Tag Archives: UK

The European conglomerate of corruption

It was always going to happen, it was always going to get pushed. Yet the setting and the size of the levels of corruption is just beyond anything I could have imagined. How large corporations and politicians set hand in hand to enable corruption is just staggering and the media is assisting in this process. This is more than just Brexit. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/17/uk-needs-darkest-hour-in-brexit-talks-before-giving-ground), gives more than just the title ‘UK will shift Brexit stance in its ‘darkest hour’ claim EU officials‘.

Now some will throw ‘corruption’ left, right and centre, so let’s take a look at this. The dictionary gives us “dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery“, the problem is that most people just think it is about the money and most of the time they are correct. Yet the legal dictionary gives us: “The use of public office for private gain, Dunhaime gives us in addition the Canadian setting with: ““Corruption is understood to be the exploitation of a position of trust, typically in the public sector, in order to receive a private gain, which may or may not be financial. “Corruption is not a simple issue of right and wrong, and conditions that encourage public officials to seek out or accept corruption include (a) the expected gains from undertaking a corrupt act exceed the expected costs and (b) little weight is placed on the costs that corruption imposes on others.” We got this part from Karen Katz in the Canadian Law Journal.

In this we must also include the American version, which was discussed in In Nixon v Shrink Missouri Gove, where Justice Souter of the United States Supreme Court used these words: “Corruption is a subversion of the political process. Elected officials are influenced to act contrary to their obligations of office by the prospect of financial gain to themselves or infusions of money into their campaigns“, it is the elected officials part that matters.

When we are confronted with: ““A lot of movement is needed by the UK side before we can actually reach agreement”, said one senior diplomat. “We need a substantial change in the UK red lines still.” A second EU diplomat added: “It seems that the UK needs to have a ‘darkest hour’ moment before they will shift position. But they will have to shift their position.”” In addition, we see the fear mongering by Christine Lagarde, managing the IMF, who so far has been wrong thrice over in the last four years alone. We are given “a no-deal Brexit would deliver “reduced growth, an increase in the [budget] deficit and a depreciation of the currency“. In this we see another claim that has to be proven wrong again, all in the need of fear. You see this fear is growing. It is in part growing because the Italians are also moving on an ItaLeave (or is that iExit) path.

A path that even I did not see happening. I gave voice to the danger two years ago, but I also recognised that it was unlikely to happen, not as much as France and they pulled a rabbit named Emanuel Macron, not the Emmanuelle the European man were hoping for (see image). Yet in Italy it did go a lot further And now that Metteo Salvini is the elected group, the powers of Wall Street are getting scared, they are contemplating the end of their long reign of exploitation, so this wave is perhaps the last one, which makes the subversion of British Freedom even more essential. And in this British politicians are helping out, because London has been scared by all the fearmongering and Sadiq Khan is now worried for his town. He is shouting on the need for a second referendum. Yet, I want to set a few parts as well. The first is that the ECB gets disbanded, it is not transparent, it has taken liberties that are beyond acceptable and whenever the G30 bank elite comes to mention it had been avoided again and again. That is the setting towards what I regard to be of levels of corruption that are beyond acceptable. I personally want to add the right of targeted killing that means that any given links on politicians and the banks and large investors that is regarded to be unacceptable comes with an automated death sentence. I wonder how many politicians will get worried, they claim they will not be, but one knock on their door with the mention of the Battersea Power Station with the quote: “In an interview with the Guardian, Anwar, who was released from prison after the opposition won power for the first time in Malaysia, said the previous government had used the savings of ordinary people to cover up the multibillion-dollar embezzlement scandal at 1MDB, a state investment fund.“, and when we consider the news merely 5 days ago (source: the Guardian) with: “Peter Bingle used his longstanding relationship with Ravi Govindia, the leader of the London borough of Wandsworth, in attempts to circumvent council officials he believed were being obstructive to his clients, including over the size of payments due to public projects“, I think that my case has been decently made. In this we will hunt down and give the fear mongers the option to either show clear evidence or get executed. Is that not an easy way to get to the truth of the matter?

This reflects on Europe and the ECB, because their laughter dies down quite quickly at the point when the first ‘accidental’ fatalities hit the newsreels, after that them bitches be crying. As for the hard times. Yes, the UK would always get a few years of hardship after Brexit. Anyone stating that this is not true is lying to you. The issue becomes that after Brexit, the careless spending will no longer get pushed onto UK budgets, which also means that debts can be better dealt with quicker and also to a larger extent. That also means that as debts go down, as infrastructure issues are dealt with, it will have much better chance when the UK is not dragged down through 3 trillion stupid mistakes by Mario Draghi. OK, that was not quite true, the first Trillion we get, but when it failed he decided to add two trillion to that debt. That is the issue that the UK is confronted with and there is also the bigger crux. You see, the BBC reported last month (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45247631) that a charity has called for tougher regulation of bailiffs, as it calculated that households have fallen behind on essential bills by £18.9bn. Staying in the EU does not fix that, the bills are still due, yet when the economy betters something can be done and that is what Europe does not want, they want that the lifestyle remains equal for all, looking at Sweden alone we see that this future is fictive and the EU is draining all funds with their gravy trains as well, making matters worse. If there was only someone who had been able to hold the ECB accountable on some of their actions, but alas, there was no option for that and there we see the one truth that Nigel Farage was correct in. If the Brits all unite for a better Britain it will work. And that is not merely those born there, anyone living in the UK, being a resident or citizen has the best interest that growing the UK is the only path that works.

The entire charity matter is also a path that matters, because it impacts life in the UK. We can agree that bills have to be paid for, but that is no longer an option as the pockets of big business are filled through exploitation and that cash is moved out of the UK through perfectly legal and creative bookkeeping.  So when we see: “Citizens Advice said it was getting a call from someone needing help owing to bailiffs every three minutes. It is calling for a bailiffs regulator in England and Wales. It points to a case of an elderly couple who owed £700 in council tax who are now afraid to open their front door after bailiffs used aggressive tactics and threatened to call in the police.” We need a much better system that allows for the return to better values and pushing out exploitative business is a requirement, yet their exploitative options are protected by the EU and Strasbourg, who want the status quo and will remain in denial for another decade, whilst the required actions are already 5 years too late. Here to we see the need to go it alone for the UK and let’s not forget that Italy is already moving on that path, no matter what happens now, when Italy gets out before the UK, the options of the UK will diminish even more, and that is still on the table, even as we see the news with “‘We Want to Change Things from Within.’ Italy’s Matteo Salvini on His Goal to Reshape Europe“, we see carefully scripted answers in regards to the Italian exit, yet the EU budget fights are implying that this path remains open to Matteo Salvini. The Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/cad84ef6-b10d-11e8-99ca-68cf89602132) gave us: “But others fear a spat with Rome that could spur support for Mr Salvini in European Parliament elections in May next year and re-energise his party’s calls for a eurozone exit.” That is the dilemma that all these Europeans now face, because when the UK is officially out, the Italian exit will collapse the Euro as well as the EU. A setting that was always going to happen (at some point), yet the order in how it happens will also set the stage on how it impacts the UK and my personal view is the quicker that they are out, the better their position will be and there we see the stage of all these fearmongering players, every month less is another year of pension gone and a more medial lifestyle for those people who want their golden parachute and their golden swimming pool. That whilst 99.99934%of the people in the UK (roughly) will never ever have either.

So even as he Financial Times gives us the Top Marginal personal income tax for employees , we see that Sweden heads it and the UK is a lot below that, whilst Italy is two places below that part and Italy ‘flat tax’ is dead last. Now if we could have seen another chart that includes the levels of tax avoidance (which is perfectly legal) we could clearly see that the UK will never get the amount professed in that chart. There are too many loopholes and many nations use them, the EU gave even more options there. This gets us to 2016, when we were introduced to: “On 28 January 2016 the Commission presented its proposal for an Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive as part of the Anti-Tax Avoidance Package. On 20 June 2016 the Council adopted the Directive (EU) 2016/1164 laying down rules against tax avoidance practices that directly affect the functioning of the internal market“, which sounds awesome, was it not that 8 months later, we were treated to: “Huge sums are being lost due to tax evasion and avoidance. Estimates go up to € 1 trillion“. The mere setting of dates that were not clearly added to the page and other matters missed, gives us the uselessness setting of the EU, moreover those 8 months, the people involved, what did they achieve and how much did they get paid? It is my personal opinion, yet ec.europe.eu is filled with blunders and misgivings of a nature that should have gotten a truckload of these people fired and now they all band together, because when the UK leaves their party ends and that scares them. It is not that they merely try, it is that they for the most fail again and again.

That whilst IBM gave us the opposite setting for Brexit only a month ago with: The problem, though, is that there are some signs that Brexit isn’t going to be as bad as once feared – and may, in fact, turn into a net positive for the UK, and tech giant IBM might play an outsized role in some of the developing factors. Here’s why:

  • Foreign Investment is Growing
  • Emerging Technology Solving Trade Issues
  • Exports Climbing and
  • US Uncertainty Taking a Toll

These are all matters that work for the UK over time and that is why these levels off fearmongering anger me so and I personally would want retaliation against those trying to prolong their futures through fearmongering.

All issues ignored by the media to a much larger degree and whilst they emphasize on people like Lord Adonis, we need to make certain that those doing so are given the spotlight to the larger degree after the proof is shown, we will not allow for a simple ‘sorry’ we will set the stage for draconian change to their non-journalistic path. In the first in setting these publications as no longer to be regarded as newspapers, especially publications like the Daily Mail. They can publish of course, we would never hold their right of expression, but no longer in a 0% setting, they will become vat accountable for the 20% that any magazine and glossy gossip mag is set to, the playing field should be equal, should it not? I wonder how long it takes for them to feel that 20% pinch (good for the UK coffers) and when they start passing that onto the consumers, do you think that they will continue choosing that medium, or will they consider reading an actual newspaper?

All elements of corruption. The setting of ‘exploitation of a position of trust‘ is seen with newspapers, title of status, positions of wealth and managing policies as well as the facilitation and nepotism on smoothing paths for buildings. There is too much going on and it is hurting the UK immensely. We can argue that the EU has allowed corruption levels that we had not seen since ancient Rome and when we consider who is heading the ECB, we see and optional coincidence of correlation.

The largest danger is not when the UK gets out, but when the fear mongers win and Matteo Salvini succeeds, because at that point the UK will face close to a decade of additional hardship. Are you ready for that? Are you in the UK willing to forgo heating in the winters of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023? Consider that, because the debt of the people adding to £18.9bn implies that they have to forgo electricity or heating; what would you chose?

 

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Investigating Self

I have always held myself to the highest degrees, I have always doubted myself. This has nothing to do with ego, or with the fact that I am better than others. This is about the setting that I am not perfect and I too make mistakes. I have never had doubt there. You see, the people claiming that they do not make mistakes are liars, plain and simple. It is not, or has it ever been about making mistakes or guilt. It has forever been about the ability to repair or adjust actions taken. I have forever stood by my words, whether wrong or right, and when wrong I have never opposed being corrected or adjust the view that I had. That is the responsible steps for any person to take.

And in the past I have given a very clear setting of the entire Novichok debacle and now, actually 6 daus later, I am taking a look at the US papers, you see, there are clear screw ups there. Yet there is also news that was never spread by the media to the degree that had to be given, was that not strange too?

So let’s take a look at the UN event (at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/you-dont-recruit-an-arsonist-to-put-out-a-fire-you-especially-dont-do-that-when-the-fire-is-one-they-caused).

On Sunday, 4 March, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in the city centre after being poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent. Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, a Wiltshire police officer, was also seriously ill after having been exposed to a nerve agent. Following this attack, the United Kingdom notified the OPCW, invited them to confirm the identity of the substance involved, and we briefed members of the Security Council. The OPCW’s independent, expert laboratories confirmed the UK’s identification of the Novichok nerve agent.

Here in the first part we see that there is already one part (when you nitpick) it. The setting ‘the Novichok nerve agent‘ might be partially correct, we see that the BBC gives us two parts. The first: “The name means “newcomer” in Russian, and applies to a group of advanced nerve agents developed in secret by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s” and the second part is “One variant was reportedly approved for use by the Russian military as a chemical weapon“. When we see that Novichok is a group, which specific one was it? Some will say that this is merely Semantics, yet the UN and the UNSC are ALL about semantics, the specifics are very important here, because it allows for ambiguity, and that is not a good thing. In addition, when we consider ‘One variant‘, was that the one that was found? A lack of details is already seen from the very beginning from a whole host of media deliverers and that is not a good thing.

The second part is even worse. With: “On 4 September, the OPCW’s independent, expert laboratories have again confirmed the UK’s identification of the Novichok nerve agent with a very high level of purity and to remind Council members, the very high level of purity means that it will have been made by a state“, we are now treated to ‘with a very high level of purity‘, as well as ‘made by a state‘. These two parts are important, the first one was not mentioned in the initial attack, the emphasis on the purity is important, because all parties hit by the initial attack survived, the third victim, the police officer was seemingly indirectly exposed, implying that his exposure was even less and we do get that he was lucky and that the indirect exposure gave him a much better chance, yet the ‘purity’ now gives the question on how the first two survived in the first place. and if we see the reference to ‘the use of such agents on door handles‘ later in their statement, was there evidence of that, merely an example and if it was the door handle, one would be exposed for certain, the second one would have more likely than not evaded exposure for longer, optionally exposed to a much lesser degree (an assumption on my side).

Yet the second part ‘made by a state‘ remains the issue. You see, in ‘Does it taste like chicken‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/07/05/does-it-taste-like-chicken/) we see: “The additional information that was published in 2016: ‘Iranian chemists identify Russian chemical warfare agents‘, which we got from http://www.spectroscopynow.com/details/ezine/1591ca249b2/Iranian-chemists-identify-Russian-chemical-warfare-agents.html. You see, the problem was already clear in the previous attack“, the fact that Iranian academics created the substance for detection with: “The authors succeeded in synthesising and obtaining detailed mass spectral data on a series of unusual nerve agents. The data have been added to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Central Analytical Database (OCAD)” we are given the prove that the evidence shows that this is not limited to state actors, hiding behind the term ‘purity level’ is just folly in several levels. The fact that this was done in 2016 also shows that the formulas had been out for a while, the Leonard Rink case is further evidence still, all elements ignored by too many players.

Let’s be clear, there it is not in question that there is more likely than not a Russian involvement, yet the evidence that it was Russian state remains debatable, that part has always been the case. In addition when we are confronted with “testing of the hotel the pair stayed in in London revealed the presence of traces of the Novichok substance in their hotel room” is clear evidence of the two persons being involved in all that, yet in opposition, the entire matter of  “Looking around in the security business, I have been confronted with quotes like “their lack of covert tradecraft seems kind of bizarre“, “The shitty tradecraft, not just with clothes but by traveling together, and by leaving a noticeable trail“, as well as “Arriving together??? Staying together??? Leaving together?” is a first instance in all this” is equally important. Open sources all over the place by people in the security industry are giving us the question on why these two remained so visible, so outspokenly noticed. Even as a non-Trade-craft person I would be more likely than not be able to avoid clear detection and identification for around 50% of that time, that setting in all this matters, because we are confronted with a government knowingly targeting the wrong player, more likely than not the wrong Russian player.

This now evolves into something more when the statement “The GRU has time and again been responsible for Russian interference in other countries’ affairs, and most recently, we saw US indictments of GRU individuals in relation to the 2016 Democratic National Committee PAC“, not merely connecting two events, we are given ‘we saw US indictments of GRU individuals‘, yet when we look deeper we see in Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2018/08/23/midterm-election-hacking-who-is-fancy-bear) “The group (Fancy Bear) – also known as APT28 and Strontium – is allegedly affiliated with Russian military intelligence agency the GRU. Fancy Bear’s aims centre around geopolitical disruption through cyber influence“, it is not merely the ‘allegedly’ part it is also the ‘affiliated’ part. What officially connects these two? What evidence is there that in the first they are officially connected, and in the second part where is the evidence? The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service has them too in their papers, and I am not debating their existence, yet the clarity of evidence is missing.

For example, we do not question the SVR, the GRU or the FSB. We know who they are and what they do, that was never in debate. Yet when it comes to hacktivists and cyber criminals, the line gets to be blurry, more important, either of them can be both and at that point, is it them, or are they doing what their government tells them, or even a third party? Now we see Ambassador Karen Pierce having her moment of folly connecting the two together, making matters worse, or perhaps better started ‘more impossible to prove‘. That was always the case, proving that it was all state driven. It was never on the Russian part, that part was easy enough (almost too easy), it is the state driven part that is the case and when we get to rely on that some parts were ‘almost too easy‘, you better believe that it is anything but that. It still gives me the stronger conviction that this is organised crime, most likely Russian organised crime. At that point the equation changes by a lot and that is where we are stuck. Even as we accept (with the evidence of trace), how come that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were not infected? Why would anyone be this casual in the usage of the material, but allowing for trace toxin in their room? That question also remains at present. So when we are given ‘we have clear evidence of Russian state involvement‘, we see the speech, but what evidence was handed over showing that evidence? Merely two names and two passports? If that is the evidence then it is evidence that is slimmer than a silk thread, no weight can be applied to it with any confidence, no matter how strong silk is regarded to be.

Yet there is other news too, interestingly not from a government source. We see (at https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/key-suspects-identified-in-novichok-nerve-agent-poisonings-/3009475.article), the acceptable parts come in two stages: “Consequently, the agency was not able to conclude from its chemical analysis that both poisonings were definitely caused by the nerve agent discovered in the counterfeit perfume bottle“, as well as “Impurities in the nerve agent samples taken from the Skripals’ and the unknown storage conditions of the bottle have made it difficult for the OPCW to conclude whether the two nerve agents originated from the same batch” elements I brought out before these articles were released. Now, we must also critically challenge these statements, because ‘impurities’ implies more. It could merely be the humidity it got exposed to, which is not strictly an impurity, merely a lessened impact. So the precision of ‘impurity’ could also spell as evidence that it is optionally not the Russian state, merely a Russian player and my much earlier opinionated assumption that it was not smuggled into the UK, but optionally made in the UK is more visible with ‘whether the two nerve agents originated from the same batch‘, or the UK would have to admit that it is lacks and allowed for Biological agents to get smuggled into the UK twice over, hurting everyone’s ego.

Which leaves us with the final quote: “Consequently, the agency was not able to conclude from its chemical analysis that both poisonings were definitely caused by the nerve agent discovered in the counterfeit perfume bottle“, giving the UK a much larger problem, one I do not envy them to have. Part of me wants to examine all the CCTV footage myself (if it comes with a job). Too much in that does not make sense in the entire setting (yes I am happily paranoid). There is too much flim flam in all this. We see that with the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-45362840). When we are given “A number of vehicles which were used in the response to the Salisbury Novichok poisoning have been buried at landfill. Defra said the “potentially contaminated items” were taken to a site at Bishop’s Cleeve near Cheltenham before “being disposed of safely”“, all this whilst we have been told from more than one source that water and humidity dissolves and the Independent gave us last week: “Within the environment, these agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent“, such an overreaction is not merely stupid, it now implies that there is more, or perhaps a lot less and no one wants to open that can of worms. If you wanted to overreact, just drive it into a swimming pool and take it out the next day, fix the car and use it again.

Even if we accept that some overreactions are merely due to fear, a healthy dose of fear mind you, then still the entire Russian State part does not make sense. In the end, two targets that are still alive and two unknowns are dead. If I was either a ‘member’ of SVR, FSB, or GRU I would have been hurt in my pride and take one of at least two dozen of lethal solutions (not of them toxins) to remedy the situation. If you doubt me ask anyone in any of the NATO related special forces this simple question: ‘Can you live with your failed operation that left the enemy alive and innocent people dead?‘, some of these people do not accept failure in any way shape or form ever, I have the weird hunch that this ego driven sentiment is also present in Russian special forces. These people are weird that way (all of them, go figure), only fortifying my belief that we are dealing with another fish altogether and figuring out what fish we are dealing with is actually a lot more important than most think. Identifying that player should be the top priority before it is too late, merely because if I am proven right, it will also show that a lot of high end spokespeople will validly receive the limelight with merely one question ‘Show us that evidence!‘ At that point we will see soon thereafter a new option in Google Search:

Which one are you looking for?

  • WMD (US) Iraq
  • WMD (UK) Salisbury/Amesbury

What a legacy for these people to leave us.

#OneStepClosertotheWeekend

 

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Paranoimia Extremis

I have been contemplating this issue for well over two days; I had a little relief when US hospitals united in creating their own pharmacy, but that only slowed matters down. I have been contemplating the open evidence as well as other sources and the setting does not add up. To give you a proper scenario in all this, we need to look at the timeline again. For me it started in March 2018 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/17/something-for-the-silver-screen/), I started the setting with ‘Something for the Silver Screen?

I gave the quote “we see ‘U.S., France and Germany join Britain in saying Russia likely responsible for chemical attack against former spy‘, the mere title. Now, I am not saying that this is not what happened, not even implying that it is some figment. Yet, why would we see ‘U.S., France and Germany join Britain‘? This is a simple murder, perhaps an assassination, or liquidation. Whatever word you use for the event, it does not matter to the person who got iced, he definitely no longer cares. But we, we should care, for us this entire situation matters.” The Washington Post woke us up and in all this, we got confronted with “She posited that either Russia was directly involved or it had lost control of a chemical weapon. Moscow responded to the ultimatum with scorn and sarcasm, ultimately blowing off May’s demands“. From my point of view, Russia had lost control of the weapon and it had done so a lot earlier then March 2018. The overreaction of ‘U.S., France and Germany join Britain‘ in something that had been known to be out in the open was weird to say the least. n that very same article on the 17th of March 2018, I also gave the goods on the OPCW. Who in their own documentation of 27th March 2013 (5 years earlier) gave us: “The name “Novichok” is used in a publication of a former Soviet scientist who reported investigating a new class of nerve agents suitable for use as binary chemical weapons. The SAB states that it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of “Novichoks”“, we should all understand that a lot changes over 5 years, yet the Independent reminded us of a certain given. They gave us “In 1995, a Russian banking magnate called Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary died from organ failure after being poisoned with a military grade toxin found on an office telephone. A closed trial found that his business partner had obtained the substance via intermediaries from an employee of a state chemical research institute known as GosNIIOKhT, which was involved in the development of Novichoks“, so at this point, we have direct information that optionally the Novichok was out in the open, we see that this happened 8 years before the OPCW statement and with the concluding statement “Leonard Rink, told police he had been storing poisons in his garage and selling them to pay off debts“, we see that Leonard Rink (patsy or not) is acceptable evidence that the toxin was out in the open, it got out 13 years ago, so in all this PM Theresa May already had verifiable intelligence, intelligence that was ignored by nearly EVERY intelligence party in this.

In ‘The Red Flags‘ (https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/27/the-red-flags/), I bring to light the article from the Guardian. Here we see the intelligent questions. Here we also see Jeremy Corbyn with his one bright moment when we see: “Jeremy Corbyn introduced a sceptical note, questioning whether there was any evidence as to the location of its production“, which fits the doubts that we get when we see “A Russian lawyer, Boris Kuznetsov, told Reuters he was offering to pass to the British authorities a file he said might be relevant to the Salisbury case“, this is the reference to the Leonard Rink case, something that should have been a clear fact much earlier, I already had that information 10 days before this publication. I am not alone here, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, was equally in doubt, we see that with “advocating scepticism about the UK placing blame on Russia“. I never stated that there is no Russian blame, I am however decently certain that there is no Russian State blame (that part will become evident soon enough). The fact that we now also get: “Murray, in a phone interview, is undeterred, determined to challenge the government line, in spite of having been subjected to a level of abuse on social media he had not experienced before” implies that someone has activated trolls to keep him quiet, that is in my personal opinion a first clear sign of orchestration.

The fact that the attempted (and never successful assassination) of a Russian nobody (not meant as an insult) is weird beyond believe. Whilst the media is now hiding behind ‘may have been‘ and ‘possibly‘, we see an utter lack of any evidence on how it all happened. The fact that a policeman indirectly got infected and sick becomes a new elements in all this. We are all happy that he recovered, but it now gives additional setting on the strength of the poison, what was regarded by insiders as a toxic that is deadlier then VX has so far infected 3 and killed no one. The media steers away form that and goes into their emotional tantrums to gain circulation.

I end that article with the setting of: “The Russian government is not absolved in all this, yet Theresa May did not tell us: ‘we have strong indications that a member or Russian organised crime with links to the Russian governments are behind this. No! She went straight for the Russian government and offered no clear evidence, that whilst the clear evidence could be largely dismissed in most courts with merely the use of the documents of the SAB, the OPCW and the testimony of Vil Mirzayanov“. Using the designer of the toxin is not the worst idea, but when it comes towards ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ and the lack of evidence, I could have won this case in the Old Bailey against any seasoned QC that the British government can throw against me and as a law student I was NEVER EVER that good, which is saying something.

April 4th day (fool’s day +3)

Here in ‘Evidence by candlelight‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/04/04/evidence-by-candlelight/) we are treated to a few issues. The first is Gary Aitkenhead, even as the Guardian treated us to: ‘Porton Down experts unable to verify precise source of novichok‘, which is fair enough, we are also given “Aitkenhead said the government had reached its conclusion that Russia was responsible for the Salisbury attack by combining the laboratory’s scientific findings with information from other sources”, which is window dressing at the most, but we also get “It’s a military-grade nerve agent, which requires extremely sophisticated methods in order to create – something that’s probably only within the capabilities of a state actor“, which is what I would personally regard as an outright lie. You see, the evidence can be seen as follow:

  1. The Novichok, from earlier sources give clear indication that it had been out for 13 years.
  2. It is a military grade nerve toxin that at that point had killed none!
  3. CLASSIFIED! (Will discuss this next)

The entire setting is getting ridiculous. You see, I am about to give you my speculation, but first some facts. In this I need to take care of the ‘state actor’ part. The fact that KalVista Pharmaceuticals is half way between the two incidents was ignored by pretty much EVERYONE. Why this part matters is that this is one place where the facilities are available where a Novichok could be made (there are several more, including close to a dozen in Europe), it would have to be an inside job, but it is an option. The press never went near that part and in equal measure it sets a different stage, the toxin was not smuggled in, it is getting smuggled out. Where to is impossible to say, but it is a much more likely scenario, placing Russian organised crime in the centre of this now. You see, the fact that the first event was without fatalities, and the second one was not is also important. It might have been the second batch, equal but better refined and stronger.

To support this I need to give you some evidence (of a sort). This is found in the July 5th article called ‘Does it taste like chicken?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/07/05/does-it-taste-like-chicken/), here we see “GC/MS and LC-MS/MS used for ‘Novichok’ agent detection”, an article from January 2017. Iranian researchers give us “The Iranian researchers synthesised five ‘Novichok’ agents, along with four deuterated analogues. They were all O-alkyl N-[bis(dimethylamino)methylidene]-P-methylphosphonamidate compounds (i.e. molecules with the typical nerve agent phosphorus group coupled to N,N,N’N’-tetramethylguanidine). The O-alkyl group was varied, with the methoxy, ethoxy, isopropoxy, phenoxy, and 2,6-dimethylphenoxy derivatives being prepared. The syntheses were carried out on a micro-scale in order to minimize exposure“, the one part to take away here is ‘carried out on a micro-scale in order to minimize exposure‘, it is actually that toxic and it also gives us an earlier part that 5 agents were created, there is more than one, so that not disclosed part is also an issue not addressed. The fact that pretty much every University library with a chemical department has access to Spectroscopy Now is not important at all, is it? The independent gives us again (2 days ago) the part that was missing here; I forgot where I had the initial part from. It is given with: “Within the environment, these agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent“, consider the UK, humidity and the second event being more deadly. This was never about the Nina Ricci bottle; this was about the one part that I myself ignored as it was not logical. There was a second batch, a purer batch and it was tried on a person, now people died. The entire setting is one of locality now and at this point we get the setting, it was not smuggled into the UK, it is getting moved out of the UK. This now stinks more and more towards the Russian Mafia, and less of the Russian state but we cannot prove that at present can we?

Two tourists and a bag pack

The final part is seen with the two people CCTV’ed all over the place. The pictures looked wrong, they were out of place and red flags were rising all around me. Looking around in the security business, I have been confronted with quotes like “their lack of covert tradecraft seems kind of bizarre“, “The shitty tradecraft, not just with clothes but by traveling together, and by leaving a noticeable trail“, as well as “Arriving together??? Staying together??? Leaving together?” is a first instance in all this. This is not GRU; it is not even someone likely to ever become GRU. The more evidence we watch, the less it makes sense. Yet if these two were merely members of some goon squad, we see a different setting and one that is more likely. In finality, the Daily Mail brings the best part. They are on a mission and stop in a coin shop to go shopping? The Article (at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6138541/First-chilling-CCTV-two-Russian-novichok-assassins-Salisbury.html) gives us a few more parts. But the big takeaway is not that they were seen. It seems to me that they were set on getting seen everywhere. And when it comes to ‘missions’, you take time to go shopping? Why to look inconspicuous into the camera? That too should be regarded as evidence, but not in the direction that the media and politicians are pushing us.

There is a larger play here and the Media has been part of it, not asking the important questions and merely trivialising what might have been essential. All, whilst a lot of verifiable facts are openly available, beginning with the OPCW document that are, and always have been publicly visible.

Have a great weekend!

 

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Goodness redirected

Even as I got shocked to the core yesterday with news on how certain Biological Agent accusations are going in the wrong direction (turning my paranoid into overdrive in 7.2 seconds flat), I was also slightly bewildered a few hours later on how a greed driven industry is now getting a rather large shake up. It was the Washington Post that treated us to ‘Hospitals are fed up with drug companies, so they’re starting their own‘ (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/hospitals-are-fed-up-with-drug-companies-so-theyre-starting-their-own/2018/09/05/61c27ec4-b111-11e8-9a6a-565d92a3585d_story.html?utm_term=.8362898ab1fe). It is a not for profit pharmaceutical company that works exclusively for hospitals. That is the first really good unbiased news of 2018. I truly wish I was part of that place. The report by Carolyn Y. Johnson gives us “A group of major American hospitals, battered by price spikes on old drugs and long-lasting shortages of critical medicines, has launched a mission-driven, not-for-profit generic drug company, Civica Rx, to take some control over the drug supply“. And even as it is for now merely the generic side of it all. We need to realise that in the UK, the NHS gives us (at https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Investigation-into-NHS-spending-on-generic-medicines-in-primary-care.pdf) and that they spend £3.5B in 2016-2017. I am using that data for the mere reason that it is more up to date and more reliable at present. Consider that an ‘island’ with only 20% of the population of the US has that bill, yet to a larger extent, they have a similar aging issue and several similarities in health care. Now consider that this is a NFP situation, so basically, we see the optional saving of close to a billion pounds a year, implying that the savings for the US should increase drastically. It is also important to see that this is merely the beginning.

So as the too laid back greed driven US pharmaceutical industry is confronted with two nightmares, the first is not merely the current generic medication part, it is that if the US and UK unite the damage increases for the pharmaceuticals. In addition to that, the Pharmaceutical industry is confronted with well over a hundred patents maturing over the next 5 years, so the generic part is increasing with leaps before 2023 and so far a lot of them cannot be ‘reset’ by altering the patent slightly and forcing exclusivity for another 15-20 years.

So there is light at the end of the tunnel, it will not happen overnight, but there is a setting that the US could remove medicine cost pressures by a much larger amount then even before. So even as we are given “Backed by seven large health systems and three philanthropic groups, the new venture will be led by an industry insider who refuses to draw a salary. The company will focus initially on establishing price transparency and stable supplies for 14 generic drugs used in hospitals, without pressure from shareholders to issue dividends or push a stock price higher“, we need to realise that this is merely the start of something much better in two directions. The first is that if the costs go down, there is more money for other hospital needs and also in the other direction, when people get affordable medication more will work on healing and in addition with added funds, the chance increases that they will adopt a healthier lifestyle and actually get better and more energised in their old age, which might change a few other things too.

Civica Rx

Yes, that will be a name to remember for a long time, especially when they start showing the results that their goals are set for. Yet this is merely the beginning. Let’s not forget that given a set of greedy hungry swine’s, when they get hungry they tend to let go of ‘morals’ and limitations, so unless severe warnings and protection is given to Civica Rx, they still have an uphill battle to fight. Forbes gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/elliekincaid/2018/09/05/that-nonprofit-generic-firm-has-a-name-100-million-and-a-ceo-who-will-work-for-free/#38015e44ce06), gives us the name of the CEO Martin VanTrieste, he was also quoted with: “has agreed to work without compensation“. Now, I could never do that (due rent and such), but that shows a system where we would love to be a part of, does it not?

So when I see: “The healthcare systems involved: Catholic Health Initiatives, HCA Healthcare, Intermountain Healthcare, Mayo Clinic, Providence St. Joseph Health, SSM Health, and Trinity Health. The philanthropies: the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Peterson Center on Healthcare, and the Gary and Mary West Foundation“, I am actually surprised that the Bill Gates foundation has not (yet) knocked on that door offering a nice 8 figure amount, but you know, 2018 is not over yet.

So even as they start with 14 generic drugs, there is every indication that this can evolve to a number in the triple digits in the next 3-4 years making life a lot more affordable fast.

So what is the setting? Why is this given so important? Well, again we need to the UK numbers (as they are more reliable). It is not merely the setting of ‘cheaper’ that we need to realise, it is the attached setting of ‘proportion of spending on generic medicines that is in primary care, 2016-17’, which was 81% at that point. The second part is the logistics, a number that is even scarier than the margins and the exploded prices involved. You see there were 3,000 concessionary pricing requests made by pharmacists in November 2017, a few months earlier, basically before May 2017 the amount of requests made were less than 150, so an increase of 2000% of concessionary pricing requests. The impact of diminished budgets had that much a drain on logistical support for hospitals and NHS departments. When that pressure falls away, so much more can be done and that part is not visible to a much larger extent. there will remain a much larger issue when we look at the branded versus generic setting in both primary and secondary care, no one doubts that and that setting will remain, but over time that equation will change as well as speed up as the life cycle of branded patents end.

It becomes a little scarier when you consider that in the UK, Ten medicines accounted for £134 million of the net spend on price concessions. Topping this is Amlodipine 5mg, a medication for high blood pressure. This becomes important when we translate that to US numbers we can use. You see, in the United States, about 77.9 million, almost 1 out of every 3 adults have high blood pressure. Now consider when that becomes affordable and less of a drain for any health facility, the savings on this one drug could change the game for hospitals all over the US and at the same time prolong life for Americans. When we see that 18 out of 134 million is for that one prescription drug only, we start seeing the essential needs that Civica Rx is bringing to the table, and it has a much a much better impact than a salad (especially when reading about the McDonald Salads this morning).

SO what will come next? Well, they are off to a start, but I never trust anyone merely giving up their golden parachutes (referring to the current pharmaceuticals having to spread the negative news to their shareholders) and in light of the pharmaceutical patent escalations in India, I feel certain that Civica Rx is likely to face dozens of injunction meetings before the end of this year alone. After that the political engine will be turned against them as much as possible. I think it is important at that point to make sure that EVERY senator and congressman (m/f), will get the limelight set upon them to make the people aware of the elected officials that will make their lives more expensive.

Yet that is not the only part, the NHS report gives us the part that Civica Rx is trying to address as well, when the reporters investigated the underlying causes of pricing, the following parts were given on that report (attached here) on page 21.

The immediate cause of concessionary pricing is pharmacies being unable to purchase a generic medicine at, or below, the Drug Tariff price“, as well as “The Department identified three main underlying causes of the 2017-18 increase in concessionary pricing, and those three causes were:

  • The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and European regulators partially suspending the licences of three manufacturers of generic medicines;
  • A fall in the value of sterling; and
  • Governments and insurers in other countries putting downward pressure on the price of generic medicines, resulting in lower returns and manufacturers withdrawing from some markets or medicines: the reduced capacity and competition then increased prices within the UK market.

Now, the first is only an issue when it keeps on occurring and until more evidence is seen, the solution is not easy in this, the second is an impact, yet short lives and the US might not face that issue as it produced its own need, the UK is much more reliant on American pharmaceuticals. The setting of Civica Rx would when effective take away the cause of that element, making that a non-issue over time, it might initially still be a short term factor for Civica Rx to consider.

And it must also be stated that the elements could not be verified or quantified. There were too many elements in play in all this, but the significance on the factors seemed to clearly shown, but to the extent of how much remains a question that can only be proven over time (and with a lot more precise data).

It is my personal view that the report by Sir Amyas Morse KCB is quite extraordinary and even as it leaves us with questions (as any report does), it also raised the curtain on several issues, not merely showing the essential need of Civica Rx in any nation that is getting drained by healthcare costs, it sets the stage that the report empowers the existence of Civica Rx as well as the essential need for their sponsoring and protection ‘against’ some of the pharmaceutical companies, because generic medication or not, you introduce me to a commercial board of directors who do not care about lessened profits and I will introduce you to a group of people lying to you, it is basically that simple.

So we enter Friday with goodness form another direction, today brought to you by the Washington Post, a paper that still states that ‘Democracy dies in Darkness‘, I say that this is not entirely true, it is currently actively getting smothered with a pillow by the needy for greed and those who get their coins from a similar direction, but again, that is just me thinking with temporarily a few paranoid clouds overhead.

#MondayMorningIsOnly60HoursAway

#HappyFriday

 

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Could I be wrong?

That is a question I always ask myself. You see, I never proclaim to know the facts (unless I was a direct witness). I have tried to use the better journalistic sources as often as possible and whenever I look at issues I try to look into different directions, and from different directions to get the better view. It is not a perfect solution, and I have never claimed that my version is the only option. So as I have written in regards to certain steps in the entire Novichok matter, the pushed actions by Natixis as well as settings into Tesco, The Geert Wilders case, the Yemeni conflict and other matters, I believe that I did a decent job, and one that was a lot better than any of the Rupert Murdoch gossip hounds could have ever hoped for.

So when I am confronted with: ‘Novichok poisonings: what is the GRU and how does it operate?‘, as well as: ‘PM points to Putin as Russian pair accused of Novichok poisonings‘ I wonder what is going on, because certain matters do not make sense.

This is the initial setting we need to contemplate when we look into the entire Novichok case. When I see the mere 4 hours old article with “In a special statement to a packed House of Commons, the prime minister, Theresa May, revealed the two suspects who flew into Britain to murder Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March with the military grade nerve agent were officers in the GRU, Russian military intelligence“, I wonder what drives this train wreck.

Consider that this is true; now consider that in the entire Skripal matter, no evidence was ever revealed on HOW they got infected. Then we get the setting that they SURVIVED that part matters when we consider the part ‘military grade nerve agent‘, all whilst the operation was a failure. Was it intended to fail? Were they ever on any CCTV in the surroundings of the Skripals? Then we get the mention “Photograph issued by the Metropolitan police of the Novichok poisoning suspects Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov“. So tell me, where was this picture taken and WHICH metropolitan police had issues it? And when we get “The GRU is a highly disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command“, which is true, and no one opposes that, yet they could have been merely there as tourists (if it was actually them), that is wherever that shot was taken. You see, from the facts given, we can in equal measure consider the arrest and extradition of Major-general Charles Stickland for the alleged killing of a US Navy Seal in Djibouti. Let’s face it, when it comes to the training and ability to even wound a US Navy Seal, he might be one of the few persons with the skills to do that. How ridiculous does that sound? Well, in that same light, we need to see a lot more when it comes to the Novichok. I get it! We are not privy to national security investigations, that part is not in doubt. Yet the entire matter, the lack of evidence presented and the Media merely boastful setting the stage of events, whilst evidence is lacking is a much larger issue, it literally serves absolutely no one.

So when we are confronted with ‘The Salisbury attack has all the hallmarks of the audacious actions of Russia’s most secretive intelligence agency‘, my initial personal response towards the writer Shaun Walker would be ‘What a fucking idiot!‘ You see when you look at the two parts ‘all the hallmarks of the audacious actions‘ and ‘most secretive intelligence agency‘, we see hem cancel each other out. Audacious actions is in the light, most secretive is not. Oh, and before I forget, how successful was the operation? They are both still alive and let’s not forget that a 7.62mm bullet from a silenced Tokarev has no risks of biological agents and would NOT have failed. The article gives us historical anecdotes that are useless, especially as the first one was from BEFORE the Spetsnaz GRU was even created.

Then we get to the second part in this. With: “The GRU has been identified as the main culprit in hacking ahead of the 2016 US election. A recent indictment from the team of special investigator Robert Mueller named 12 apparent GRU officers over the alleged hacking and leaking of Democratic Party emails. Like the US operation, the Novichok poisoning fits an apparent pattern of GRU operations: ingenious and audacious, yet uncovered and publicised by the target countries“. Here again we see the issue of evidence. How was the GRU identified? I am not stating that the Russians were not part of it, but between political hacks (or is that hackers), optional Russian Cyber units and the GRU is quite the leap and what evidence has given that part? When we see ‘Robert Mueller named 12 apparent GRU officers‘, how did the identity of the members of ‘Russia’s most secretive intelligence agency’ even make it out to the open? Is that not a weird thing either? In that we get to the final art of the first article, and it is again given with “the Novichok poisoning fits an apparent pattern of GRU operations“, so is the GRU about failures? In that, how does the second attack fit, and there we get the different news articles where the victim is dying in one and to be released in the other (see Yesterday’s blog at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/09/05/the-target-is-killing-me/).

The Article Two fiasco

The second one was from Marc Bennetts in Moscow. This gives us “Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree making information about freelance agents working for Russia’s foreign intelligence agencies a state secret, two days before Theresa May accused Russian secret service officers of carrying out the Skripal attack in Salisbury“, this gives us merely two elements, it is implied to be connected, yet through what evidence? Basically we see the non-denied truth that ‘information about freelance agents working for Russia’s foreign intelligence agencies a state secret‘. That might be the case and that is fine, but is it related to any of this?

Now we get to the beef of the matter. It is seen with “The Fotanka News Agency appeared to confirm claims by the Metropolitan police that the men had used their Russian passports before. The force said the pair travelled regularly to Europe between September 2016 and March 2018, with trips to Amsterdam, Geneva, Milan and, repeatedly, Paris. Petrov visited London between February 28 and March 5 2017, the news agency said, citing its own unnamed sources“, now add to this “They purchased return tickets from London to Moscow for both Sunday 4 March – the day Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned in Salisbury“. So these two experts fly into Salisbury with no preparations time, no options to set anything up, infect them with a Novichok and get out (all in 48 hours)? This would essentially need a second team prepping it all (if it were them), this implies a team of at least 5 people in total. I admit that when I see ‘for both Sunday 4 March‘, there is something we need to contemplate, yet from my point of view they could have been used for a mere embassy courier drop, or any dead drop. However using that for the Novichok is ludicrous, so much could go wrong that failure was almost a given. A flight with zero leeway, that is not the acts of a secretive agency that is merely an advertisement of something else, what else? I have no way to know that. Oh, and for all the travels. That might be perfectly valid and true, but do we have any intelligence on where they went (exactly that is), where they stayed and which CCTV’s showed them? London and Amsterdam have a sizable CCTV system, also where did they go in Geneva? When we combine it all, there is a chance that they were optionally state security, no one denies that it is a possibility, yet the other side is that they might be the couriers or the personal assistant of one of these Russian billionaires, and if that is anyone related to organised crime we see my initial setting where I never stated that it was not Russian, merely that it was not Russian state and that does fit the bill. When you want your essential secrets to be transported, will you turn to the Randstad employment agency, or to Russian State Security offering people like that, offering a cushy job with a nice income that guarantees a lovely golden pension parachute, who would ever resist that?

Let’s not forget, we still have no actual evidence that these two (Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov) were GRU. They might be FSB, SVR, or perhaps merely intelligent and optionally well trained Russian citizens, where is the evidence? In finality Marc Bennets adds the anecdote of Dmitry Gudkov, for whatever value that has.

So far all articles that merely set optional allegations lacking evidence, so far when it comes to the Novichok, there has been a lack of evidence and even less cohesive evidence. The small parts that might have been an optional were overturned with the easiest of searches by me; all lacking the proper setting. Now I want to get back to the initial part, because I was not ignoring “assistant commissioner Neil Basu, laid out a compelling trail showing how the suspects travelled from Moscow to London and then on to Salisbury“. You see, when we see compelling as ‘not able to be refuted‘, it does matter, yet why not a mere CCTV pic of the Train platform or Bus platform to Salisbury? That is the part that is so weird, when a picture gives 1000 words and you rely on the one that gives merely 50 words, questions need to be asked and in that part the entire Novichok case (both attacks) is all about questions and no actual answers, mere allegations and accusations. So now we get to the quote “Police produced CCTV footage of the Russian assassination team during their 50-hour visit to Britain, entering at Gatwick airport at 3pm on Friday 2 March, and smuggling in the Novichok“, so where was the Novichok? It is another accusation that is lacking evidence. Apart from the fact that a biological agent got past Gatwick Airport which gives us a whole range of other questions too, but that is for another day.

I will also get us to the setting of the CCTV images. There were a few and I never ignored them. So let’s take a look at the setting (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/novichok-poisoning-what-we-know-so-far)

Arrival Friday March 3rd 15:00

There is no mention what was done between arrival and the first image, that part is actually important too. You see, that part might have supported or even denied the defence of mere tourists.

Saturday, March 3rd 16:00 Image one

Sunday March 4th 11:58 Image two, different outfit from image one, different shoes too, different hats. So are these the same people? (I wonder), the walk implies that the legs are slimmer too (what diet is that, please gimme some of that.)

Sunday March 4th 13:05 Image three seems to be the same as image two, yet now one of them has a backpack. Jeans of one of them looks different, could merely be the contrast of the two cameras.

Sunday March 4th 13:08 seems to fit image three, yet from behind, we can agree that it is most likely the people from image three, yet how certain are we that these are indeed the ‘culprits’? You see, from my (optionally wrong) point of view. We might have clothes to travel within 48 hours, yet two coats and two pairs of shoes? Also, in the end the mention of: ‘CCTV footage of the Russian assassination team’? Is there clear evidence that they were an assassination team? Yet the article gives one part that is the heart of it. That was given with: ‘For six months since the incident in Salisbury, the government has faced criticism over the apparent lack of evidence linking the crime to Russia‘, which was my case all along. I would love to get my fingers on that presentation and go over it with a really fine comb. I wonder what else I can find when I get access to all the raw data and raw footage, and let’s remain fair here, if there was a clear case of guilty in that mix, I would be able to find that too.

I am still willing to consider that I have been wrong, but the lack of evidence gives me the edge and some of the evidence seen is a little off, giving me the edge of my conviction even more. Oh, and in all this, the second ‘attack’ is still an issue and the fact that the second attack was a lot more lethal than the first one, in the light of humidity being a factor in making the Novichok less efficient remains a factor too, especially when we consider the time passed and the Charity bin part is just too vague on a few sides, as well as the setting that no one else got caught with any issues, too many parts are off there too (but that could be my lack of knowledge on how the entire charity bin path goes).

If I had to speculate on this, I would give the comparison of a factory making Jigsaw puzzles. Two different puzzles of the same size gives us two different puzzles with the same cut of pieces and someone mixed parts up so that we get a partial part of puzzle one in puzzle two and vice versa, that does not give us two puzzles, but basically 4 puzzles with an incomplete and incorrect view. In data we get the comical setting that: ‘to get any linear correlation, merely plot two observations’, yes it is 100% linear, as well as 100% unreliable mind you. I personally feel that the issues are pushed in one direction not because the evidence is there, but because the presentation was orchestrated, optionally by a third party, so who was this 3rd party?

I never stated that I was not wrong, I could still be wrong, but the evidence looks too tainted to be accepted as such we are all (including me) set on the wrong foot, you merely have to Google ‘Charlie Rowley’ and look for the news in the last week to see that (also mentioned in my blog Yesterday, as in the link given earlier). In the end, we must not forget the official government news (at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-secretary-statement-on-the-opcw-report-into-amesbury), where we are given “The police continue their investigation into the poisonings in Amesbury and Salisbury and we await their further conclusions”, when we read that on 4 September 2018, whilst we were given “Two Russian nationals named and charged over the novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury have been identified as officers from Russia’s military intelligence, Theresa May has said, saying the attack was clearly authorised by Moscow” the day after in the Guardian. So what evidence was added in those 24 hours?

The issue given in the government statement with: “The recklessness of the Russian state in bringing a nerve agent in to the UK, and total disregard for the safety of the public, is appalling and irresponsible. Our thoughts are with the family of Dawn Sturgess and with Charlie Rowley” is the one in question. You see, no one ever denied the fact that Novichok is of Russian origin, yet there have been several sources in the past that showed that somehow Novichok got to be out in the open and that gives us the part where: ‘The recklessness of the Russian state in bringing a nerve agent in to the UK’ is the debatable part, merely ‘the Russian state’ as the setting whilst there is more than one alternative part in that trajectory. The push of that path is giving so much doubt and so much consideration towards a botched investigation on several levels. Even if we accept the optional two names to be Intelligence officers’ aliases, and if I was the Russian Mafia, I would definitely use names that at the mere sight of them would be intentionally ignored by border officers at Moscow airport. The fact that this path was ignored FROM DAY ONE is just too big an issue, add to that the failures of the events and we get something quite debatable.

I am always happy to be wrong, yet the presentations we have seen so far makes it more likely then not that this is actually not the case in the end.

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The target is killing me

The BBC gave the news 4 hours ago. We are treated to ‘Men planned ‘driverless car’ attack‘ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-45409925). In the article we are also given “She said both men supported terrorist organisation, the so-called Islamic State (IS). The two had decided that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) could be made and used in the UK in a way which would spare their own lives but harm others they considered “infidels”, she said.” At this point three red flags went up. Then we see “In November he is said to have shared a propaganda video showing warfare and beheadings “to inspire supporters of IS [and] frighten those who do not support IS”“, which is red flag number 4.

Finally we are treated to “When the pair were arrested in the early hours of 19 December police seized three air rifles, two Samurai swords, a wine bottle of sulphuric acid, homemade fireworks, and “a variety of improvised homemade fuses” at Mr Star’s flat“. These are not Jihadists. They are losers in the first degree and they are playing the decoy in the second degree. When you see ‘My only attempt is to find a way to carry out martyrdom operation with cars without driver, everything is perfect only the programme is left‘ do you not get that?

The problem is not that they were caught; the issue is that they are draining essential resources. You see, from the early view (optionally not the correct one) we see the clash of ‘martyrdom operation‘ against ‘spare their own lives’; you see martyrdom opposes sparing one’s life. It is nice to see that Islamic State people are implied to be this stupid, because that is a war we can easily win, yet the reality is far from this. Some IS people are actually really intelligent and resourceful and lowering our guards will be the one fatal mistake we cannot walk away from. So the makers of ‘were trying to make an explosive device’ whilst the police went home with ‘three air rifles, two Samurai swords, a wine bottle of sulphuric acid, improvised homemade fuses‘, yes those people are indeed all kinds of dangerous, are they not? Even as this case is in the trial stage, we need to realise that the danger is still out there. Those people are not the ones in the dock. Al Bawaba gives us ‘ISIS militants in Afghanistan are still posing a potential threat to carry out attacks in the U.K. and Western Europe as they are in communication with cells there, British government warned Monday‘. That news less than 6 hours old is a more directly drastic given in this. The article gives (to the smallest degree mind you), the indication that British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Andrew Parker, director general of the MI5 are not entirely up to speed on the levels of danger. Now, coming from an outsider that is quite the accusation and it is not meant to be as such. When we see: “intelligence work had thwarted 20 plots in the last four years“, I would sincerely hope that the two earlier mentioned losers are not part of that equation. You see, I look at issues in a different way and something that I was ‘accidentally’ made aware of, merely because I am from that area and I speak the local language, and it gave rise to another thought. The article (at https://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/containers-in-water-door-menselijke-fout~a8e56404/) gives us “Forty sea containers fell from an inland vessel into the water on the Second Maasvlakte. Employees of the Port Authority pushed the containers out of the navigation channel“, let’s be fair here, mistakes will be made at any given day of the week, yet the math does not add up, not even if there is a human entry error. This was not merely one or two containers; it was a bunch of them (40 to be more exact). They were empty and when we see “The seaport police is researching the matter“, I have full faith that this is being done. Yet, will they find something? You see, these were 40 empty containers, what if the weight system had been intentionally ‘offset’ to give an additional 200 Kg to the empty weight of the container and the transgressor had forgotten to properly reset the system after they were done. Take that by 40 and we now get an 8 tonnes error; now we have a setting of a game; now we have the foundation of the problem. You see, I kind of remember (I am pleading the fifth here children) that the transport options for the people engaged in discrete entry and removal operations tended to have really good options if they could only get the goods to the UK and for the most, the police would concentrate on the Belgium and German borders. UK Customs tend not to dig too deep into any container and the weight would have been the trigger in those cases. Now we know that container weight and cargo weight makes for the total weight. We know the trailer weight, we know the cargo weight and the rest is computer calculated in an instant when the truck goes over the scales. So as the offset of 200 Kg was achieved there will be no alert. When you consider that a full 40 ft. container can be anywhere between 18 and 23 tonnes, the mindset will be set on only the ones raising flags and then more often than not only when the provider is an unknown one. So ever since the 90’s there has been a setting of partial containers (a container with 2 or more users), and adding a pallet of flat screen TV’s is an easy thing, and 50 displays per container leave no mark and when packed on a pallet and foiled all around leave no mark at all, an easy 25K, adding a bag of the white stuff (more risky) allows that profit to go to 2.5M, yup that is the easy money and now that we see that Some ISIS and IS supporters are willing to dish out serious cash, we see that an almost empty display with 1Kg of C4 is at present almost as rewarding as the white stuff and cannot be detected in similar ways. Add one container in the entire bunch set to setting off the alarms and not offsetting that container means that the basic defences seemingly work, everyone feels like a champion and 4 containers with C4 got through. That is an actual danger and many of the playing parties are still a bit in the dark whilst too many people focus on Andy Star and Farhad Salah. So whilst these individuals are stating that they supported ‘the so-called Islamic State‘, whilst in fact they are all about singing the song:

I love the limelight
I want to nooky
whilst I’m creaming the ground, oh yea.

Yes it is a whole new day for those wannabe’s; they too could get lucky at some point. Yet the dangers remain and I am slightly more worried that the statistics are changing as we underestimate the actual IS threat because of people like these two.

Oh, and before you think that they had any brain cells, consider the earlier mentioned part with ‘he is said to have shared a propaganda video showing warfare and beheadings “to inspire supporters of IS [and] frighten those who do not support IS”‘, so as they wanted to have that Sci-Fi solution in place, they give visibility to themselves by sharing a video that screams ‘We are here!’, yes like that would be the best course on any given day. The fact that it took up to 5 weeks after the shared video to arrest them is an equal worry on a few levels, but let’s not go there for now, because in equal measure it took weeks to consider that the ‘three air rifles‘ might have been considered Weapons of Optional Destruction, which is a new acronym in all this and intelligence logistics would have been required to validate the WOD acronym is currently assigned to ‘Workout of the Day‘ confusing MI-5 to optionally walk into the wrong Gym during an operation.

Yet the setting is not merely eerie, we see in several ways that this is still going on in a lucrative scale. Even as the Dutch police was able to capture a corrupt harbour worker with 363 Kg of Cocaine, I remain in the setting that he only got caught as Greed became his middle name and at that point, the chance of exposure grows exponentially with every shipment. It is the patient one, the one with a setting of small portions, that is the one who does not get captured and let’s not forget, after the container makes it into the UK, after that, on route the seal can be broken and at that point, finding the culprit becomes the stuff of nightmares (aka not the one you will find). Now we get the good stuff, because if it is not the large option, we see that the additional danger is not the drugs, but the 4 displays having 1Kg of one of the 2 Novichok parts, so 4Kg of processed Novichok, that is the actual danger and even as we are treated now to the news that Charlie Rowley has lost hope and doesn’t have long left to live, we must equally realise that we still do not know the transgressors. I refuse to believe (without any actual proper evidence) that this was the Russian State, not whilst the Russian Mafia is ten times more likely and above them is the true optional culprit Islamic State, or Islamic State sympathisers (funding the facilitators mind you), willing to become the martyr, an ‘actual’ martyr, not one interested in the setting to ‘spare their own lives‘, that is the growing danger and in all this the proper solution is yet to be found. If there is one given at present is that the optional trial runs should have been considered a success from their point of view. The fact that something as fast acting as a Novichok is seemingly still instilling death 2 months later. So even as we have an issue with News.com.au giving us ‘Novichok victim Charlie Rowley ‘close to death’ in the UK‘, as well as ‘This article originally appeared in The Sun and is republished here with permission‘ a mere 5 hours ago (at https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/novichok-victim-charlie-rowley-close-to-death-in-the-uk/news-story/549fb81c17db8ff0400cedf488b33abd), whilst (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/novichok-poisoning-salisbury-attack-russia-charlie-rowley-meningitis-loss-eyesight-a8522991.html), we see ‘Novichok poisoning victim Charlie Rowley treated for meningitis and loss of eyesight‘, as well as ‘45-year-old hopes to be discharged ‘in next two or three weeks’‘ one hour ago. So if the media cannot get their fucking act together, how can we ever resolve the dangers to our nation when greed and circulation decides on what is true? In the end it is not whether Al-Qaeda and ISIS are trying to kill us, it is whether the media is enabling to do just that for them is becoming a much more important question. I personally have a lot more faith in the Independent than the other providers, but in all this someone needs to take a serious look at the news released and the factual setting o the stage, because being pointed at the wrong target is just as dangerous as ignoring that the target and method exists.

I will let you decide on where the danger is, but make sure that you choose wisely because in the end you might only get one shot at the factual danger, so make it count.

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Democracy is dead

If there is one thing that the UK situation showed is the mere fact that not only is democracy dead, the question becomes has it even existed in the last 10 years? The fact that bullying and harassment are now the core uses of the media in facilitation towards power players (not even the political players) is at the heart of it all.

What started as an actual discussion became a trodden lane of smear campaigns and misstated innuendo. In the end a golden cage is still a prison, no matter how you slice it and even as the UK is all over the place, I do hope that they realise that they are about to become part of an additional 3 trillion in debt. The part that the media has refused to look into for the longest of times, the mindless spending by Mario Draghi and now a mere two hours ago we are confronted with “some economists argue that rapid technological development keeps a lid on prices, forcing central banks to exhaust their firepower fighting an economic paradigm shift, and leaving them with few tools for the next downturn“.

How does that relate?

Part of an issue I mentioned yesterday was (source: CNN) “Europe’s third biggest economy has suffered years of anaemic growth, high unemployment and budget deficits, while neighbours such as Germany and the U.K. have enjoyed a stronger recovery from the global financial crisis” at present the forecast is that the economy will rise by 0.2% less, giving a setting that is close to stagnant. In addition, even with the news from yesterday, we also now see: “Italian Economy Minister Giovanni Tria is pushing the parties in the governing coalition to keep next year’s budget deficit below 2 percent of output, sources close to the dossier said on Monday, lower than the party leaders have indicated so far“, as well as the part I mentioned last week as the article (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-view-friday/daily-briefing-italian-debt-yields-get-stretched-idUKKCN1LG0T2) was giving me “Fitch is due to provide the latest evaluation of Italy’s creditworthiness with national debt standing at 130 percent of GDP. The Italian-German bond yield spread is already at its highest since 2013 – a downgrade will widen it further and make Italy’s borrowing even more expensive“, there was an overall loss of faith, yet we are now treated to ““The actual rating wasn’t lowered, and anyone who follows Italy closely will know that a lowered outlook for the future should be taken with a grain of salt because so much of the political situation can change so quickly,” Alessandro Polli, an economic statistics researcher with Rome’s La Sapienza University” and when we add Bloomberg (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-03/italian-bonds-get-a-respite-as-fitch-affirms-credit-rating) with: “Basically the politician with the greatest clout is saying Italy will remain within the 3 percent deficit band“, which is not only 1% deficit more, it is also an initial indication (indication mind you) that the 2% deficit marker is now more and more likely not the be a feasible one. But in all this, it would all rely on Germany and now we see the play, the EU and ECB are desperate to thwart UK democracy, because without it there is no euro, no Eurozone and no options remain and big business is willing to betray 65 million people to keep their cushy 7-8 figure income jobs, they are willing to do that at the drop of a hat, any hat.

The political players let the media be the facilitator for big business, first the banks, then tech companies and now the car industry. One by one fear mongering until the people got too scared and according to the Independent, 2.6 million people jumped ship and decided the swim to remain. So the new UK lyrics become ‘Ruled Brittannia, Brittania is the bitch! We shall never never ever trust in Fitch‘.

We get that to the setting of ‘Fitch ratings review gives reprieve to Italian govt bond yields‘ (source: Reuters). It is seen with: “Italian bond yields edged lower on Monday after Fitch left its credit rating unchanged at BBB, revising only its outlook to negative, though mixed news flow from senior ministers and manufacturing PMI data due later this morning could mean the rally is short-lived, analysts said” where we need to focus on ‘manufacturing PMI data due later this morning‘ which gives me that the rating was done ‘just in time‘ to avoid having to lower it, which implies to me that it was not a reprieve, merely the application of time management to force an upped rating. In that regards, when we see that and the UK realise that the EU barge cannot be stable, not with only one solid anchor, we get to see the equation where the UK becomes the force anchor to keep the EU dinghy from sinking on the spot. So as the industry will see ‘assurances’ of their value protection from the ECB. You see when we look at Section 9.4.5 of Part II of the AnaCredit Reporting Manual (this is about to become a massive leap of speculation on my side), we get to see:

If the appraisal aims to estimate the spot value taking into consideration market conditions, then “market value” is reported; on the other hand if the appraisal aims to estimate the market value ignoring cyclical factors, then “long-term sustainable value” is reported

Now consider that the UK is in Brexit and the Italian economy is rated down, when we now consider “APP holdings, Purchases of marketable debt instruments increase the Euro system holdings of such instruments and inject liquidity into the banking system“, we would see that under those conditions the entire ‘expanded asset purchase programme‘ would have to stop as per immediately and that is what the members of the ECB do not want to do, no matter how useless their exercise is and still seems to be regarded as (by critical outside minds). As I personally see it, the reported net acquisition of €24 billion a month, will need to stop before the current held holdings of €2.51 trillion might end up being regarded as dumped value, the setting of a ‘bad mortgage’ write-off. And do you think that this bad ‘mortgage’ is suddenly whisked away? Nope the outstanding amount becomes a taxpayer’s debt to deal with and without the UK the other players get a nightmare amount to deal with and that is what none of the 27 members want.

Now in all this I will be accused of comparing apples to oranges and that would be correct, yet what those people are (intentionally) forget to mention of illuminate that the ECB is a fruit vendor in all this. They are not the apple sales person or the banana (republic) sales vendor. In all this the ECB does not get to compartmentalise any of it. They bought 3,000,000,000 barrels of fruit at €1,000 each, so when some of these barrels contains rotten fruit, it becomes their loss, not the salesperson who they bought it from and as the barrels were unattended for the longest of times, more barrels and larger portions of every barrel become infected increasing loss over time to amounts too large to even contemplate. So, when the Italian shipper and the French shipper state: You bought it, it’s yours now; they will have no defence. In this it is the British supermarket that they need to buy some of these worthless goods or they go belly up and that is what they deserved in all this.

They should have sold the stock a year ago and stop purchasing those barrels of fruit and they are still buying junk fruit. And when we were treated to the earlier mentioned ‘manufacturing PMI data‘, when we see that it was reported down from 51.50 to 50.10, in the setting where highest was 59.00 and lowest was 48.00. So when we see the Trading Economics report and when we focus on that part and see the statement: “The reading pointed to the weakest pace of expansion in the manufacturing sector since a contraction in August 2016, as new orders fell for the first time in two years and output posted the first decline in over three years. In addition, employment growth was the weakest recorded in nearly two years and expectations slumped to the lowest since May 2013 amid concerns over future global trading conditions, particularly in relation to the US” is there any doubt on orchestration? This was done to stretch the game, not truly act on the reported value, if that was done the setting of ‘BBB’ could not have been maintained, it should have been dropped to ‘BBB-‘ (my speculated view). So whilst we think we are being told the truth, in my personal opinion, we are sold a bag of goods, because that is how the game is players and we are all being duped, just like in 2008, I would have thought that those players had learned their lesson, but apparently they did not and I truly believe that the UK needs to get out before that tidal wave hits them. When it does and they were still in that boat, they get to lose it, to drown just like the other players. So if all else fails, I hope that those players grow a set of gills, because they will need them and right quick at that point.

All this wheeling and dealing gives me the impression that the people are merely offer the choice between poor and destitute, I wonder if any of them can tell the difference from this point onwards. Oh, and if you think that I am kidding there, consider Greece that is under all that oversight. And only 12 hours ago, the Greeks decided to strand all the tourists on a strike. so as we see “Members of the union are reportedly seeking a 5 per cent increase for ferry crews, a request which they claim is long overdue as pay has remained static for eight years“, which now has two impacts. The first is that “affect around 180,000 people who have booked travel to and from some of Greece’s most popular tourist destinations“, who will optionally infect another 600,000 tourists not to consider Greece in 2019. In addition the fact that those people are demanding an additional 5%, because ‘pay has remained static for eight years‘, then those Greeks better wake up, because static incomes will be the cornerstone of their life for perhaps another 15 years. that is the long term effect of austerity, that is the impact of that massive a debt, so tax breaks are basically a thing of the past for them and the UK is still steering to a similar setting, that €3 trillion will make of that very clearly and it will over time affect all 27 member states to some degree, likely to Germany the most. In this, the Politician and environmentalist Nikos Chrysogelos has even more to deal with. the man is correct on all counts, yet until the Greeks are willing to strangle these dangers by installing Singaporean like methods (like a €500 fine for any environmental transgression) the tourists (and to some degree the people) will not change and the Greek islands will transform into an open sewer soon enough.

These are all issues that will impact the citizens of other member nations in some form or another; the impact of long term austerity and short term thinking. It will be about “some sustainable model of tourism” soon enough, but that also implies one thing. It implies that people will still be able to afford a vacation, because that group is actually shrinking and the economic upset that Europeans are currently facing makes that issue a non-option to at least some degree. That evidence was seen earlier with ‘forcing central banks to exhaust their firepower‘, so when that stagnation shifts to downturn the economic hurt will be on all over Western Europe and the ECB will have 1-2 options reserved for themselves and their ‘friends’; and the people in Europe? Well, who cared about them anyway?

So in all it is not merely the economy for the now in all this. The setting is also the backwash from the consequences we see in Saudi Arabia. Canada, Sweden and Germany are all losing business in Saudi Arabia. Let’s be honest, we see that Iran is their enemy; we see that there is more and more evidence that Iran is facilitating missiles for Yemen, who are then fired on Riyadh. All this whilst the EC nations are bending over backwards to keep a nuclear deal alive that is quite honestly not worth the paper it was printed on and they expect to rake in billions in Saudi Arabia as well, whilst criticising Saudi Arabia at almost every turn. So as I am contemplated (read fantasising) on “an $11 billion arms deal between Saudi Arabia and Canada may be scrapped“; and how I could optionally sell that deal to a few alternative players (for a 1% commission). Whilst at the same time we see the quote “To German news outlet Der Spiegel, an unidentified businessman said, “For Germans, the doors in Riyadh have suddenly been closed” here I see a few non-European options as well (the 1% commission still applies) and when I see “Saudi Arabia is Sweden’s fourth largest recipient of arms outside the EU with sale totals in 2014 reaching approximately $39 million“, I see an opportunity to consider talks to get that shifted to perhaps a ‘Northrop Grumman X-47A Pegasus‘ consideration and perhaps even more, once the abilities are confirmed. Of course for all the extra work I will be taking an additional 1% on top of the 1%, so in all this, the European Hypocrisy works well for me, providing that Wesley G. Bush is still taking my calls, or I will have to postpone that deal and start wining and dining Kathy Warden (at her expense, it is an emancipated world after all) and she might be hungry for the setting of an additional 200 million, especially as the doors to Sweden and Germany are closed. All economic settings that are clear to all and clearly visible to all, so in all that, how are we not seeing that there is an increasing realisation that economic stagnation is closer to mere millimetres away from an actual economic downturn.

All elements that will hit the UK one way or another, because if it took this little to get the economy down with the smallest of efforts on two EU nations by up to 1%, how unstable do you think that the EU economy was in the first place? You see, the ECB ‘forcing central banks to exhaust their firepower‘ is one without firepower and options, making it merely a logistic system administrating €3 trillion of debt. So how desperate do they need the UK and how dim sum is the view that being a ‘remain’ member will make their lives easier? When everyone around you says: ‘Stay with us, or else‘, how much does who need who in the end?

Consider the truth there, if it was such a bad deal for the UK and a good one for Europe, do you think that the bullying and harassment would have been this severe? Until the EU and the ECB stops facilitating for the large corporations, you need to realise that those ‘facilitating’ are merely ‘tools’ trying to get a ticket on the next gravy train and those rides always cost the taxpayer and most often way more than acceptable.

 

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As the car industry dies

Yes, today is the nicest day of the week. After the weekend, after all done, it is again Monday morning. So, happy, happy, joy, joy!

I am waking up with the news ‘Shaken-up Aston Martin hopes to stir investors with a public offering‘. When it comes to cars, the Aston Martin is about the coolest car in existence. I would favour it over the Jaguar XF, the Infiniti Q60, the Tesla Roadster (2020) and the Lexus LC500, yet to be honest, I cannot afford any of them.

Now, I have nothing against cars, by themselves they killed each other. It was too much about ego, all about status and too few about what mattered, to get safely from A to B. So even as I have nothing against cars, the setting of those behind them? Yes, that matters a great deal, and most of them fuelling each other, most of them pushing for more models, more options and all financed in a try before the debt phase. Just like the PC industry. Makers having a dozen models every year, the market just could not sustain it and it collapsed. The same is happening here now in a few ways. We will always have a few exotic members (like Aston Martin), or a brand that is unique because of the niche they choose (like Morris Mini Cooper). For some of them, there will always be a market, they are established. The Japanese market made a mess of close to everything and now we see an entirely different kind of fallout. So even as we are treated to the ‘threat’: “Japan’s ambassador has warned Japanese companies will quit the country if a botched Brexit hits profits“, it is not a vague threat, but overall that does not matter and it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit. You see, I discussed this in February 2014 when the Australians got confronted with ‘The last Australian car‘. Here we see: “The world’s largest car maker announced it would stop building cars in Australia by the end of 2017 and would operate in this country only as a sales and distribution company. One additional factor needs to be told, which will have bearing down the road. Namely “Toyota is Australia’s biggest vehicle exporter with around 70,000 of the 100,000-plus cars it builds here being sold in foreign markets”“. What is even more upsetting is the part that Business Insider gave with it and my response to it in the article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/02/12/the-last-australian-car/) “The car industry is estimated to have received a total of $12 billion in direct subsidies and protections over the past 20 years, including $1.8 billion to Holden in the 11 years to 2012.” is at the heart of this. So basically, 4 car makers have enjoyed an annual $600 million in subsidies a year. This is so off the wall it is not even funny!” In addition, the Australian, via Judith Sloan gave us the overall view: “Australia has subsidised almost $1900 per vehicle produced. If we take that and we add the initial quote I mentioned “Toyota is Australia’s biggest vehicle exporter with around 70,000 of the 100,000-plus cars it builds here being sold in foreign markets” leaves me with the question whether we have been sponsoring that part too“. So here is the crux. This is not about mere profits; this is about subsidies and what I personally see as legalised slave labour. This is about maximised potential without accountability or taxation. In all this, let them move away, let other nations subsidise it all and when their coffers are empty, we will see another ‘Cars from Japan’ setting soon enough. From my point of view, let them move out and lose 65 million potential consumers. When those wells dry up, when they see that the free ride is over, they will suddenly offer some price package, or is that prize package?

The nice part is when those brands fall away; we will see a revitalisation of other brands, those who will grow inside the UK. It might be a harsh reality, but it is a reality none the less. Will consumers miss out? I do not know, their ego’s might, but in the end, if a decent affordable car gets you from A to B, does it matter? This goes beyond the British car brands and who owns then nowadays, Morgan is seemingly the only one still in British hands, but again a niche market. So if the Japanese walk away and Daewoo and Kia walk in, would that be such a hard thing? Then there is China and India. They might actually like having a much better spot in the UK car industry. Many brands left life over time, all killed by the subsidised markets and drowned by subsidised cheap options. Who even remembers the Dutch brand DAF, or the German brand NSU? We have options, there are opportunities and the bottom dollar that japan wants needs to be barred. In all that, the only acceptable conflicts were the ones that Honda and BMW offered, which are about customs delays. I believe that to be the valid part and for the most, it is not merely about custom deals. It is about the EU trying to pressure into a another vote, trying to get Brexit killed, because Europe has no actual solution for the debt now moving towards 3 trillion Euro that Mario Draghi created. Now with the Italian economy is an approaching freefall, unsurmountable debts, Greece still in a bad spot, Europe cannot survive without the UK, now that France is also lowering expectations via: “The French government has revised its growth forecast for 2019 downwards to 1.7 percent from 1.9 percent, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told the Journal du Dimanche” also implies that the Economy is not really moving forward, creating a setting that the debts of Europe are becoming a much larger issue. All those interests, when they come due there will be no infrastructure. That is the setting and the 1500 voices in charge of all that money are seemingly now scaring 15,000 politicians into pressuring others, because their life of well-being is about to end and someone must pay for their way of life.

That is the setting that is behind the cars, not merely the cars, but when you realise that your taxes were funding cheaper build cars, please show me where you signed up for that part of the equation. You cannot, can you?

I do agree with Dr Paul Nieuwenhuis of Cardiff University. He is correct Aston Martin is making a move at the right time, and when the economy truly picks up, their fortune is set for close to two generations. They are in a niche, but one with a good margin and with the growing of millionaires all over the place, they are also creating demand, because getting seen in the 007 choice of wheels does count (as your ego is able to foot that bill) even as the car looks supercool regardless. And when you consider the quote: “Issues such as Brexit are quite different for Aston compared with mainstream manufacturers because it is not as reliant on the EU for sales as the volume producers“, when you consider transport and other elements, why were they in the UK anyway? With these brands margins were always the case, for well over a decade, so in all that, why were they here? Is the reason merely because there were 65 million optional consumers in the UK or because the EU was all about big business, and a lot less about the people living there? Well, that was a rhetorical question, because Reuters in 2016 gave us:  “Compensating carmakers in Britain for any post-Brexit tariffs on exports to Europe could see the government hand the companies more money than they need to pay the salaries of all their British workers, a Reuters analysis of corporate filings shows“, that was exactly the image that we saw in Australia and there is the crux, what is the use of having a company in the UK, when we see that the UK government is paying for the wages? Where was that ever a solution? A flawed presented image on the presentation of great industrial UK revenue whilst hiding some of the costs?

So many questions and in the end, merely a drain on the coffers, so let them leave, let them move to Germany (Mercedes & BMW will love that), or France (at the loving side of Citroen, Peugeot and Renault). So when the subsidies are demanded, will those local brands even accept that? I wonder how long until they move back east and let the reality of the cost of manufacturing hit these players full on. I wonder how many brands will still be around in 5-10 years. A lot less that seems almost certain, but that is pure speculation on my side.

 

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The devil is here, who is he?

We have seen attacks on nearly every religion. There was the satanic verses that attacked Islam, a book I never read mainly I had close to zero knowledge of Islam in those days. There was Apologie (1581), a book by William of Orange who would later create the Netherlands as a nation as well as taking that territory away from the Spanish, showing that the Inquisition as merely a power behind every Catholic throne, controlling kings who became mere puppets in its hands. It was all done by sacrificing ladies who lived a natural life and brand them Witches (as well as a few other niche population groups). Then there was Awful Disclosures (1836). this book was important as the book was proven to be a hoax and Maria Monk was merely a fraud, but in the end this book ended up doing massive damage to the Catholic ’cause’ and even gave additional rise to the Ku Klux Klan later on as well as the American Patriotic Association. Finally there is American Freedom and Catholic Power (1949) which is apparently still in print today. The writer saw the Catholic Church as an anti-democratic force bent on world domination, an alien power in American society determined to keep the masses poor, ignorant, and breeding.

These books are important to the setting, a setting of both corruption and nepotism on a global scale. That evidence was seen quite recently when we were treated on the world stage by the revelations in the Boston globe, which was shown in the movie Spotlight based on the true events of the Boston Globe Spotlight team. When the world is exposed to this, the world gets treated to a setting where thousands of priests on a national scale and a scale that was unfathomable on a global scale. In the search, the 6% rule where they investigate Boston Priests gave them in the end an initial 87 out of the expected 90 and the search started for the victims. The day after the story went to print; we see that the spotlight team gets swamped by phone calls from victims coming forward to tell their stories. This could in the end become the most shocking revelation of the twentieth century.

The movie seems to keep as close to the truth as possible with the setting that one of the members had initially failed as a list of 20 paedophile priests by lawyer Eric MacLeish in 1993, which he never followed up on. Yet at this point, they have done more than merely follow up on this and the setting became a movie that got the academy award for best movie, and best original screenplay. In the end, the audience is treated to ‘Cardinal Law resigned in December 2002 and was eventually promoted to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome before presenting a list of places in the United States and around the world where major scandals involving abuse by priests took place‘ this is what disgustingly might be considered as ‘nepotism at its finest‘.

Is this going somewhere?

Yes, this is the setting that you need to consider when we have two elements. The first is given in the Guardian where we see that in Ireland, one of the most devoted nations to the catholic church (next to Italy) is giving us: ‘‘Hit-and-run’ visit: Irish protesters reject pardon plea from Pope Francis‘. Large demonstrations with slogans like “The Pope is protecting paedophiles”. It is a setting that visiting Pope Frances would not have expected; a setting where the people are confronted with literally thousands of paedophilic priests and for the most (as far as I can tell) none of them are in prison. In Australia the scandal of Cardinal Pell hit the news and even as we cannot tell just how far it went, the setting where we were confronted with ‘The most serious charges were thrown out for “fundamental defects in evidence”‘, as well as ‘credibility issues over witnesses‘ has angered the population to no end. For me, from a legal perspective it needs to be about the law and the evidence. The fact that the Catholic Church has a large following of powerful people and that Australia too is drenched in operational nepotism does not help the case for Cardinal Pell, but that does not make him a guilty party. It counts against his visibility that the setting ‘The most serious charges were thrown out for “fundamental defects in evidence”‘ was not given more clear daylight in the media. We must accept that a judge will not merely throw away ‘fundamental defects in evidence‘ because it sets the stage for acquittal, the issue had grown too much by then, but in equal measure it will fuel all manners of conspiracy theory where the people will throw themselves into speculation, I do not feel that need, but the issue remains that 6% of the clergy with most of them not getting any conviction is fuelling rage, anger and even abandonment of the Catholic church and that is the setting that the current pope is confronted with. It is interesting that we can easily find the setting of ‘Studies estimated approximately that 20,000 Muslims convert to Christianity annually in the United States‘, yet we have to really dig to get any kind of statistic to see how many people move into the other direction. Yet the previous number is opposed by CBN who gave us “A recent article in Christianity Today (Aug 20, 1990) reported that in the U.S., the average age of those converting to Islam (31) is about twice that for conversion to Christian faith (age 16)“. Even as the numbers might have been dented due to extremism on one side and sexual child abuse on the other side, we see that the media is clearly set on misrepresentation as much as possible. The churches are that powerful that even that so called independent journalistic side sways to ambiguity as much as we see. One of the examples we see in that case is ‘Media, Culture, and the Religious Right‘ by Linda Kintz and Julia Lesage. If there is one issue then it might be that this is set into the American fit in all this (which makes sense). The setting we are given with “the ideology of clarity has helped move the centre of contemporary US politics far to the right as it made a tidy fit with a media culture that privileges the quick, simple message over time consuming complexities and ambiguities and that manufactures a commoditised audience by ratings” So basically trivialisation and simplification works for the church and their masses (pun intended).

I believe that the setting is actually a little less clear. I do believe that it is within the nature of all people to grow through faith and that faith in the Catholic Church is waning because of the events that are out in the open and the actions by the Vatican are not seen as acceptable (Ireland being a perfect example in all this). The people are more and more exposed to Muslims through work and through personal interactions and we are shown that the small group of extremists and the personal interactions show us Arabian and Pakistani interactions, especially the Pakistani interactions (which is much larger), where we see a more westernised group of people and we find a kinship. People all dedicated to a healthy family life as well as a dedication towards good work ethics and an appreciation towards the finer things in life. Even as most are dedicated non alcoholics, they do show a real appreciation towards good food. It is a personal observation, but I see that there is a more readily acceptance of Muslim elements than of Judean elements in all this. Yet the numbers are very sketchy, it seems that the media is embracing the Christian need on how far the flock has grown, yet the opposite direction seems to be actively ignored by all, which is interesting because the full picture is essential for anyone to give appreciation and acceptance of what could be perceived as the whole truth.

So when the Irish were confronted with “The pope’s requests for forgiveness in his Phoenix Park sermon, including for members of the church hierarchy who covered up “painful situations”, were far too little and too late for the crowd who had gathered at the garden dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives for Irish freedom“. there are two additional parts that need to be addressed, one in the positive light, which is seen with “The author, activist and abuse survivor Colm O’Gorman organised the event, which was timed to coincide with the mass. He told reporters that the pope had apologised and met survivors but evaded Vatican responsibility for crimes and cover-ups. “I think [his visit] has made it worse”“, in this I tend to agree with Colm O’Gorman. Apart from his movie as well as the coverage shown in the BBC, we need to accept that the pressures that the church gave through ‘Crimen Sollicitationis‘ was such an unacceptable setting and the fact that the media has for the larger extent ignored this and reported close to nothing is also a fact that should be seen as evidence. Especially when the document included: “every person, who in any way belongs to the tribunal or is given knowledge of the matter because of their office, is obliged to keep inviolate the strictest secrecy (what is commonly called “the secrecy of the Holy Office”) in all things and with all persons, under pain of automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication, incurred ipso facto without need of any declaration other than the present one, and reserved to the Supreme Pontiff in person alone, excluding even the Apostolic Penitentiary“, I will soften the blow by not including the Latin part of this.

It seems to apply to both victim and perpetrator, so the priest who would eagerly accept that silence, whilst the victim would not have any options at all. Consider being an excommunicated catholic in Ireland. It seems that all things are not created equal, especially via the Vatican and in this, the pope is pleading for forgiveness? How was this ever going to work?

In opposition we must also see “Maeve Lewis, of the advocacy group One in Four, agreed. “A missed opportunity. He made not one concrete proposal about what he intends to do.”” Here I cannot agree. I understand the setting that Maeve Lewis is trying to make and I get it, but this is too big, the entire setting of ‘one concrete proposal about what he intends to do’ was never realistic. The best the Pope could have done was to merely pray for strength of the victims whilst he admitted that such a large issue requires more time. That was as good as he was going to get in all this. The priesthood of sexual release in the light of the bible on the scriptures inside Mark 10, Matthew 12 and John 11 was not going to find any insight any day soon and the amount of non-prosecuted priests was too large by every standard. In the Netherlands the Commission Deetman report gives us ‘several thousands of children between 1945 and 1985 were seriously sexually abused , an estimated 1000 cases of penetration were established‘ in this we see later ‘since 2010 the Roman Catholic church in the Netherlands have fired 12 priests from their profession and removed 2 from their profession‘, in this, how many went to prison exactly, and in light of the thousands of transgressions, how many priests were never considered for prosecution in any way?

In all this, the people are in conflict with themselves, we see more and more growth of Christian abandonment, merely because of the treason by the Roman Catholic church, whilst protecting its flock of abusing priests and now we see more and more that since the 60’s the church has put in place draconian self-preservation settings like ‘Crimen Sollicitationis‘ and in addition we see the stage of Father Joseph Henn, who was fighting extradition in 2006, when the media treated us to “An American priest who is wanted in the United States on child molestation charges has gone missing while under house arrest in Rome” on August 3rd of that year and whilst we are partially informed through “is believed to be hiding in Italy while there is an international warrant for his arrest“, until this day for well over 12 years the Church seems to be actively engaged in keeping this priest form getting prosecuted in court. This is your faith and your children will remain a valid target for any priest. That is the setting that the people are confronted with and whilst the movie Spotlight gave much larger visibility to the entire setting, we see that millions of Christians now more and more in doubt of the Christian (Catholic) church as a whole. I would speculate that moving from church to church is not as completely acceptable (catholic to Baptist of protestant) to perhaps an agnostic or even a Muslim setting.

In support of my view there is in the first “Although 500,000 tickets for the papal mass were allocated, the Vatican estimated the crowd at 300,000 and other estimates were lower“, so basically in one of the strongest strongholds of the catholic church, merely 60% decided to attend, in what would have been close to a once in a lifetime event for many Irish people.

In this we now get the new setting that will play out over the next decade. As we are treated to more and more vilification that the Catholic church is bestowing on the public, are we witnessing the first steps towards the diminishing if the Christian church? Even as this is unlikely to happen in Ireland and Italy, or in England (Church of England) and Sweden (Lutheran), we are seeing a more rapid growth of Islam all over Europe. France has an estimated 2500 Mosques, and Germany seems to have well over 3000, many mosques in Germany are seemingly funded through Turkey.

What about the title?

Yes, here we need to address The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. I have not read the book, but from the settings and descriptions (read: reviews) we are confronted with the optional view that the book gives us the elements of identity, alienation, compromise, and conformity. They are concepts that confront all those disillusioned with their culture. In this, when we see the acts of the Vatican is very much in the centre of Christianity. If we accept that this is a path that a Christian in thrust upon through outside forces, at that point, we partially accept the Muslim setting that Mahound is the vilification form of Christians against  Muhammad. Yet, what if that was NOT the case? What if the path of Mahound is the path a Christian must walk to find his faith? What if the path of true faith is one that takes some people a lifetime, especially when they were on a forced faith through the pressure of parents and their surroundings from birth? To change faith is not what is done through insight of wisdom, what if the path is one we seek out because of our doubts and our love for our family to find the homestead of our lives to test the place where the safety and health of family is proven to be the correct one? Consider my thoughts in another direction, if the Agnostic wants to believe and does believe that there is a larger power, but cannot tell what it is and we see the Christian in doubt, knowing that there is a larger power, but there is now more and more evidence that they followed the wrong power, how can either find the right larger power? In my view it will take a journey that if completed within one’s life is still a great accomplishment. If we all accept that Muhammad was the true messenger of Islam, how can one set on a path to prove this to one’s self? If we see that the internet gives us thousands of books, all proclaiming that they lead to faith and immortality is the path to find the right book not a true journey? In this I give that we accept in two parts: “Every Muslim proclaims in Shahadah: “I testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is a Messenger of God.”“. In the first nearly all Christian’s will accept that there is ‘no god but God‘ and the challenge is merely to find the true messenger, and if we are on a path where there is too much doubt on the Christian church is the Journey not merely to setting to learn the truths of Muhammad and how he is the messenger of God?

If our lives can be seen as fulfilled when we address that one part in our lives, is the switch, the conversion towards Islam that hard to believe? When we come to think of it, is the Vatican not merely giving us the additional ability to walk away from their teachings as they embrace the protection of what in the largest setting of the world is seen as a criminal act against our children as well as the children of our neighbours?

So if the devil is here, what shape has the devil taken and how can we prove that this is the shape of the devil?

In finality, it seems fitting that I make a reference to one of my all-time favourite movies: ‘the Usual Suspects‘. The quote we get is “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist“, the problem is that he does exist and we have been pointing at all kinds of people on who the devil was, yet we forgot to embark on a journey to learn who the devil was not and that is the one part where Christians and more directly the Catholic church failed that task. So when we accept that the Catholic church was not that good, perhaps we can also accept that Islam is not evil, because the data and historic evidence shows the church to be not that good (well over 17 destroyed civilisations is only one part of the evidence), so those appointed as evil are more likely than not, not the setting of evil we were told. If we also accept the evidence that in 1095, 923 years ago, at the Council of Clermont, we were told “Pope Urban II begins by reminding the clergy present that they are shepherds and that they must be vigilant and avoid carelessness and corruption. He reminds them to refrain from simony and to adhere to the laws of the church. Urban complains about the lack of justice and public order in the Frankish provinces and calls for the re-establishment of the truce protecting clergy from violence. In the Historiography of the Crusades, there is a long-standing argument as to how much the pacification of the Frankish realm was designed to go hand in hand with the “export of violence” to the enemy in the east“, important here is ‘pacification of the Frankish realm‘, as well as ‘the “export of violence” to the enemy in the east‘, it comes from Fulcher of Chartres, who was at the proceedings and gave this account in ‘Gesta Francorum Jerusalem Expugnantium‘ 6 to 10 years later. The account would be given much later by Georg Strack in ‘The sermon of Urban II in Clermont 1095 and the Tradition of Papal Oratory‘. It became the foundation of Christian exponential growth into a region that was never that Christian to begin with, and through this, through the crusades the setting of hatred grew on both sides. The estimation is that over those two centuries (1095-1291) close to two million lives were lost in a time when the global population was a little short of 350 million, so 0.5% of the entire global population died in that one ‘skirmish’ that is not easy to overcome and we must realise that part too, because it polarised both parties in all this. So when we consider that we were pushed into a war by the greedy need of the church (several pieces of evidence exists), what other paths have we wrongfully considered? Now, let’s be clear that we all still openly oppose extremism in every form. Yet we also see that when we talk to our neighbours and we see that many Muslims embrace fundamental values of family and prosperity, how wrong have we been on several other fronts?

We need to realise this in the light of utter unacceptable levels of forgiveness requested whilst anti-Muslim actions are on the rise in many places. When we see politicians like Geert Wilders move into these streams proclaiming “he thinks Christians “are my allies” and that they fundamentally should want the same thing“, so how does that go over when that Christian priest sodomises his child? Are those views still aligned? Too much consideration on one side and total non-consideration on the other is merely giving view to levels of acceptance of evil and we should not ever allow for that.

Some players in this large game have been given way too much leeway and that needs to be openly scrutinised by all players.

In light of the issue I mentioned in my blogs in the last few days when we were confronted by the ‘Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest‘ that had been started months ago. We now see the Dutch Prime minister give us: “The Dutch prime minister on Friday distanced his government from a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest being organized later this year by anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders. Wilders “is not a member of the government. The competition is not a government initiative,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said at his weekly press conference“, yet the competition is still held in Dutch Parliament, which makes no sense in any valid universe. In addition, we see a ‘casual’ distancing, whilst in equal measure that we are introduced to “This man, Geert Wilders, is known for testing the limits of freedom of expression. He is free to do that“, in this, if the Dutch are so ‘politically‘ correct, when we accept “Artikel 147 Sr, verbiedt sindsdien smalende godslasteringen die krenkend zijn voor godsdienstige gevoelens” (Article 147 Sr forbids blasphemy that is regarded as offensive to religious feelings), and in this the Parliament building is accepted as a suitable location for the venue of a ‘Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest‘?

The overall lack of coverage by the global media at large remains a much larger issue and it seems that giving a global light to these acts is becoming more and more important, in addition, it seems that when it comes to values, we see that some are not having any and believing in the Golden Calf called ‘Freedom of expression’ should also see vilification by the global population when it is done to intentionally inflict mental abuse of ANY ONE religion. It seems that the Dutch have liberalised themselves a little more than should be regarded as acceptable, but that is merely my view.

In the end: “I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze”, which is another nice quote by the Usual Suspects what remains for consideration is: ‘Who exactly is Keyser Soze and which identity does he have now?

 

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Liberalism overboard

We can agree that there is in many places a setting of ‘freedom of speech’. For the most, I have always supported that, and even though I know that there is an overwhelming amount of exercise in the ‘art of free speech’ for the mere setting to do harm and to inflict insult onto others, the largest portion of people are about merely voicing personal opinion, or in some cases to evangelize their version, or better stated their interpretation of events through free speech. I do still believe that freedom of speech is a much larger advocate of good then evil. The question becomes, what happens when the intent is a malicious one?

In America one of the most famous cases of free speech is still Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). From the New York Times at the time we get “the Court held that the First Amendment gives speakers immunity from sanction with respect to their speech concerning public figures unless their speech is both false and made with “actual malice”, i.e., with knowledge of its falsehood or with reckless disregard for the truth of the statement“, that is the important setting in this case, and even if this is regarding a setting in different nations, it gives a clear view on where most of us are, or should be. So when I was confronted with “a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest organized by anti-Islam PVV leader Geert Wilders“, a person who has a visible anti-Islam view, when we are clear and in the know that images of the prophet Mohammed are a massive taboo in the entire global Islamic population, why can we allow a political party leader to set a stage of mental duress to Islamic people of all ages? The fact that this competition is to be held in a closed part of Parliament closed or not reflects even worse on the Dutch government.

If I was an emotional person (which I am not), I would plead with the United Muslims of Australia (UMA) as well as a few Muslim governments on the idea of a fantasy story, the topic would be ‘How to assassinate a politician‘, it is partially important that the people realise that I am a Catholic, not a Muslim. It would be open to all Muslims from 14 to 20 years old and the story needs to surpass 8000 words. We will ask a prominent member of Muslim society to consider being the judge of all those stories.

I am as rich as a church mouse (read: therefor the opposite of rich), so I cannot make a price available, so we need sponsor willing to host the artistic exercise and the winner should get a decent award and we will send all the submissions in PDF form to the Dutch Parliament as a statement of objection on what PVV Leader Geert Wilders had set in motion.

You see, the steps are important for the mere setting that there must be a dialogue with people that is not set on hatred and in equal measure, people fuelling the fires of hatred should no longer be allowed in politics. The fact that we were offered: “In 2015 Wilders attended a Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas. He left just before jihadists tried to commit an attack“, it was a clear message (apart from the one in France). So the Dutch politician was in attendance at this event on Dutch Memorial Day (regarding WW2), when we are treated to: “Two gunmen who opened fire outside a competition for the best cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad near Dallas in the United States on Sunday. PVV leader Geert Wilders was the keynote speaker at the event. The police shot and killed both gunmen. A security officer was injured“. It was at an American event, in America that called for, and knowingly invited for an action of extremism. A hate group hiding behind “He told the audience that most terrorists are Muslims and “the less Islam the better”. “We are here in defiance of Islam to stand for our rights and freedom of speech,” he said during his speech. “That is our duty.”“. the two sides is that we do not deny a freedom of speech, yet when you use that freedom to knowingly and intentionally inflict harm to others, how does that go over with you?

In this it is the current nightmare for Stef Blok who is currently heading the foreign office. It is a nightmare, because not only is it a setting where a politician is intentionally insulting a religion, not only is this a set stage, it is one that is ALLOWED to be done in Dutch Parliament.

No matter how good most of the Dutch are, no matter how dedicated they are to excellence. when we consider the business model (at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/local/dutch-model-attracts-uae-firms), when we see that the setting of “Twenty-seven of the 60 projects come from the UAE“, when the attached “Currently, we have 60 investment projects from the Mena region together investing more than 1.1 billion euros and creating more than 2,000 jobs“, when that falls away due to the insult of their national religion, when the people in the UAE are made aware of the insults that PVV Leader Geert Wilders is allowed to get away with. How long until the funds stop and the jobs go to the UK, France and perhaps Australia? When we get Jeroen C.M. Nijland, commissioner of the Ministry of Economic Affairs at the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA), now having to state that economic times have taken a step back due to ‘abused freedom of expression’ in a stage of intentional malignant acts against Muslim nations on a global scale. When these 2,000 jobs fall away? What will be the excuse Dutch officials will announce in line to the ‘Due to uncontrollable elements, the Dutch deficit will rise from 1.1% to an expected 1.9%‘, or perhaps “The economy will grow by 3.3% in 2017 and a projected 1.3% in 2018“. When one party represents close to 50% of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, getting the scope of alienating economic partners correct tends to become extremely important.

In that regard, when the President of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan learns that Dutch parliament was allowed to be used for such an event. How do you expect that he is likely to react? When Saudi Arabia learns of this, a nation now ready to give reign to around one trillion dollars in projects for the next 7 years (the new Neom city included as well as other Saudi projects), in that light, just how stupid was the setting of facilitating to Geert Wilders in all this?

A setting where the technological growth, especially in 5G projects will be the largest in the history of the world (for now that is), when these projects could feed corporations for close to two generations, getting ‘political correctness’ a little better under control is close to everything. So, I do remain a ‘champion’ of free speech, but we should learn to see accountability equally important, especially when there is as what I personally see as clear intentional malice in play. In that regard it was never about ‘freedom of expression‘, was it? So, if we accept fair play, then the Dutch economy should rely on business partners that are not fundamentally Muslim and perhaps they can get the same amount of projects and revenue in Asia, or Africa, or perhaps America. Was America not that nation that has such a booming economy? You see, plenty of other nations to get the 27+ replacement contracts.

I think that this should be the impact of Liberalism when it goes overboard. When we dig deeper and we consider the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), we see “findings confirm that conservatives, liberals, the religious and the nonreligious are each prejudiced against those with opposing views. But surprisingly, each group is about equally prejudiced. While liberals might like to think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative counterparts are” (source: Politico.com). Mark Brandt, Geoffrey Wetherell and Christine Reyna created the paper ‘Discrimination Across the Ideological Divide. The Role of Value Violations and Abstract Values in Discrimination by Liberals and Conservatives‘ (2013). Here we see “conservatives were more discriminatory than liberals toward liberal groups, and liberals were more discriminatory than conservatives toward conservative groups. Conservatives’ discrimination was driven by their higher traditionalism and by liberal groups’ apparent violation of their values. Liberals’ discrimination was driven by their lower traditionalism and by conservative groups’ apparent violation of their values. Complicating matters, conservatives highly valued self-reliance, which weakened their discrimination toward liberal groups, perhaps because self-reliance is associated with the freedom to believe or do what one wants. And liberals highly valued universalism, which weakened their discrimination toward conservative groups, likely because universalism espouses acceptance of all“. Yet the foundation is not the setting of prejudice that we all will have to some degree, what happens when this prejudice is coated in intentional malice? What happens when malice is the cornerstone of the politician and the spokesperson on an agenda that is drenched in self-interest and in that knowingly sets the stage of ‘absence for consideration‘ towards the economic setting that is part of a governing parliament, a parliament that Geert Wilders is a part of? When we see that the economic partners walk away, is that prejudice or the cost of doing business? When we accept certain cultural business partners, should we accept that a level of accountability is to be expected when the ‘freedom of expression‘ is set towards the stage of intentional malice?

You see, for me the exposure would be merely business. I can, to some degree take the slack of these 27 projects and claim my 3.75% of 1.1 billion euros and assist in getting the UAE the quality replacements that do take a level of political correctness in their stride, especially the political players that are unwilling to play fast and loose with a billion euro’s by not allowing parliament to be used for intentional malicious anti-Islam events.

So am I suddenly anti-Dutch? Am I suddenly anti freedom of speech, or anti freedom of expression? No, I am not. I merely state that ‘intent of malice’ should not be allowed, especially not in any house of parliament. I do also accept that the Charlie Hebdo case is a sensitive one, yet in that this was acting within France, in a total satirical case and it was not merely Islam. The setting was also anti Catholic and anti-Judean. One could argue that the magazine treated all religion, as well as politics and culture to a larger degree with contempt. I do not accept that the act against the Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015 was an acceptable one. For the most also for the driving reason that they were not singling the Muslim religion out as a target for their satire. In their setting it was about freedom of expression against all they viewed, not just one religion. There was a debatable absence of malice here.

This does get me on a slippery slope and I admit to that. You see, when we set that stage, is there intent or absence of malice? Is satire an intention of malice? No, when it is done over the top and in the staged setting of a cartoon, I remain in line of the Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell stage. It is cartoon, over the top expression of ridicule, like the two Hebdo images. And as a Catholic, I can look onto that setting and giggle. We never had the absence of icons and images towards religious Christian figures. It changes the field completely.

When liberalism allows for, and to the larger stage supports intent of malice, that is when we need to sit down and wonder just how far over the top have we gone? It is a discussion that the Dutch need to have in the very near future. That pressure will grow when it is no longer merely Pakistan formally complaining, but when Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Turkey and Indonesia follow suit and stand with Pakistan. At that point it might be too late for the Netherlands to merely do this away with some political statement. At that point it will require much larger efforts by the ambassadors in those nations to go into damage control mode and fix the mess that Geert Wilders was allowed to make in the first place.

It suck to be Mr Laurens Westhoff, Mr Joost Reintjes, Dr Bahia Tahzib-Lie, Mrs Laetitia van Asch and Rob Swartbol in the coming weeks. I have no doubt that in these places there will be a lot of outrage on the matter (and a few other places too).

The fact that this started in June and was not the front page setting in many papers was to some degree an issue, the fact that Pakistan made a formal complaint about the setting and the fact that the newspapers are ignoring the issue over the past 48 hours is also an issue, especially when we are confronted with the setting “Mazari said the actions of Wilders, who heads the Dutch Freedom Party, was a clear violation of human rights of Muslims in Europe as well as a violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom“, so we see Human rights issues in almost every paper, yet when it is Pakistan minister Shireen Mazari, the papers set it aside? Will it all become an outspoken stage on the Pakistan blasphemy law that still attracts the death penalty? In this stage and those settings, we need to accept that there is a much larger hypocrisy in play, so when I limelight the issue, partially so that I can fly in with an option towards 3.75% of One billion Euro, I feel perfectly justified in my actions, at least I was always willing to state out the settings, even when I was wrong (the Jeremy Corbyn stage of a funeral in Tunesia), I had no issue about correcting the stage as to what it truly was (to the degree that I was able to validate).

 

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