of that population has type 2 diabetes, with roughly 1.4 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in United States every year, we see that the danger now becomes that one in five (20%) could have this condition before 2035, we are skating dangerously close to a flawed lifecycle that we are allowing to hit the next 3 generations. It is one way to cull the population, yet in equal measure the cost of living will take a downturn on a global scale if the health premise is right. Another part we see and should give serious consideration to is seen when we take the source (http://stateofobesity.org/diabetes/), when I slice the data to the hit states on recession in the US, than my statement on ‘chicken twice a week‘ gets a lot more foothold. the rising in places like West Virginia and Missouri give rise to my view, yet in opposition, when we consider the life in Utah as they relish their quality prime beef and the fact that they are 50^th on the US-state diabetes scale, we see that not only are cheap chickens an optional reason for diabetes; its dietary absence in a state like Utah is a speculated reason that not consuming chickens is also decreasing the diabetes wave by a lot. It is a mere 14.5% (WV) versus 7% (UT), which is a 100% difference!

So my question to Liam Fox at this moment becomes ‘Have you heard of long term consequences and did you properly investigate these?‘ My question is a valid given as the data out in the open from health institutions, from academic sources and the data openly available give a very grey view on the impact of healthcare. The fact that some of the proven research is well over 10 years old give even more questions towards the actions taken on Chlorine bathed chickens. Is it not equally interesting that one product made the difference in the ‘race to the bottom‘ as environment secretary Michael Gove gives us?

In finality on the academic side, the paper ‘Chlorinated Persistent Organic Pollutants, Obesity, and Type 2 Diabetes‘ came from Duk-Hee Lee, Miquel Porta, David R. Jacobs, Jr., and Laura N. Vandenberg. This is the paper where we see the reference to the paper by Paula (in section IV.A), with on the right side of that paper, dozens of other articles linked or contain references to all this. Some of them with titles a lot scarier than the one we used and the ones I looked at were all on an academic level, so this is not some speculative tabloid event.

Even as we look at the balloons in Brussels and as the evidence has been out in several ways, the Guardian article also calls for the immediate dismissal of Gianni Pitella. Unless he can bring evidential proof in the quote: “Gianni Pittella, leader of the socialist group in the European parliament, said: “I’m sure British citizens will be enthusiastic to go from the EU high standard control over chicken and food to the chlorinated, full of hormones, US chicken“, in light of the fact that the US had banned the use of hormones in poultry for the longest of times. So as he quickly made that statement, and seemingly replaced ‘antibiotics‘ with ‘hormones‘, who is he playing for?

He might look like a balloon (read: larger than life and extremely colourful), yet he is not alone, we see in equal measure the dangers within the UK, in this the BBC (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40703369) give us “Lord Krebs, the former chair of the Food Standards Agency, told the BBC that no-one was saying that US beef or chicken was unsafe but that the UK could not “have it both ways” when it came to a future trade deal“, which is another issue, because with ‘no-one was saying that US chicken was unsafe‘ we get new questions, as that is exactly what the academic evidence is implying, in addition there are other statistics to give the growing dangers in the US. We can easily agree that this is not merely because of Chicken, yet they are clearly an unhealthy factor here. In this, Lord Krebs (apparently a Baron in nature) is linked to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which is clearly linked to ethics in biopharmaceutical engineering (read: antibiotics as one small part of this field), we all know that there is nothing unethical about antibiotics, so whose team is he on? Now, he is not misstating any question, he is also right that the UK cannot have it both ways, in that many agree. Yet the dangers of these chlorine cleaned chickens go a lot further than those speaking are telling you and that is equally a danger to all those who get confronted by grilled chlorine chicken on their plate. The biggest danger is that the threat is not immediate, yet for the reading parents, the dangers that there is a clear showing that POP’s are linked to an increasingly growing population over 20 years of age, now with Type 2 diabetes, is that the future you wanted for your children?

I am the first to admit that this is a complex situation, it is ‘sharded’ with sharp issues on every side of multiple issues and there is a lot more required to give it a true (read: closer to the needed) proper verdict, which in light of the quote “Fox has dismissed the row as a minor detail of trade negotiations that have not yet even formally begun” is a misstatement. It is not a minor detail, the repercussions will hit the UK population in several ways and both Liam Fox as well as the speakers on this issue in the European Union seems to be in it for other reasons. The mere ‘emotional voiced claims‘ should be seen as evidence as it. In all, I am not presenting ‘other’ facts, I am merely presenting details that have been known for well over a decade, the fact that none of them make mention of these factors are all kinds of wrong, it is not what any person signed up for. In all this, I am merely a conservative stating to the conservative Secretary of State for International Trade that he has made a significant blunder. Time will tell if he comes forward and corrects himself, because that is the reality that any person in the UK is entitled to.

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Tagged as BBC, David R. Jacobs, David R. Jacobs Jr., Duk-Hee Lee, Food Standards Agency, Gianni Pittella, Laura N. Vandenberg, Liam Fox, Lord Krebs, Michael Gove, Miquel Porta, Missouri, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, obesogens, Oxford, Paula Baillie-Hamilton, Secretary of State for International Trade, Supernatural, the Guardian, Type 2 diabetes, US National Toxicology Program, Utah, West Virginia

July 24, 2017 · 13:20

How to pay for it?

Yesterday’s news is not new. We have all heard the options, the opposition and the recrimination. Yet the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/23/uk-arms-sales-to-saudis-continued-after-airstrike-on-yemen-funeral) gives out more to ask of those who are on the moral ethical high ground and as such we need to make considerations, from within ourselves and towards others choosing for us.

You see, I am not stating that they are wrong, or that there isn’t an issue. We need to ask ourselves whether we should take blame of responsibility of the actions of other governments. So consider the £283m. When we consider the 2017 spring budget, that one sale takes care of the Education and health bill for spring 2017 and potentially leaves us with enough to pay the Debt interest for that quarter. So, what will these campaigners do when they are opted for one (the deal) or the other which would be no health or education money? I always love campaigners who in a downed economy make demands and have no clue or no solution on how to pay for it all. It is a really lovely group of non-deciders in most of the events.

What would I do?

I would happily go to Riyadh with my new BAE business card and sell them whatever systems they need to keep their nation safe. You see, it is the right of any nation to defend their nation. The application of the weapons purchased is up to them. Guns do not kill people, people kill people, it is basic and as I see it the correct dimensionality of a situation.

So when I read “the UK trade secretary, Liam Fox, delayed signing a set of export licences and his officials prepared for sales to Saudi Arabia to be suspended. However, documents obtained by the Guardian revealed that the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, advised him that the sales should continue, as he judged there was no clear risk that British weapons would be used for serious breaches of international humanitarian law“, like Boris Johnson, I see no real issue. The fact that he added: ‘serious breaches of international humanitarian law‘ as a condition was politically fair enough and perhaps a definite essential condition. It seems a little cowardly, but at what point would there be a serious consideration there? Even Iran might not fall into that category, leaving us with only North Korea, Al-Qaeda and ISIS as actual risk factors and we do not deal with these three anyway.

When someone states that I am wrong and there is a clear risk with Saudi Arabia transgressing there, my question would be: ‘Show me that evidence‘. After which I get a lot of speculative mumbo jumbo and no evidence at all. In this day and age we need to consider the choices to select which is fair enough, yet to give rise to campaigners on speculative events whilst they are willing to give silence in the case of Javier Martin-Artajo, Julien Grout and Bruno Iksil, willing to shrug the shoulders and walk away without anger or indignation. Such persons are all about feigned morality because there was no blood. So how many people lost their quality of life for a long time whilst JP Morgan Chase & Co lost £4.7 billion? You think that this was merely printed money, people lost all levels of hard worked gains, pensions, savings and other losses were endured. So as we read in that case “the Department of Justice said it “no longer believes that it can rely on the testimony” of Bruno Iksil, the trader dubbed the London Whale, based on recent statements and writings he made that hurt the case” (source: the Guardian), I feel like this was an orchestrated event. First get the accusations out, make a final thrust for your own acquittal and then write a little more making it all unreliable? Consider not what he lost (stated at 80%), but that he got to keep 20% of some $6m a year (paid more than one year), in addition, whatever the DoJ agreed to in 2013, which might be his house and a few other things. So he got to keep an amount that is exceedingly more than whatever I have made or will make for my entire life, a mere 2 years of his. So as we see about extradition issues, we now see that all three walk away.

This relates to the arms deal as the consequences of that part are merely speculative and it pays for a chunk of the government budget, so I will take a job there willingly any day of the week, presenting the technological marvels of the F-35 JSF missile which can be set to the bulk of the Saudi Arabian fighters. I will gladly take the reduced 1% commission and sell 5,000-10,000 missiles, after which I fly to Egypt and sell a few more. If that gets education and health funded in the UK for the entire year, so much the better! I will sleep like a baby knowing that education and health care are safe and set in stone to be funded. My presentations would be the best stellar presentations of them all. So F.U. (sorry for this instance of Post Enhousiastic Sales Drama) to both Raytheon and Northrop Grumman!

As we can imagine at times we need to take heed (read: listen to) campaigners, when the going was good (20 years ago) and we had several options to take a high moral stance, yet at present with a collapsing NHS, with politicians showing less and less backbone against large corporations on taxation issues, the United Kingdom has a responsibility towards its citizens, not just to keep them safe, but to offer some level of any future. Those campaigners seem to think that money grows on trees and have no idea on how to get things funded; in the UK the UK Labour party is perhaps the most striking evidence of all. As Jeremy Corbyn is now in denial on student debt issues, as he was intentionally vague during the election race. Of course apart from not winning (thank god for that), the realisation that he has no options, no methods and no way to get any level of budget done without raising the current debt by at least 50% and initially projected at 80%, the question becomes, how it would have ever been paid for as people like this, and campaigners against certain paths (read: perhaps for the right ideological reasons) have no way to deal with the national issues. Leaving people with much harsher debts, increased taxation and less social security as it can no longer be paid for.

I am not against ideology, I do not believe that dedicated pacifism is a cowardly stance; it is often quite a brave stance. Yet, it is equally often not a realistic one. We can all go to Hacksaw Ridge and be amazed of the events Andrew Garfield’s character went through, showing us some of what the real Desmond Doss went through, and we can admire his stance and his courage. Yet in the end, without the thousands armed forces in the 77^th Infantry division, the battle would have been lost. It does not diminish the actions of this one highly decorated person, I am merely stating that the 77^th held its ground and was victorious in the end, yet we should never forget that it is still regarded as the bloodiest battle in the history of WW2, with 50,000 allied lives lost and well over 100,000 Japanese casualties.

We make choices in war and in peace. I believe that every sovereign nation has its rights for defence, we cannot vouch for the articles of war in offense and that is not our responsibility. It is not for the salesperson of equipment to say and even the campaigner for peace needs to realise that there is a stance to take, even if it is a valid choice to oppose offensive actions, we must realise that any self-governing nation can deal with its enemies in the way they seem fit, when it becomes too unacceptable we need to accept that places like the United Nations will take the appropriate actions.

So how is this different?

It should not be, but it is. Ask yourself how you would act. We can always act holier than thou when we can afford it, yet when we are confronted with being hungry or to some degree making a questionable deal that is not criminal, and it is perfectly legal, but we cannot foresee the consequence. Is it still wrong to do it? Consider that we cannot predict the future and this is not merely a legal ‘more likely than not‘. It is about legally acting correct and morally acting optionally questionable, because that is where the stance is. Should we interfere with the right of Saudi Arabia to defend itself and act, or become judging and act towards denying them that right? This is the view I think that the campaigners are not taking correctly, too hastily and in judgement of ‘some’ moral principle. Now, I am not stating that they cannot do that, it is their right and their expression of free will, but in all this, they must also than accept the setting that they will have to voice: ‘We have decided to stop all NHS healthcare and education for the upcoming Autumn 2017, as we stopped the revenue that would have guaranteed it‘, that must then be in equal measure their acceptance in this. I wonder how the doctors, nurses and teachers feel at that point.

In this we now see another part grow. Even as we agree to some extent with the quote of “The terrible funeral bombing should have been a time for reflection and for the UK to reconsider its uncritical political and military support for Saudi Arabia“, we accept that ideologically Andrew Smith, spokesman for Campaign Against Arms Trade has a right and perhaps even a valid point, yet does he?

When we see “‘Incorrect information’ meant hall in Sana’a was mistaken for military target, leading to 140 deaths, says US-backed mission” (source: the Guardian) we need to know a lot more, the actual Intel, the raw data and the decision tree. When we also see “The air operation centre in Yemen, it added, directed a “close air support mission” to target the site without approval from the coalition’s command“, we can argue and question a few issue, yet in all, who authorised the action? How was the coalition command set up? If there was an approval at any level it takes the pilot out of the equation (read: likely he was never a consideration in the first place), so even as we see questions on the actions, even when we read “Dozens of citizens fell as martyrs or were wounded in this attack by planes of the Saudi-American aggression“, whilst the actions of the Houthi rebels are left in silence by too many, including the indiscriminate shelling of places. Any war is a place where it took two to tango, which does not absolve any side of considerations, yet in all I see often a complete lack of complete information, or better stated more precise and more complete information to the extent that was possible. Even now as Yemen is using ballistic missiles attacking a Saudi Oil refinery, as Mines are killing Saudi Soldiers, we see that Yemen remains active, shooting missiles close to 600 miles into Saudi Arabia, so as such, I think that the time of recriminations are over, they have been over for some time. Even now, merely 5 hours ago, we see that Nayef al-Qaysi, governor of the central province of al-Bayda was removed from office because of his ties with Al-Qaeda. Now, the source here is the Miami Herald, and others are voicing pretty much the same article. I cannot state one or the other, yet when we see these events unfold, giving rise to one or the other without proper visible intelligence is not a given. Yet in all this, when we take the original title and make this: ‘UK approved £283m of arms sales to Saudis to fight Al-Qaeda‘ (read: personal merging of different timed facts), at that point how many campaigners would we hear? Can we agree that if Nayef al-Qaysi has ties to Al-Qaeda, they would have been there for some time?

A piece of intelligence that I and perhaps many others would not have had last October, so should I not have sold these weapons to Saudi Arabia? I do not think that I had any valid opposition to not sell and whenever we campaign (even for the best and most valid of reasons) is always a loaded gun and that loaded gun is always aimed at the victims of these actions. In my presented case it would have been the people in need of NHS treatments and students. Any person proclaiming that they have the whole picture is usually lying to you, apart from the General of the Saudi armed forces there would be almost no other person in possessions of all the facts and even then we can state with a certain level of certainty that this person did not have ALL the facts. This is what makes the opposition to any debatable act a dangerous path. We can at best hope for acting in a non-illegal manner and that is exactly what happened in this case. It was a legal transaction, one that was essential for the coffers of the United Kingdom.

We need to learn how to compartmentalise. It is in our best interest to do what is correct and to do what our bosses want of us. When we try to grow beyond that cubicle we tend to speculate on what is best and even if we agree that thinking things through is never a bad thing, unless it is our responsibility we have to act according to our better angels, which means no in opposition of law. Is it not interesting that when that happens, more often than not these actions were greed based and those transgressors should be prosecuted by law, which in the case of hedge funds traders is almost 0%, so if we want ideology, it should be on the evolution of legislation to stop economic exploitation. Yet at that point, how many campaigners remain? I reckon that list slims down a lot, because economic transgressions are not sexy enough, or it is like a happy lottery ticket that nearly everyone wants and in case of Bruno Iksil when it amounts to 20% of many millions, I would love to get that lottery ticket as well, I saw a nice place in Cognac, where I would happily retire to. A mere €850K, which would leave me well over €100K a year to live off for the rest of my life, whilst the house (read: villa) had been paid for. I admit it is a lifestyle I would embrace if it was limited to one questionable, non-illegal act. It will not make me a criminal, merely a person not hiding behind some hypocrite high moral code of conduct.

Until campaigners get in the stage of life on how to pay for their daily meal and proceed on that moral high ground, that is the first step in filtering the actual ideologists from the hypocrites, an essential first step, yet in the end, they too need to accept that some sides of life need to get paid for and they cannot vote to make thousands abstain from essential needs. It is not fair and not pretty but that is the place that deep debts have pushed us all into, the mere acceptance of our to the smallest degree of changed options in upholding any quality of life.

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Tagged as 77th Infantry division, al-Bayda, Al-Qaeda, Andrew Smith, BAE Systems, Boris Johnson, Brian Garfield, Bruno Iksil, Campaign Against Arms Trade, Cognac, Department of Justice, Desmond Doss, DoJ, Egypt, F-35 JSF missile, Hacksaw Ridge, Houthi rebels, Iran, ISIS, Javier Martin-Artajo, Jeremy Corbyn, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Julien Grou, Liam Fox, Mimi Herald, Nayef al-Qaysi, NHS, North-Korea, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, reuters, Saudi Arabia, the Guardian, UK, UK Labour Party, UK trade secretary, Yemen

July 21, 2017 · 12:41

Opinions are like dicks

This is going to be a weird day; I can feel it in my bones. Whenever my hair goes 180 degrees into the other direction, I know the day will be rough. It turned slightly rougher when I saw the piece by Christina Patterson in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/20/porn-warps-culture-credit-card-footprint), there are a few issues with the article as I personally see it. You see, the people have had their say on porn for the longest amount of times. For me it is one of the ‘holiest of places’ as it shows the people just how hypocrite they can get. She starts right of the bat with “Many of us can remember the shock. Naked ladies!” and that is coming from a woman who should accept the natural part of her body as… natural. OK, she added after that “In a magazine!” it merely shows you all how ignorant she actually is as she passed the half century mark (an age thing). So, if you ever go to Amsterdam, one of the musts will be the Sex Museum. You see, it is actually merely a few minutes from Amsterdam Central Station, it is one of the cheapest museums in Amsterdam to visit and it is a real eye opener. There you are confronted with paintings, sculptures and other art. Also objects like an Ivory Dildo, snuffboxes depicting porn, all items with some of them going back to the 16^th century. Art covers on Vinyl’s (a 70’s thing) and even a street showing on how the red light district was and still is to some degree. It is actually informative both the adult boys and girls, and this museum is also highly recommended to visit as a couple. So when she goes on about “But, still, to see those naked ladies, as you giggled with your friend, was a shock“, we can say that this is fair enough. Not everyone feels comfortable seeing nudity. So as we see “porn has moved on a bit since then” we need to correct her a little. There are pornography shots going back to the 1900’s taken with the earliest cameras. Consider that Playboy started in 1953 and Penthouse in 1965 and July 1974 saw the beginning of Hustler. The growth for more explicit pictures was not just uncanny; the entire Sexual revolution in the 70’s gave the start for a porn empire of magazines and classifieds that grew into a multi-billion dollar industry within 20 decades. Now, Christina is certainly allowed her views in all this. Yet, the hypocrisy is actually seen when you know more about the background of certain things and just like the age of hypocrisy grows, the church gets involved (as I see it, it fuelled it). So it is time to get back to Larry Flynn to give it a certain ambiance. To get the sides right we need to add that in August 1933 Jerry Lamon Falwell Sr. was born (not named senior at birth though), a conservative and an American Southern Baptist Pastor, a ‘so called’ pillar of the community. The man was in the eyes of certain people hypocrite, now we can say that most televangelists tend to be hypocrites to a certain degree, yet this man took it beyond normal measures. So when we read some of his idea’s (idea’s that he is allowed to have) and we see “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals” as well as “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being“, you can imagine how some will react. By the way, I have met both Hindu’s and Muslims who have shown more what some call ‘Christian values’ (like helping thy neighbour, care for the weak and be charitable) than most Christians EVER will. So there!

In all this Larry Flynn saw in this man a valid target to ridicule some of the hypocrite values that were shown, the entire matter had gone to court over and over until it got to the Supreme Court in 1988, here we get Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), which ended in an 8-0 unanimous decision for Larry Flynn. You see, when you see the quote “According to a report commissioned by the NSPCC last year, about half of 11- to 16-year-olds have seen explicit sexual material online. They were, the report said, more likely to find it accidentally than to seek it out“, I would like to remind certain members of the hypocrite political branch that they merely did this to themselves. To explain that, I have to take you back to the early 90’s. The internet was no longer Arpanet and started to take off. It was around 1993 when certain parties had a first issue with adult entertainment. It was growing like wildfire and anyone with knowledge of HTML could get a nice paid job in that industry instantly. Which was in the days when security was a decent joke and those in the know around it did not need a subscription, merely the IP number and the right path to the art and you could easily save the directory with all the artwork (awesome access in early internet days). Yet the serious vendors in this industry understood certain values and were willing to talk around certain domains, providing that there would be no restrictions beyond that. Of course certain conservative players were all in arms (because the pastor called them) and the so called hypocrite god fearing community ware all in opposition even before the day ended. You see, these people living in pretence of having virtues and moral principles pleaded the immorality of porn and then went to the nearest hooters and after a few beers would seek out the closest hooker to get a blow job (speculative thought). Yet that one moment, the option when the adult industry wanted their own part in responsibility (.XXX had been voiced) we see the church who opposes that and subsequently fucks the choirboys in whatever hole they could, which is less speculative as the Catholic church is confronted with sexual abuse numbers that exceed 100,000 abuse victims in the US alone. That has been one of the driving forces on immorality. The movie Spotlight (with Michael Keaton & Mark Ruffalo) gives only part of the issue, all true, based on clear evidence from the investigative reporting of the Boston Globe. At present, in Australia over 4,000 alleged cases exist. With 90% of them boys with the average age being below 12 (at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-06/child-sex-abuse-royal-commission:-data-reveals-catholic-abuse/8243890), so whilst we see that as implied the political branch was all up in arms, they took advice from a collection of paedophiles. Great job!

So in the early 90’s there was an option to give less options to accidently get to these adult entertainment places, yet now we see the other part in all this. If ‘sex sells’ than advertising would be more valuable there. So when the world gets to live with the factor that one domain would be (speculatively estimated) well over 60% of all traffic, how much value would the other places have for advertisement?

The second issue is seen with “Expert witnesses told the women and equalities committee last year that girls are now wearing shorts under their skirts, in an attempt to survive the “normalised culture of sexual harassment in schools”. Children, in other words, are being stripped of their childhoods“, this is indeed pretty awful. Yet when we see the Netherlands we get (at http://www.ad.nl/binnenland/overheid-heeft-pedofilie-jarenlang-gedoogd~a870a359/), the title gives the goods ‘Overheid heeft pedofilie jarenlang gedoogd‘, which translates to “the government has silently accepted paedophilia for years” (there is a fair issue that the translation should be ‘tolerated’ and not ‘silently accepted’ which is my take on the issue as it was given), the entire mess is partially to blame on a political and police system that preferred to remain in denial, perhaps the names Jimmy Saville & Garry Glitter ring a bell in the UK?

So when Christina comes with her (validly allowed) view of “Oh, and users may be asked to give credit card details, and perhaps even be charged a small fee. A fee that might appear on a bank statement that might, for example, be seen by your wife“, I see her as no more than a condescending tart. You see, that is exactly the problem how the issue is not avoided, not solved, but would allow for the issues to be pushed towards ‘somewhere else’. So, as some firms will offer photo forums on Dark web (some extreme players already do), she is basically setting the stage for more wide stream groups to go to Dark web too. The problem there is that there will be no oversight and even less control of who goes there or what they will see and face. That was a really bright idea from Sandra Dee Patterson (not!). The entire issue could have been averted well over 20 years ago, but she is now upping the ante by having even less control, less insight and less oversight, and close to no monitoring options. The dangers that these high school boys and girls will get the pictures of boys and girls through their smartphone to the Dark web would speculatively go up 10 fold as the investigating parties do not have an overview and even less options to monitor and retrieve Dark web events. This adds up to more dangers and less protective options for the people actually in the line of work of trying to protect victims.

So even as Christina does not have a husband, she made matters optionally worse for millions of wives and double the amount of worry for these mothers, a real bright move Christina! Yet it is her view and she is entitled to it.

So now we get to the funny part with “It’s possible, of course, that people watch this stuff and remain loving partners and pillars of society. It’s more likely that they don’t. It’s possible, of course, that people watch this stuff and remain loving partners and pillars of society. It’s more likely that they don’t. I’ve interviewed a number of men whose porn addiction, and sexting habits, have lost them their marriage, their jobs and their homes. These are the extremes, of course, but there’s not much doubt that porn is changing our culture whose porn addiction, and sexting habits, have lost them their marriage, their jobs and their homes. These are the extremes, of course, but there’s not much doubt that porn is changing our culture“, you see, it is funny as the mention of ‘I’ve interviewed a number of men‘, how many? You see, places like Pornhub have around 15 million unique visits a day, so at best she has talked to 0.00006% of that population ever, so as 99.99994% is unknown, how did she get any real feel of what that population is like? there is no doubt in my mind that the largest part reflects near adult (or recently adult) boys with hormonal drives and more likely than not with speedy hands, there is also a growing trend (as speculated by others) that the amount of women taking a peek is a lot larger now than it was 5 and 10 years ago. Yet the largest group will soon outgrow this phase and as these young man end up with a girl happy to spend time in a bedroom or any room naked with them their need will focus on actual sex than watching it (just my speculation on the matter).

The next quote is actually important. As she states “The internet has already changed so much of our culture. We rage. We shriek. We hate. We do this in the name of “free speech”. We buy things with a click. We swipe for sex. We want instant everything, all the time. And we want it all to be free“, she hits the large nail with a slightly too small a hammer, because it is not merely on the free content, it is the question on how the content was acquired. This is a larger issue than you think. Some will give 10 pics free and hope that the person subscribes for $10 to see the 89 other photos and an additional movie with 1080p for any computer or mobile device, as well as a million fold more images and movies for a mere $10 a month. Sex sells so as 99 might not go there, 1 will and 1% of 15 million visitors still adds up to a massive amount of money, it easily sells itself. Yet the part that she ignores is that when the people go to the Dark web, the origin of the photos will be less straightforward. It could be the old BBS ‘peer to peer system’, when you upload one movie (or photo) you get to download ten additional movies. So how long until these people let’s say in year 12 start finding ways to get some unclad pictures of young women? That is the danger that parents are more than likely to face. When it was all on the up and up there was some option of monitoring and control, I fear that certain pushes in the UK will start to push in very wrong directions.

In the end the idea of age proof is not bad, it might even be good, yet the way around it will need some very diplomatic and technological hands, because it is not merely how it is done, the idea that junior gets a hold of dad’s credit card and personal details is not really that far-fetched, so how long until the debating parents on issues of ‘perversion’ realise that it was junior all along? As I see it, the idea is not bad, you merely need to go around it another way on getting an anonymous database system that could function as a non-repudiation system that merely require the need to set the premise of 18+, which is actually a fair system in light of the other opportunities wasted by those who looked at the bible and chose Luke 12, John 9 and Mark 10 to get their jollies off. There is however one upside (apart from the 18+), as we are more and more pushed to the new IPv6, when that happens we could revisit the entire 1993 event and allow a part of IPv6 to be unmonitored and explicitly for adult entertainment. By the way, which is also good to know is that some of the adult entertainment players wanted some sort of segregation to keep it safe away from children, so in that Christina is pretty much on their side with “It’s children they were trying to protect, and the only way to protect those children is to make all users of online porn leap through a few hoops“, in that, that in those days there would have been option to for example to add .XXX to a sort of ‘child lock’ system as US cable TV had (which would have been the next step in the US with AOL), this made sense as AOL grew from 200,000 uses to 34,000,000 in the height of their now no longer existing empire. Yet at that point there was a good option to get a handle on issues, but the uppity religious hypocrites pushed them into the WWW at any address they could, some even merely living through IP addresses.

We can never totally avoid that the wrong people (age wise) go there, yet in all this we can avoid the chance of people going there accidently. We merely need to accept as it has been proven through the centuries that some claim that our heavenly father came up with all that lives and grows and on the 7^th day, either Adam or Eve (not pointing fingers here Adam!), one of the two came up with adult entertainment.

So in the end, opinions are like dicks and perhaps in this I am a dick at present, yet as I see it, when we see that porn has been around for well over 4,000 years, it is time to stop being huffy, puffy and stupid around it. If protecting children was truly the only concern, the bulk of the Catholic Church should be in prison spending double digits in Sing Sing. This reminds me of A Jimmy Carr joke, ‘the innocent members of the College of Cardinals were questioned on the issue of Sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church; they were both sickened by the notion!‘ (The College of Cardinals has 225 members). If the politicians got religion out of all of this (and especially the linked hypocrisy) we could have had protective solutions for the longest of times, so focussing on a solution that works, instead of some half-baked system that allows for conceited stigmatisation, we could actually get somewhere, yet at present, when we see how certain parties play their media game, the dangers are growing to an overwhelming rate that in the end, more and more adult entertainment internet sites are pushed into the Dark web, next to the actual sleazy extreme adult sites that upsets the bulk of the entire planet. It will push too many under aged people there too, the one place where they suddenly have additional optional access to weapons and drugs in their raised hormonal state, a dangerous escalation to say the least.

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Tagged as 485 U.S. 46 (1988), ABC, Algemeen Dagblad, American Southern Baptist Pastor, Amsterdam Central Station, AOL, Boston Globe, Catholic Church, Christina Patterson, College of Cardinals, Garry Glitter, Hustler, Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, Jerry Lamon Falwell Sr, Jimmy Carr, Jimmy Saville, Larry Flynn, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Netherlands, NSPCC, Penthouse, Playboy, Pornhub, Sex Museum, Sing Sing, Spotlight, the Guardian, USA

July 20, 2017 · 16:14

When the trust is gone

In an age where we see an abundance of political issues, an overgrowing need to sort things out, the news that was given visibility by the Guardian is the one that scared and scarred me the most. With ‘Lack of trust in health department could derail blood contamination inquiry‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/19/lack-of-trust-in-health-department-could-derail-blood-contamination-inquiry), we need to hold in the first stage a very different sitting in the House of Lords. You see, the issues (as I am about to explain them), did not start overnight. In this I am implying that a sitting with in the dock Jeremy Hunt, Andrew Lansley, Andy Burham and Alan Johnson is required. This is an issue that has grown from both sides of the Isle and as such there needs to be a grilling where certain people are likely to get burned for sure. How bad? That needs to be ascertained and it needs to be done as per immediate. When you see “The contamination took place in the 1970s and 80s, and the government started paying those affected more than 25 years ago” the UK is about to get a fallout of a very different nature. We agree that this is the term that was with Richard Crossman, Sir Keith Joseph, Barbara Castle, David Ennals, Patrick Jenkin, Norman Fowler, and John Moore. Yet in that instance we need to realise that this was in an age that was pre computers, pre certain data considerations and a whole league of other measures that are common place at this very instance. I remember how I aided departments with an automated document system, relying on 5.25″ floppy’s, with the capability that was less than Wordstar or PC-Write had ever offered. And none of those systems had any reliable data storage options.

The System/36 was flexible and powerful for its time:

It allowed 80 monitors (see below for IBM’s description of a monitor) and printers to be connected. All users could access the system’s hard drive or any printer.
It provided password security and resource security, allowing control over who was allowed to access any program or file.
Devices could be as far as a mile from the system unit.
Users could dial into a System/36 from anywhere in the world and get a 9600 baud connection (which was very fast in the 1980s) and very responsive for connections which used only screen text and no graphics.
It allowed the creation of databases of very large size. It supported up to about 8 million records, and the largest 5360 with four hard drives in its extended cabinet could hold 1.453 gigabytes.
The S/36 was regarded as “bulletproof” for its ability to run many months between reboots (IPLs).

Now, why am I going to this specific system, as the precise issues were not yet known? You see in those days, any serious level of data competency was pretty much limited to IBM, at that time Hewlett Packard was not yet to the level it became 4 years later and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who revolutionised systems with VAX/VMS and it became the foundation, or better stated true relational database foundations were added through Oracle Rdb (1984), which would actually revolutionise levels of data collection.

Now, we get two separate quotes (not from the article) “Dr Jeremy Bradshaw Smith at Ottery St Mary health centre, which, in 1975, became the first paperless computerised general practice“, as well as “It is not developed or intended for use in any inherently dangerous applications, including applications that may create a risk of personal injury. If you use this software or hardware in dangerous applications, then you shall be responsible to take all appropriate fail-safe, backup, redundancy, and other measures to ensure its safe use“, the second one comes from the Oracle Rdb SQL Reference manual. The second part seems a bit of a stretch; consider the original setting of this. When we see Oracle’s setting of data integrity, consider the elements given (over time) that are now commonplace.

System and object privileges control access to application tables and system commands, so that only authorized users can change data.

Referential integrity is the ability to maintain valid relationships between values in the database, according to rules that have been defined.
A database must be protected against viruses designed to corrupt the data.

I left one element out for the mere logical reasons.

now, in those days, the hierarchy of supervisors and system owners was nowhere near what it is now (and often nowhere to be seen), referential integrity was a mere concept and data viruses were mostly academic, that is until we get a small presentation by Ralf Burger in 1986. It was in the days of the Chaos Computer Club and my trusty CBM-64.

These elements are to show you that data integrity existed in academic purposes, yet the designers who were in their data infancy often enough had no real concept of rollback data events, some would only be designed too long later, and in all this, the application of databases to the extent that was needed. It would not be until 1982 when dBase II came to the PC market from the founding fathers of what would later be known as Ashton-Tate, George Tate and Hal Lashlee would create a wave that would get us dBase III and with the creation of Clipper by the Nantucket Corporation, which would give a massive rise to database creations as well as the growth of data products that had never been seen before, as well as being the player that in the end propelled data quality towards the state it is nowadays. In this product databases did not just grow with the network abilities within this product nearly any final year IT person could have its portfolio of clients all with custom based products all data based. Within 2-3 years (which gets us to 1989), a whole league of data quality, data cleaning and data integrity base issues would surface for millions of places, all requiring solutions. It is my personal conviction that this was the point where data became adult, where data cleaning, data rollback as well as data integrity checks became actual issues that were seriously dealt with. So, here in 1989 we are finally confronted with the adult data issues that for the longest of times were only correctly understood by more than a few niche people who were often enough disregarded (I know that for certain because I was one of them).

So the essential events that could have prevented only to some degree the events we see in the Guardian with “survivors initially welcomed the announcement, while expressing frustration that the decades-long wait for answers had been too long. The contamination took place in the 1970s and 80s“, certain elements would not come into existence until a decade later.

So when we see “Liz Carroll, chief executive of the Haemophilia Society, wrote to May on Wednesday saying the department must not be involved in setting the remit and powers of an inquiry investigating its ministers and officials. She also highlighted the fact that key campaigners and individuals affected by the scandal had not been invited to the meeting“, I am not debating or opposing her in what could be a valid approach, I am merely stating that to comprehend the issues, the House of Lords needs to take the pulse of events and the taken steps forward from the Ministers who have been involved in the last 10 years.

When we see “We and our members universally reject meeting with the Department of Health as they are an implicated party. We do not believe that the DH should be allowed to direct or have any involvement into an investigation into themselves, other than giving evidence. The handling of this inquiry must be immediately transferred elsewhere“, we see a valid argument given, yet when we would receive testimonies from people, like the ministers in those days, how many would be aware and comprehend the data issues that were not even decently comprehended in those days? Because these data issues are clearly part of all of these events, they will become clear towards the end of the article.

Now, be aware, I am not giving some kind of a free pass, or give rise that those who got the bad blood should be trivialised or ignored or even set to a side track, I am merely calling for a good and clear path that allows for complete comprehension and for the subsequent need of actual prevention. You see, what happens today might be better, yet can we prevent this from ever happening again? In this I have to make a side step to a non-journalistic source, we see (at https://www.factor8scandal.uk/about-factor/), “It is often misreported that these treatments were “Blood Transfusions”. Not True. Factor was a processed pharmaceutical product (pictured)“, so when I see the Guardian making the same bloody mistake, as shown in the article, we see and should ask certain parties how they could remain in that same stance of utter criminal negligence (as I personally see it), but giving rise to intentional misrepresentation. When we see the quote (source: the Express) “Now, in the face of overwhelming evidence presented by Andy Burnham last month, Theresa May has still not ordered an inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the Department of Health in dealing with this human tragedy” with the added realisation that we have to face that the actual culprit was not merely data, yet the existence of the cause through Factor VIII is not even mentioned, the Guardian steered clear via the quote “A recent parliamentary report found around 7,500 patients were infected by imported blood products from commercial organisations in the US” and in addition the quote “The UK Public Health Minister, Caroline Flint, has said: “We are aware that during the 1970s and 80s blood products were sourced from US prisoners” and the UK Haemophilia Society has called for a Public Inquiry. The UK Government maintains that the Government of the day had acted in good faith and without the blood products many patients would have died. In a letter to Lord Jenkin of Roding the Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) informed Lord Jenkin that most files on contaminated NHS blood products which infected people with HIV and hepatitis C had unfortunately been destroyed ‘in error’. Fortunately, copies that were taken by legal entities in the UK at the time of previous litigation may mean the documentation can be retrieved and consequently assessed“, the sources the Express and the New York Times, we see for example the quote “Cutter Biological, introduced its safer medicine in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the earlier version was infecting hemophiliacs with H.I.V. Yet for over a year, the company continued to sell the old medicine overseas, prompting a United States regulator to accuse Cutter of breaking its promise to stop selling the product” with the additional “Cutter officials were trying to avoid being stuck with large stores of a product that was proving increasingly unmarketable in the United States and Europe“, so how often did we see the mention of ‘Cutter Biological‘ (or Bayer pharmaceuticals for that matter)?

In the entire Arkansas Prison part we see that there are connections to cases of criminal negligence in Canada 2006 (where Canadian Red Cross fell on their sword), Japan 2007 as well as the visibility of the entire issue at Slamdance 2005, so as we see the rise of inquiries, how many have truly investigated the links between these people and how the connection to Bayer pharmaceuticals kept them out of harm’s way for the longest of times? How many people at Cutter Biological have not merely been investigated, but also indicted for murder? When we get ‘trying to avoid being stuck with large stores of a non-sellable product‘ we get the proven issue of intent. Because there are no recall and destroy actions, were there?

Even as we see a batch of sources giving us parts in this year, the entire visibility from 2005-2017 shows that the media has given no, or at best dubious visibility in all this, even yesterday’s article at the Guardian shows the continuation of bad visibility with the blood packs. So when we look (at http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/04/bad-blood-cautionary-tale/), and see the August 2011 part with “This “miracle” product was considered so beneficial that it was approved by the FDA despite known risks of viral contamination, including the near-certainty of infection with hepatitis“, we wonder how the wonder drug got to be or remain on the market. Now, there is a fair defence that some issues would be unknown or even untested to some degree, yet the ‘the near-certainty of infection with hepatitis‘ should give rise to all kinds of questions and it is not the first time that the FDA is seen to approve bad medication, which gives rise to the question why they are allowed to be the cartel of approval as big bucks is the gateway through their door. When we consider the additional quote of “By the time the medication was pulled from the market in 1985, 10,000 hemophiliacs had been infected with HIV, and 15,000 with hepatitis C; causing the worst medical disaster in U.S. history“, how come that it took 6 years for this to get decent amounts of traction within the UK government.

What happened to all that data?

You see, this is not merely about the events, I believe that if any old systems (a very unlikely reality) could be retrieved, how long would it take for digital forensics to find in the erased (not overwritten) records to show that certain matters could have been found in these very early records? Especially when we consider the infancy of data integrity and data cleaning, what other evidence could have surfaced? In all this, no matter how we dig in places like the BBC and other places, we see a massive lack of visibility on Bayer Pharmaceuticals. So when we look (at http://pharma.bayer.com/en/innovation-partnering/research-focus/hemophilia/), we might accept that the product has been corrected, yet their own site gives us “the missing clotting factor is replaced by a ‘recombinant factor’, which is manufactured using genetically modified mammalian cells. When administered intravenously, the recombinant factor helps to stop acute bleeding at an early stage or may prevent it altogether by regular prophylaxis. The recombinant factor VIII developed by Bayer for treating hemophilia A was one of the first products of its kind. It was launched in 1993“, so was this solution based on the evolution of getting thousands of people killed? the sideline “Since the mid-1970s Bayer has engaged in research in haematology focusing its efforts on developing new treatment options for the therapy of haemophilia A (factor VIII deficiency)“, so in all this, whether valid or not (depending on the link between Bayer Pharmaceuticals UK and Cutter Biological. the mere visibility on these two missing in all the mentions, is a matter of additional questions, especially as Bayer became the owner of it all between 1974 and 1978, which puts them clearly in the required crosshairs of certain activities like depleting bad medication stockpiles. Again, not too much being shown in the several news articles I was reading. When we see the Independent, we see ‘Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to meet victims’ families before form of inquiry is decided‘, in this case it seems a little far-fetched that the presentation by Andy Burham (as given in the Express) would not have been enough to give an immediate green light to all this. Even as the independent is hiding behind blood bags as well, they do give the caption of Factor VIII with it, yet we see no mention of Bayer or Cutter, yet there is a mention of ‘prisoners‘ and the fact that their blood was paid for, yet no mention of the events in Canada and Japan, two instances that gives rise to an immediate and essential need for an inquiry.

In all this, we need to realise that no matter how deep the inquiry goes, the amount of evidence that could have been wiped or set asunder from the eyes of the people by the administrative gods of Information Technology as it was between 1975 and 1989, there is a dangerous situation. One that came unwillingly through the evolution of data systems, one that seems to be the intent of the reporting media as we see the utter absence of Bayer Pharmaceuticals in all of this, whilst there is a growing pool of evidence through documentaries, ad other sources that seem to lose visibility as the media is growing a view of presentations that are skating on the subject, yet until the inquiry becomes an official part we see a lot less than the people are entitled to, so is that another instance of the ethical chapters of the Leveson inquiry? And when this inquiry becomes an actuality, what questions will we see absent or sidelined?

All this gets me back to the Guardian article as we see “The threat to the inquiry comes only a week after May ordered a full investigation into how contaminated blood transfusions infected thousands of people with hepatitis C and HIV“, so how about the events from 2005 onwards? Were they mere pharmaceutical chopped liver? In the linked ‘Theresa May orders contaminated blood scandal inquiry‘ article there was no mention of Factor VIII, Bayer (pharmaceuticals) or Cutter (biological). It seems that we need to give rise that ethical issues have been trampled on, so a mention of “a criminal cover-up on an industrial scale” is not a mere indication; it is an almost given certainty. In all that, as the inquiry will get traction, I wonder how both the current and past governments will be adamant to avoid skating into certain realms of the events (like naming the commercial players), and when we realise this, will there be any justice to the victims, especially when the data systems of those days have been out of time for some time and the legislation on legacy data is pretty much non-existent. When the end balance is given, in (as I personally see it) a requirement of considering to replace whatever Bayer Pharmaceuticals is supplying the UK NHS, I will wonder who will be required to fall on the virtual sword of non-accountability. The mere reason being that when we see (at http://www.annualreport2016.bayer.com/) that Bayer is approaching a revenue of 47 billion (€ 46,769M) in 2016, should there not be a consequence of the players ‘depleting unsellable stock‘ at the expense of thousands of lives? This is another matter that is interestingly absent from the entire UK press cycles. And this is not me just speculating, the sources give clear absence whilst the FDA reports show other levels of failing, it seems that some players forget that lots of data is now globally available which seems to fuel the mention of ‘criminal negligence‘.

So you have a nice day and when you see the next news cycle with bad blood, showing blood bags and making no mention of Factor VIII, or the pharmaceutical players clearly connected to all this, you just wonder who is doing the job for these journalists, because the data as it needed to be shown, was easily found in the most open of UK and US governmental places.

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Tagged as Alan Johnson, Andrew Lansley, Andy Burham, Andy Burnham, Barbara Castle, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Blood Transfusions, Caroline Flint, Chaos Computer Club, Cutter Biological, David Ennals, DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation, Dr Jeremy Bradshaw Smith, Factor VIII, FDA, George Tate, Haemophilia Society, Hal Lashlee, hepatitis C, Hewlett Packard, House of lords, IBM, Jeremy Hunt, John Moore, Leveson inquiry, Liz Carroll, Lord Jenkin of Roding, Ministry of Health, Nantucket Corporation, New York Times, NHS, Norman Fowler, Oracle Rdb, Oracle Rdb SQL, Patrick Jenkin, Ralf Burger, Richard Crossman, Sir Keith Joseph, Slamdance 2005, the Express, the Guardian, The Independent, Theresa May, UK NHS, United States, US, USA, VAX/VMS

July 17, 2017 · 11:16

Oh La L’argent

Reuters is giving us the news yesterday that there is trouble brewing in France. The article titled ‘France’s Macron says defense chief has no choice but to agree with him: JDD‘ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-defence-idUSKBN1A00TE). The best way to trivialise this is by going on the fact that the world’s 6^th most spending nation on defence is cutting the defence of France back by almost a billion. Now, for the number one and two spenders in this field, that is a laughable amount. In the national terms it is a little below 2% of that total budget. In light of the UK NHS and other players needing to trim the fat and handover a pound of beef that amount is equally laughably low, yet for France? The article gives us in addition ““If something opposes the military chief of staff and the president, the military chief of staff goes,” Macron, who as president is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, told Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD)“, we can see this as hard talk and a kind warning to any opposition, or we can accept that this former financial advisor is setting up the board. He is placing certain pieces in reflection of the events coming in 2018. I wonder if it is merely about defence spending. Even as we see the other quote “General Pierre de Villiers reportedly told a parliament committee he would not let the government ‘fuck with’ him on spending cuts“, the questions are rising on two fronts, fronts that are not them by the way. You see, when we see another source (at http://www.iiss.org/en/militarybalanceblog/blogsections/2017-edcc/july-c5e6/franco-german-cooperation-1efd), we see ‘Can Franco-German cooperation deliver a new European defence?‘, yet the question is not merely the side that matters, it is the quote “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has committed her government to meeting the symbolic 2% defence-spending threshold” as well as “Germany remains far off the 2% spending mark – it is projected to spend 1.2% of GDP on defence in 2017 – and the Chancellor’s main opponent in this September’s federal election, Martin Schulz, has poured cold water on Germany’s commitment to that goal“, this is where the cookie starts to crumble. Is there a consideration that France is cutting costs, to remain on par with Germany, mainly because that would simplify a European Army where the ‘pound’ of all power is based on France and Germany? It works for President Macron, because at that point he could spend it somewhere else, in some form of local Quantative Easing (read: funding economy projects) as well as highly needed infrastructure overhauls. Although, 1 billion will not get this too far, but overall one or two larger issues could be resolved to a better degree, depending on whether he goes for roads or waterworks as a first priority. In all this there is a second issue, which is the combined design of a new 5th generation fighter jet, which will impact both German and France’s defence spending a lot more than anything else.

So as General Pierre de Villiers is contemplating the impact of 2% less, whilst a new jet is on the design table and 2018 will become the year of whatever EU army is up for initial presentation, the amounting costs of that infrastructure change, the General is confronted not with a president, but with a former investment banker that relies on Excel and predictive analytics to set the possible options of a virtual reality against a person who deals in real time events, idle time strategy impacts and an need towards an affirmation of hierarchy whilst having a complete operational army. In all this there is no telling when France gets attacked next and for that the DGSE will need 5 high powered computers with access to a cloud system. With a new encryption that surpasses the current 1024-bit RSA encryption that is used. So yes, that is also going to cost a bundle.

This is not just ‘all about the money’, you see, the IISS article seems to give rise to the Nuclear planning part, but that is not the actual issue that will play. As in any war and any intelligence operation, it will be about the data and intelligence that is acted on, and whilst there is data going back to 2007, that the growing issues becomes a shifting one. With: “Arjen Lenstra, a cryptology professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, says the distributed computation project, conducted over 11 months, achieved the equivalent in difficulty of cracking a 700-bit RSA encryption key, so it doesn’t mean transactions are at risk — yet“, the growing deadline was set to roughly 5 years, with the growth of Ransomware and other criminal cyber solutions, we have gone passed the deadline of 2012 and as such, the is now a growing need for matters a lot more secure. when we consider the added quote: “the University of Bonn and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan, researchers factored a 307-digit number into two prime numbers“, this might be a breakthrough in some ways, yet it still took 11 months to get to the solution, with other solutions like distributed calculating (example the famous Seti@Home program) and the cloud, as well as the fact that the bulk of PC users leave their computers on and way too unsecured, we are facing a combination that could spell cyber disaster. Just consider all those kids working their DDOS attack games. What happens when the computer is not aware because it is no longer attacking places (that can actually register these events), but just silently mulling over data? The person is asleep or at work, now we get that shared options gives us for example 50,000 calculators, changing an 11 month gig into a mere 10 minute job. Now, there is no precedence for this, yet the amount of people that have an infuriating lack of common cyber sense is still way too high (well over 75% too high), so getting to 50,000 computers silently is not the greatest task. It had been made easier by the Microsoft security flaws all over the place and the users not being adamant in upgrading their system when needed, as well as the need from Microsoft to keep on pushing some version of blue (read: Azure), my speculation is not that far away, moreover, it could actually already slowly being used in one way or another (read: extremely speculative suggestion).

Yet, the gist must be clear, the governments, pretty much all over Europe are due a large overhaul of data collectors and data storage systems. Even as we see on how Russia and the US are so called collaborating on quantum computing, those who comprehend the technology will know that whomever has that technology would be able to gain access to any data, it like you using a PC XT, whilst others are all about the Pentium 2, the difference will be that severe.

Yet, this was about France (read: actually it is not). The issue is not just the small disagreement that was going on between two important players within a Western European nation; the fact that it was on a subject and amount that is not that drastic, but Reuters is going with it on the front of its pages. In all this France is also getting the forefront of visibility trying to become the facilitator for the Qatar, which comes with the added danger that France will become more of a target for extremists because of it. Not a given, but it is more likely than not that there is a danger that this will happen.

On the coming year, we see that it will be all about the money, that has always been a given, so it is just telling people that there is water coming out of a water tap, yet it will be growing in the coming year as several nations have overly neglected infrastructures and there is a decent prediction that some part will have to give in, which will require additional budgets. France and Belgium are taking the top ratings on the need to improve their roads and as some roads have been neglected for too long, the road repairs bill could become exceedingly large for those two players. As such, the total debt of France will take a rising hit (one part that France cannot really afford at present) and Belgium would be in a similar predicament. These are the additional elements that President Macron will need to deal with.

Does that not make defence cuts more important?

Well, that is one way to look at it, which is a valid one, yet the rising projects and the growing chance of a European Army start would give rise to either more spending needs in the French defence budget or the French Ministry of Defence could end up having to deal with additional pressure points soon thereafter, in this other nations (including the UK have similar complexities to deal with)

Why the reference to France?

Well, that will become a little more obvious in about a moment, yet it was important to show that the cost cutting on Defence in France is a first mistake (read: blunder) by President Macron.

The article ‘Government offers £2m for scientific research into counter-terrorism‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/17/government-offers-2m-for-scientific-research-into-counter-terrorism), is showing us a first step in regards to solve possible extremist behavioural issues. In my personal view it is a competition that Israel could win hands down as they have been employing certain parts of that with success at Ben Gurion Airport and other places for close to a decade. Yet, doing it in some automated way through data gathering is a new side to that and here is where all the hardware and DGSE comes into play, or in the UK terms, this is where GCHQ could be starting to earn the big bucks (read: £). The quote “The threat from terror does not stand still, so neither will we, which is why we are calling on the best and the brightest from the science and technology sector to come forward with their ideas and proposals to support our ongoing work to keep people safe” is the one that matter, yet overall, even beyond the £2M price, the costs will be decently staggering. You see, this is no longer about intelligence dissemination; it will become the field of real time parsing, gathering and analysing. Yes, the sequence is correct! You see, it requires the analyses of gathered information, parsing new data and overlaying the results, all that in real time. So as I stated earlier by relating this to Paris (and the attacks), it is the applied use of General Pierre de Villiers with the added parsed intelligence in real time. For the non-military trained people. It is like watching a Command and Conquer videogame, yet now seeing the entire map and knowing how the opposition is moving next, whilst in reality you are not seeing the map at all. Look at it as a version of blind chess, Hi-Octane style. Now consider that this is happening in real time at this very moment in London, with all the information of CCTV, facial recognition and back tracking the first attack and then back tracking the faces where it happened, seeing where they came from and seeing how the next event would likely happen and how soon. The computational power would be close to unimaginative large. So when you see ““In light of the horrific attacks in London and Manchester, the government has committed to review its counter-terror strategy,” Wallace will say. “Further to this I am announcing today that we are making up to £2m available to fund research into cutting-edge technology and behavioural science projects designed to keep people safe in crowds.”” we need to consider not just doing that, yet as I stated encryption, it will also require the collected data to remain safe, because the first one to have the manpower and the skill to hit not just in extremist ways with weapons, yet to hit their opponent with a cyber-assault to corrupt the initial data, will not merely have the advantage, it could cripple that forecasting system, implying that crowds will suddenly no longer be safe when an actual attack occurred.

So when we consider “Counter-terror agencies are running 500 investigations involving 3,000 individuals at any one time as they confront an unprecedented threat“, we aren’t being told the entire story. You see, it is not just that, in a crowd event, there would be the need to be able to scan 50,000 people and be able to flag as many and as fast as possible those who are not a threat. To teach a system where to look is one way, where not to look and what to overlook is equally a required skill. To do this in real time, requires loads of data and might not be entirely feasible until quantum computing is a realistic option. When someone tells you that 50,000 people can be easily scanned, we could concur, yet when every person needs to be checked against 200 sources? Consider the lone wolf (or wannabe extremist). Having an initial harmless person in the crowd is one thing, having one that came all the way from Grantham, whilst there is no data that this person has ever attended such an event becomes an issue, now correlate that against the event (like a concert, a humanitarian event or a political rally), how often has this person attended? It might be the first time, which does not make that person a worry, merely a flag that it is out of character. So how many people would have a similar flag setting? Now you get to see the need of exiting gathered data, which gives a rise to knowing those who are merely vested interest people, and optional worries. When you consider that it could require 100 additional flags that give rise to danger, you will now see the need for the computing power required. So how has Israel been successful? Well, they have observers, people who see people walk by, their stance, and their actions, how they look around, levels of nervousness, the way they walk, the luggage they have. The human brain is the most powerful computer there is, the eyes are camera’s that can see more detailed in 3D than nearly any given camera on the market and those persons can read the people walking by. I believe that there is a future where devices can do similar things because they can look different (read: infra-red), not better.

I think that the approach by Ben Wallace, the security minister, is brilliant. He is opening the doors towards out of the box thinking and perhaps set a new stage of technology. There will always be people outside the government who are more brilliant that those within, he is merely inviting them to cast the stone of innovation, I reckon that in light of the technology changes we will see in the next 2 years, the timing is great, time will tell us whether the solutions were real ones too. At least the ball has started to roll and in light of the cut backs by France, the United Kingdom could have a technological advantage that might be a long term solution all others want, which is great too for several reasons of economic growth, which keeps the commercial solution providers interested.

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Tagged as Arjen Lenstra, Ben Wallace, Ben-Gurion airport, CCTV, Cloud computing, Cloud storage, DDOS attacks, DGSE, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Facial recognition, France, GCHQ, General Pierre de Villiers, Germany, IISS, Israel, Japan, JDD, Le Journal du Dimanche, Paris, Paris attacks, President Macron, Qatar, Quantum Computing, ransomware, reuters, Russia, Security Minister, Seti@Home, Switzerland, the Guardian, UK, United Kingdom, University of Bonn and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan, USA

July 15, 2017 · 15:13

Thomas the Tank wreck

Parents will have seen a program if they have kids, they all love to see that cheeky tank engine. The simple life in the town of Knapfort, or is that Nap Forth? The complication of not getting uncoupled, and even as it was merely an episode one, the not so young population might remember the rap edition of this Thomas (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETfiUYij5UE), so in all this. Is it about the music or the story? Consider that, when we see the Guardian claim ‘Revealed: NHS cuts could target heart attack patients in Surrey and Sussex‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/14/revealed-nhs-cuts-could-target-heart-attack-patients-in-surrey-and-sussex). So when we see “Organisations in the area are considering limiting angiogram and angioplasty despite positive evidence for procedures” should we be surprised? You see, I have had one, I understand that it is at times essential and that it is needed to assess the situation. We might see: “Hospitals routinely use an angiogram to assess the health of a patient’s heart“, so there is not surprise here. Yet when we see “Patients at risk of a heart attack could be denied vital tests and potentially life-saving operations under NHS plans to make £55m of budget cuts in Surrey and Sussex, the Guardian can reveal“. Why is anyone surprised? You remember that vague promise from some politician named, I think it was Jeremy Carbonite? Labour was going to hire a thousand nurses. So with what money were they going to do that? The NHS is out of cash and out of options. Whilst we see the NHS being politicised, everyone forgot that whilst those optional solution bringers remain talking, not much gets done whilst they talk and whilst they contemplate the decisions that need to be made; no resolutions and the money kept on draining for another 5 months. So we might feel sorry to the smallest degree for Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, with the mention of “the secretive cost-cutting regime which the NHS is imposing on 14 areas of England in an attempt to save £500m – because it involves “draconian” cuts to services that will hit patient care“, which is fair, it is Draconian and nobody wants it, but as the politicians were shouting at each other time went on and nothing was done, the changes for long term gain were all not done, pretty much none of them. Perhaps Labour can help? Do they not have a leader named Jeremy Carbonite? Is Carbonite not a backup program? Perhaps he has a backup option? He was so ‘speechy’, so clear on what needed to be done. So, Jeremy, what would you do next? Spend more money? It’s gone, your Labour predecessors took care of that, to have an NHS, you need an actual economy, if your side had not wasted the massive chunk of a £trillion in total, there would be options to move the track. Did you think of that as you paraded your addition of 4 figure amounts of nurses, police officers and others?

Did you think that the governing party was not aware of the issues? Did you think that those who are governing are not aware of the fact that the NHS is ending far below the line of zero before the end of quarter three? When we see the quote “Hospitals routinely use an angiogram to assess the health of a patient’s heart. The number of people in the UK undergoing angioplasty has risen eightfold since the early 1990s to almost 100,000 a year, reflecting its growing popularity as a non-invasive alternative to a heart bypass“, we understand that it is routinely done (I had one), oh wait! I never had an angioplasty, I had an angiogram. So why is the Guardian just shovelling two issues together on a pile making it seem as one? Perhaps it is done to make it all a little more trivial? When we consider that an angioplasty is set at roughly £17,500, we see that this procedure alone would cost £1,750,000,000 annually, that is a lot of fish and chips repair, or am I trivialising here? So how much are the costs of an angiogram? One source gave me £5,529, so how many a year operations are needed of those and why was there one number, but not the other? It should be a larger number of ‘operations’ needed, but with the cost being merely a third, the impact is less severe. None of that part matters when it is needed, yet what does matter was given to us in 2010 by USA today. Here (at http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-03-10-heart-angiograms_N.htm) we see a point that matters. With “A troublingly high number of U.S. patients who are given angiograms to check for heart disease turn out not to have a significant problem, according to the latest study to suggest Americans get an excess of medical tests. The researchers said the findings suggest doctors must do better in determining which patients should be subjected to the cost and risks of an angiogram. The test carries a small but real risk — less than 1% — of causing a stroke or heart attack, and also entails radiation exposure“. Now, we get that it is an American source on US patients, and not on UK patients, yet there have been correlations in health care in many nations, so it is not without merit to state that there is the chance that the same issue to some extent in the UK is taking place. Now, in the NHS age where £500 million in cost cutting, is it such a stretch to cut the one procedure that is seemingly only actually required in 1% of the cases? I am not stating that it is a great idea, yet if we accept that we need to get £500 million down, going after the 1% group might be one of the better ideas. In all this Labour should not object, a truckload of their politicians have made a career out of going after the 1% group their entire life, so there should be a consensus on both sides on the isle on this subject! The quote that is hugely helpful is ““We have to rationalise cardiac investigations and treatments. There’s variation of 60% to 70% between hospitals. We’re looking into why that is. Who in future won’t get an angiogram? That’ll be up to cardiologists,” said one senior doctor“, which makes perfect sense and as we accept that there will be a group of people that goes through one way of treatment, some of this will be done because a doctor had a certain education from a certain medical school, another takes route 2. I am largely convinced that both paths have merit and are in the best interest of the patient. In addition, when we see the 60%-70% variation, what happens when we drill down deeper and set it against the years of practice of the cardiologist. Will there be clustering? I am not stating that any of them are wrong. Yet, is there a chance that a junior cardiologist would see a few more (perfectly valid) reasons to do the cardiogram? I am not stating, not judging, I am merely asking. You see, as stated by: ‘the Guardian can reveal‘, yet that part they did not reveal. Why not? Perhaps the data was missing, yet the article on how “NHS organisations in Surrey and Sussex are considering restricting the number of patients who have an angiogram or an angioplasty” it would have been nice to see more than merely quoting “I don’t think that these extra cuts are reasonable. You can’t justify £500m to the DUP while taking another £500m out of the English NHS“. When we see the numbers I see that £500 million can be cut from one side where the costs are implied to be £1.75 BILLION, meaning that here we see that cost cutting is met whilst that budget remains to get 72% and none of the other parts are affected.

So cutting 28% from a program, whilst one of the other considerations is ‘Shut beds or even whole wards in community hospitals‘. It is merely a good idea to contemplate what could be cancelled, postponed of even considered in other ways. Another part that is true, yet limited to merely a small paragraph is “Saving the £55m this year will prove to be a false economy that costs the NHS more money in the long term, warned Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust health think-tank” Now, we might think that Nigel Edward is talking politics to the people that hire his consultancy (which is fair enough), yet he has a point and the point he is trying to make has been proven again and again. Yet, the NHS needs a massive overhaul and for the longest of times, people seemed to have been merely talking about it. Is it mere complacency or is there more? Consider the American source 17 years old gave us a 99% not needed rate. There is no evidence (at present) that this is as high in the UK, yet when we see “rationalise cardiac investigations and treatments. There’s variation of 60% to 70% between hospitals“. In an age of cost cutting that 60-70% is an enormous amount of variation and until properly looked at that data there is no way to tell how valid it is in the end.

The article merely gives us a lot more questions than they answer. That is gotten from the final part with “A Department of Health spokesperson said only that “Given the NHS budget has gone up by £6 billion in the last two years in real terms NHS England and NHS Improvement are ensuring that local areas spend their increasing share equally based on best clinical practice.”“, and in addition we see the mention of Tory MP Sarah Wollaston and “while taking another £500m out of the English NHS“, whilst at the end we see “Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, declined to comment on the £55m cuts“. In addition there is “under NHS plans to make £55m of budget cuts in Surrey and Sussex“, so the article does not give us many things. Like why these two counties have to cut a little over 10%, the final part is given in the weirdest of ways. Now, it could be merely the reporter having a creative thought. If that is not the case, the entire issue in the NHS is a lot weirder and even more problematic than the Guardian could have revealed. The issue “The bodies made clear that they have to contemplate such controversial measures because NHSE and NHSI have told them to save the £55m. Despite already having “ambitious financial plans for 2017-18”“, so here we see part of a larger problem. We have seen for the longest time that the NHS over overspending, that the cash is gone and that cuts were needed, we have all seen that news for about 2-3 years and here we see “ambitious financial plans for 2017-18“. So based on what budget were those ambitious plans conceived, perhaps on a gurney with a few nurses (a somewhat speculative imaginative thought)?

The clarity of the problem has been there for the longest of times, the governing bodies need to take several matters a lot more serious, and in all this the shifting numbers, the mentioning of the blended events and numbers give rise to several other questions too. All this because certain numbers were thrown at the readers, yet the overall numbers called in questions from the very first moment and as such the article (in my humble opinion) merely stats that there is a lot more wrong at the NHS than most people realise, with all that, caught in the middle are the doctors and nurses. None are getting hired in addition and there are issues for the doctors two, so when they rightfully demand that these ‘ambitious financial plans for 2017-18‘ are being made public, what kind of a story will they receive? The tension should be an interesting one as the pay rise for health care workers was capped at 1%.

So as we conclude today’s event, we all need to take a long hard look at the decision makers in the UK NHS, they are seemingly wasting too much time of the preferential prospect of presentation, whilst the reality was never a given element of that presentation at all. The fact that there are actual issues rising to the surface of the NHS, whether already looked at or not, when we see the amount of issues linked to high variations, in an age where costs are cut to the extent they need to be, is it not weird that those numbers had not be properly looked at and reported on at least 2 years ago? The 2010 article is indicative of that to at least some degree. You see, if it had been, that that would have been evidence that could have been added to this article. The fact that it was not gives rise to the questions I added and in all this it took not that much time. Now in all fairness, to add 30% on a £105M cut. Yet in all this, there is still the issue with the £1.75 billion of angioplasty in the UK.

In addition, to add the amounts that are added, how was it decided where they would fall?

Now we get that there are issues in several places and some would state ‘It will be alright‘, and ‘things will get fixed‘. Yet from my point of view and from the issues presented there are merely more and more questions coming up and it seems to me that the growing issues with the NHS is due to inaction, not merely through cut backs. That is one actual clear given, the issue at that point is not how we can solve the NHS issues, it becomes how can we temper towards zero the amount of idle time and inaction, not in the staff, but in the governing and infrastructural sides.

The additional part that was not seen at present is the realisation that the NHS issue will tighten, and get worse for the next foreseeable future (up to 5 years), you see, the turnaround will take longer with every delay and the recovery from any delay will take longer with every delay we see. The second part that we will be shown with the time to come is that there is a growing concern that the UK aging part has been shelved with the NHS for too long, so in about three years we will see that the NHS geriatric division is not up to scrap and there will be additional increasing pressures on the NHS soon thereafter.

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Tagged as Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Hunt, labour party, NHS, Nigel Edwards, Nuffield Trust, Sarah Wollaston, Surrey, Sussex, the Guardian, UK, USA today

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