Why Brand is a Dangerous Fool

A few days ago, a certain Russell Brand appeared on Newsnight. Much to the delight of the generally disillusioned left wing viewer, here was a charisma with a rant about revolution, everything being wrong, and why vote for anyone?

A worryingly large chunk of my left leaning twitter cloud seemed to latch on this call to not vote out of protest. Hence this short blog.

His argument here was that voting for the system gave it legitimacy it doesn't deserve, and what was needed was revolution, not a slightly different brand of politicians.

Like all persuasive arguments, it has some basis in truth. There is little difference between the UK's two major parties .. BUT ..

Let's look at the NHS. If you seriously believe a Labour government in power would be selling off the NHS on the quiet as the Tories are, then maybe you have a point. I however, despite being willing to admit there is little in major reform policies between the two parties, can't see it myself. So let's assume I'm right here and if Labour was in power right now, the NHS would not be being dismantled.

Let's also take ATOS. A scheme introduced by the right wing that has arguably caused multiple early deaths and suicides. This is important. It's not a minor policy quibble. It's something else I don't believe Labour would have implemented that has and is causing very real damage to people.

What Russell Brand has just called for, as an appeal to the disillusioned left was in effect "Forget it lefties, don't vote. Let the Tory's win". This annoys me, and this is why I call him a dangerous fool.

If as part of your left leaning thinking, you believe cash flow perhaps isn't as important as avoiding human suffering where possible, then even if the existing Labour party doesn't represent your ideal government, it's still the option to vote for. Basically, that you should have got off your ass and voted for *something* if you wanted to help avoid needless human suffering, premature deaths and suicides. Otherwise you are complicit.

If you really hate Labour? Sure. Set up your own party representation, give it a shot. While you're grumbling about lack of representation, your wish for an ill-defined revolution though .. you might want to actually turn up at a voting station every once in a while and stick two fingers up at the right wing in which ever way you wish to do so.

One step further. I've heard a few times the argument that you have to let the right wing win, so that things get really bad, and this mythical revolution can occur. This .. will only take a moment.

So what these people are saying is, the needless suffering and hastened deaths that occur in pursuit of a revolution are valid. Whereas the needless suffering and hastened deaths that occur due to an unchecked free market / right wing agenda are evil. I'll go a step further. I think the needless suffering and hastened deaths that occur because left thinking people decided to not vote out of apathy or some form of ill judged protest are just as disgusting as the other options.

Read that last paragraph back. Can you see what I see? Where's the evolution in thought to a more caring society? Nowhere. If that's your basis for revolution, I don't want to have anything to do with it. You're just as demented as the people you claim are demented.

Yup. Russell Brand is a dangerous fool indeed.

Syria

It won't fit on twitter, and I don't like monologuing so much on there, so...

It's not about Assad.
The aim of any surgical strike (if it happens) on Syria, will be to destroy weapons that Israel believe to be threatening to themselves whether in the hands of Assad OR whoever might gain power following Assad's removal.

This explains in part the US & allies readiness to strike. They really don't intend to get dragged in to an Iraq war scenario here. It's just destroy the weapons then leave Syria to fight it out again.

But it raises some issues:

Firstly Israel must not only believe that it's strikes on Syria earlier this year were unsuccessful or limited in scope so a risk still remains. That or Russia has recently supplied Syria with more advanced weapons that Israel can't confidently deal with.

Next that it has reached a point where Israel doesn't believe it's safe for them to strike again to remove this threat as they have done in the past. Far safer for Israel to get America & chums to do it for them to avoid direct retaliation.

Next up? That Russia has knowingly provided more advanced weapon capabilities to Syria presumably in response to Saudi and US constantly funding the rebels for dubious reasons.

So if you stand back and take a look at it, it's once again super powers that be using another country as the playground of political gain with messy results.

This time however, there are some problems. The Syrian military has already said it would view an act of aggression by the US as an attack directed by Israel and would fire on Israel in retaliation. Bluff? Bit of a gamble? Israel / US counting on the fact they can neutralise the entire Syrian threat to Israel in one strike? Well ... If Syria does respond with a successful strike on Israel, all hell will break lose.

Now .. it's at this point I get a bit worried.

In the UK in recent days there's been a dramatic up turn in immigration control stopping and "taking away for interview" any ethnic minorities they can scoop up off the streets. Today it was Victoria station in London, and Oxford that I heard of. Want to minimise the risk of terrorism in response from within? Strike first and round up all you can?

Tenacious perhaps. But then there's the build up of military planes in Cyprus today. Easily the preferred point for US attack on Syria ... But ...

Look back up at the top there? We started this ramble on the assumption the original strike was simply to remove arms that Israel regards as a threat. Now all of a sudden, we're looking at contingency plans going in to place for a prolonged engagement and presumably a successful retaliation from Syria against Israel. If that does happen and it is being planned for as a side effect of the initial strike? Then the term "All hell will break lose" is very carefully chosen.

The Egypt Problem

Just for the sake of own sanity faced with the barrage of tweets on the subject.

Let's go back a few years, to a point where it was widely regarded that Morsi supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, was without a doubt the US backed preferred government in Egypt.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-struggles-to-install-proxy-brotherhood-in-egypt/31552

Now since then. On a wave of optimism that the Morsi solution would hold, one of America's big five buddies, the UK, has been busy selling arms to Egypt. All sanctioned and approved by American political interest in the region. (I don't have this kind of info for other countries, I'm sure the UK wasn't the only one).

http://www.caat.org.uk/resources/export-licences/licence?rating=Military&region=Egypt&n=0&date_from=2010-01-01

Most if not all of that weaponry and body armour goes to the police and armed forces in Egypt. In the eye's of America and it's arms dealing buddies, that was all totally fine because Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood had the power and therefore the arms.

So what happened yesterday? The Egyptian Army moved to clear out a large Muslim Bortherhood protest encampment. There were preceding reports that the MB camp was getting heavily armed in readiness for a fight. If you dig through the AP post on what happened today, you'll find buried in there:

"Authorities said the encampment had been heavily armed and footage aired on state TV showed security forces uncovering stashes of ammunition and hand guns after storming the site."

Now I can't tell you which side is exaggerating the truth in their own favour here. I'm sceptical of the largely pro-US media coverage we get in the West, and I'm finding it a little hard to believe the Army just decided to go on a killing spree one day for no particular reason. If they did? America has problems, because someone high up in Egypt has decided to declare war on the MB using the very arms that America and it's allies have been happily selling them. It's worth also noting here, that many in Egypt reportedly view the Muslim Brotherhood as "terrorists". So in the eyes of much of Egypt, not a lot of sympathy is felt. They were told they had to clear the encampment, they didn't so ...

All in all, it's a complete mess, once again with a root cause looking like Western interests meddling in foreign affairs for many years leading to a complete breakdown.

So that's why I'm holding back on comment on the situation unfolding in Egypt on Twitter. It's simply too complex an issue to fit in to 140 characters and there's little I can link to that demonstrates my point of view. I don't trust the media bias in the official news sources that I have access to. I don't trust the knee-jerk reactions of many twitter posters on the subject. I don't trust Obama's intentions either. Many of the Egyptian tweets I've seen are virtually the opposite of the slant of the AP or VICE news reports for example.

Calls to end financial support or military aid are short sighted. The military aid has already been supplied with intent to give Morsi the fire-power to retain control (Ooops). Cutting more general financial aid is likely to harm the citizens that everyone claims they are most concerned about.

The media machine and Western government official lines are a bit stretched here. Obama condemns the violence mainly because it's focused on his own pet project the MB. A sane person would condemn the violence simply on the grounds that violence doesn't solve anything. However, Obama and his supporting nations have been arming and funding Morsi and his supporters precisely to gain control through violence, and then to retain that position via violence if necessary. The word "hypocrite" springs to mind again.

Also worth noting here, that amongst some, the assumption that all protesters must be the good guys is a little jarring. It wasn't the MB protesting that caused the coup that wasn't a coup. That was most of the rest of Egypt against the MB / Morsi. But people seem to like thinking in little boxes without too much analysis, so somehow, the MB protesters are now the good guys because it was a protest. Sure there should always be a right to peaceful protest, but that doesn't mean the protester is always right. Sigh. Anyway. That's one example of the kind lazy thinking that got me to write this.

If you blindly cheer for the MB on this one, you're cheering for America's interests against the will of Egyptians that was shown by the largest turn out for sustained protest in human history just weeks ago. If you cheer for the Army, you're cheering for what does seem to be unjustifiable force from an outside perspective. Who knows? What if the MB was shooting at the Army and police from an encampment containing women and children? Who gave the orders for the Army to move in? As yet, I don't know. What we lack as usual is clear unbiased reporting.

For now, it simply looks like both sides are deeply in the wrong.

It's a horrible mess. The best I can do is hope that somehow out of the smoke, Egypt manages to emerge with a non US installed government and some form of peace. Some in Egypt are predicting civil war and an eventual geographic divide. I hope not. But I guess those in Egypt probably have a better insight in to what's going on than I or most the commentators I've seen in the West do.

``Never Whistle While You're Pissing''

Excerpts from ``Never Whistle While You're Pissing''

by Hagbard Celine

From the Illuminatus! Trilogy

Seventh Trip, or Netzach (the SNAFU Principle)

"The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded,
condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignore, suppressed, repressed,
robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual
human being. The social engineers, statistician, psychologist,
sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of
industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are
perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared
blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not
fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and
try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish
it. the psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still,
the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix Teth: Hagbard's Booklet

" I once overheard two botanists arguing over a Damned Thing that had
blasphemously sprouted in a college yard. One claimed that the Damned Thing
was a tree and the other claimed that it was a shrub. They each had good
scholary arguments, and they were still debating when I left them. The
world is forever spawning Damned Things- things that are neither tree nor
shrub, fish nor fowl, black nor white- and the categorical thinker can only
regard the spiky and buzzing world of sensory fact as a profound insult to
his card-index system of classifications. Worst of all are the facts which
violate "common sense", that dreary bog of sullen prejudice and muddy
inertia. The whole history of science is the odyssey of a pixilated card-
indexer perpetually sailing between such Damned Things and desperately
juggling his classifications to fit them in, just as the history of
politics is the futile epic of a long series of attempts to line up the
Damned Things and cajole them to march in regiment.

Every ideology is a mental murder, a reduction of dynamic living processes
to static classifications, and every classification is a Damnation, just as
every inclusion is an exclusion. In a busy, buzzing universe where no two
snow flakes are identical, and no two trees are identical, and no two
people are identical- and, indeed, the smallest sub-atomic particle, we are
assured, is not even identical with itself from one microsecond to the
next- every card-index system is a delusion. "Or, to put it more
charitably," as Nietzsche says, "we are all better artists than we
realize." It is easy to see that label "Jew" was a Damnation in Nazi
Germany, but actually the label "Jew" is a Damnation anywhere, even where
anti-Semitism does not exist. "He is a Jew," "He is a doctor," and "He is a
poet" mean, to the card indexing centre of the cortex, that my experience
with him will be like my experience with other Jews, other doctors, and
other poets. Thus, individuality is ignored when identity is asserted. At a
party or any place where strangers meet, watch this mechanism in action.
Behind the friendly overtures there is wariness as each person fishes for
the label that will identify and Damn the other. Finally, it is revealed:
"Oh, he's an advertising copywriter," "Oh, he's an engine-lathe operator."
Both parties relax, for now they know how to behave, what roles to play in
the game. Ninety-nine percent of each has been Damned; the other is
reacting to the 1 percent that has been labeled by the card-index machine.

Certain Damnations are socially and intellectually necessary, of course. A
custard pie thrown in a comedian's face is Damned by the physicist who
analyzes it according to the Newtonian laws of motion. These equations tell
us we want to know about the impact of the pie on the face, but nothing
about the human meaning of pie-throwing. A cultural anthropologist,
analyzing the social function of the comedian as shaman, court jester, and
king's surrogate, explains the pie-throwing as a survival of the Feast of
Fools and the killing of the king's double. This Damns the subject in
another way. A psychoanalyst, finding an Oedipal castration ritual here,
has performed a third Damnation, and the Marxist, seeing an outlet for the
worker's repressed rage against the bosses, performs a fourth. Each
Damnation has its values and uses, but is nonetheless a Damnation unless
its partial and arbitrary nature is recognized. The poet, who compares the
pie in the comedian's face with Decline of the West or his own lost love,
commits a fifth Damnation, but in this case the game element and the
whimsicality of the symbolism are safely obvious. At least, one would hope
so; reading the New Critics occasionally raises doubts on this point.

Human society can be structured either according to the principle of
authority or according to the principle of liberty. Authority is a static
social configuration in which people act as superiors and inferiors: a
sado- masochistic relationship. Liberty is a dynamic social configuration
in which people act as equals: an erotic relationship. In every interaction
between people, either Authority or Liberty is the dominant factor.
Families, churches, lodges, clubs and corporations are either more
authoritarian than libertarian or more libertarian than authoritarian. It
becomes obvious as we proceed that the most pugnacious and intolerant form
of authority is the State, which even today dares to assume absolutism
which the church itself has long ago surrendered and to enforce obedience
with the Church's old and shameful Inquisition. Every form of
authoritarianism is, however, a small "State," even if it has a membership
of only two. Freud's remark to the effect that the delusion of many men is
religion can be generalized: The authoritarianism of one man is crime and
the authoritarianism of many is State. Benjamin Tucker wrote quite
accurately:
Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression,
invasion, government are interchangeable terms. The essence of
government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to
control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the
nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it be made by one man
upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one
man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by
all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.
Tucker's use of the word "invasion" is remarkably precise, considering that
he wrote more than fifty years before the basic discovery of ethology.
Every act of authority is, in fact, an invasion of the psychic and physical
territory of another.

Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered
impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every
artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of
culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given
to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow
to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the
first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant,
and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, "Disobedience was man's
Original Virtue."

The human brain, which loves to read descriptions of itself as the
universe's most marvelous organ of perception, is an even more marvelous
organ of rejection. The naked facts of our economic game are easily
discoverable and undeniable once stated, but conservatives- who are usually
individuals who profit every day of their lives from these facts- manage to
remain oblivious to them or to see them through a very rose-tinted lens.
(Similarly, the revolutionary ignores the total testimony of history about
the natural course of revolution, through violence, to chaos, back to the
starting point.)

We must remember that thought is abstraction. In Einstein's metaphor, the
relationship between a physical fact and our mental reception of that fact
is not like the relationship between beef and beef-broth, a simpler
extraction and condensation; rather, as Einstein goes on, it is like the
relationship between our overcoat and the ticket given us when we check our
overcoat. In other words, human perception involves coding even more than
crude sensing. The mesh of language, or of mathematics, or of a school of
art, or of any system of human abstracting, gives to our mental constructs
the structure, not of the original fact, but of the symbol system into
which it is coded, just as a map-maker colors a nation purple not because
it is purple but because his code demands it. But every code excludes
certain things, blurs other things, and overemphasizes still other things.
Nijinski's celebrated leap through the window at the climax of 'Le Spectre
d'une Rose' is best coded in the ballet notation system used by
choreographers; verbal language falters badly in attempting to conveying;
painting or sculpture could capture totally the magic of one instant, but
one instant only, of it; the physicist's equation, Force = Mass X
Acceleration, highlights one aspect of it missed by all these other codes,
but loses everything else about it. Every perception is influenced, formed,
and structured by habitual coding habits- mental game habits- of the
perceiver.

All authority is a function of coding, of game rules. Men have arisen again
and again armed with pitchforks to fight armies with cannon; men have also
submitted docilely to the weakest and most tottery oppressors. It all
depends on the extent to which coding distorts perception and conditions
the physical (and mental) reflexes.

It seems at first glance that authority could not exist at all if all men
were cowards or if no men were cowards, but flourishes as it does because
most men are cowards and some men are thieves. Actually, the inner dynamics
of cowardice and submission on the one hand and of heroism and rebellion on
the other are seldom consciously realized either by the ruling class or the
servile class. Submission is identified not with cowardice but with virtue,
rebellion not with heroism but with evil. To the Roman slave-owners,
Spartacus was not a hero and the obedient slaves were not cowards;
Spartacus was a villain and the obedient slaves were virtuous. The obedient
slaves believed this also. The obedient always think of themselves as
virtuous rather than cowardly.

If authority implies submission, liberation implies equality; authority
exist when one man obeys another, and liberty exists when men do not obey
other men. Thus, to say that authority exists is to say that class and
caste exis, that submission and inequality exist. To say the liberty exists
is to that classlessness exists, to say that brotherhood and equality
exist. Authority, by dividing men into classes, creates dichotomy,
disruption, hostility, fear, disunion. Liberty, by placing men on an equal
footing, creates association, amalgamation, union, security. When the
relationships between men are based on authority and coercion, they are
driven apart; when based on liberty and non-aggression, they are drawn
together. The facts are self-evident and axiomatic. If authoritarianism did
not possess the in-built, preprogrammed double-bind structure of a Game
Without End, men would long ago have rejected it and embraced
libertarianism. The usual pacifist complaint about war, that young men are
led to death by old men who sit at home manning beaurocrats' desks and
taking no risks themselves, misses the point entirely. Demands that the old
should be drafted to fight their own wars, or that the leaders of the
warring nations should be sent to the front lines on the first day of
battle, etc., are aimed at an assumed "sense of justice" that simply does
not exist. To the typical submissive citizen of authoritarian society, it
is normal, obvious and "natural" that he should obey older and more
dominant males, even at the risk of his life, even against his own kindred,
and even in causes that are unjust or absurd.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade"- the story of a group of young males led
to their death in a palpably idiotic situation and only because they obeyed
a senseless order without stopping to think- has been, and remains, a
popular poem, because unthinking obedience by young males to older males is
the most highly prized of all conditioned reflexes within human, and
hominid, societies.

The mechanism by which authority and submission are implanted in the human
mind is coding of perception. That which fits into the code is accepted;
all else is Damned to being ignored, brushed aside, unnoticed, and- if
these fail- it is Damned to being forgotten. A worse form of Damnation is
reserved for those things which cannot be ignored. These are daubed with
the brain's projected prejudices until, encrusted beyond recognition, they
are capable of being fitted into the system, classified, card-indexed,
buried. This is what happens to every Damned Thing which is too prickly and
sticky to be excommunicated entirely. As Josiah Warren remarked, "It is
dangerous to understand new things too quickly." Almost always, we have not
understood them. We have murdered them and mummified their corpses.

A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more
precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of "monopoly in the means of
production." Since man extends his nervous system though channels of
communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who
controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of
society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every
individual's brain.

Thus in preliterate societies taboos on spoken word are more numerous and
more Draconic than at any more complex level of social organisation. With
the invention of written speech -- hieroglyphic, ideographic, or
alphabetical -- the taboos are shifted to this medium; there is less
concern with what people say and more concern with what people write. (Some
of the fist societies to achieve literacy, such as Egypt and the Mayan
culture of ancient Mexico, evidentially kept a knowledge of hieroglyphs a
religious secret which only the higher orders of the priestly and royal
families were allowed to share.) The same process repeats endlessly: Each
step forward in the technology of communication is more heavily tabooed
than the earlier steps. Thus, in America today (post-Lenny Bruce), one
seldom hears of convictions for spoken blasphemy or obscenity; prosecution
of books still continues, but higher courts increasingly interpret the laws
in a liberal fashion, and most writer feel fairly confident that they can
publish virtually anything; movies are growing almost as decentralised as
books, although the fight is still heated in this area; television, the
newest medium, remains encased in neolithic taboo. (When the TV pundits
committed le`se majeste after an address by the then Dominant Male, a
certain Richard Nixon, one of his lieutenants quickly informed them they
had over stepped, and the whole tribe -- except for the dissident minority
-- cheered for the reassertion of tradition.) When a more efficient medium
arrives, the taboos on television will decrease.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can order The Illuminatus! Trilogy over the Web from
The Robert Anton Wilson Bookstore

There are no words

Curious title.
Just another ramble on a topic I can't hope to fit in to tweets.

It's just that there is no alternative language or voice against the situation the western world finds itself in at the moment.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's been assumed that the good guys won. That's us right? The cold war ended and glorious American style capitalism won out over corrupt terrible communism.

Well that's the history we're told. Having learned more about how the media treats those the establishment don't like over the years, I begin to wonder quite how horrible East Berlin and the old USSR actually were. Probably quite bad. But ... dare I suggest .. just as bad as the "good guys" that won?

We have a growing perceived threat of terrorism. Increasingly domestic. That is people radicalised and ready to carry out atrocious acts without ever needing to travel to some far off easily blamed country. The only language I see in the main media against that is quibbling over just how draconian the surveillance laws need to be to catch these evil people before another bomb goes off.

I have another idea.

Why aren't we asking what makes a terrorist act against our own people seem logical to some? I don't know, maybe it's an illegal Iraq war, the injustice of Guantanamo Bay, blind support for Israel and it's persecution of Palestine, countless innocents killed by ongoing drone strikes ... you know .. stuff like that. Maybe it's us doing that kind of stuff that gives people the beginning of an idea that the only way forward is to blow something up.

Worse. Maybe it's the fact there is no voice in the mainstream saying "Hey! Maybe it's this stuff that's creating terrorism against us?!", that makes it even MORE likely for someone to feel horribly aggrieved against America and it's allies. If there was a political voice arguing against the hypocrisy then it would remove a huge part of the incentive for someone to go and make a bomb. Why would you? Wouldn't you join the party protesting the injustice, that has it's voice heard in mainstream media and shout even louder instead?

Yeah yeah. Go for it. Call me a terrorist sympathiser or something. I'm not in anyway justifying terrorist acts. I'm simply saying American acts ARE terrorist acts, or at least can very easily be interpreted as terrorist acts, and it seems highly likely that being a terrorist to others is going to result in some terrorism being done in return.

What do we do? Remove our own liberties and rights as a reaction. Maintain that we (the western world) are not terrorists, even though we commit acts of murder that we would call terrorism by others.

It's just plain dumb. It's a self perpetuating spiral down. I know "think outside the box" makes people spit in hate. But we are in a very small box.

Yeah. Again!

Maybe I should just call this the bitcoin blog.

Time to place myself firmly in the middle again. There are some on one side predicting bitcoin will die right back to $5 or even completely, on the other side are the hopeless optimists seeing it race to thousands of $ per BTC.

Me? I'm in the middle.

It is indeed on an entirely unsustainable ramp. That much I know. Well. I think I do. With every other commodity / share / currency that I know of. Yup. That's an unsustainable up-curve.  A whole bunch of logic in me tells me this. But this is something a bit odd, in certainly unusual times. If anything faith in traditional currency and freedom of exchange is on an increasing dive. That is going to mean yet more cash pumped in to BTC. So the question really is, what's the sustainable level? I have no freaking idea. It could be $50/BTC it might end up being $5000/BTC or .... god only knows! Somewhere in this range of freaky is a level it will eventually settle down to. It seems unlikely at this point that the value will be $0. It seems to have achieved escape momentum. It has, or is beginning to achieve that holy grail of currency, acceptance as a means of transfer and value for it.

It's set against a bizarre backdrop. The money printing presses of the world just keep going, and the stock markets and forex charts look super healthy. Everything has a David Lynch like saccharine sprinkling to hide any evil that may lie below. To me ... and well ... I could be wrong here. It looks like an increasingly dangerous disconnect. The viewpoints are incredibly polarized. The government statistics look increasingly, how can I put this? Imaginative. I'm not an expert in all fields, but I know a few have thrown hands up in horror at reality vs US commercial property occupancy and employment figures, and here in the UK we have some numbers that really don't add up on employment as well.

Maybe it's always been like this, and I'm late to appreciate it. That is possible. But gut feeling tells me (all praise the truthiness!), that maybe it has always been a little bit true, but now we're taking it to epic proportions.

Hell no. On a limb on this one. I've watched the EURUSD long enough, and the whole deal is ... bizarre. When the Greece crisis was originally hitting, things sort of made sense. Hits to the Euro gave you chunks in shorts. I mean. It went down. Things have changed. The market's still don't like it if the Troika look like they've lost the plot, but other than that, as long as Ben keeps printing, and Troika keeps just about getting away with it, there's no danger here folks! Up we go!

Once again, it's a people in glass houses scenario. Yes BTC looks crazy at the moment, but the rise is actually just due to demand, there's no mystery reason beyond that. People are just willing to pay that much for BTC at the moment. That doesn't make it invincible. But then look at the stock markets, they seem to be on an ever rising up curve based on money printing and bail-outs or bail-ins. That doesn't seem all that sustainable either when just about every underlying economic indicator tells you there's a hard hitting recession going on outside the stock markets. So who's the fool at the moment? The BTC buyer or the perma bull on the markets? Both maybe?

It's not just an increasing disconnect in finances I'm picking up. It's social as well. Thatcher's death highlighted it strongly today. I was alive back when Costello was singing and I prayed people would listen to Spitting Image. I remember being a teenager. Swearing with friends that we'd book a minibus together and go piss on Thatcher's grave. If you weren't in the UK around that time at an age to appreciate the hack and slash job Maggie did on the UK, you'll no doubt think that's cruel, stupid and evil. But million's of us did and do still think like that. We all noticed she supported apartheid, we hated her for it. Our skin crawled as she declared Pinochet a friend of Britain. We knew she was destroying unions and industry out of pure ideological malice against them. We saw all the jobs vanish and even now, lack of production and manufacturing sector in the UK that resulted. We even got to see her install Rupert Murdoch. Possibly the most corrupt and corrosive media barron the world has ever known. It was him that got her re-elected. The Sun knew it. They even bragged.


I'm not glad she died.

I wish she'd never existed.


If I can?
Yes.
I'll keep the promise to my friends.
If I have caused harm to anyone as much as Thatcher did to a nation. You're welcome to piss on mine.

Meanwhile ... Those that credit Thatcher with easy wealth and massive growth in the finance industry, who worship her vicious direct style of leadership "she got things done". Can't understand why there were street parties the night she died. Strangely, these people also seem to own virtually every single newspaper, radio and television station. I can't think of a single world leader except for known established dictators who's death has inspired celebration. I'm certain Maggie will be buried in a very secure location, probably with CCTV monitoring, so I and many like me, won't ever get the chance to stay true to our promises of years ago. What level of social disconnect are we managing to achieve here? It's beyond strange. It's a society living in some kind of psychosis.

Global Warming

From Twitter

David Davies @davidtcdavies 9:50 PM (27th March 2013)

"Where's the global warming? Maybe govt shud create tax breaks for high carbon industries. Cheap bills, jobs & warmth (if greens r correct)"


David Davies. The man here showing zero reasoning skills is Conservative MP for Monmouth and Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee.

Why is he a moron?

Well let me explain to him and all the other "I'm cold, global warming must be bollocks" idiots.

Warming something is adding energy. Global warming is energy being added to the atmosphere and oceans of the planet at faster than historic averages / normals.

When you heat something up, you make it more chaotic. The little particles go bounce bounce bounce. That's what heat is. Tiny little atoms and molecules going ping ping ping all over the place extra fast.

When you heat up the entire globe, the same thing happens. The overall average temperature goes up and you get resulting chaos in the weather patterns. What does this mean?

This means you can get abnormally short or long periods of a certain weather pattern. You can have hotter weather or colder weather. The earth really doesn't care about the 10 mile radius around your house that much. It's busy with all this extra energy going ping ping ping around the atmosphere. So sorry brains of Monmouth, cold weather ALSO happens because of global warming.

I really wish they'd called it Global Entropy, because then moron's like David Davis might understand. I could be wrong. They might just stare at the word "Entropy" and look puzzled.

Warmth = Entropy.
Unusual weather = Entropy.

Got it?
Great now what the hell are you doing in a position of power and responsibility with an IQ of 12?

Digs a little deeper: This guy left school at 18, and was raised by the intellectual elite of British Steel (before the Tories helped it vanish), and the Territorial Army. His life funded by his "Something for nothing" family shipping company. He also makes the grade of Special Constable for the transport police. If you ever wondered how smart some of our police are? Here's a prime idiot.

When your political system is staffed by people who had their entire life funded by bank of mum & dad, and don't have a clue about further education or any reasoning ability you have a problem. David Davies you are the weakest link. I wish you would say goodbye.

Why so glum?

More thoughts that don't fit in tweets.

This one to do with a certain sense of gloom. You see, many people have this optimistic view that things are improving. I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but it's a pervading wish in society. "America is over the worst", "Europe is fixed", "Next year growth will return". That sort of thing. I guess it's fair enough to wish for the best.

But the problem I see is that there's virtually no drive or will for anything to actually change, and the causes of the problems that are popular to blame are wildly wrong. The Occupy movement had basically the right idea, but that largely (for now at least) has been beaten back and stalled. Other than that, you're very hard pressed to find even an activist movement, let alone a political party willing to take on the real problems.

And what pray tell do I think they are?

I think the system of wealth and how it runs our entire lives is perhaps workable in theory, but horribly flawed in it's current state. One of the manifestations of the current problem is in a curve of opportunity that comes with wealth. Lets concentrate on this one for now, because I think it helps explain why we seem to be on a hockey stick curve of doom.

If you're in the lower, middle, even low high end salary brackets these days, your money is largely tracked, identified, taxed and there's little you can do about it. You're in the bracket that can't afford legal tax avoidance. Or. If you can to some small degree, you're talking about a few thousand saved, enough to give you a smile maybe, but not enough to materially alter your overall financial position. You also can't afford to speculate on the markets to any real degree. Again, it's possible, but because the amounts that can be risked are fairly small, the amounts that can be made are also fairly small, and because you can't afford off shore accountants and brokers, the gains are going to get noticed and taxed.

At a certain point though, you're out of the woods. You can afford to offload all your tax affairs to experts in the dark arts of tax avoidance, and you can afford to pay the sums involved in setting up such schemes as a small blip compared to the quantities saved. You can also afford to speculate on the markets, you don't have to do it. Your broker will happily take that on for you, and unless you've picked a duff broker and tax accountant, you're pretty much home and dry.

The point is, at a certain point, wealth has been allowed to snowball wealth. Not just for individuals, for corporations as well. In the UK and USA you can find large corporations paying zero tax despite good earnings for the year in question. You can even find them being paid by the tax man just for having the grace to be in business and having good accountants.

You can muddle along with that sort of thing going on up to a certain point, but after a while, you begin to notice that far too much of the profit in just about everything is getting sucked out by those who can afford to squirrel it away and avoid the tax, or invest it to make yet more money to help pay for the money that's tucked away off shore.

This is just one aspect. The ability past a certain point for wealth to magically become almost untaxable because you can afford all the dodges and cheats available to you, and the benefit out weighs the costs. There are more. The culture of gouging as much money as possible out of any public expenditure is another, but that's another story.

So when you're looking at the world and wondering where has all the money gone? It's up there folks. At the top. In huge quantities. And it ain't trickling down.

If anyone can point me at a potentially viable political party willing to tackle even this one basic problem? I'd love to hear about them. All the serious political parties that I know about are funded by those exact same rich corporations and individuals. If you think they are willingly going to give any of that up you're just plain crazy. It's easier to let a few thousand commit suicide from austerity measures than even admit there's a huge wealth distribution problem.

You think I'm exaggerating?

See if this helps you picture the problem more clearly...

When is that going to change?

Well. I'd say it'll take civil wars, even international wars, financial collapse, mass poverty, and a huge depression to even begin to redistribute the wealth. I don't particularly want any of that to happen. It's just that's the only way I can see any of the current system changing in any meaningful way. Until then? Get used to things getting slowly worse, because nobody in power or close to getting power wants to do anything about it at all.

Hey. It's only human lives that get messed up and considerably shortened in the meantime. Don't be so glum. Us humans seem to love taking what could be a perfectly enjoyable lifetime and screwing it up for as many people as possible. It's how we do business. It's normal.

Adjustment

Just going to home in on a gap in understanding for a few brief minutes.

Countless are the tweets declaring austerity as a war on the poor. However...

Walk with me in my twilight, unpopular thinking mode for a while.

It seems to me that what's happening is more of a readjustment. We understand now that money itself isn't behaving that well. It seems that those in wealthy positions of power tend to extort the system, often beyond the point of criminality to retain and gain wealth. It seems avenues of legal or potentially problematic but virtually untraceable tax avoidance are openly available for the £150k+ earning of the world, and often used.

That accounts for some of the individual abuses of the monetary system. Now lets layer on top corporate abuse. The scope is stunning. From insider & high frequency trading, to thousands of offshore tax havens. from the lowly picking up unpaid workers struggling to get off welfare, via the rent inflating landlords coining it in from the welfare state and blaming the soul that had to claim housing benefit, all the way up to government scale manipulation of currency markets, bond prices and lets not forget the power of political lobbying in cash for gain.

The vast array of abuses of money are laid out. So what's with this "War on the poor" thing? Well ... If only.

I see it more as the results of the system attempting to balance what a £ or $ is worth against the world but still within the terms of reference that nobody really cheats that much. It's a bogus assumption, but it's not a war on the poor in strict terms. It's a huge unsustainable cloud of debt and expectation for cash returns that hangs over all of us. At the moment it's adjustment time, and the huge hole in world finances is being adjusted by demolishing any and all support that was provided to the poor and ill. That all vanished. The heads full of money (breadheads?) will see it as simply unsustainable without question of why. The bottom line counts. Cut the deficits by cutting welfare. It's simple. But.

Yes ok, I can see that simplistic interpretation and why the money of the world protects it's interests that way, but it's simplistic and lives in a world of denial.

The system isn't working because it's being abused at any level you care to look at. Money in effect is being syphoned out towards large corporations and the rich list tax avoidance schemes faster than Mr & Ms Jones on the Clapham Omnibus can keep up. If you keep punishing Mr & Ms Jones for it ... disaster happens.

Ok. So I was wrong about expecting a market crash in 2010-11. I still think it would have happened i it wasn't for massive central bank / ECB intervention, but that's beside the point. We're here now. And here's what I'll cast out for now in my own limited sphere of knowledge.

The UK is going to be hit in April with cuts it didn't even know were coming. A huge number of people probably won't even realise where all the spare money has gone until June or July. Austerity cuts have been scheduled on a scale and depth beyond which even fairly switched on readers and observers will expect. I'm a cynical bugger, and even I'm caught out by finding new implications for the cuts about to start biting. Even smug little me is going to get a bigger bill or two come April, despite my best efforts.

So here's how I see it ...

The UK is in for a horrific 2013. The extent of which probably won't begin to bite home till late summer. By the time autumn swings around and official statistics have caught up, Britain will be already staring the kind of recession people have muttered about in the face. It won't just be a theoretical "As bad as the great depression" problem. It'll be here. Now. In pretty much everyone's face.

The British though are a docile race. It's fair to say the probability of civil disobedience on a massive scale will be much higher, but then again, the chances of the British getting of their arse's and doing anything about it are also reasonably slim. At this point though, we'll be diving back past "Poll Tax" riot potential in to new, uncharted realms.

The bad news is. Some of you will die as a result. I might be one of them. Cuts in healthcare will reduce life expectancy. The homeless can expect significantly shorter lifespans. Some of us will even commit suicide in the face of impossible odds. I'm afraid that all comes with the territory ... but .. while you die ..

Relax.

Smile.

It's not a war on the poor. It's simply a religious faith in money and it's protection taking precedence over life and humanity. The banks will be fine. Most the hedge funds will somehow survive. The core will survive. And .. that's all that matters ... right?

Games games games

A few quieter days have passed. A bit of time for reflection. This time thought experiments in game playing.

This one at least in part prompted by the few measures Obama did manage to implement regarding gun control. First lets appreciate the extremes of emotion and potential solutions.

On one extreme we have the "no guns at all" lobby, at the other is the "arm everyone" brigade, in between of course a myriad of combinations and choices including indifference. For once, lets not dwell on who's right and who's wrong. The first point worth considering is that any person selected at random across that entire spectrum will agree they don't want another massacre of children. That's a pretty major revelation if you can disengage from your own passionate viewpoint for long enough. All parties agree on a final desirable result, the problem is consensus on how to get there.

So there's your game set up. Common desire to prevent atrocities. Wide range of view points. So ... what happens? A compromise deal is produced by Obama. It doesn't satisfy those wanting much tighter gun control, and it doesn't satisfy those that want to arm everyone. This is a recurring pattern and is a leading cause of "kicking the can" on all sorts of problems.

In a pseudo game theory sense. The legislation produced is a result of multiple conflicting pressures for different solutions to a common problem. In game theory, this happens fairly often. Rather than an optimal outcome, a fudged or sometimes even worse possible outcome is the result.

Does this matter?

Well, in many instances. No. Humankind has been muddling along with fudged middle ground solutions for a long long time, and is likely to for the foreseeable future. In most cases, compromise solutions will sort of work for long enough for the next crisis to be averted a few years, then we can repeat the process once more.

The times when it does matter, are when the compromise solution is still harmful to a significant population.

All good clean fun, and it's a handy framework to have. Enables one to sit back and take a wider view of many issues in the world ... but just before that smug feeling takes hold...

There's a problem. Compromise is achieved due to conflicting pressures. It's not ideal, but that tends to be the result. Now if you sit back comfortable in the knowledge that another mediocre solution will appear, a source of pressure is removed and the end result will be skewed towards the side that shouted loudest.

Knowing all of the above doesn't remove the need to campaign, educate and shout for what you believe is right. It just makes it feel a little more like being a hamster stuck on a never ending treadmill. Keep running hamsters. It's frustrating, often pointless and the end result is almost never what you wanted ... but that's the way it works.

Further down the sprial

Thoughts on crumbling empires.

This started from a bit of a thought experiment I've been tinkering with. I wondered if for a change, I'd have the guts to announce future predictions on what happens next in Europe and America. After batting the ideas around for a while, I realised I couldn't, but ... I could narrow it down.

I'm basing this on the concept of de-leveraging that's occurring in the world. It's not the banks rebalancing books to safe levels in particular, and the upper say 20% of America and Europe certainly aren't loosing much in the way of creature comforts. All the correction of unsustainable debt appears to be falling on the poorer end of society through tax hikes, food inflation, welfare and healthcare cuts. This is where the missing billions of correction to the system appear to be coming from.

Now I tried to guess how this would play out. A fair number of analysts are predicting a turn around for national finances in 2013. "We're through the worst" sort of thing. I don't buy that so much. In the UK cuts are only just starting to bite, in Spain and Greece lost tax revenue from the oceans of unemployed and an increasing unwillingness or inability to pay tax are undermining any recovery, and it's just beginning. As I see it, 2013 is the year when all the Austerity talked about in 2011 & 2012 is finally going to bite for millions.

There's a disconnect to contend with though. I'm not in the grand conspiracy theory set. I tend to think the elites, rich list, 1%, 10%, 20%, whatever you want to call them act more though two things. Greed and a lack of empathy. From earlier scribbles, you'll know I see greed as a human problem that covers the entire spectrum from those in poverty, right to the top. The lack of empathy is more of a kicker. The end result is that top say 15% of wealth in any country doesn't really have a clue what all the tax cuts and care cuts mean in real terms for millions of less well off people.

But... It's not only the 15% that will politically support and maintain any measures that preserve the status quo of the top, it's anyone who believes they are near that bracket (even when demonstrably the intended cuts will leave them or very close relatives worse off), and the lovely Mass Media. The likes of Fox News and the putrid Murdoch's of this world are in with the top percentile. Far too many uncritical thinkers just go along with the political spin, and at time down right lies from low grade media aimed at them. They won't even notice huge stories being skipped entirely by the press and media. When things get bad later, they'll blame Muslim's or the Polish or the Socialists, or the unemployed. Whatever Fox News and Co. aim the cross hairs at.

So we have a system of inequality that is trying very hard to maintain equilibrium, and *that's* why I can't predict much. Logically, you'd expect things to fall apart in to fiscal defaults, companies going bankrupt and social unrest. However, with the vast majority of money in the world selfishly protecting it's own interests, and a big chunk of the population blindly following the resulting rhetoric ...?

I see two options ... That's as good as I can get it.

Either the interests of the money effectively win. That is, the poor are ground further and further in to debt slavery and ill health. Inequality soars, but the state puts in place increasingly draconian policing and social control. Eventually it wouldn't matter if three major banks all did fail, or if every pension pot in the land got emptied. Once the oppression reaches a certain state, what's the public going to do about it even if the main stream media is kind enough to let them know about it?

Or! The more optimistic version. Things break before we find ourselves living as slaves in police states. Major losses are sustained by the financial sector and hit a big chunk of the 15% top end. I say optimistic. Actually it's almost as miserable as the other option. You could reasonably expect major social unrest and a period of huge political and financial uncertainty before things get any better.

Fun huh? Yup. That's how I see the two main potential outcomes of the current situation.

Oh wait.

Except...

War.

But who is brave enough to predict the next war in scale, location, involvement or scope?

Not me. But it is the other option.

The Gun Debate (cynical version) MOAR GUNS!

If you ever wanted a study in flawed logic, some of the messages and debate coming out of America following the vile tragedy of the recent school shooting is a good place to start.

It stirs emotion. This is good. But...

I follow a bit of an eclectic bunch on Twitter even after my own selective preferences, so I see a weird and broad spectrum of reactions scroll past. Here we go!

On the far left are those who can't believe fellow Americans want to stick with free gun ownership. They look at gun death rates in countries with gun control and wonder why on earth people want them around. I'm with these guys. They are in a vocal minority.

Also on the far left are those that utterly mistrust the US Government. They want to keep any guns and rights they have to defend themselves against their own government. Many see a coming collapse in America and want to protect themselves when it does happen. This could be true. If you want to be a hero and you're sure you're right? Keep an illegal gun or two for the end of times.

A little way in from there are those arguing for a ban on assault rifles and semi-automatics (either or both). They argue this kind of tragedy can only occur with guns designed for relatively rapid fire, but they still want rifles, shotguns and many of them pistols. Some for reason of defence against criminals, some for the above reason of defence against the US government. I sort of get this. It would be a decent step in the right direction. I don't think it will stop the next school massacre though. A couple of handguns and clips full of ammo will do plenty of damage.

Moving to the right there is the argument that guns are not the problem, but a screening and mental health check of gun owners is required. There's a bit of a hole in this one. It seems the killer in this case took his guns from, and killed his mother. He wouldn't of had a mental health check. Here is where we start to depart from logic. This one is pure and simple "I want my guns! Blame and identify mentally ill people!" ... Little realising it's their guns that can be used by the loony and that health screening won't catch everyone who has a bad Monday.

Sadly also in here are those who jumped to identify asberger's as a mental health problem that caused the shooting. Just no. I'm not aware of any link for decades between asberger's syndrome and violence. Cut that crap out.

There's another one in here that it's violent video games that do it. Not the guns. Oh jeez. Really? Well ok. You run your own nation. Go ahead. Ban all violent video games. I bet you in a few months time even after a ban like that, another bunch of innocents will be shot and you'll be looking for something new to blame. This one really is insane. The kinds of violent video games they are talking about exist in all the gun control countries as well. They have death rates sub 20 per year. America is 9,000+?! Logic fail and again "I want my guns! Blame something else!".

[Yes. There is an argument for trying to persuade the public that age limit's on games mean something. Wandering off on my own view for a while, the same is true for DVD's. It seems to be trivial for parents now to ignore age ratings on video and games simply because they have an older child that wants to watch it or play it. I don't think that's right. I don't think the age ratings games and DVD's get are always right either, but it would be better to have parents try harder to enforce the guidance. Kid's are exposed to enough violence and stress via main stream broadcast media already. There are good reasons why we put time and money in to rating films and games. But I digress...]

Further right are those wanting to give all school staff bullet proof vests and concealed firearms to protect the children they send to school. Oh come on! MORE guns will solve gun crime? Every nursery teacher wants to be Rambo? Logic here has taken an acid trip but .. spot the meme yet? "I want my guns!"

And in an odd camp. All on it's own. Are those that simply say "They aren't taking my guns". These guys also say "I want my guns!"

There are some (mainly women I've noticed) who have decided they now need to buy and train with firearms out of fear. I can see the fear, of all the reasons, I can see the straight line logic at work on this one, but ... ouch. This was a mum who was shot and her guns taken to commit mass murder, and here's a bunch more women (people in general) motivated to go buy guns and keep them at home. This is the self-perpetuating "I want my guns" logic at work. It's fear. America wants guns because they live in fear? Possibly. It's still more guns though.

My own position can be expressed a little like this:
"Hey! Everyone in the UK. We've had gun control for ages, but it's clearly a restriction on our freedom. So all those in favour of everyone having a semi-auto handgun and an assault rifle raise a hand!". Looks around the room. Looks at America. No. That's not going to work here. We don't get classroom's full of children slaughtered with guns much, and we're pretty ok with that. Virtually nobody in the UK would even entertain the thought of adopting US gun culture.

I'd call that pretty clear cut from my "smug, self satisfied European outlook". Yup. We are smug. Our kids don't get shot at the rate of 30+ mass killings in schools since 1999. That's something to be smug about. I'm smug. I'm self satisfied, and the children are not getting shot.

Looking back at the spectrum of response in America to the idea of gun control? Change is going to be incredibly hard. I know Obama made some "we must change" noises. But I'm not seeing much in the way of substance yet. Cynical me also realises that we've seen so many multiple shooting incidents in America, why should this one change anything?

So .....

Innocent children died. Horribly. I can't imagine the fear and horror of the dead or of those who survived. I'd expect that kind of trauma to scar many of them for life. It's vile and disgusting.

The chances of America actually changing? Are minimal indeed. I hope. But I doubt. The vast majority of reactions boil down to "I want my guns!".

Sorry America. You want them? Then you get used to people dying by them, and incidents like 20 children being slaughtered should be page 12 news. It comes with the territory.

Pond scum

Despite my best efforts.
"Pond Scum"
A reasonably accurate way to describe the human race.

We learn nothing. Despite knowing it for years. Example? Oh I don't know, take the recent UK paedophile revelations. Looks on shelf. Yeah. Lets take the Leveson report and Murdoch as well.

What's going on here then? Well. A bunch of people did illegal, immoral and wrong things. Raping children, hacking a dead girl's voice messages, bribing the police and so on and so on.

This happens because as a species we already know that if 49 people in the room say "Ah just do it. Press the button, give the guy a 240v electric shock and then we can all go home". The chances are the guy on the button, whether he wants to or not, will fry the victim. Peer pressure. We all suffer from it.

Where we excel at being pond scum however is:

We naively assumed that our governments and officials in places of power were somehow better than that. Wrong. Actually, if you give people power and opportunity to cover things up, they'll tend to go with that. Stop wagging your finger at the government. I'll bet you're just as bad. I am. It's just my lies and cover ups tend to extend to covering up for forgotten appointments, instead of forgetting to mention to anyone about this guy raping small children or taking a bribe as a police officer.

Thing is. The government and the police get the chance to cover up *really big things!* for years and years and years. Better yet, they can get fairly wealthy at the same time. It's win win.

The other factor in our pond scum skill is:

We have no culture at all for dealing with it. There is no incentive for anyone to break rank and reveal wrong that they've been a part of. First, they'll get victimised by everyone else that's still in on the cover up. But being a brilliant bunch, the general public, despite being better off for the knowledge will lynch them as well. Maybe 2% of the population will be smart enough to go "Hey thanks! You're a bit of an asshole for all that, but at least you did the right thing in the end".

Leveson is pond scum gold. Corruption upon corruption, with only the corrupt investigating the corrupt, to find that they don't need to change anything because that would annoy the corrupt people that started the need for Leveson in the first place.

Paedophile cover up. Same deal. Huge public swell in demand for enquiries, some credible queries and evidence of very notable public figures being involved. And what do we get? Lord McFuckingAlpine. Sorry. Lord McAlpine (fucking), in my opinion deliberately trying to stifle public debate about allegations. To my knowledge, not one single case of libel has been heard or proved. Not one. NOTHING. McAlpine is 100% bluff and bullshit and the only reason that I can see for that is HE IS PROTECTING KNOWN PAEDOPHILES. They might be live, they might be dead, I don't know. But that appears to be his aim as determined from his own actions. Not one thought of "Maybe we should do the right thing here". Just pure denial, concealment and cover up.

Pond scum.
We excel at it.