Various Goings On

The weather here in southern Oklahoma is, at last, after days of temperatures in the 80s, acting in more autumnal fashion. Today it's actually cool to cold outside - 49 degrees, windy with a storm in the offing. The trees haven't yet donned their fall colours, after a few more of these cooler nights, it'll happen.

In other news, a routine blood test on 16 October, to discover how the targeted therapy medications are affecting my blood quality, showed that the white cell count was below desired minimum - same for platelets. Oncologist told me to take a second week off the Ibrance capsules - these are routinely taken for 21 days with 7 days off each month. This time I had 14 days off. Blood test yesterday showed figures had bounced back to an acceptable level, so off I go again with the Ibrance. I'm to have a CT scan next week - to check whether much has changed for good or for ill since my last scans around 6 months ago. Not looking forward to that!



The problems I had in obtaining a refill of my pain medication last month happily did not recur this time. Our usual pharmacy has changed their wholesaler. The medications I take for pain-while-walking now come from a different generic manufacturer. I was worried that these might be even less effective than those I've been taking, but, though it's a little early to be sure, I do suspect that these might be a tad more effective.

Further afield, Brexit bumbles on...and on....and on. When, oh when, oh when will it end? The part of it all that affects me personally is the currency exchange rate, it affects my two pensions coming from the UK. The rate has been volatile for a couple or more years, diving down then up, down again etc, depending on what had been Boris Johnson's or Ms May's latest failed attempts at bringing about a deal.

In the USA the season known as "The Holidays" is almost upon us. I'm glad to be here, still, to see it once again! Hallowe'en decor has been showing up for the past few weeks in front yards - ghosties, ghoulies and long leggedy beasties, spider webs and witches...you know the drill. We now await the Trick or Treaters on 31st of the month. We had very few last year - disappointing, because it's fun to see the imaginative costumes the kids come up with, and the excitement on the faces of the littlest ones. Perhaps the custom is starting to go out of fashion, for one reason or another - safety, perhaps, and many communal organised Hallowe'en costume events. Next up: Thanksgiving on 28 November, followed by You-Know-What-mas, a month later.
Ka-ching...ka-ching!

On the knitting front, I'm using a big skein of pink "ombre" tinted yarn to make another, longer scarf. It's something I can pick up and just knit, without need to refer to a pattern. I love seeing the changing shades of pink appear, apropos of which, I noticed that my husband is reading "The Secret Lives of Colour" by Kassia St Clair. I shall read it too, when he's done with it. Back-cover blurb: "From the scarlet women to imperial purple, from the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, from kelly green to acid yellow, the surprising stories of colour run like a bright thread through our history." Several varieties of pink are investigated, for example: Baker-Miller Pink; Mountbatten Pink, Puce, Fuchsia; Shocking Pink, Fluorescent Pink, and Amaranth. Maybe some of those will appear in my scarf.

Blame the Dog - or Blame Theresa May?

We've been otherwise engaged for the past few days so I haven't got around to preparing blog posts - blame the dog[-sitting]! Pooh-dog is back with his new humans now, bless his little running jumping feet!

From any news-reading I've done lately, I note that the Brexit scenario hasn't improved any. My jaw can't drop any lower than the floor, but it is certainly grinding the carpet to dust! Here are some good well-upvoted observations from Richard Lock, who Has Somehow Ended Up Working as a Patent Attorney. It comes from his Quora answer to the question:

Why do so many people blame Theresa May for the Brexit mess since it’s not entirely her fault?

This answer has already been "shared"; I'm taking it that a further sharing here would raise no objection - so a big thank you, to Mr Lock!

Spilling a bucket of cowshit on the hallway floor may be considered an accident.

Tap-dancing in the resultant mess so that it sprays high and wide up the walls and ceiling, running through the house flinging handfuls of it around the living room, and then finger-painting the kitchen and bedrooms…cannot.

The referendum was held in June 2016. It is now nearly March 2019.

Consider the following. These are all Theresa May’s actions. Hers, and hers alone. Roughly chronological:


~ Appointed David Davis as Brexit Secretary (13th July 2016). Kept him in that position even when it was clear that he was doing nothing and achieving nothing. He resigned - not fired, resigned - in July 2018.

~ Triggered Article 50 (March 29th 2017). There was (and is) no ‘roadmap’ to leaving at the time she (and she alone) did this. Triggering Article 50 sets a two-year fixed time period for arranging an orderly withdrawal.

~ Called an unnecessary election (June 2017) partway through the two-year Article 50 process, diverting time and effort from all parties into the campaign. Manages to lose 13 Conservative seats and cannot form a Government.

~ Decides to solve this problem by allying with the 10 MPs of the DUP, a Northern Irish party who believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago, and who are known for being somewhat…inflammatory, not to mention stubborn, in their viewpoints. Gets them onboard by somehow finding 1.5 billion pounds going spare in the public finances. At a time when the country is undergoing huge and sustained cuts in public spending.

~ Sets up a bunch of ‘red lines’ in her negotiating position with the EU. The result of these is to exclude certain solutions such as continued membership of the Single Market and Customs Union (e.g. the ‘Norway’ option and various other forms of ‘soft’ Brexit), and to put any possible solution that would fit within the red lines in conflict with the Good Friday Agreement, an international and legally-binding treaty which the UK is signatory to.
Refuses to modify the red lines to accommodate this (for example by keeping Northern Ireland in the Single Market), almost certainly because she has to rely on the DUP to stay in power.

~ Finalises an agreement with the EU (25th Nov 2018). This needs to pass the UK parliament. The vote is scheduled for 11th Dec 2018.

~ Is defeated in three preliminary votes on 4th Dec, including being held in Contempt of Parliament.

~ Announces on 10th Dec 2018 that the vote scheduled for 11th Dec is postponed. Admits that it’s because she would lose the vote. This is rescheduled for 15th January 2019.

~ Vote is put to Parliament on 15th Jan 2019. May loses by the largest margin ever (230 votes). She very narrowly survives a confidence vote held directly after this.

~ Another vote is scheduled for 14th Feb. She loses this one as well.

~ Another vote is, or rather was, scheduled for 27th Feb. This one was supposed to be the next ‘big’ vote - following the delayed and rescheduled Dec/Jan votes, the theory was that further changes would be negotiated with the EU, and UK MPs could then re-vote. This has not happened, as the EU has made it very clear that further changes cannot and will not happen. The vote is currently re-scheduled for 12th March. It is highly likely that this will be more-or-less the same deal that Parliament already voted down by 230 votes.

In short, ‘so many people blame Theresa May’, because she has made a bad situation almost infinitely worse, as a direct result of her own actions or inactions.


Edited to make an addition. This is from ‘Times’ correspondent Matthew Parris in his column over the weekend of 23rd/24th Feb 2019:

Time and again I’ve protested that she may not be the answer but she didn’t create this mess. She’s just a dogged politician, overly cautious and rather shy, but time and again my informants, MPs, former MPs, civil servants, special advisers, tell me eyes flashing that I’ve got it wrong, and the public have got it wrong and she’s so much worse than that.

She’s not normal, she’s extraordinarily uncommunicative, extraordinarily rude in the way she blanks people, ideas and arguments and to my surprise there’s no difference between the pictures of her that Remainers and Leavers paint. Theresa May they tell me (in a couple of cases actually shouting) is the Death Star of modern politics, she’s the theory of anti-matter made flesh. She’s the political black hole because nothing, not even light, can escape: ideas, beliefs, suggestions, objections, inquiries, proposals, protests, loyalties, affections, trust; while careers, real men and women are sucked into the awful void that is Downing Street, and nothing ever comes out, no answers only a blank so blank that it screams.

Reputations, they lament, are staked on her and lost, warnings are delivered to her and ignored, plans are run by her unacknowledged, messages are sent and unanswered, she has become the unperson of Downing Street, the living embodiment of the closed door.

Music Monday ~ "...they try to sock it to ya...."

Joe South - I remember him only from a hit song he wrote from the late 1960s, with its interesting and ever-relevant lyrics: The Games People Play. The song's title was taken from a book by Eric Berne, a bestseller on the psychology of human relationships.

There's a full post about Joe South and his natal chart in an old post of mine HERE.

That old song often comes to mind when reading about Theresa May's Brexit fumbles and foibles. Is she playing games, running out the clock, gaming the dissenters to her Withdrawal Agreement until toes are over the cliff edge and that dreaded "crash out" is nigh? Or is she.......?

On this side of the Atlantic, our current president has his own favourite gaming table: Twitter! Also, it's more than likely that games are already being played, prior to the 2020 presidential election, to ensure that anyone daring to voice policies even a smidgen left of establishment Democrat line (which, translated, means conservative) will never bask in the sunlight of media celebrity, but be constantly ignored, criticised or dismissed as "socialists". Socialist, a term which describes nobody currently on the list of candidates, and probably no more than a few dozen individuals in the whole of the USA! The word 'socialist', even though most don't understand its meaning, has gathered the same kind of horror here as 'leper' had in biblical times. ("Unclean, unclean!").

For this Music Monday, I was about to post Joe South's own rendition of his song, when I noticed this exuberant old version of it by Engelbert Humperdinck (now 82), Tom Jones (now 78) and Billy Preston (who, sadly, died in 2006 aged 59). Joe South, the song's writer died in 2012, aged 72.




Oh the games people play now
every night and every day now
never meaning what they say now
and never saying what they mean
while they while away the hours
in their ivory towers
till they're covered up in flowers
in the back of a black limousine

la da la da da da da,
I'm a talkin' about you and me
and the games people play

You know we make one another cry
we break our hearts and we say goodbye
we cross our hearts and we hope to die
that the other was to blame
we need a woman that will give in
so we gaze at our eight by ten
wanderin' 'bout the things
that might have been
and it's a dirty rotten shame

[chorus]

People walkin' up to ya
singing glory haleuajah
and they try to sock it to ya
in the name of the Lord
they're goin' to teach ya how to meditate
read your horoscope and cheat your fate
furthermore to hell with hate
c'mon and get on board

[chorus]

Look around tell me what you see
what's happening to you and me
God grant me the serenity
to remember who I am
cause you've given up your sanity
for your pride and your vanity
you turn your back on humanity
and you don't give a damn da da da......

Brexit the Bastard Monster

The Brexit saga continues, a not-so-mini drama series that I had never expected to see! I've been away from the UK for more than 14 years now, so can't fully appreciate how things must have changed in that relatively short time. I follow Brexit news daily, out of self interest and general concern about my native land. Self interest, because my two pensions come from the UK. The vagaries of currency exchange reduce my income substantially when sterling dips or crashes, as it surely must if "no deal" were to become the saga's last episode.

This answer at Quora a few days ago makes a point, in the third paragraph, I hadn't fully grasped. There was no facility to comment on the answer, so I am unable to ask permission from the writer to use it here; I'm confident he would not object. I especially like the imagery in the last paragraph.



Question
Was Brexit ever going to be easy and uncomplicated?


Answer by
Brian Coughlan, QRAFT Solution Expert at Volvo Trucks (2011-present)

Yes, in a funny kind of way.

You see, although the current deal is the result of 2 years of agony, and it disappoints almost everyone, it could have been completed in the first month after the referendum.

Because, it was always going to be this way: be part of the EU or be it’s vassal - this much the Brexiteers have gotten right. That even if the EU disappears, the UK - if it doesn’t fall to pieces due to the economic havoc brexit will wreak - will be the vassal of whatever nearby federation absorbs the fragments of the EU. That in the 21st Century this is the fate staring every country with less than 100 million citizens in the face: join voluntarily with someone or have a nearby economic colossus numbering their citizens in the hundreds of millions - the EU, China, the US, India - tell you what to do.

How you leave doesn't matter — other than the amount of damage it does — crash out, EFTA or Canada Cubed, it's all the same. You'll still be a vassal of the EU. This is a fundamentally pointless exercise. The economic gravity the EU exerts is Hotel California strength: you can checkout, but you can never leave. A fact - that even I, as pro EU as they come - had not fully grasped.

The worst thing of all? It’s not even a plot. That there is no conspiracy. It’s just fucking arithmetic. The implacable numerical reality for a country of 65 million in a world of 7,500 million+ and single states now numbering their increasingly well fed, educated and ambitious citizens in the billions.

In a wierd way BREXIT has strengthened the EU, as we watch the UK’s miserable, desperate and weakening struggles to square the circle that BREXIT was always doomed to be. This process has inadvertently highlighted the substantial value of the EU and the terrible loss that leaving represents. Comic-Tragic.

And yet, if someone had had the guts to tell the UK voters this, and convinced them, this could have all been over in a weekend by strangling this misbegotten, hideous child at birth.

Now, I fear, it’s too late. The bastard monster is up on its mishapen little hooves and trotting about the place. The UK will just have to go through the crucible and see what survives to the other side.

Rant Central with Ian Lang

Here's another super rant by Ian Lang (of Quora), posted with his (blanket) gracious permission. This time Ian is blowing off steam in regard to Brexit and the way specific, and other, aspects of the proposed exit from the EU are dragging on...and on....and... The question which brought on his recent rant was:

After 40+ years of common EU regulation and compliance, is it odd that the EU suddenly has an issue with UK driver’s licenses?

However, his words could be applied equally to any of the numerous stumbling blocks presented by the UK's proposed goodbye wave to the European Union.

By Ian Lang, Leading Technician

All of this sort of bollocks could be sorted out over a couple of G&Ts on a Wednesday afternoon if both sides really wanted to, but no, we have to have these long, drawn-out dramas because bloody career politicians and pundits on both sides want a bit of publicity.

For Christ’s sake. The bloody Yalta Conference only lasted eight days and that was sorting a proper mess out. The Congress of Vienna only lasted nine months; most of the work was done inside a week by little blokes with pencils and it might not have gone on as long as it did if bleeding Napoleon hadn’t slipped out of Elba in February and spoiled things. The Armistice of 1918 took three days. The German surrender at Luneberg took the same.

We’ve got these things we keep hanging around at great expense. They’re called diplomats. Granted, some of the ones at the top might not be any good but behind Sir Rupert Twaittingly-Corpulent KCBE etc (PPE Cambridge) and whatever his foreign equivalents are there are men and women who know how to strike a good compromise for both sides so lock them up in a room somewhere quiet with a pile of sandwiches and vol-au-vents and a tankerful of tea and coffee and let ’em hammer it out.

It’s bloody well symptomatic of our times. In industrial circles it used to be “go and make one of these and we’ll see if anybody’s got a use for it and sell it to ‘em” now it’s five years case study and cost-benefit analysis and worrying about how it fits in to the business model, by which time whatever it is you were going to make has been denecessitated by something else. In government it used to be chaps (hardly ever chapesses but never mind for the moment) had words in French and stuff got sorted that afternoon. It’s not that hard to be a moderately succesful shopkeeper, you buy a load of stuff and if it’s cheap quality you sell it on at a reasonable price, if it’s high quality you charge a premium, and where it falls between the two you judge it and set the right price adding a bit for profit and a bit more for tax. As long as you aren’t selling utter tat, keep your shop clean and you don’t throw cabbages at great velocity and scream “get out you bastards!” at customers as they come in the door they will give you money. But no. We have to have retail professionals running things. If anybody ever tells you they are a retail professional just say “oh, you mean you work in a shop?” and watch their faces. Retail professionals ran Woolworths. BHS. Toys R Us. Maplin. House of Fraser. Marks and Spencer. Need I go on?

It’s the same sort of professional that’s running politics as it is retail. They think they know it all and won’t let the people who do know how to do it actually do it. It strokes their egos but nothing gets done. Then there’s a big old mess to clear up but by that time they’ve had their bonuses and buggered off to ruin something else.

We could have a Brexit deal done and dusted by September and this sort of arsing about shouldn’t be necessary. But no. The politicos on both sides want to grandstand and bluster and in the end all that happens is we do nothing.

Politicos. You’re all bastards. We should have a European-wide rising to give you all a last cigarette before a nice, sunny wall in Madrid or somewhere. That’s the sort of EU I’d back. Then the rest of us could just get on with it. Now take your giant egos and insert them rectally at an oblique angle, you bunch of publicity-chasing charlatans.

The Mare's Nest that is BREXIT

Brexit. What a mess! I look on from across the Atlantic with disbelief!

Stray readers of my blog on this side of the Atlantic probably have less idea of what's what than I do, so when I read this at Quora the other day I decided to ask permission to post it here - permission was graciously given by Mr Andy Cooke. The piece sets out the difficulties of Brexit as simply and clearly as I've seen them listed anywhere.

So... here is Andy Cooke's answer to the question

Why is Brexit on the brink of failure, despite the referendum that was supposed to force the parliament to follow it?

Andy Cooke, former Engineering Officer at Royal Air Force (1995-2012) answered:

It’s having problems and taking ages because it’s so difficult. The compulsion on Parliament to follow it doesn’t mean it becomes quicker, easier, or more possible.

Why is Brexit so difficult?

People will confidently tell you it’s because of incompetence by the UK Government. Or intransigence by the EU. And these do have some minor effects on it, but the core problem is that Brexit is massively complex at the best of times

What was sold in the referendum isn’t possible or consistent within itself (deliberately so; unsurprisingly, both sides exaggerated their claims to absurdity and the Leave campaign was deliberately vague enough to encompass multiple inconsistencies. Otherwise they might have turned off those who wanted to Leave but didn’t want a particular vision of Leaving).

The UK has come to rely on standards, institutions, legislation, capabilities, treaties, and privileges that come with EU membership. This isn’t due to
creeping politicisation, or any conspiracy to tie us together - it’s just that when there’s a ladder convenient, you’re going to use it. You’ll get a lot further up a lot easier than you would just trying to scale the wall without it. And if you’re a long way up the wall and you choose to leave the ladder, you’d better have a strong grip on what you’re gonna do next.

For example, membership of the Single Market and Customs Union not only makes Just-In-Time supply chains possible across multiple countries (enabling more and cheaper production of a whole swathe of things), but being fundamental in the Good Friday Agreement which finally ended decades of violence and terrorism in Northern Ireland.

… There are trade agreements upon trade agreements with external countries, agreeing standards, quotas, tariffs, how standards are proven and upheld, and so on; each one of these 50+ agreements taking hundreds of pages of detail.

… The Open Skies Agreement allows planes to fly across and between European countries and the US, underwriting the essential servicing standards that are needed and safety protocols.

… Medical supplies are made across the continent to the same standards, examined, underwritten, moved freely to where they are needed, allowing for specialisation to improve quality, research, and availability at lower cost to the needy.

… Lorries passing through Dover and other ports on their way in and out of the country can be passed with minimal hold-up, allowing more flow through, increasing the economic activity of the entire country.

… We pooled our expertise in certain areas, such as EURATOM, which is essential for getting certain isotopes, such as those used to treat certain cancers. It provides the expertise, the standards to which things are held, and a way to check compliance.

… We’re in a common energy market; around 25% of our power comes from the continent. All under existing agreements.

… We have reciprocal obligations for healthcare, pensions and so on – which means that British pensioners in Spain can get their old age pensions from here, we can get free healthcare on the continent, and so on.

… and so on, and so on. The EU has published 69 documents for various sectors enumerating preparations that have to be made on their side for a No Deal Brexit. Those are areas that have to be resolved for there to be a deal on Brexit. And, if there isn’t, we’ll end up abrogating the Good Friday Agreement, losing access to the Open Skies Agreement, possibly losing medical supplies for our most needy, massive queues outside Dover (a 2 minute increase to checks would lead to a 17-24 mile tailback inside of hours, which would grow), imports would crash, exports would crash… this isn’t Project Fear, this is a logical and inevitable issue that needs to be addressed.

So why not make a deal? Quickly and easily?
Well, not only the complexity of all these issues needing to be resolved (negotiating a single Trade Agreement takes 3-10 years, usually, and we have more than 50 to negotiate), but what is wanted is often irreconcilable:

Leave wants different trade and customs status to the EU, establishing customs controls and checks. This abrogates the Good Friday Agreement if we have a ‘hard border’ in Northern Ireland (there’s always the option to give Northern Ireland a separate status to preserve the Good Friday Agreement, but that would lead to the border being between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, in the Irish Sea, and that’s utterly unacceptable to the DUP, who are propping up the minority Conservative Government). And, of course, we’d have more than 2 minutes extra delays on the lorries at Dover and other places, leading to massive snarl-ups around all of Kent, delays on Just-In-Time supply chains, huge swathes of industry crashing to unplanned halts as they desperately (and expensively) set up for increased storage and delays…

(There is a suggestion that we just drop ALL customs checks and have no tariffs, quotas, standards checking, etc. Even if we were to accept this, the EU would have to institute checks in their direction, which retains the problem. This isn’t out of intransigence; WTO rules state you can’t discriminate between countries with whom you have no specific Trade Agreements – so if they let UK stuff directly in, they’d have to do the same to ALL countries with whom they have no agreements. That ain’t happening).

So we definitely need to stay in the Single Market and Customs Union, or we’ll have chaos and possibly even a restart of the Troubles.

There IS an off-the-shelf existing setup which preserves membership of the Single Market and the vast majority of those institutions. It’s called the European Economic Area, and it’s available to non-EU countries. Such countries include Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. It requires compliance with the Single Market legislation (about 25% of the EU ‘acquis’, or laws) as long as it doesn’t infringe with sovereignty, some payment to the EU, and compliance with the Four Freedoms of the Single Market: Free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. The EU insist these four freedoms are indivisible for membership of the SM, which is fair enough (“we want membership, but we won’t let money move around…” isn’t going to work…). Unfortunately, a key plank of the Leave campaign was stopping Free Movement of people.

So we definitely need to leave the Single Market and Customs Union.

Any solution? All we need to do is resolve all of those complexities, maintain membership of the Single Market while leaving it, and renegotiate 50+ Trade Treaties that take many years each (and now from a position of comparative weakness), establish new institutions and standards in most areas of activity while getting others to agree to them in treaties, and if we can’t pull it off, things get bad for people needing pensions, medicines, food… that’s why it’s taking a while, it looks like it may well fail (and leave us in all sorts of problems), and the referendum instruction (and background) isn’t making things easier for the Government.

Saturday & Sundry Moments from The Week That Was - French Style

Gallic-flavoured momentary discomforts: the qu'ils mangent de la brioche: "let them eat cake!" moment, combined with a mauvais quart d’heure, (as well as having fifteen minutes of fame, one can also have a “bad quarter of an hour” — a brief but embarrassing, upsetting, or demoralizing experience) - this week's related shaming award goes to Louise Linton, labels-loving wife of Steven Mnuchin, US Treasury Secretary. She replied condescendingly to an Instagram poster about her lifestyle and belittled the woman, Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Portland, Oregon for having less money than she does. Thereafter Twitter and the rest of the net did what they do best (or worst depending on one's viewpoint).
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41027854
BUT... what would Madame Defarge have done?

Our plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose moment (the more things change, the more they stay the same) came with President Trump's speech on 22 August : more troops to Afghanistan.

Blackwater founder says Trump's Afghanistan plan is 'Obama-lite'
By Ellen Mitchell

Linked to that is our après moi, le déluge moment: “after me, the flood.”

Stephen Bannon was removed, one way or another, from the White House -

After Bannon, Do Hawks Rule the Roost? By Miles Mogulescu
Without Bannon’s strategic guidance, it’s likely that Trump wouldn’t be President. There’s a special place in hell for that.

But there was another side to Bannon that has been lost in the turmoil over his departure from the White House. The New York Times characterized him as the White House’s “resident dove. From Afghanistan and North Korea to Syria and Venezuela, Mr. Bannon… has argued against making military threats or deploying American troops into foreign conflicts.”

Loosely linked also - another recent exit from The White House: that of Anthony Scaramucci, he of the colourful language and tale-telling proclivity. Sadly we lost him before he could delight us further. This was, no doubt at all, our
pour encourager les autres moment. “So as to encourage the others”— that's the straight translation, but this actually, and obtusely, refers to an action carried out to discourage any future episodes of similar behaviour, unhelpful to The Powers That Be.

Lastly, not an actual moment but a famous (in Britain) French phrase, seldom uttered, often seen as legend on isignia: honi soit qui mal y pense - "shame on him who thinks badly of it". In English, used to discourage preemptively or unjustly talking something down. Dates from the early Middle Ages. Tongue in cheek cartoon (at right) could represent a imagined recent honi soit moment for Queen Elizabeth II.

Who is Robert Mercer ?

Robert Mercer? Who's he? He hadn't entered my mental card index until a few days ago. Seems he's been one of the shadowy figures lurking behind The Donald, The Bannon; and with sticky fingers in The Brexit too; reputed to be on the edge of billionaire-dom, and a longtime computer whiz. A whirl around the net's back alleys threw up some detail. From a fellow-blogger:

Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica, and Why It All Matters
by Robert Selth at his blog Sea Wolf.

First paragraph:

Over the past several months, a series of three articles by a journalist named Carole Cadwalladr have appeared in the Guardian. These articles detail the connections between the US billionaire Robert Mercer (now notorious as the money behind Trump), the data firm Cambridge Analytica (which he owns), and a vast, extraordinary campaign of psychological profiling and manipulation, conducted over the internet, and intended to alter beliefs and voting behaviour on a massive scale. The articles touch on a remarkable range of problems and questions, from the probability of large-scale intervention in the Brexit referendum and 2016 American election by a small nexus of reactionary individuals centred around Mercer, to the landscape of international cyberwarfare and how cutting-edge technology is evidently being used to sway elections in unprecedented and frightening ways.

Yikes! Big big money is one thing but "psychological profiling and manipulation"? Up with that we should not put - not ever!

 Click on image for clearer view

There's lots of stuff around the internet about Mercer and his doings. I looked for specific information on his personality, as seen by those who know him. Here are some snippets I gleaned:

He's a man of few words.
The Guardian called Mercer "brilliant but reclusive." Newsweek's headline declared him "mysterious." Bloomberg: "Secretive." You get the idea. In a 2010 book, Mercer referenced a 40-minute speech he gave and said it was "more than I typically talk in a month." That same year he told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm happy going through my life without saying anything to anybody."
(HERE)

One source told the New Yorker that Robert believes “human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.”
Robert has also been described by people who know him as brilliant, but also weird. Apparently one of his favorite things to do is walk around and whistle, and the same source told the New Yorker, “He can barely look you in the eye when he talks.” (HERE)


His personality is very interesting. Mercer is the co-C.E.O. of Renaissance Technologies, which is among the most profitable hedge funds in the country. A brilliant computer scientist, he helped transform the financial industry through the innovative use of trading algorithms. But he has said little about his political views.

Through a spokesman, Mercer declined to discuss his role in launching Trump. People who know him say that he is painfully awkward socially, and rarely speaks. “He can barely look you in the eye when he talks,” an acquaintance said. “It’s probably helpful to be highly introverted when getting lost in code, but in politics you have to talk to people, in order to find out how the real world works.” In 2010, when the Wall Street Journal wrote about Mercer assuming a top role at Renaissance, he issued a terse statement: “I’m happy going through my life without saying anything to anybody.” According to the paper, he once told a colleague that he preferred the company of cats to humans.

He seems like he has Asperger's syndrome, a.k.a. high-functioning autism.

According to another former employee, RM also apparently believes that the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki made Japanese people away from the blast zones healthier.

RM also supported Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, and he claimed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a big mistake. That employee claims that RB believed that black people were better off before that act, and also that there are now no white racists in the US, only black racists.

NP also recalls clashes with RM about climate change -- RM does not believe that it is real, and that if it is real, it would be beneficient.
(HERE)

Unpleasant, bordering on repulsive then!


A little astrology:

Data from Astrodatabank: Born 11 July 1946 in San Jose California at 4.25 AM

Sun and ascendant in Cancer - and Saturn too! I need look no further to discover how such an an obscenely wealthy and technologically brilliant guy is seen as reclusive and introverted. Cancer - symbolic crab of the zodiac - values, above all, the protection and isolation afforded by its shell. Ultra sensitive, cautious and quite oddly and unnecessarily shy, there is no way someone with Sun and rising sign in Cancer would ever be an ebullient extrovert. Show me one and I'll take that back! Mercury in Leo might have helped Mercer overcome addiction to his shell but Mercury in his case is conjunct Pluto, planet of (among other things) secrecy, darkness, control - even, possibly, manipulation.

Mercer's natal Moon is in Sagittarius - his emotional core is quite different from his outer nature. His family and closest friends would likely have a different take on his personality, having felt benefit of the warmth and joviality of Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius.

There's what astrologers call a T-square in Mercer's chart: two challenging square angles linking to an opposition, forming a triangle. Here we have the opposition from Sagittarius Moon to the conjunction in Gemini, with squares from both to Mars in Virgo. First interpretation of this coming to my mind is a kind of echo of the contrast between Mercer's Sun and Moon. The Airy and warm sides of his nature constantly challenged, held in check, by Mars (energy, aggression) in critical, down to Earth Virgo.

What about Mercer's technological brilliance ? We look to astrological Air (mental acuity) for that, and find his North node of the Moon conjunct Uranus in Airy Gemini; Jupiter also in Air, in Libra, links to the Gemini emphasis via harmonious 120 degree trine aspect. There lie his credentials as technological virtuoso.

It all fits - as does the overall "shape" of planets in his chart: all planets are grouped within just half of the zodiac circle. Astrologers call this a "bowl" shape. Astrologer Bob Marks interprets thus:

When one half [of the zodiac circle] is empty, it seems to give painful recognition that something is missing, that there is an area of existence from which they are excluded, and the entire life may be spent trying to fill that void. This is why those with Bowl horoscopes frequently seem to be on a mission. And they do have a tendency to get involved in causes.

Whatever the causes driving Mr Mercer, I'll wager they're never for the good of The Great Unwashed - to the absolute contrary in fact!

Women in Power

An interesting piece by British astrologer Marjorie Orr on women in power and Saturn/Neptune:
Saturn Neptune turning the focus on women

I'm glad that the UK will have some capable hands to steer it through choppy waters ahead; though Theresa May would not be my cup-of-tea, politically, as Prime Minister in ordinary times, these times are far from ordinary. She is now Prime Minister elect, just awaiting Cameron's visit to Her Majesty the Queen. Ms May will no doubt be visiting Buck House too. My recent post on Ms May and her astrology is HERE.

Women in Charge: Comparing May and Thatcher

I have some sympathy with the sentiments expressed in this brief piece:

Voter wishes we could just once have woman leader who didn’t openly despise us.

SNIP: “Unfortunately here in England we’re once again faced with a step forward for feminism being three to four steps back for humanity, whose rights Theresa May is actively campaigning on stripping away.”

I don't recall Theresa May from my time in the UK, though she must have been around. It's looking highly likely that she will succeed David Cameron as Prime Minister, but we won't know for sure for a few weeks, there are various stages of voting to be completed.

British astrologer Marjorie Orr took a quick look at Ms May's natal chart, along with those of other bright sparks hoping for "a leg-up the political ladder" during this oddly chaotic political season.

I'm inclined to compare Theresa May's natal chart to that of Margaret Thatcher - just because...

Margaret Thatcher: born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, at 9 a.m. according to Astrodatabank (A rating)..
Thatcher ought to have been more of a charmer, except for her Saturn in Scorpio rising - that is if 9.00am exact is really 100% accurate, if so with Pluto in trine to Saturn, from Cancer, the lady was likely to exude both power and....sexiness - really....Maggie Thatcher? (I do recall, though, reading that in her youth Maggie was something of a charmer among her male colleagues - pity it didn't extend to her "subjects!)

Moon at 28 Leo, if time were not 100% accurate could have been in Virgo, and I see that as not unlikely. She had only one planet in Earth - if born at 9 am on the dot: Jupiter in Capricorn, which is a good fit.

Theresa May born on 1 October 1956 in Eastbourne, Sussex, England. No time of birth available - chart set for noon.
This lady is more earthy workhorse than charmer, I suspect. Without time of birth ascendant can't be known but, what a coincidence that at noon Saturn was in much the same position as in Thatcher's chart! Saturn would be in Scorpio whatever time May were born, but not necessarily on the ascendant, so the two have that in common, as well as natal Suns in Libra.

Astrologer Jane Harrison at always Astrology begins a piece on Saturn in Scorpio thus:

Saturn in Scorpio is impatient. They demand a lot from themselves and from those around them. They can be so intense that it can be overwhelming to those who are not as directed as they are. Full of willpower and energy, they are so determined to meet their goals it is hard for them to remain calm. They are not the type to stop and smell the roses. Instead of going gung ho for their goals, however, they are usually more subtle and calculating. Saturn in Scorpio can be secretive. When hurt, they can be unforgiving. They don't like to be treated unfairly. They may be cunning, resentful, jealous, or possessive. They are shrewd and like to come out on top of any type of deal............

May's Saturn is square Pluto in Leo, rather than in trine as in Thatcher's case, so still linked but not as harmoniously. Venus conjoins Pluto, perhaps even Moon too, but without time of birth it's not possible to know. Venus conjunct Pluto, in some charts might indicate a sex-goddess type, but here, because of the square to Saturn, I wonder if it reflects more her limitation in not being able to have children "for health reasons". Don't know. She has been married to her husband, a banker, since 1980.

I guess one could make a trio here and compare Hillary Clinton's natal chart - it's at Astrodatabank HERE should anyone wish to take a look. It might be a tad apples and oranges though, as life, customs, environment and political systems in the USA and the UK are not fully comparable. I'm not sure that, had Hillary Clinton been born in England, with the same natal chart, without connection to any of her US history, she'd have risen to a political position comparable to that of Thatcher and May. (Just speculation!)

GULP...

There's so much going on just now that it's not easy to focus on any single issue for long.

Brexit and the fall-out from that : who will be the new Prime Minister? How will she/he deal with what has to be dealt with in regard to the UK's exit from the EU, not forgetting that Scotland, and possibly Northern Ireland are likely to try (again) for their own independence from England/Wales, so that they could remain part of the EU. That internal UK tangle really needs sorting out first! Some establishment members of the opposition Labour Party want its current leader to stand down, but he, Jeremy Corbyn, is reluctant to do so - rightly, because his supporters, and the unions still believe in him. Then there's the Chilcot Report due for release this week; possibly fear of what the Report will reveal has been the driver of goings on in the previous sentence.

Nearer to home: Hillary Clinton's three and a half hour interview with the FBI on Saturday, result due in weeks to come. Bill Clinton's rather (ahem) opportune meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an Arizona airport the day before Hillary's interview. Party Conventions later this month. What will Bernie do? Will Donald Trump ride out his storms with the RNC? Who will be chosen as Vice Presidents for the two nominees?

SCOTUS is still a Justice short of a full court. Republican congress is still being as obstructive as ever, if not more so.

Outside of the political, I'm still keen to know what caused the Egypt Air plane to crash into the Med. a few weeks ago, as well as being still bugged by the disappearance of MH370, 2+ years ago, presumably sunk deep in the Indian Ocean. Those matters have disappeared from news media.

And: ISIS, Olympics, climate change, Zika virus......PHEW!

Independence/Interdependence

“There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976

“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.”
― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

The USA's Independence from Britain in the 18th century is celebrated today, while Britain, or parts of it now strain for their own independence from the European Union. Hmm. I saved a comment found on a British-Ex-pats' discussion forum this week, as representative of the situation in the UK at present:

"So, let me get this straight… the leader of the opposition campaigned to stay but secretly wanted to leave, so his party held a non-binding vote to shame him into resigning so someone else could lead the campaign to ignore the result of the non-binding referendum which many people now think was just angry people trying to shame politicians into seeing they’d all done nothing to help them.

Meanwhile, the man who campaigned to leave because he hoped losing would help him win the leadership of his party, accidentally won and ruined any chance of leading because the man who thought he couldn’t lose, did – but resigned before actually doing the thing the vote had been about. The man who’d always thought he’d lead next, campaigned so badly that everyone thought he was lying when he said the economy would crash – and he was, but it did, but he’s not resigned, but, like the man who lost and the man who won, also now can’t become leader. Which means the woman who quietly campaigned to stay but always said she wanted to leave is likely to become leader instead.

Which means she holds the same view as the leader of the opposition but for opposite reasons, but her party’s view of this view is the opposite of the opposition’s. And the opposition aren’t yet opposing anything because the leader isn’t listening to his party, who aren’t listening to the country, who aren’t listening to experts or possibly paying that much attention at all. However, none of their opponents actually want to be the one to do the thing that the vote was about, so there’s not yet anything actually on the table to oppose anyway. And if no one ever does do the thing that most people asked them to do, it will be undemocratic and if any one ever does do it, it will be awful.

Clear?"
(mrken30, British Ex-Pats forum)

Easier to Blame the Faceless

A moving piece at The Guardian yesterday by Mike Carter bought tears to my eyes:

I walked from Liverpool to London. Brexit was no surprise.

Maybe the Brexit vote from the people living in areas Carter describes was inevitable - they needed to blame someone and to, at last, make themselves heard. I understand their pain and frustration, I do! Yet they were not aiming their wrath in the right direction.

Among the 2000+ comments under Mike Carter's article I saw one with which I 100% agreed, posted by another Annie: "Annie M"

As the fallout continues, this is another truth emerging: that it's much easier to blame "abroad" in the guise of the EU/faceless bureaucrats and those darn immigrants than it is to blame the home team. Consecutive governments on all sides from Thatcher on down to today, with their failure to serve the people who elected them, is the real reason for this disastrous Brexit vote. I've long been predicting that the working class will rise again, possibly through some new configuration of organised labour, but perhaps this referendum has been their single best weapon to stick it to the ruling class however devastating the outcome. (Annie M)

I'm both very sad, and very angry at the situation in which my old homeland finds itself now, with no strong leadership to steer it through the tangle ahead. Perhaps this is the fever stage, it'll continue for a short time, then break and a slow healing will begin, though it will be leaving the country weaker, for many years, than need ever have been the case. Will those people on Mike Carter's route be any better off though?

I voted in many General Elections during my 60+ years in England, I always voted Labour - always! Labour used to be the party of the working classes. Labour changed though, just as the Democratic party in the US has changed over the years. Both parties abandoned their roots long ago - and that is where the true rot is seated, both here in the USA and there in Britain - and where all the blame should rightly be aimed.

The EU isn't perfect, far from it, but it's being made the scapegoat for decades of what's now called neoliberalism in national governments - abandonment of the working classes by all political parties. Conservatives and Republicans never pretended to represent the working classes - how so many years under their rule have happened I shall never understand, but at least they never pretended to be something they were not. The poisoning of the Labour Party and the Democratic Party are crimes which will need to be accounted for at some point - perhaps not quite yet, it seems, but soon.

I let my keyboard cool down after typing the above, and moved on to read the day's offerings at The Smirking Chimp. I was happily surprised to find a piece by one of my favourite writers, absent for many months. Prof. David Michael Green's piece is an excellent commentary on the overall, worldwide situation which has directly brought about the results on which I've scribbled above. Prof DMG's article is titled:
How The West Was Lost and Other Joys of Greedy Sociopathy - do give it a read!

X-ing It

Britain, today, will be in the grip of referendum fever. The people must decide whether to place their "X" in the "Remain" box or or "Leave" box. This problematic referendum has been referred to generally as "Brexit" : to stay a member of the European Union or exit it?

I have some purely selfish interest in the result, because of the vagaries of currency exchange, to which my two pensions from the UK are subject. If the vote is to leave the EU there'll be a severe fall in sterling's value, leading to a drop in the amount of money arriving in my bank account each month. That aside, which though important to me means nothing to those living in the UK, I've come to the conclusion that it was a very, very risky business leaving it up to the population to decide on such a complex issue, upon which might ride the future fortunes of the nation for decades to come. Ordinary people simply do not understand the big print, let alone the small print in something so complex .

As I understand it, the referendum will not be not totally binding, especially if the vote were to be very close. A close vote could leave the final outcome up to parliament. Last I read, parliament favours "remain". Or there could be a further referendum later.

From reports, not even experts can predict confidently how things would proceed in the case of a "leave" vote. In the case of a "remain" vote, things would continue much as they have been, though perhaps with some stronger pushes from Britain's EU representatives for better terms from the EU.

I'm not equipped to blog about the pros and cons of a vote either way, not having lived in the UK since 2004 . I could have voted in the referendum, possibly should have voted, but decided not to do so. It's for those who have to live under, or outside, the EU, day to day, to make the important decision; they having been given this opportunity, which I do sincerely believe is way beyond their (and my) "pay grade".