Archive for the ‘Behaviour’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Is Sweden’s Green party fundamentally anti-semitic?

April 16, 2016

The Green Party’s Mehmet Kaplan who is the housing minister in the Swedish coalition government is currently in hot water after photographs were released showing him hobnobbing with Turkish, far right, neo-fascist extremists. He is seen at the same table as Barbaros Leylani (“death to the Armenian dogs”) and president of the Swedish branch of the neo-fascist Grey Wolves Ilhan Senturk.

This is not the first time Kaplan has been linked to extremist, islamic and anti-semitic organisations. As housing minister he is seen as incompetent and has also surrounded himself with an unprofessional personal staff. He is still in government as part of the price that Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and the Social Democrats have to pay for keeping their coalition going with the Greens.

(The Green Party leader is environment minister. She along with the culture and education ministers, who are also from the Greens, have not distinguished themselves particularly. But they cannot be accused of being extremist or anti-semitic – only of being incompetent and desperate to stay in government).

Kaplan however has been linked to islamic militants for some time.

  1. In 2014, Turkish-origin former Social Democrat member of parliament Nalin Pekgul accused Mr. Kaplan of being an “Islamist” with a “hidden agenda”. Writing a scathing editorial in a Swedish newspaper, the politician said that with Kaplan’s appointment to the ministry the government had “sent a clear signal to Sweden’s Muslims that the Islamists now have the support of the Swedish establishment”.
  2. Kaplan was also unthinking enough to equate Swedes joining IS with Finns fighting against Russians during WW2. Also a remarkable display of ignorance of history and an apologist remark – in any interpretation – for the IS.
  3. Mehmet Kaplan was arrested in 2010 by Israeli forces after participating in the Mavi Marmara flotilla, which was headed to the Gaza Strip. The Turkish-born MP was later deported from Israel over his involvement.
  4. During Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Kaplan called for the “liberation of Jerusalem” at a pro-Palestinian rally.
  5. When the Mohammed cartoons were published in Denmark, he thought it was deplorable and not applicable as an expression of freedom of speech.
  6. Kaplan hosted a conference in the Swedish parliament where he invited Yvonne Ridley, a member of the English Respect Party and a rabid anti-semite. He also invited hate preacher Riyadh ul Haq.

The Green Party leader Åsa Romson is also – like Jeremy Corbyn’s extreme labour supporters – so enamoured of the Palestinian cause that she often strays into anti-semitic territory.

Green party “co-spokesperson” (a euphemism for “leader”) Åsa Romson has once again demonstrated that the greens have great difficulty in making the transition from being demonstrators on the streets to actually being in government. Åsa Romson is even the Deputy Prime Minister. She has been silly enough to first compare the Mediterranean to Auschwitz and then to refer to the Roma as “zigenare” which means gypsy and as a term has officially been declared to be “offensive”.

Anti-semitism crops up regularly among local Green politicians. Birgitta Hansen of the Stockholm Greens has said the Israelis “behave like the Nazis – only worse”. Another local Green politician Jerker Nordlund has called Israel “mentally sick” and called for a global war against Israel.

The Greens claim that they have no more than a “usual” number of anti-semites among their members. But I note that 17 of 21 local Green parties have expressed their support for Kaplan. They try to excuse themselves by saying they are pro-Palestine and anti-Israel and not anti-semitic, but methinks they do protest too much.

Green Parties around the world have become a safe haven for former communists and far-left extremists. And among the far left (as with the far right) there is very hard core of fascists and anti-semites. Unfortunately the sanctimonious, self-righteous sections of the Greens are often too naive – or too stupid – to realise when they have been hijacked. The Green Party in Sweden contains a hard core of anti-semites. In Kaplan they also seem to have an apologist for islamic extremism and a not particularly good minister.

 

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Sweden | Comments Off on Is Sweden’s Green party fundamentally anti-semitic?

That iPhone the FBI (Israelis) cracked – “contains nothing of significance”

April 15, 2016

Much ado …. full of sound and fury … signifying nothing.

So, Syed Farook’s iPhone that Apple refused to unlock, which the FBI took Apple to court for, which was finally cracked by an Israeli company working for the FBI, contained nothing of any significance. Still, I suppose the FBI and Apple (and the Israeli security company Cellebrite) have all had their time strutting and fretting on the stage, and all publicity is good publicity.

But the FBI come out of this looking petty and silly.

CBS News: 

A law enforcement source tells CBS News that so far nothing of real significance has been found on the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone, which was unlocked by the FBI last month without the help of Apple.

It was stressed that the FBI continues to analyze the information on the cellphone seized in the investigation, senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports. Investigators spent months trying to gain access to data on the locked iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, believing that it might hold information on the plans or contacts of the attackers, who killed 14 people on December 2, 2015.

Apple was fighting a court order to assist the FBI in bypassing the phone’s security measures. On March 28, the FBI announced that it had managed to unlock the phone and was dropping the court fight with Apple.

The FBI has not disclosed what method it used to access the data on the iPhone but the method is believed to have been developed by a third party, a private entity, the government has refused to identify.

FBI Director James Comey said last week that the bureau has not decided whether to share details with Apple about how it hacked into Farook’s iPhone 5c. “If we tell Apple, they’re going to fix it and we’re back where we started,” Comey said. “As silly as it may sound, we may end up there. We just haven’t decided yet.”

As The Register points out the FBI were more interested in attacking Apple and actually did not expect to find anything. They probably always knew that Cellebrite could get into the phone but dinät reveal that to support their position in court:

The news will not come as much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the case: the phone in question was one of three used by Farook. It was his work phone and was owned by his employer, the health department.

His two personal phones were found by investigators, crushed and dumped in a trash can at his house. Since Farook had clearly gone to some trouble to destroy any digital evidence (he also smashed up hard drives and other digital media), the fact that the iPhone in question was recovered intact made it highly unlikely that it held anything of real value.

Regardless, the FBI used the existence of the phone and the shocking nature of the crime to wage a public war with Apple over encryption and access to electronic goods. Having mistakenly caused the phone’s cloud storage to be reset (some doubt it was a mistake), the FBI applied through the courts to force Apple to develop a way for it to pull all the information of the phone.

The court served an injunction but Apple refuse to honor it, claiming that the request effectively obliged it to break its own product’s security and would have implications far beyond the single phone.

Following a very public spat in which Apple refused to back down, and voices in Washington starting to criticize the FBI for trying to seek a legal precedent rather than solve a crime, the day before a legal hearing on the matter, the FBI suddenly announced it had found a third party that was able to grant it access to the phone’s data.

 

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Technology | Comments Off on That iPhone the FBI (Israelis) cracked – “contains nothing of significance”

UN cholera which killed 9,000 could have been prevented for $2,000

April 14, 2016

The UN peace keeping force which moved to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake introduced cholera which killed 9,000 people. Haiti had not, for at least 100 years, and possibly never before, had a cholera outbreak. A new Yale study shows that it could have been prevented if the UN had spent just $2,000 for advance health checks and preventive antibiotics for their troops from Nepal who carried the disease. The cost of the UN incompetence in addition to the 9,000 lives lost is now estimated to be over $2 billion.

Of course, Ban Ki-moon spent months spinning the story and denying responsibility. (Just as he is still denying UN responsibility for the sexual predations of UN troops in Africa). Naturally anybody on UN duty is immune from any prosecution – even for blatant incompetence or gross negligence.

It can only be considered incompetence on the part of the UN when the study states “Prior to the outbreak, there were no biomedical interventions in place to prevent its occurrence despite the recognized risk for spread of infectious diseases from military to civilian populations”.

JA Lewnard et al, Strategies to Prevent Cholera Introduction during International Personnel Deployments: A Computational Modeling Analysis Based on the 2010 Haiti Outbreak, January 26, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001947

One of the most severe cholera epidemics of the modern era began in Haiti in 2010, causing over 700,000 reported cases and nearly 9,000 deaths to date. Prior to the outbreak, cholera had been absent from Haiti for over a century. Several pieces of evidence have contributed to widespread acceptance that the epidemic resulted from contamination of the Artibonite watershed with infected sewage from a United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) base. The causative Vibrio cholerae strain was imported from Nepal and diverged from strains circulating in that country around the time 454 Nepalese troops were deployed to Haiti, and the first cholera cases in Haiti were seen downstream from the base days after troops arrived.

…. The cholera outbreak in Haiti arose from a confluence of preventable circumstances. Systemic inadequacies in sanitation infrastructure made Haiti vulnerable to water-borne disease, like other disaster-affected settings where peacekeeping operations are undertaken. Mass personnel movements from a cholera-endemic country and deficient waste management practices at a MINUSTAH base led to the introduction of V. cholerae to a susceptible population. Prior to the outbreak, there were no biomedical interventions in place to prevent its occurrence despite the recognized risk for spread of infectious diseases from military to civilian populations. While the UN has been reluctant to implement interventions in the wake of the epidemic in part due to uncertainties surrounding their effectiveness, our findings suggest antimicrobial chemoprophylaxis reduces the risk of disease introduction by over 90%. The low costs and minimal logistical burden of chemoprophylaxis relative to the other interventions suggest this approach warrants consideration as a strategy to limit risk for cholera introduction in future peacekeeping operations.

The Guardian writes:

The devastating Haiti cholera epidemic that has claimed thousands of lives and will cost more than $2bn to eradicate could have been prevented if the United Nations had used a basic health kit for a total of less than $2,000, scientists have found.

A team of Yale epidemiologists and lawyers has looked at how the cholera bacterium was introduced to Haiti by United Nations peacekeepers relocated there in the aftermath of its 2010 earthquake. Yale’s startling finding is that simple screening tests costing $2.54 each, combined with preventive antibiotics at less than $1 per peacekeeper, could have avoided one of the worst outbreaks of the deadly disease in modern history.

The Yale experts warn that the catastrophe in Haiti could be repeated as the UN appears to have failed to learn the lessons of its lack of preventive screening of peacekeepers. Some 150,000 UN peacekeepers are deployed from cholera-endemic countries each year but there is still no routine procedure to ensure they are free of the infection before being moved.

At least 9,000 Haitians, and possibly many more, have died in the continuing cholera epidemic that erupted in October 2010, it is thought as a result of untreated sewage from UN peacekeeping camps being dumped straight into a river. It was the first outbreak of the disease in Haiti in 150 years, and was almost certainly caused by the relocation of UN peacekeepers from Nepal, where cholera is present, to Haiti for emergency earthquake assistance.

Related:

UN’s own experts chastise Ban Ki-moon over handling of Haiti cholera outbreak

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour, UN | Comments Off on UN cholera which killed 9,000 could have been prevented for $2,000

US warship playing in Russia’s backyard is buzzed by Russian aircraft — what else?

April 14, 2016

The US Navy and a compliant press corps in the US and in Europe are making a great to-do about Russian aircraft buzzing a US warship playing war-games, in the Baltic. A long way from home and in the Russians’ backyard.

What's a US warship doing in the Baltic?

What’s a US warship doing in the Baltic?

What did they expect?

If a Russian warship was carrying out exercises just off the US coast, the US military would be castigated if it did not challenge such games.

NATO – after Turkey and Ukraine and Libya – is proving to be irresponsible. In Syria they could not do in 5 years what the Russians seem to have done in 6 months.

Baltic Sea Region

Baltic Sea Region

The Swedish military and the defence industry are pushing for Sweden to join NATO. I suspect that could be just the provocation needed for the Russians to do to the Baltic what the Chinese are doing in the South China Sea. Take over a few islands, build some airstrips and military bases and redefine the extent of domestic waters. It may not be Gotland in the first instance but Sweden joining NATO will increase the risk in the Baltic – not reduce it.

NATO expansionism creates a greater risk of WW3 than Russian aggression in Russian dominated areas of the old Soviet Union.

US Navy Press Release:

A United States Navy destroyer operating in international waters in the Baltic Sea experienced several close interactions by Russian aircraft April 11 and 12.

USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) encountered multiple, aggressive flight maneuvers by Russian aircraft that were performed within close proximity of the ship.

On April 11, Donald Cook was conducting deck landing drills with an allied military helicopter when two Russian SU-24 jets made numerous close-range and low altitude passes at approximately 3 p.m. local. One of the passes, which occurred while the allied helicopter was refueling on the deck of Donald Cook, was deemed unsafe by the ship’s commanding officer. As a safety precaution, flight operations were suspended until the SU-24s departed the area.

On April 12, while Donald Cook was operating in international waters in the Baltic Sea, a Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter conducted circles at low altitude around the ship, seven in total, at approximately 5 p.m. local. The helicopter passes were also deemed unsafe and unprofessional by the ship’s commanding officer. About 40 minutes following the interaction with the Russian helicopter, two Russian SU-24 jets made numerous close-range and low altitude passes, 11 in total. The Russian aircraft flew in a simulated attack profile and failed to respond to repeated safety advisories in both English and Russian. USS Donald Cook’s commanding officer deemed several of these maneuvers as unsafe and unprofessional.

After Syria, there is some irony in the US military accusing the Russians of unprofessionalism. Or maybe I’m thinking of competence rather than professionalism.

 

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour, Russia, Sweden, US | 6 Comments »

Panama papers probably a CIA hacking operation

April 13, 2016

That the CIA engineered the hacking and release of the Panama papers makes a lot more sense than the cover story of it being the work of “intrepid journalists” based on a whistleblower’s revelations.

CNBC: ….. the political uproar created by the disclosures have mainly impacted countries with tense relationships with the United States. “The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don’t see one U.S. name. Why is that?” Birkenfeld said. “Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation.”

…… Asked why the U.S. would leak information that has also been damaging to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, a major American ally, Birkenfeld said the British leader was likely collateral damage in a larger intelligence operation.

“If you’ve got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this,” Birkenfeld said. “But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn’t hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister here behind this.”

…… Birkenfeld also said that during his time as a Swiss banker, Mossack Fonseca was known as one piece of the vast offshore maze used by bankers and lawyers to hide money from tax authorities. But he also said that the firm that is at the center of the global scandal was also seen as a relatively small player in the overall offshore tax evasion business. 

….. But Mossack Fonseca was just one of a number of firms in Panama offering such services, he said. “The cost of doing business there was quite low, relatively speaking,” he said. “So what you would have is Panama operating as a conduit to the Swiss banks and the trust companies to set up these facilities for clients around the world.”

I find all the indignation about “avoiding taxes” a hypocrisy and rather stupid. The politicians make the rules and if anybody pays more tax (allows more of his wealth to be confiscated) than the rules require, then he is just plain stupid. Any company paying more tax than it should is failing in its fiduciary duties.

 

Tags:
Posted in Behaviour, Economics | Comments Off on Panama papers probably a CIA hacking operation

A back-lash against “authority” and the “establishment”

April 13, 2016

I observe that “authorities” are becoming much more strident and self-serving than ever before. They have become more lobbyists than authorities. They increasingly resort to advocacy – which is inevitably political – rather than being the objective disseminators of sound analysis – as they claim to be.

It applies to the World Bank, the IMF, many parts of the UN and virtually every NGO there is (WWF, Greenpeace, Amnesty….). Advocacy inevitably brings “spin”, and that leads, as I perceive it, to a loss of their credibility and their “authority”. But I also perceive a growing back-lash to this perversion of “authority”. The “establishment” view is facing an unprecedented loss of credibility.

This week it was the IMF coming out against Brexit. But it is so strident that it sounds more like scare-mongering than any reasoned analysis. The IMF has not covered itself in glory with their forecasts. They have been wrong in about 3 times as many cases as they have been right. I suspect that itself suggests that the Brits have much more to gain from Brexit than the “establishment” would have them believe.

Perhaps the “authorities” are turning strident to make themselves heard. But I suspect they are bucking a global “anti-establishment” phenomena that is just getting started. It was visible with all the various Arab spring events and it is increasingly visible in Europe and the US today. The EU is facing unprecedented opposition to its “establishment” positions; from Ukraine to refugees. Both the Democrats and the Republicans in the US are facing waves of ant-establishment protest. The stridency from the “establishment” or from “authority” is becoming counter-productive. The louder they shout, the less they are heard. When the ultimate establishment figure, the POTUS, attacks Trump, Trump’s numbers rise. When he supports Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders’ numbers rise. When the IMF attacks Brexit, the number in favour of Brexit increase.

I think the phenomenon arises from a resentment in being told what to think, by “establishments” and “authorities” trying to impose their politically correct beliefs (not analysis) onto others. The World Bank and the IMF write their conclusions before starting their analyses. Greenpeace and the WWF routinely exaggerate and Greenpeace even makes up facts. They have become no different in their tone to the Grand Mufti declaring that women who drive are exposed to evil or the Shankaracharya Swaroopanand warning that women will suffer rape now that they have entered forbidden parts of the Shani Shingnapur temple.

 

 

 

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour | Comments Off on A back-lash against “authority” and the “establishment”

When a foetus is no longer an unborn child – just a toe-nail?

April 8, 2016

Hillary Clinton has been criticised for calling a foetus an “unborn person”. The pro-abortion movement in the US finds this beyond the pale. They find that the use of the words “unborn person” implies that the foetus is an “unborn child” which of course is unacceptable.

So is a “foetus” not an “unborn child” and of no greater significance than an overgrown toe-nail or unwanted hair? To be cut off as and when desired?

NYMagazine: Hillary Clinton drew criticism on Monday after referring to the unborn as a “person” in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. “The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights,” she said, before adding, “that doesn’t mean that we don’t do everything we possibly can to help a mother who is carrying a child and wants to make sure that child will be healthy to have appropriate medical support.”

As might’ve been expected, both abortion-rights advocates and abortion opponents quickly seized on Clinton’s remarks. “Usually when you hear her talk it’s about the fetus,” Tina Whittington, executive vice-president of Students for Life, told the New York Times. “To acknowledge it’s a human person, a human child, to us it’s huge.” Other activists condemned her use of the word “person,” saying it implies the fetus is an “unborn child” — rhetoric the pro-choice movement opposes.

I don’t dispute a woman’s control over her own body. But equally she must take responsibility for her own actions. The question becomes one of liability and to whom. And when does a foetus gain an identity and become a “who”? I find that the current practice of banning abortions after a foetus is about 20 -24 weeks old (as the point when it is independently viable) somewhat illogical since the alternative to an abortion is not a premature birth.

Immortality of Identity:

So why should it be that preventing an egg being fertilised, which would otherwise go on to become a foetus, causes no moral qualms but aborting that same foetus after it has been conceived is so disturbing to some? Extending that thought, what is it that makes aborting a foetus and preventing a child from being born much less disturbing than terminating the existence of that same child after birth?

I suspect that it is our concept of “identity” rather than “life” which determines. ……

… Many societies set a limit of 22 or 24 weeks after conception as being the point when a foetus acquires the “right” to live but this boundary is irrational. This time is based on when a foetus – if born prematurely – is considered to be viable. I don’t find this very useful since the alternative to an abortion is not usually a premature birth. I note also that the probability of a foetus reaching full term changes very little after the first 10-12 weeks of a pregnancy. A 12 week old foetus has almost the same chance of being born as a 30 week old foetus. An abortion at any time after about the first 12 weeks effectively eliminates a birth which – with a 90% probability – would otherwise occur. After birth, infant mortality rates today are generally around 5% (ranging from close to 15% in the poorest parts of Africa to less than 2% in well developed societies). …..

….. A unique identity is recognisable first when an egg is fertilised. That identity cannot be foretold but it may be remembered long after the individual dies. It may in due course be forgotten. But whether or not it is forgotten, the fact of the creation of that identity remains. Forever. It is identity, once created, which remains unique and immortal.

The winner spermatozoon – image Gabriel Sancho

 

Tags:, ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics | Comments Off on When a foetus is no longer an unborn child – just a toe-nail?

Sweden tries to buy votes for Security Council place

April 5, 2016

Five UN Security Council places (non-permanent) come up for election in June 2016. Sweden is competing against Italy and the Netherlands for the “Western European and Others” place.

The elections are for five non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council for two-year mandates commencing on 1 January 2017. The five members will serve on the Security Council for the 2017–18 period.

No doubt there is heavy lobbying going on. A UNSC place is seen as a strategic – and ideological – objective by the Social Democrat /Environment party government. The Social Democrats especially see the UN as a minor God and they have already canonised themselves as Saints. (Their sanctimonious self-image has been dented lately as they have been forced to take less than “friendly” actions in stopping the influx of “refugees”).

In any event, the Social Democrats were faced with the problem of how to fund their lobbying activities while not seeming to bribe “poor” countries for their votes and tarnishing their own self-righteous, self-image of propriety. So they chose a round-about method of inviting 27 UN ambassadors of “poor countries” to an all expenses-paid jaunt in Sweden under the guise of an “environment seminar”. They funded the whole business through a number of intermediary institutions to hide the fact that the money was coming from the Foreign Aid budget and that the whole “bribery tourism” was organised by the Foreign Ministry. The Foreign Ministry arranged the “gift packages ” for the UN ambassadors (note that those invited were not environment ministers but UN ambassadors). It is not often that UN ambassadors get their business class air tickets and five-star hotel bills paid for by a foreign country. What exactly was contained within the “gift packages” is not known. The environment seminar, just for these 27 country ambassadors, was an attempt by Sweden to cash in on its “environment credentials” just before the Paris conference. A similar jamboree was also arranged in March 2015.

By FIFA standards, the Swedish bribes were just small potatoes and normally I would expect Italy and the Netherlands to have provided more. But a  UNSC place is probably of more prestige value to the Social Democrats in Sweden. There is nothing wrong, I think, in lobbying. It is trying to hide it which is despicable. The sanctimonious, self-righteous facade which covers Swedish foreign policy is always despicable but it has reached new heights (or should it be depths) with this government. If it was all for the interests of the country it wouldn’t matter much, but for the Social Democrats, ideology often overrides country interests (Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the PKK ….).

(I observe that the left parties in Europe and including the Social Democrats in Sweden, in their ideological zeal to support the Palestinians often come close to being anti-semitic. And they get into a tangle when supporting a Kurdistan).

Kronprinsessan och Prins Daniel tillsammans med ambassadörerna.

Crown Princess and Prince Daniel with the Ambassadors. Photo kungahuset.se

Swedish Television:

Ambassadors from 27 island nations and poor countries were treated to a free trip to Sweden in August. The official reason for the visit was a climate seminar. The bills running into millions were sent to the  Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, who in turn received 14 million kronor of Sida’s aid money.

The common factor for the visitors was that they each have one vote in the UN General Assembly, which in June will appoint new members to the Security Council.

To get a seat in the UN Security Council has been one of the current government’s major foreign policy goals. …..

After the disclosure the government … writes that aid money was also used at another opportunity to invite UN Ambassadors on a trip to Sweden. On March 10,  27 representatives of several small island states met the Aid Minister Isabella Lövin (MP) and Foreign Minister Margot Wallström (S), during a visit to Sweden at the invitation of the Dag Hammarksköld Foundation. ….

…… Niclas Kvarnström Manager of the Security Council candidacy, said that the UN ambassadors’ visit was a collaboration between the Foundation and the Foreign Ministry. …..

During the visit, the ambassadors lunched with Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, had coffee with Aid Minister Isabella Lövin and had dinner with Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. 

But the program was not mentioned publicly …. and they made no press releases.

The UN ambassadors also met Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel who received them at the  royal palace.

The Social Democrats together with the Environmental party makes for a dangerous mix. They are particularly good at “Do as I say and ignore what I do”

 

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour, Sweden, UN | Comments Off on Sweden tries to buy votes for Security Council place

Leonardo di Caprio’s movie was financed from corrupt 1MDB Malaysian fund

April 2, 2016

Di Caprio spends much of his time posturing as an environmentalist and anti-corruption champion, but I am not very much impressed. He chooses to support whatever is in vogue or “politically correct” or can get publicity, with little exercise of mind. Right now he is in Indonesia protesting against the palm oil industry and the Indonesian government has even had to remind him that he could be deported for anti-government activities.

It now turns out that his 2013 movie “Wolf of Wall Street” was financed from the infamous Malaysian 1MDB fund.

Wall Street Journal:

Investigators believe much of the cash used to make the Leonardo DiCaprio film about a stock swindler originated with embattled Malaysian state development fund 1MDB.

Despite the star power of Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese, the 2013 hit movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” took more than six years to get made because studios weren’t willing to invest in a risky R-rated project.

Help arrived from a virtually unknown production company called Red Granite Pictures. Though it had made just one movie, Red Granite came up with the more than $100 million needed to film the sex- and drug-fueled story of a penny-stock swindler.

Global investigators now believe much of the money to make the movie about a stock scam was diverted from a state fund 9,000 miles away in Malaysia, a fund that had been established to spur local economic development.

The investigators, said people familiar with their work, believe this financing was part of a wider scandal at the Malaysian fund, which has been detailed in Wall Street Journal articles over the past year.

The fund, 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, was set up seven years ago by the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak. His stepson, Riza Aziz, is the chairman of Red Granite Pictures.

The 1MDB fund is now the focus of numerous investigations at home and abroad, which grew out of $11 billion of debt it ran up and questions raised in Malaysia about how some of its money was used. …..

…… The story of how “The Wolf of Wall Street” was financed brings together Hollywood celebrities with a cast of characters mostly known for their connections to the Malaysian prime minister. It detours through parties in Cannes and aboard a yacht, and spending on such embellishments as a rare, million-dollar movie poster and an original 1955 Academy Award statuette. ……. Shooting began in August 2012. Three months later, when Mr. DiCaprio had a birthday, the Red Granite principals forged a closer tie to him with an unusual gift: the Oscar statuette presented to Marlon Brando in 1955 for best actor in “On the Waterfront.” People who described the gift said the statuette had been acquired for around $600,000 through a New Jersey memorabilia dealer. …..

 

Wolf of Wall Street Financing (graphic WSJ)

Wolf of Wall Street Financing (graphic WSJ)

So, what’s new?

 

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour, Malaysia | Comments Off on Leonardo di Caprio’s movie was financed from corrupt 1MDB Malaysian fund

Walk-through “intention scanner” will revolutionise airport security

April 1, 2016

The I-Scan will be on commercial trials later this year and soon airport security will again be almost as unobtrusive and as non-invasive as it was before 9/11.

The brain and its centres for emotion and cognition are increasingly becoming readable. Strong emotions create stronger brain waves and their characteristic brain-wave signatures are being “read” in ever increasing detail. Israeli research  – which has been classified as a military secret for some time now – has shown that “malicious intent” has a characteristic signature of brain-waves and that the proximity of actions based on the “malicious intent” are clearly connected to eye and facial movements. The new malicious intention detector (I- Scan) is non-intrusive and is based on detecting and reading the brain waves of passengers as they simply walk through what looks like a door – albeit a rather thick door. The I-Scan is built into the surrounds of the 1 m thick door and identifies anybody who has “malicious intentions” by monitoring the emanations from the limbic centre of the brain – the amygdala.

Within the limbic system is a small structure called the amygdala, a storehouse for emotional memories.  It is also the area of the brain responsible for our “fight or flight” reactions, our natural survival instincts.

The brain wave detector built into the I-Scan has to be within 80 cm of the subjects skull and detects a “malicious” signature within 20 ms. Malicious intentions show up clearly as tell-tale brain-waves, and together with facial muscle and eye movements, it can now be determined if the malicious intentions are also connected to actions planned for – or carried out in – a time proximity (about 3 hours) to the present (probability >99.99%). As the passenger walks through the door-scanner, an array of five cameras placed about 2 m ahead read the facial expressions and eye movements of the subject. The scanner has been tested extensively at 3 airports in Israel and now a corporation has been vested with the sole rights for commercialisation of the device. It is unlikely that the Israelis will make the technology generally available but they are expected to licence 2 or 3 US manufacturers.

It is envisaged that everybody would walk through the intention scanner. Only those who triggered the scanner would then need to go through a conventional X-ray scanner. The luggage of these passengers would also need to be X-rayed. Even using a “safe” threshold would allow over 95% of all passengers to effectively experience no delay whatsoever. They would just walk through a door. The other 5% would still have to undergo the usual X-ray scanners and a pat-down. Most of these 5% would be false positives for “malicious intent” but but even these passengers would experience a much speedier process. It would allow the number of security staff at airports to be reduced drastically.

“No hijacker or bomber or terrorist could conceal his intentions from the I-scan” said Dr. Jakob Malinowski of The Israeli University of Bio-Competence. “We have been developing the scanner for almost 10 years and it is now ready to be rolled out. It has already been on trial – secretly, and very successfully – at 3 airports. It is so unobtrusive that nobody has even noticed”. 

The scanner is now being produced by Bethmalion-I Ltd., at the rate of about 50 I-Scans per month. Production is being ramped up and it is expected that given a sufficient number of licencees, the I-Scan could have been rolled out to most “friendly” airports within 3 years. It is not expected that the Russians or the Iranians or others considered “unfriendly” will even be allowed to just purchase the I-Scan.

I have always felt that every increase of security is a sort of victory for the terrorists. We will never return to the innocent days when there was no security, but the I-Scan could both simplify the entire security process and provide a much greater level of security. That will begin to redress the balance.

It is expected that the I-Scan will have many other applications (concert halls, football stadiums, government buildings and the like).

Tags:,
Posted in Behaviour, Israel | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »