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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?

 

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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).

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In Scandinavia, Sweden becomes the example not to follow for integration of immigrants

March 31, 2016

Parts of Stockholm and Malmö and Göteborg have now some areas which are dominated by immigrant communities. With multiculturalism (as opposed to multi-ethnic under a common culture) made into a god of political correctness, Sweden has done relatively little to ensure the integration of immigrants into the country. That, in turn, has led to the congregation of immigrants into just a few areas and their subsequent segregation.

Both Denmark and Norway are now using Sweden as the cautionary tale and of how not to manage integration.

The Local: Norway’s integration minister has called for tighter immigration policies – to avoid the country becoming like Sweden.

Sylvi Listhaug used Sweden as the cautionary tale when speaking about recent terror attacks in Europe, as well as a package of asylum reforms due before the Norwegian parliament shortly.

“Many of those who have carried out terror attacks in Europe are born and raised in France and Belgium. It shows how important it is to succeed with integration and that is again connected to how many come to Norway. Therefore a tight immigration policy is important,” she said.

In the aftermath of the terror attacks in Brussels, there has been a debate in Norway on so-called parallel societies and neighbourhoods where the police don’t dare to patrol. Listhaug acknowledged that the problem exists.

“We have foreign fighters who have left Norway and [we have] radical environments. We should not stick our heads in the sand and say that everything is good here. But fortunately we are a long way from the conditions we see in some other countries, for example Sweden,” she told NTB.

The difference between multiculturalism with a fractured society and a multi-ethnic society with a common over-riding culture, is one of my hobby-horses.

A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

Of course one can have – if one wishes – many different cultures within different sub-societies in a single geographic area. But if these sub-cultures are not subordinated to a larger culture then the sub-societies cannot – because it becomes a fatal contradiction – make up any larger society. Multiculturalism dooms that geographical area to inevitably be a splintered and fractured “greater” society – if at all.

 

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Saudi Prince royally renditioned from Paris?

March 29, 2016

Strange goings on in the Kingdom. Prince Sultan bin Turki, (who is suing the Saudi government for being kidnapped in 2003) boarded a plane in Paris bound for Cairo, but didn’t arrive. It seems he may have been whisked off to Saudi Arabia. Saudi princes wouldn’t normally interest me greatly but he “is the third Saudi prince seemingly to go missing in suspicious circumstances in the last year”.

The US has made the practice of extraordinary renditions a regular and allowable action against its perceived enemies. Saudi Arabia, it seems, favours royal renditions. The orders may have come from King Salman but are more likely to have come from his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, who is also the power behind the throne

…. the BND, the German intelligence agency … portrayed Saudi defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman … as a political gambler who is destabilising the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria. – Wikipedia

The royal dungeons must be filling up.

The Guardian:

Staff working for a Saudi prince involved in high-profile legal proceedings against the Saudi government claim he has been taken to Saudi Arabia from Europe against his will.

Prince Sultan bin Turki, who has elaborate 24-hour protection, brought legal action in Switzerland against the Saudi government over a kidnapping in 2003, which he says left him with serious, ongoing medical problems.

On 1 February he and his entourage boarded a Saudi plane in Paris ostensibly bound for Cairo, where he had made plans to visit friends and his father, the Saudi king’s elder brother, who lives there. His aide made reservations at the Kempinski Hotel in Cairo’s Garden City district. But he never arrived.

“There was a Saudi plane with a flight plan to Cairo but the plane did not fly to Cairo,” said an associate of the prince who was with him in Paris. “This airplane had a Saudi flag on the tail. This plane came from the Kingdom.”

The Guardian concludes

Saudi Arabia has long had problems managing disaffected royal family members. In 1975 King Faisal was assassinated by a disaffected prince, but until now there have been no claims that the kingdom might have a concerted campaign targeting defectors and dissidents.

Attempts to contact the three princes directly and members of their entourage received no response. The Saudi government and Moroccan authorities did not reply to requests to comment.

 

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The Raj reversed

March 29, 2016

A UK delegation to India to secure jobs in Wales.

Does not need much further comment.

cyrus mistry (chairman) and ratan tata (former chairman) tata sons image - bisinesstoday

cyrus mistry (chairman) and ratan tata (former chairman) tata sons (image – businesstoday.in)

BBC:

UK union leaders have held talks in India ahead of a Tata Steel board meeting that could decide the fate of thousands of workers. Officials from the Community union had “constructive” talks with Tata Steel representatives in Mumbai, where the board is meeting on Tuesday.

The future of thousands of UK steelworkers is at stake. The Port Talbot plant in south Wales suffered most of the 1,000 job losses announced in January. Unless Tata goes ahead with a turnaround plan, the future of the huge plant could be in doubt.

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of Community, along with Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon, and Frits van Wieringen, chairman of the Tata Steel European works council, met in Mumbai with senior representatives of Tata Steel ahead of Tuesday’s board meeting.

A Community spokesman said the meeting was “open and constructive”, with the European delegates making the case for Tata to continue to support the UK business.

The myth in the UK that India gained more from British rule than the economic benefits squeezed out of India is addressed very well by Shashi Tharoor in his speech at the Oxford Union.

Dr Shashi Tharoor MP – Britain Does Owe Reparations

 

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Where have all the leaders gone?

March 28, 2016

Democracy and leadership are incompatible. The “democratic process” does not give value to leadership, only to popularity. 

By definition a “full” democracy would have all the electorate determining every little decision by a majority vote. Such a “full” democracy can never work. That would be closer to anarchy than anything else. In practice, therefore, most “democratic” states use the democratic process sparingly and primarily at the time of elections. The elections are meant to choose leaders who will then lead during their term in office. In between elections, decisions are generally to be taken by the anointed leaders in a limited but semi-autocratic fashion. Presidents and Prime Ministers become temporary, limited dictators or kings. But the more “democracy” that is applied, whether through parliamentary limitations or by passing the buck in a referendum, the more heads of government follow the wishes of the majority rather than lead. Street demonstrations, opinion polls, popularity polls, on-line polls, parliamentary votes and referenda are all supposed to be, and taken to be, expressions of the democratic will of the people. Increasingly heads of government are forced to “follow” the wishes of the masses rather than even trying to “lead”. The “democratic process” does not give value to leadership, only to popularity. 

Political wolves who once led the human flock have been turned into sheep.

I suspect this is because democracy and leadership are fundamentally incompatible. The greater the level of democracy that is applied, the more a titular leader is required to follow rather than to lead. Corporations know this very well. Shareholders apply democracy only at shareholder meetings. And here they choose their leaders who become dictators for a time. Operations are autocratic and are only democratic as an “act of benevolence”. When the shareholders are not satisfied, they change the dictator but they rarely interfere with the exercise of his authority.

Looking at the titular leaders of the democratic countries today, there is not a leader of any stature anywhere in sight. I take a political leader to be someone with a vision of where he wants to take his country and his people, and who creates the path for doing so. Countries with proportional representation are – inherently – no longer capable of producing a leader of that school. They throw up administrators and conciliators who can compromise between different factions but whose time horizon is only up to the next election. They are congenitally incapable of leading, of creating a path to a new condition that they can envision and communicate. Most European countries now fall into this category. Countries with two party systems can, in theory, produce a political leader who can be a king for his term. In practice they too are constrained by their parliaments and “popularity ratings”.

Among the current bunch the closest to being a leader is Angela Merkel. There is not another “leader” in all of Europe. The democratic limitations have been further compounded by the extra layers of bureaucracy in Brussels, the European Parliament and the European Courts. The EU is not a place to look for leaders any more. Barack Obama could have been a leader but he has been too risk-averse (a euphemism for scared) to lead. Hillary Clinton is an administrator who would not recognise a vision if it was handed to her. Donald Trump is a maverick and there is just a faint chance that he could turn into a leader, though it is highly unlikely. Trudeau in Canada has just won a popularity contest and will not challenge the conventional wisdom of the masses. China has a head of political party who seems to be losing control of even his own party. Narendra Modi in India is too busy with collecting frequent flyer points and PR to have time to lead. I don’t count Putin who is a straight dictator without too much pretense of being democratic. (But he is allowed to, and he does lead.)

Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with leadership. A “full” democracy needs no leaders to make any decisions – only followers to do as they are told to by the majority. My thesis is that there is a balance to be found between democratic principles and operational authoritarianism.  You can well apply democratic principles when choosing heads of government. But democracy has to be suspended when providing authority to such heads of government; at least during their time in office and perhaps with some other safeguards. But these chosen heads have to be given the room to become, or grow to become, leaders – if they can.  Right now the authority of the chosen heads is so curtailed that they have little chance to be leaders.

I suspect we do need leaders. But they will not appear until the balance is redressed and we recreate the space within which political leaders can exist and operate.

 

 

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New Zealand keeps the Union Jack – who’s surprised?

March 24, 2016

I always thought this referendum was a pointless and expensive (NZ$26 million) exercise in futility.

Differentiation from Australia was supposedly one of the key drivers. Another fundamental mistake made by the new flag proponents, I think, was to connect it to the utterly failed and discredited concept of “multiculturalism”. They would have had a better chance if they had connected it to multi-ethnicities. The new design with the addition of the Union Jack would also have had a better chance of being adopted.

Did anybody really expect any other result?

From a tweet by Elle Hunt

NZ flag referendum

nz could have been

nz could have been

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ISIS brings guerrilla warfare to Europe

March 23, 2016

There are thought to be some 5 -10,000 Islamic terrorists spread out among the cities of Europe – hiding in plain sight. About 1,500 of them have returned from committing atrocities in Syria in recent times. Perhaps another 2,000 are among the “refugees” waiting to be granted asylum somewhere in Europe. They are the members or sympathisers of ISIS who are future potential, terrorist, guerrillas.

Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which a small group of combatants such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military. – Wikipedia

It is difficult, after Paris and Brussels, not to conclude that an urban, guerrilla war is now ongoing across the capitals of Europe. One hallmark of guerrillas is mobility. There is little doubt that the Schengen rules are being exploited and the rules will have to be modified if not suspended or abandoned.

The objective is no longer just terror. The war has ideological objectives. It is to alienate muslims in Europe from the values that are taken for granted in Europe (democratic processes, “human” rights, justice, women’s rights ….) and to prevent the integration of muslims into European society. To create muslim ghettos and their own “territory” would be ideal.

The path being followed goes from first isolated acts of instilling terror, then through guerrilla war to internal resistance to insurgency to civil war and eventually to a Europe as part of a Caliphate.

As the Daily Beast writes, ISIS

 is following a playbook written more than a decade ago: The Call for an International Islamic Resistance by Abu Musab al Suri, a Syrian jihadi.

Suri knew Europe well. He had lived for a while in Britain, in the community of Arab and Muslim exiles there. His core idea was that Muslims in the West, though increasingly numerous, felt themselves isolated and under pressure, and this could be exploited to create a breakdown of society, develop insurgency, and launch a civil war where the forces of Islam eventually would be victorious. 

Acts of terror, dubbed “resistance,” would heighten the already existing “Islamophobia,” and “exacerbate the contradictions,” as communist revolutionaries used to say, until hatred and suspicion ran high and integration became impossible.

Since the Nov. 13 atrocities, that process has been taking shape, with increased resentment and fear linked to the coincidental mass influx of refugees from the Middle East.

The only way forward is for Europe to accelerate the integration of newcomers and immigrants into the societies they live in. Muslim ghettos applying Sharia law must be resisted at all costs. Integration requires

  • a mandatory language requirement
  • a requirement for compliance with “behavioural and dress norms” (difficult but can be done)
  • a suspension of minimum wages and “employment rights” which prevent small employers from taking on the liabilities of immigrant workers,
  • a recreation of the jobs at the lower end of the employment spectrum which Europe has eliminated
  • encouragement of self-employed craftsmen and handymen who have disappeared from the European workplace
  • a recreation of “cottage industries” with a lower cost structure (restrictive European laws and EU regulations)
  • …….

The multiculturalists effectively encourage ghettos. On the employment front, the traditional trade unions are a hindrance rather than a help to integration. The politicians who find excuses and justifications for terrorist activities are the achilles heel of Europe.

ISIS cannot survive within Europe if all their potential supporters are actually integrated within the societies they live in.

 

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Here we go again! Islamic terrorists strike Brussels airport — 11 reported dead

March 22, 2016

There was shouting in Arabic and then two explosions in the departure lounge at Zaventem Airport in Brussels. No doubt it is in retaliation for the capture of the Paris terrorists. Another explosion and shots are reported from an underground train station (Molenbeek?).

Some reports say that 11 are dead.

The vast majority of terrorist activities in Europe (not forgetting Anders Behring Breivik) are by Muslim fanatics.

It is not entirely coincidence.

Only a few Muslims are terrorists, and all religions generate their fanatics, but Islam seems to allow for a greater glorification of jihad and the indiscriminate killing of infidels than most. And Islam has more of its priests exhorting its followers down the terrorist path than other religions.

Denying that in the name of political correctness serves no one.

 

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US media overwhelmingly against Trump, but yet …..

March 21, 2016

There is something strange in the mood abroad among the US electorate and it is something that the US media either do not understand or are deliberately ignoring.

That the liberal media oppose Trump is only to be expected. The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, Politico and their ilk cannot be expected to support any GOP candidate at the best of times. But against Trump they are positively vitriolic. The “hard left” media (Slate, Salon, Huffington Post etc) are apoplectic when it comes to Trump. They have compared him to Hitler, Mussolini and even Kim Jung-Un. But now even the right of centre media (Wall Street Journal, Fox News….) are lambasting him. Even the hard right media (Breitbart, Drudge, Washington Times….) will not endorse Trump but just stay “neutral”.

And yet Trump’s numbers continue to rise. It is apparent that the media are failing to capture the mood in the country. I am sticking to my theory that Trump has activated an anti-establishment sentiment where all the mainstream media are considered “establishment”. And this gives the peculiar situation where any attack by an establishment figure only sustains the anti-establishment sentiment that Trump has tapped into.

Observing this from across the Atlantic has proven to be even more fascinating than my wildest expectations. But the anti-establishment sentiment is also abroad in Europe. It shows up in the BREXIT campaign and in the rise of parties which challenge the “politically correct” view. It is not just anti-immigration, far-right parties which are prospering but any party which occupies the “anti-establishment” space. That can be seen in Denmark and Norway and Sweden where mainstream centre-right parties are taking away some support from the far-right  by adopting somewhat “politically incorrect” positions.

I suspect that this is not just restricted to the US and Europe. I see in India and Africa the beginnings of something similar. It is a mood which has global dimensions and is, I think, something primal. A reaction perhaps to 3 decades of sanctimonious “political correctness” which has – or is perceived to have:

  • excused criminality and bad behaviour on genetic or social grounds
  • downgraded the victims of crime or bad behaviour
  • protected criminals and “bad people” in the name of human rights,
  • downgraded “family values”
  • promoted the bureaucracy against the individual
  • downgraded the individual
  • relaxed moral values
  • promoted deviation and deviants
  • demonised progress and economic growth
  • …….

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but the fact remains that the US media are missing something quite fundamental. i expect that to defeat Trump it needs someone to take his ground away from him – not just attack the ground he stands on. And that requires someone who is perceived to be just as “anti-establishment”. And there is no one on the GOP side who can do that and only Bernie Sanders among the Democrats comes close.

From the Reuters tracking poll:

Reuters tracking 18032016

 

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