Do you have a whistle? Let’s blow it!

It is a grey morning

Bob wakes up… brrr another hurricane arrived…. Lets have a coffee… Floods… Suddenly the phone ringing…

“Hi Bob, the boss asked me to tell you to go to the Watergate complex. Some guys braked in yesterday. Have a nice swimming hic..hicc”

It is June 17 1972 Washington. The hurricane “Agnes” caused the biggest flood in 100 years in the Capital.

And one other hurricane appeared. Bigger than “Agnes. A political one.

Why Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein made history?

They have managed to blow up a case of the abuse of the POWER by an American president. (I hope you remember what we were thinking previously about power)

What is the end of the story?

-       Bob and Carl each got a Pulitzer Prize; (Bob got later another one as well.

-        The informant or whistle blower called later the “Deep Throat” dies about 35 years after the event – his identity was publicly revealed only then. Mark Felt considered being the only informant, but most likely Bob and Carl would never write down a single word, unless they would not be able to verify the information given by Mark from various sources. So the other Deep Throats will remain anonymous and rest in peace…

 

-       After his death Mark was called an American Hero.

-       Richard (Nixon) resigned and was pardoned by his ex vice president Gerald (Ford); He lived his life and enjoyed all the privileges of a retired president;

-       The Watergate scandal resulted in 69 government officials being charged and 48 being found guilty.

Why at June 16^th 1972 late it the evening five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, were trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex?

INFORMATION

But the history as usual repeats itself…

Carl writes another article 40 years later (this time without Bob). 9^th of July, 2012; And he compares Rupert Murdoch’s phone hacking scandal to the Watergate…

You can compare indeed.

In the middle of the scandal (and left on the photo)it is Andy (Coulson), former press chief to Prime Minister David (Cameron)…

Do you remember David from our previous story?

Yes, this is the same David… He once learned a bitter lesson.

David, when he was still wearing shorts at Tory’s headquarters, spent some time under Sir Norman (Lamont). Sir Norman was among those, who decided to enter to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) at 1990. The same Sir Norman, as Chancellor was forced to quit the same mechanism at 16^th September 1992.

From our point of view we only need to know, that David was working as Special Adviser to Sir Norman.  The name of that day is the “Black Wednesday” (must have been a big fun for DavidJ)

So what’s happened at Black Wednesday?

 

George (Soros) made a hip of money after crashing the pound and the Bank Of England.

How could he do it?

Simple – he got proper INFORMATION and earned about 3 billion dollars… He was in right place at right time and he took the best possible action to take advantage of the situation.

Why this happened?

The British government had little clue what to do with their economy at the end of 80’s (Do you think they have more clue now? Don’t be too much optimisticJ). So at the end of 80’s it looked like a good idea to gather with the Germans and the ERM, as the system was working since its introduction. It worked till the re-unification with the East Germany. But suddenly the Germans and the DM (Deutschmark) got under huge pressure.

AT the same time Britain had an opposite problem – they were in the mid of a recession and instead of turning their effort to clean up their economy, to put in order their budget, they choose to go the easy way…

This is somehow comparable to the effect, when you have a pile of garbage under your dining table and instead of cleaning it up you choose to change the tablecloth…

And what about David?

David looks like learned only a part of his Black Friday’s lesson…

He realized, that the INFORMATION is important, so he went after it. He definitely benefited from his good friend Andy and won the elections.

But he forgot one thing – phone hacking will not give you sufficient information about you and your partner’s economic situation.

And betraying your own EU allies looks like another wrong decision. His Germanic phobia is understandable; I would also have nightmares from Black Friday, but in here he was no more a Special Advisor, but a Prime Minister.

David, did you hit this time a huge own goal? The history shall prove. (And I do hope, that I am wrong).

A last question. Did the participants do anything to prevent the black Friday type events? The answer is – practically nothing.

George made a lot more money under the same circumstances, but in other countries. The classical “recipe” is: overstressed budget with over valued local currency, slow and incompetent government reaction.

We can blame George, however better we blame our own governments. As George only uses an opportunity…

Remember the Black Friday and George, as we shall come back to this matter later on.

But we did not yet finished completely with David…

Richard of Watergate had to resign. David managed to keep his seat and this is a significant difference.

He was definitely smart, very smart and most probably managed to learn something in Oxford.

However, if he would spend more time with economics and less with arts and the Bullingdon Club, than might the history would turn different way.

And we need to mention the whistle blower in David’s case.

The Guardian, Monday 18 July 2011 18.04 BST
“Sean Hoare, the former News of the World show business reporter who was the first named journalist to allege that Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead.”
“The inquest into his death noted the irreversible damage caused to Hoare's liver by his alcoholism and his return to drinking brought about by the resurgence of media interest in the phone hacking scandal in December 2010. It ruled he died from natural causes”.
 Sean was 48 years old.

And what happened to David’s buddy Andy?
“He appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court on 13 June 2013 in private, represented by Richard Keen QC, no plea or declaration was made and he was given bail. There was a ban on reporting this at the time, but it was challenged by some media outlets and lifted a few days later.” The BBC news reported.

Anyone abused its POWER? It is up to you to make a conclusion…

I have promised to talk to you about moral issues… But the life goes on and it goes faster than my silly plans…

And there are few more important issues we need to look after…

Lets go back to Ed Snowden.

He is still enjoying the Sheremetevo Airport Transit Lounge hospitality (unfortunately for him, they do not serve anymore black caviar and Champaign)

The Americans want him badly.

According to the CNN “The U.S. Justice Department will not seek the death penalty for U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote to Russian authorities in a letter dated July 23….
Once back in the United States, Snowden would not be tortured and would face a civilian trial with a lawyer appointed to him…”


There is no one on this Globe, who would believe to the americans and especially not since Sacco & Vanzetti.

Snowden has no chance to have a fair and independent trial in the US.

Why they want him so much? 

Why no one wants Gerard Depardieu, who recently got a nice Russian passport?

Snowden was giving out secret information about his government violating the rights of a huge number of foreign individuals, organisations and governments. 

His government instead of correcting their own illegal actions makes a full scale campaign and put pressure on the half of the World to take Snowden back home – most probably with the reason to silence and isolate him 


or may be Snowden's Mummy asked Barack to get him back home, same as the Nation did with Private Ryan... So romantic...

I let you decide for your own who is right and who is wrong.

This entire story about Snowden reminds me about another recent event.


The Marte Deborah Dalelv’s rape case. The young Norwegian interior designer accused a Sudanese man of raping her in a Dubai hotel. After the attack she immediately reported the event to the Dubai police.

After a long investigation the court sentenced her to jail based on charges of committing adultery and consuming alcohol.
After a Number of Human right groups made a huge noise, Dalev was finally pardoned few days ago… She says, she is happy… Are you sure? 
As she was raped first, then lost her job, than sentenced to jail, than finally pardoned. But the rapist is still somewhere out there… (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/22/world/meast/uae-norway-rape-controversy/index.html)


Will Ed Snowden ever be happy? I wouldn’t bet on it… Does the American justice system shifting towards the Islamic one? Hopefully not, but at the moment it certainly looks so.


But from the point of view of our future thinking we need to record the fact itself, that despite the earlier propaganda, it turns out, that the biggest power of the World suddenly appears to be at the same time the biggest hacker as well. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23123964

It looks also evident, that more powerful you are as a NATION, more you can follow the principle of “THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS” – meaning you do whatever you want just make sure to show some results.

This in the meantime verifies our previous suspicion, that the INFORMATION has an extreme importance on both, NATIONAL and GLOBAL level.

We shall later analyse this subject (the INFORMATION) in details, but probably everyone will agree with me, that right now a full-scale information war goes on, involving private, corporate and government structures from all over the World. In this war there are no allies any friends or associates. This process can be compared to an early stage of an evolution process, where a huge variety of species fight for their survival.

Let me finish our today’s story with Charles Darwin:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”.

So never give up as the majority of the changes are still ahead of us!

Hammurabi forever

As promised, we shall travel back to the past, few thousand years…

But in fact it is a much shorter journey, as it is enough to go to see a piece of a bit over 2 meter high stone in the Musée du Louvre carved around 1750 BC or better to say about 4000 years ago (and discovered in Suza at 1901 – just in timeJ)

Just like in 1977, the Voyager was sent out to the outer space in a silent hope, that someone will find it with the message of humanity, the sixth king of Babylon, Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite) have left for us a carved stone. This stone is a proof, that people 4.000 years ago were seeking law and order. It also proves, that the ancient people created rules for their every day life.

And the difference between the Hammurabi’s code and the Voyager’s message is, that the code is useful in many aspects until now. The Voyager’s message is nothing, but a nice self-advertisement…

By the way the vinyl type disc sent to the outer space on Voyager would cause a problem to read for the majority of our children even today, only one year after the Voyager left the solar system and in about 20 years reproducing the content of such disk will be more difficult, than to listen now the first recordings of Edison… I do not want to criticise those, who created such a message; just it is another proof of what is long lasting and what is not….

 

It took 3 years to translate the Code of Hammurabi, hopefully in the outer space someone will manage to translate our disc faster…

Among the 282 laws, most of you will recognise"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” paragraph (sounds very brutal right?), but there is something much more important happened in here.

The same stone recorded a fundamental rule:

The presumption of innocence,

Sounds the best in Latin “Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat” (the burden of proof lies with who declares, not who denies)

At the same time the law suggests, that both the accused and accuser have the opportunity to provide evidence.

Since 4.000 years this principle is kept during the times of peace in the civilised part of the World…

There is one more reason why we need to mention the Code of Hammurabi…

It is in the meantime the first attempt to regulate the use (or restrict the abuse) of POWER among the citizens of Babylonia…

Some people say, that love is the strongest drug…

Kipling says “words are the most powerful drug to humanity”. I disagree…

The POWER is the most powerful drug known to humanity…

And since 4.000 years people try to regulate it (I am sure much more before, but we can prove this from 4.000 years ago only)…

Do you know since when:

-       Love is regulated?

-       Words are regulated?

-       Alcohol and drugs are regulated?

You can think of many things, but trust me; people try to regulate the power, since the beginning of the Human race…

For now we shall quit for sometimes the great Akkadian, who ruled Babylonia over 40 years and go a bit further in the history…

Since the Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” book and film, the Templars become a popular story…

We shall talk about Templars, but from a different point of view….

They called themselves the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici in Latin), or known, as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple (Ordre du Temple or Templiers in French) or simply as Templars…

Anyone remembers the lovely movie serial with Roger Moore the “Simon Templar”? (But this has nothing to do with our topics…)

So just imagine yourself at around 1100…

We are right in the middle of Islamic Golden Age.

 Pope Gregory VII defines the powers of Pope.

Henry the IV walks to Canossa;

The gunpowder is invented in China, however China itself is falling in parts;

Pope Urban issues the Crusades to capture the Holy Land;

After the First Crusade around 1119 Hugues de Payens (a French noble) and another 8 knights approach King Baldwin II of Jerusalem to protect the pilgrims. They established their headquarters on the Temple Mount. Then for 9 years nothing significant happens…

In 1129 the Order was recognised and confirmed by Pope Honorius II. In fact from this moment the story of Templars start to be more known.

In 1139, even more power was given upon the Order by Pope Innocent II, so the Knights Templar could pass freely through any border, owed no taxes, and were subject to no one's authority except that of the Pope. (hey, our UN peacekeepers can only dream about such privilegesJ)

By today understanding we can call the Templars, as a GLOBAL organisation.

Besides the powers they got, they were absolutely multi national, they were the first bankers of the Middle Age, they had an extremely well organised  devoted and trained army up to 20.000 people and they had their own reliable and by that time extremely effective information routes, channels and sources. (It happened once, that 500 of these guys led by King Baldvin, managed to defeat a 25.000 force of Saladin right in the middle of the desert… Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria happened to be the best military man of his time and he also used professional soldiers against the Templars..)

After their rise, the Templars possessed all the means of the absolute power:

-       Ideology (religion);

-       Military power;

-       Financial power;

-       Political power;

-       Information and scientific knowledge;

-       Control over “international” trade;

At 1300 the Templars made their last attempt to get back the Holy Land – with no success. This means, that their original purpose of founding (helping the pilgrims on the Holy Land) did not exist anymore. However they still represented an enormous military, financial and ideological force and intended to establish an independent state in South France (Languedoc) or in Cyprus.

Philippe IV, King of France saw his opportunity – deeply in debt against Templars, he took his chance to get rid of them… (a practice used often in the history – if you cannot pay your creditor, you better kill him…)

He secretly ordered to capture hundreds of Templars and ordered the inquisition to force fake confessions from them.

 Yes, this is still the time of inquisition, no mistake… So one of the basic laws the “presumption of innocence” was abandoned and confessions forced by inquisition were enough to sentence people…. (And by the way, later the investigators ordered by Pope, could not find any real crime or wrongdoing)

“Several significant changes in legal procedures had been made by 1230 that affected later trials, especially those of the Templars. No longer did a witness need fear reprisals if his accusations were proved untrue. Instead, a new system relying on the testimony of witnesses, judicial latitudes and the institutional procedure began to dominate criminal trials in most of Europe.^{” (}Edward Peters, Inquisition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989)

Why this is important for us?

We were talking about GLOBALISATION – this is not a new idea – from Alexander the Great, through Julius Caesar, Chinggis Khan, Napoleon, or the Templars, the idea to unite the World  (for various reasons) is not new.

In fact the Templars represent the first example, when a multi national organisation had the power, but did not want to take effective power directly into their hands and to rule. None of the members of the Order (including the master) had (or in other words, by their own rules also could not have) any ambition for any personal wealth or specific power. They were actively participating in Western European politics, however they remained by their original principles. The Templars served the GOD – in other words, the GLOBAL interests…

Still they could not escape their destruction.

Seemingly the national interests proved to be the stronger force….

Our other subject is the question of POWER.

The main reason for the French King to destroy the Templars was to regain his POWER. (He not only executed the Templars, but also intended to confiscate all their belongings – not personal ones, as they had none, but the belongings of the Order)

For this reason he was ready to use any kind of means. The behaviour of Philippe is a classic example of the ABUSE of the POWER;

And here we come to the next point, which you should remember as we shall discuss it in details later. The constant struggle between the NATIONAL and GLOBAL interests and the ABUSE of the POWER.

As a prologue, the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay confessed to the inquisition under torture all the charges against him. He was publicly burned at 1314…

However tens of thousands of Templars remained alive, either were protected in their own country (like Portugal), or joined other nations (like Switzerland) and numerous legends will keep them alive forever regardless to the fact, whether they managed to dig out something from the ruins of the Temple of Solomon or not.

If I did not make you too much tired, let me follow with another story….

I switched on my TV few days ago and saw Monsieur Dominique Strauss-Kahn… (Another French guy!!!)

Here you can follow the whole interview…

http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/09/cnn-exclusive-dominique-strauss-kahn-talks-europe-european-banking-and-the-infamous-perp-walk/

He looks much better, than 2 years ago. Definitely better…

First of all I do not trust any politician – including Dominique… And please, listen to me – never trust any politician!

But there are some basic questions and topics we need to think about…

The main candidate of the Socialist Party for the French presidential elections was Dominique…

He is a charismatic personality by all means. Very well trained and well experienced, with proven work and leadership record, worldwide known and accepted… And for sure accepted by his countryman as well. Finally, he was ruling an organisation, which is one of the main financial institutions of the World, and as such, he was sitting on the main source of economic intelligence worldwide…

Definitely it was of interest of several people, institutions and even countries to put him aside… 

Dominique was most probably set up. Not by an accident… But at one point his right to “the presumption of innocence” was violated for sure…. Nearly 4000 years after Hammurabi’s Code… Interesting right?

Once you have some time – just try to compare him to Monsieur Hollande… Oh lala!!!! The next choice of the French people with all the respect is a nice guy, who did not worked a single second in the real life, but made a spectacular advance in the Socialist Party of France…. Good choice my French friends! You have chosen a singer instead of a general… The consequence will be all yours!

And here come some topics of our main interest from Dominique in the TV interview:

He said: “Well, I think most of them (European Leaders) don’t really understand what globalization is. They have been educated, trained, they have, had a political life in one country- in only one country- and they don’t realize that Europe is not that big, it is a small part of the world. And the problem is, to solve the European problem, in the globalization, not against the globalization, against the globalization.”

With this question I would like to deal later, a bit more in details as it is really important. For some this is boring, for others sounds interesting – for me challenging… In the interview Dominique was very kind to the European leaders… As in fact only very few of them were trained at all, but on this matter we shall come back from another post.

Just remember the main topic of this blog (are we in war? What do you think? Yes or not???)….

Dominique mentioned one more important issue, which we will also discuss very much in details…

COMPETITIVENESS…

Here it comes from Dominique…

“Well, you have to work on the competitiveness. The history is too long to be said today, but a country, like France, like UK, like Germany also, has lived for a century or more on the fact that they keep the technology for themselves, leave the rest of the world. And that’s over.”

 Jacques de Molay and Dominique the two French man, think about them….

For Dominique the only difference is, that the NYPD did not beat him to half dead, as it happened at 2012 October to Ehud Halevy in a community center… (http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/oct/15/2-nypd-officers-investigated-assaulting-man-community-center/)

Hey Dominique, you are a lucky guy!!!!!!

Dominique said one more interesting sentence during the interview:

“I wasn’t thinking anything. It happened, something happened, which is a private thing and I still say what happens in a room is a private thing unless the prosecutors find something to tell you that you are going to be charged for something and they have proof of that..”

Hey Man! Dominique, your memory is so short! To your good friend Bill also something was repeatedly happening in the Oval Office! And he managed to settle the story not only with Hillary, but also with this naughty Congress! (The only consequence, which Bill got, is a bypass - few years later… Hey Monica the heart breaker , what you were doing under that table???)

Monsieur Dominique, your main mistake is, that you did not ask your other friend, Barack to give the key of his office for a bit of hihi haha:-)) under the resolute desk, (While he is walking the presidential dog)… As in the US the Oval Office in the White House seems to be a more private place, than a hotel room in NY… Heh, what a mistake… 



I do really hope, that everyone learned their lesson, so your successor, the charming Christine can always ask a favour from the First Lady. Just she needs to make sure, that the dog is walking Barack or he is playing golf at the time of hihi haha:-)))

And I am still wondering:

Is this still the time of inquisition?

Ohh no!!!! (or may be???)

I might took too much of your time….

We shall follow up this topic with some further examples, in a hope, that we can slowly close to our main goal, of making some more deep analysis of the current economic wars and hopefully to give some hopes for the hopeless:-)…

I also plan in the next blog to touch some MORAL ISSUES, which are very important from our point of view…

I am sure most of you have seen or at least heard about Jose Mujica.

This old man told many things, but I want you to think further about some of his words… And as usual, we shall try to talk about this question from “another aspect”…

“Are we ruling over globalisation or is globalisation ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of “being all together” in an economy based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go?”