Hacking, blagging and cover-ups........

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The point of Leveson was to stitch-up the Dirty Digger, not to open a large can of wriggly things that would lead to an even bigger scandal.

 

But the word has been in the street for quite a long time that hacking by newspapers was the tip of a very dirty iceberg.

 

It now transpires that the Serious Organised Crime Agency has a dossier containing the names of 102 suspects – lawyers, banks, insurers,  and wealthy individuals amongst them.

 

Amongst the suspects are 20 law firms (what we once called ’solicitors practises’ when the law was a profession instead of a trade). Getting a peep at the case for the other side or insider knowledge of its assets could be highly profitable. It could also get a solicitor struck off, but the dodge would be to get information at extreme arm’s length by contracting-out the funny business to agents who would then employ the private eye.

 

It is said that a number of blue-chip companies are involved. Advance knowledge of a competitor’s financial performance or the attitude of individual directors to a take-over bid, for example, could be highly profitable.

 

It is not only phone-hacking and waylaying e-mails. CRO information has been harvested also.

 

So who are the prime suspects?

 

SOCA has given the list to the Home Affairs Committee, but the Chairman, Keith ‘Slippery’ Vaz MP is not happy, having been told that it is ‘not for publication’ because disclosure could prejudice ‘on-going inquiries’.

 

On-going? SOCA has known all about it for 9 years and did nothing until the Dowler case hit the fan. It would seem that feeling the collars of a few hacks is one thing, but upsetting the big-shots of business is quite another. But the government is going to make it a crime to be an unlicensed private detective, so that should about do it!

 

This leaves us with a paradox. If it is a crime to pay an official to release information, as in Murdoch, why is it not a crime to pay an official to conceal it, as in NHS?

'Labour's union crisis'.

 

The title is Private Eye’s cover page. The picture is Miliband saying ‘Trade unions fixing elections would be disastrous', and McCluskey, the Union boss, replying ‘True. That’s how we got you!’

 

I have been delightedly following the row that rumbles on between Miliband and the UNITE union over allegations of vote-rigging in choosing a candidate for the safe Falkirk seat, vacated after the previous incumbent was booted out for kissing colleagues Glasgow-style. The ruse apparently was to sign up fictitious party members so as to ensure that Ms. Shoowin walked it.

 

But I am nonplussed as to why today’s Union bosses are such an unprepossessing, thuggish, ugly lot. They are incapable of speech except shouting. They rant as a normal conversational style. They divide the world into ‘fatcats’ and ‘workers’ who are exploited by the fatcats. Of course, they themselves, with 6-figure salaries, cars and expense accounts are not fatcats at all. One of them even lives in a subsidized council house to show solidarity with the hoi polloi

 

Mentally they are in a 1970s time-warp, when the TUC, the NUM and the TGWU told the government what to do, and rabble-rousers such as Red Robbo destroyed whole swathes of manufacturing industry. They reminisce about cosy chats with the PM over beer and sandwiches in smoke filled rooms at No 10, the 3-day week, flying pickets. Their favourite song is ‘You can’t touch me. I’m part of the Union’. And yet they were scarcely out of their teens during those great days.

 

Over the past 20 years we had rather stopped even thinking about Trade Unions. They were no longer the ever-present malevolent power that characterized the 1960’s.70’s and early 80’s.

 

Union membership has nearly halved since 1979. In former times days lost to strikes averaged 13 million a year; in 2010 it was just 365,000. (It has crept up in the last couple of years, and 75% of strikes are now in the public sector).

 

With Labour under its weakest leadership since Michael Foot perhaps the Unions see their way back to the power they once wielded.

 

And perhaps they have a point in trying to get more ‘workers’ into Parliament.

 

Labour MP’s divide roughly into Blairites and Brownites (with quite a few ‘ I don’t care; I’m in it for me-ites’). As with the Tories, the people at the top have a certain uniformity of class, background, education – and lack of work experience outside politics. Both parties are under-represented by people who have earned their wages outside the public sector, and who have some idea of the condition of the ‘working classes’.

 

Perhaps it’s time to extend the membership of this cosy, upper middle class, members-only, no proles admitted, club.

Islam's civil war: a Texan writes......

Interesting theory, yours, about the whole Middle East gambit boiling down to a civil war within Islam which has been going on for more that 50 years. How about for more than 1500 years? I am rereading a book by Richard Fletcher entitled Moorish Spain which was written in 1992. Fletcher speaks about troubles between the Arab rulers of Spain who as Sunnis endured various problems from the Shiite Arabs known as Fatimids and living in Baghdad. This was in the ninth century, but the schism arising from the Shiite breakaway dated back to the seventh century.

 

What we are today witnessing is perhaps a cyclical manifestation of this schism. I find it a bit difficult to characterize these two main branches of Islam. One might argue that the Sunnis are better represented in the strictly Arab countries, but this is not a hard rule as there are some glaring exceptions, Iraq for example which is largely Shiite.

 

Nor can I claim that one branch is more fundamentalist than the other. It may be difficult to be more fundamentalist than the Shiite Ayatollahs in Iran, for example, but the Sunni Wahabi's come as close as anyone. Also, al- Qaeda with all its ultra-orthodox manifestations of Islam was Sunni inspired and led.

 

During my 15 years in Indonesia, all of the Muslims I queried did not recognize either the Sunni or Shiite terms. Only recently have I discovered the presence of a very small group of Indonesians who have declared themselves as Shiites.

 

These anecdotal observations lead me to opine that membership in one of the main branches of Islam or the other is in itself insufficient cause for civil war. One important consideration that I had learned and that was confirmed by Fletcher is that Arab Muslims consider themselves on a higher plane than non-Arab Muslims regardless of nationality.

 

The Moors of the Maghreb, for example, were looked down upon as undisciplined cannon fodder during the invasion and occupation of Spain even though they were converted under the Sunni Arabs. This observation came manifestly to light when the ruling Arabs in Andalucia meted out the choice conquered lands to their Arab brethren while the Moors got the hindmost. Such descrimination seriously pissed off the Moors.

 

Relations between Saudi Arabs and Egyptians are even worse. 

 

The better educated Egyptians are often employed in Saudi Arabia, but with some reservations as they are very much disliked. The Egyptians tend to lord it over the Saudis which exacerbates relations considerably. Hence, the Saudi Arabs have a harder time pulling rank on Egyptians than they do on citizens of most other Muslim countries.

 

Moreover, Egypt is clearly the most scholarly country in the Muslim world when it comes to Koranic study and interpretation. This status annoys the Saudis who can only revert to their claim on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

 

Clearly, the basis for unity does not exist among the Islamic peoples of the world. I would therefore augment your civil war theory with emphatic tribal and ethnic differences between and within Muslim countries of the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

I would also add that the burgeoning population of Middle Eastern youth and their attendant rising social, economic and political expectations contribute substantially to current discontent given that these expectations have not, and are not likely to be met within the visible future.

 

Perhaps we should expand our thinking to the non-Muslim dominated world as well. I recently heard that should the new Prince of Cambridge have to be named according to the currently most popular name in England, it would be Mohammed. 

 

Mideast mayhem; the Islamic Civil War.......

I have been trying to make sense of the Middle East mayhem

 

Am I alone in believing that for all the blood and treasure expended in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the real conflict is not the so-called ‘War on Terror’. This is a diversion. There may be some madmen who believe that the world can be turned into a Caliphate, but the real conflict is much bigger and goes on largely unnoticed by the world.

 

What is happening – and has been for years – is a civil war within Islam.

 

It has been and will be bloody in the extreme.

 

It has been going on for at least 50 years.

 

Egypt suffered more casualties when it intervened in Yemen in the 1960’s than in the 6-Day War. The Iran-Iraq war in the 80’s resembled WW1, with horrendous casualties, maybe 1 million dead. Sunni, Shia and Taliban are killing each other on a daily basis in Pakistan, which is also ruthlessly suppressing an uprising in Baluchistan. Nigerian fundamentalists are causing mayhem in the Muslim north, killing both Muslims and Christians.

 

Since the 2^nd Gulf War 120,000 Iraqis have been killed, more than 500 only last week, Sunni against Shia, Iraqi against Kurd, tribe against tribe.

 

There have been civil wars in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon and Mali. Syria is a blood-bath, with Sunni, Shia, and just about every other sect fighting each other. Assad has been very successful in turning the conflict from an uprising into something quite different, but it may well be the end of Syria as we know it. Lebanon, one of the cradles of civilisation and home to very intelligent and cultured people, had 15 years of everybody fighting everybody else and has been in a state of simmering conflict ever since. Libya seems to have settled into semi-anarchy. Somalia is a failed state that exports its own brand of Islamic terrorism to its neighbours plus piracy and kidnapping.

 

The old post-colonial boundaries are fracturing, with Syria and Iraq in particular fragmenting into warring parts.

 

‘What comes next?’ seems both unanswerable and unaskable.

 

Time was, before the Russian invasion, that Kabul was a sophisticated city with a culture stretching back to the Ancient Greeks, modern buildings, busy markets, women in Western dress. The Mujahidin ransacked the museums and flogged off the contents on the black-market. The Taliban destroyed that entire culture. The ultimate cultural atrocity was the destruction of the Great Buddha carvings of Bamiyan, more than 1000 years old.

 

How did all that advance the cause of Islam? It is totally nihilistic.

 

Now we have the fall-out from the ‘ARAB Spring’ to add to the noxious brew. This goes beyond Sunni vs. Shia, tribe against tribe, and stirs in class warfare, with the young, educated and unemployed bourgeoisie pitted against the Establishment, be it political or religious. This will be the scenario for many years to come, so we can safely ignore the pundits  and armchair strategists who are constantly writing articles entitled ‘Has the Arab Spring turned to Winter’ or some such garbage.

 

I have no doubt that ordinary Muslims want what everybody wants – education, employment, justice, honest government. The men with beards are equally determined that they will not get it.

Watch out! There's a Roma about.......

The Roma are coming! The modern-day equivalent of the Visigoths.

 

As from November the riff-raff of Romania and Bulgaria will have free entry to UK under the Treaty of Lisbon furtively signed by G. Brown in his dying days.

 

We have plenty of them in London already.

 

They account for 80% - 90% of all pickpocketing, ATM thefts and begging. It looks as if London is about to get a new growth-industry – affirmative redistribution, just in time for the Xmas trade!

 

They are well-ensconced in Germany where they have progressed from petty theft to organized crime. 75% of crime in Germany is committed by non-Germans. Bulgarians account for nearly half this.

 

And it will come as no surprise to learn that the Bulgarians and Romanians bring with them filth, squalor, street violence and anti-social behavior of all kinds, as they have done since time out of mind.

 

So what are you going to do  about it, Kittenheels?

 

Brexit, maybe?

 

Motown stops motoring.................

 

Our beloved Motor City has just (finally) filed for bankruptcy. 

 

Over 18 billion dollars in debt was the accused culprit along with the loss of tax revenue from a declining population. City residents have declined to around 700,000 from a peak of 2 million. Some mean spirited commentators go so far to suggest that a history of corruption contributed to Detroit's financial, social and economic demise.

 

On the upside, both residential and commercial real estate is cheap. City officials and service employees are finally able to handle the workload. There are no water or electricity shortages. Itinerants and miscreants have a wide selection of places to crash.

 

Traffic jams are history. Pollution has declined. Crime, however, has not diminished. The response time for police to get to a crime scene has in fact increased.

 

The iconic home of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler is but a shadow of its former self.

 

I vividly recall the time when the notion that what was good for GM, was good for America. To be sure, this philosophy applied equally to the US economy and to Detroit itself. The city became a victim of its own propaganda and conspired with the auto manufactures to over indulge city politicians, trade unions and liberals to the point where no money remained to pay public debts. 

 

It is highly likely that the newfound American habit of paying enormous pensions to higher level city employees also took its toll from the public kitty. It now remains to be seen which debtors will be paid, how much and when. Bankruptcy adversely affect civil servants drawing pensions. The question is by how much.

 

Some employee groups are already planning law suits to counter the city's request for bankruptcy.  

 

Ironically, Detroit is better off now than it has been in decades. It has finally come to terms with its errant past and placed its future in the hands of the judges, financiers and lawyers.

Smoking, sunbathing & nagging......

It will come as no surprise that Nanny Nagger is at it again.

 

We are currently in a heat wave (by our standards) with temps heading towards 30C and no rain forecast. Needless to say, Nanny is bombarding us with nagging messages to drink more water. She tells us that you can get sun-burn if you stay in the sun too long. Well, who’d a-thought it?

 

According to the media, it is estimated that 700 people have already died. Apart from 2 SAS recruits who conked out during a training exercise, no actual deaths have been reported. The figures are an extrapolation from the last heat-wave. That must have been in the last century.

 

Actually, the greatest danger is having a driving shunt when distracted by all the scarcely dressed young ladies parading the streets.

 

And here’s another piece of official silliness.

 

I have quit the weed and now use an e-cigarette, which is actually better than smoking as it gives a double charge of nicotine without the ill-effects of tar and other impurities. There is no smoke, only an odourless vapour. The cost is about 10% of cigarettes, and no dirty ash-trays, no smell of stale smoke, no brown stains on the décor. 

 

It is the ideal way of giving up smoking and one would have thought that the medical establishment would have welcomed it with open arms.

 

Step forward the meddlers in Brussels. They are saying that the nicotine fluid is a medication and must therefore be put through the drug testing routines. This would ban e-cigs for maybe 7 years. The immediate effect  will be that the fluid is smuggled, very easy because it comes in a very small bottle.

 

Some proper experts have a different take.

 

‘Nicotine itself is not a particularly hazardous drug," says Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians.

 

"It's something on a par with the effects you get from caffeine.

 

"If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It's a massive potential public health prize."

 

Meanwhile, the UK government is muttering about registering it as a medicine and supplying it on the NHS. 

 

One certainty is that they will tax it.

 

There are now over 1.5 million users. It is an easy tax-cow.

 

So why would some wowsers want to ban it?

 

Because we enjoy it, that’s why!

 

Snowden's collateral damage........

Internationally, we are falling further into the abyss of world unpopularity.

 

Much of the recent decline is due to the sympathy foreigners have for the position of Edward Snowden. He has exposed our fanatical quest for data collection on our own and foreign citizens, he has managed to escape the long arm of the law and he has ridiculed and embarrassed some of our mightiest security institutions in the process.

 

Snowden has become a folk hero not unlike our mobsters of the mid 1900's who enjoyed a massive popular following for evading the law. A contemporary Bonnie and Clyde whose guilt is known but who still harvests sympathy from the masses.

 

I find it curious that Snowden is so fickle over where he wants to spend the rest of his life. First China, or at least Hong Kong, was his Shangri La followed by Russia, followed by tropical paradises like Ecuador and Venezuela and then reverting back to Russia. With all of our technology focused on his person, it would be logical for Snowden to keep out of the air lanes and take a taxi from the airport to the nearest dacha.

 

However, the damage has been done. We Americans are being cast more and more like Cold War era Russians or Red Chinese than leaders of the free world promoting freedom, human rights, equality and world democracy.

 

We thought we were the proverbial good guys, but little by little, the scales are being lifted from our eyes as we witness exploits like that of Snowden's, as we watch our elected and non-elected leaders systematically lie to us and as we feel the loss of respect and favor among other peoples of the world.

 

It’s a lonely life.

 

That Zimmerman acquittal.......a Texas take

 

We have a  problem in the USA just now what with the release via a not guilty decision by a jury trying George Zimmerman, a Hispanic/white for the murder of Trayvon Martin, a young black. One could not help watching every bit of the trial as it was broadcast live on most news networks including cable TV.

 

The prosecution had a weak case as it went to trial without a witness and lame testimony from friends and recorded phone calls. Everyone agrees that Zimmerman killed Martin but nobody could prove the act was anything but self defense.

 

The trial paralleled the MB situation in Egypt in that much of our black minority, like members of the Brotherhood, felt cheated out of a just decision. Never mind the circumstances, Trayvon was killed at the hand of Zimmerman and the protesting blacks would settle for nothing short of a murder verdict. Truth is, that reasonable doubt hung over every aspect of the killing and the only reasonable verdict had to be not guilty.

 

Not good enough say the blacks supporting and identifying with Martin. They are prepared to take to the streets in protest to make their point. In short, we have a nasty racial situation on our hands that may possibly chill over the passage of time. The next few days are critical. Meanwhile, Zimmerman has been labeled as the walking dead in light of the many anonymous threats that have been sent to him.

 

Our justice department claims it wants to look into the triall, I imagine for any evidence of mishandling legal procedures or something of that nature. For his part, Obama took to the media stating that the jury has spoken.

 

That must have been intended to put a lid the fury of protestors and undoubtedly did some good in the direction of mitigating their ire. It was a good move after what all serious commentators label a procedurally fair and just trial.

 

The supporters of Trayvon make him out to be a nice  young lad who never did anybody any harm and those backing Zimmerman cast him as a dutiful citizen who patrolled the area as a member of the neighborhood crime watch brigade.

 

My take is that both Martin and Zimmerman had axes to grind and were deeply involved in racial behavior against people of their opposite color. They were an incident waiting to happen and it did because Trayvon had an agenda of some sort for being there and Zimmerman was determined to find a black intruder.  

The beautiful game......

Soccer is irredeemably corrupt, rotten to the core both at national and international levels. The advent of big money has a corrosive effect on all sport but perhaps none more so than soccer.

 

Starting at the top, a season rarely goes by without FIFA being involved in a mega-scandal.

 

An Honorary President has resigned recently, along with two Executive Committee members for having trousered about £1.4 million in bribes. This has been going on for eight years, but Seth Blatter claims to have known nothing about it.

 

Tickets allocated to the FIFA movers-and-shakers are resold to touts.

 

The TV rights for the 1998 and 2002 World Cup were accompanied by allegations of bribery on a major scale.

 

There is vote-rigging at FIFA elections.

 

Members of the body that decides the venue for the World Cup are alleged take bribes for votes.

 

There are strong suspicions that there were substantial bungs when Russia and Qatar were chosen as venues.

 

But when BBC Panorama did an expose three days before the World Cup venue in which England was a candidate, Cameron criticised the BBC for damaging our chances. Maybe his moral compass could do with swinging.

 

Seth Blatter has presided over perhaps the most corrupt reign in sporting history. But you must hand it to the old larrikin. He’s a survivor!

 

Now for the national game.

 

Do you imagine that wealthy individuals buy English football clubs because they love the game, enjoy the chutzpah of lording it in the Chairman’s Box, and hobnobbing with the likes of the wondrously vulgar stars and their WAGS?

 

Not at all. They are in it for the big bucks, and not necessarily made from football. Eleven of the sixteen Premier league clubs are wholly owned by  foreigners whose actual knowledge of the game is possibly miniscule.

 

Top clubs are a financial asset that offer great opportunities for money-laundering and other hanky-panky. Here are some of the ways.

 

You have a big wedge from another of your business interests that you need to hide away. So you big-up the ticket sales and then make up the difference so that your money is now in the legitimate accounts. Or you can do the opposite and siphon off the cash.

 

You can overstate the transfer-fee when selling a player, and then launder your own money through the accounts.

 

Some players are ‘owned’ not by the club but by a third-party secret consortium and then rented back to the club. It also helps to have an offshore ‘vehicle’ that buys a player from the club that you own for a low price who is then sold-on at the real price.

 

Match-fixing is rife throughout the game in Europe, much of it through organised crime syndicates based in Singapore and other Asian hideaways. Europol’s Operation Veto has recently uncovered match fixing involving £2 million in bribes and an £8 million rake-off. Tax evasion and money-laundering is a feature of Italian football.

 

Randy refs are bought-off with high-priced hookers. It’s a funny old game.

 

Small wonder that a season ticket can set you back up to £1500. Welcome to the midden.

Coup? What coup?

‘Coup d’etat: a violent or illegal seizure of power’.

 

Well, it was certainly that but Obama can’t say so otherwise he would have to cut off aid to the Egyptian military. And Hague can’t either  without the OK from Obama.

 

But there is another way of looking at it, so we need to understand the causes.

 

Amongst many grievances, one action was pivotal. That was when Morsi decided to become another Phony Pharaoh and place himself above the law, creating an elective dictatorship. Meddling with the constitution began early in his term. This was when his approval ratings started to go south quickly.

 

Since then he has broken every promise and generally screwed up.

 

Unemployment has rocketed by about 50%.

 

Foreign  reserves have fallen by about the same.

 

Government debt has climbed along with the cost of servicing the debt.

 

He did nothing about the ruinous fuel subsidies which prevents Egypt from importing its full needs. This has led to chronic diesel shortages in particular. Diesel not only drives most vehicles bit also the multitude of water pumps that are vital for farm irrigation. This has cost Morsi his erstwhile support in the rural areas.

 

Lack of urgent economic reforms has left a $4.8 billion IMF loan suspended in limbo.

 

He has turned a blind eye to violence and murder against minorities, including the bestial lynching of four Shia upon which Morsi made no comment.

 

The rule of law is in a state of collapse.

 

He has offended both his erstwhile friends, such as Saudi, and the military by cuddling up to Iran and other ‘hostiles’. This has resulted in the suspension of aid from the Saudis and the UAE.

 

He started to convert Egypt into an Islamist state, which it has never been and which is totally unacceptable, especially amongst the urban elites.

 

He inserted MB placemen into most positions of importance, including Provincial Governors who ought to have been elected. The major tourist resort of Luxor had imposed upon it a hardline Islamist who was connected with the massacre of 67 foreign tourists in 1997.

 

When a survey asked about Morsi’s good decisions, a vast majority said ‘None!’.

 

So what were the Egyptians expected to do? Allow Morsi to turn Egypt into an Islamic basket-case. Yemen writ large’ perhaps?

 

The move against him was not initiated by the military. It was the younger generation. The military was the instrument, not the instigator.

 

A movement called Tamarod started a social networking sign-in for Morsi to go, to be published on his first anniversary. It collected 22 million signatures which must have represented a large proportion of literate Egyptian adults. The street protesters are said to have numbered some 14 million.

 

We tend to conflate ‘democracy’ (a system of government by the whole country), a political concept, with voting which is one but not the only process for achieving it.

 

Generals have not been installed to run the country .What has happened in Egypt is not so much a military takeover but more a massive exercise in people-power. Isn’t that what democracy is about?