Tag: Truth

The Delusions of Leadership

The British ‘silly season’ approaches!

gordon-brown1 — The current British Prime Minister

Well, this is election season in Britain, or as near as it gets ….. no doubt British PM Gordon Brown will wait to the last possible moment in the hope that either oil in vast quantities will be struck on Salisbury Plain or that David Cameron will be found wandering around near the men’s toilets on Wandsworth Common late one night.

But Gordon-Brown’s procrastination has almost reached its consume-by date and everyone expects an announcement soon for an election on May 6th.

This will be a momentous election. As it seems that British politics has evolved into mammoth-long parliamentary stints – a bit like Japan – the government of the next 15 years could be up for grabs. Will we stagger along under the camel-breaking weight of turgid bureaucracy, overspending and debt under Labour or emerge post-election into the great entrepreneurial leap forward à la Maggie Thatcher Mark II? (this is a slight over-simplification for newcomers to British politics).

We’ll see, but one of the most fascinating aspects of general elections is always to listen to what politicians say. On rare occasions we may be inspired and amazed by their vision and rhetoric, but unfortunately one’s reaction is more often one of total disbelief. I had one of the latter yesterday when I read the following in the Guardian:

“I will continue as Labour leader even if I lose election, “Gordon Brown says.

Now nobody pretends being British PM is easy, but one does at least hope that one’s leader – the one with the finger on the nuclear button after all – will not lose touch with reality. And the idea that Brown could soldier on after a defeat is surreal.

He was never actually elected by his party in the first place, nor of course as PM by the British Public. He has already nearly been thrown out a couple of times by his own party so what possible justification could there be for trying to stay on in defeat? Is the following a justification?

“I owe it to people to continue and complete the work we have started of taking this country out of the most difficult global financial recession.” (Reuters)

Does he really think that NOBODY ELSE can save Britain? Megalomaniac delusions, I fear. And IF he loses the election, the Labour Party could face another 15 years in opposition. The idea of Brown staggering on until he drops is rather sobering.

Mr Brown didn’t NEED to say what he did; the usual politician’s deviousness would have sufficed: “no point speculating about hypothetical situations …. ” and so on …. the fact that he cannot seem to imagine NOT being leader after so many years of playing sulky bridesmaid to the slick and charismatic Tony Blair is pathetic in the true sense of the word.

In sport, business, love and politics, there comes a time when you have to give up, and leading your party to defeat at an election is one of them ……..

PS Of course, he could WIN the election! Oh dear …… pass me the Glenfiddich …..

By Chris Snuggs

Nationalist Hysteria Yet Again

Politics, history and daftness!

The Armenian “genocide” of WWI is once again in the news. The Americans seem to be on the point of recognizing what happened as genocide, much to the fury of the Turks. (though Obama is – once again – apparently wobbling ….)

To my mind, what happened WAS genocide or as near it as makes no difference, but that judgement is best left to historians and is not what interests me in this matter. No, once again it is the absolute hysteria that nationalism can provoke that intrigues me. I take hysteria to be a form of insanity; it is certainly as potentially destructive. How can most of an entire nation be insane?

The point is – but logic seems to go straight out of the window when nationalist hysteria takes over – that this happened nearly ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Any Turks involved are long dead. Present-day Turks cannot POSSIBLY be blamed for what their predecessors did, no more than Germans today can be blamed for Hitler or indeed today’s Mongols for Genghis Khan.

What is the POINT of Turks protesting so loudly about what was the appalling mass killings of Armenians? Nobody is going to blame TODAY’S Turks, are they?

The Turks’ current position could be described as anything from wrong through illogical to insane. For goodness sake, just admit the truth and let’s get on with the future. It happened, it wasn’t YOUR fault but THE TRUTH must be told. Without the truth, we are lost.

The irony is – and irony is never far from human experience – that one supposes the Turkish reluctance to admit that it WAS a genocide or as near as dammit is because to do so would mean they “lost face” or “were guilty”, whereas in fact what is reprehensible is the very FACT that they refuse to admit it, not the original events themselves for which THEY TODAY cannot be held responsible.

This seems to me such a self-evident truth that I truly do not understand the Turkish position. Perhaps someone else can help me here ……

As for “we must avoid damaging relations with Turkey”, I can only throw up my hands in despair. The truth is the truth, and what is the VALUE of “relations” based on lies?

As for joining the EU, forget it. There is enough hysteria within our borders already without adding another 90 million people’s worth.

PS And while we’re on the Turks and Armenia, it is time that the Japanese made a more convincing admission that their army was guilty of appalling atrocities in WWII.

By Chris Snuggs

Tax, Law, Crime and Morality in Banking

More holes than in a Swiss Cheese!

There is currently a merry old ding-dong spat going on between the German and Swiss governments. Basically, someone has got hold of information about German citizens with bank accounts in Switzerland where they are hiding large sums on which they should pay German taxes.

This or these enterprising whistleblower(s) are offering to sell this data to the German government for a hefty fee. The German government is on the point of accepting to buy this “illegally-obtained” information from the (from the Swiss point of view) criminals who have stolen their secret bank data.

This story raises a large number of fascinating questions. It has long been common knowledge that Switzerland offers banking facilities with few questions asked. Any self-respecting criminal or tax evader has or had a secret, numbered Swiss account.

What has always amazed me is how they have got away with this for so long, stuck as they are in the centre of Europe. How is it possible that other countries have allowed Switzerland to become a haven for money obtained illegally in other countries?

For it is clearly immoral to profit from the illegal activities of foreign nationals, isn’t it? What exactly is the difference between this behaviour and “receiving stolen goods”? Worse, we have to remember that the largest sums come from drugs. Anyone willing to look after (or launder) drug money is complicit in the misery and deaths of millions of drug addicts worldwide. Yet the Swiss have pulled off this trick for decades. The Swiss banking (and government) fraternity has never shied away from shady dealings, being until the end of WWII covert supporters of the Nazis.

Well, Angela Merkel is going to do a deal with presumably Swiss “criminals” (according to the Swiss government) in order to recoup money it is owed by German criminals (according to Germany). What a merry old moral maze we have here. But in truth, the world is now too small and inter-connected to allow either tax evasion on a vast scale or the safeguarding of criminal funds.

Switzerland has to decide whether to remain as a supporter of tax evaders and gangsters (including of course African Presidents who have ripped their countries off in a big way) OR to join the real, civil, honest and inter-connected world.

The rest of us should stop tolerating this connivance with crime. “Client secrecy” is no excuse for condoning and profiting from crime.

More on the whole Nazi gold in Switzerland story is here.

By Chris Snuggs

Are you really sure about your cell phone?

Society may be cooking up one hell of an issue.

Like most people if most western nations, for many years I had a cell phone, or a mobile phone as they are known in the UK.

I can recall a few years ago there being a scare in the UK about the microwave radiation hazard involved in using a cell phone but it certainly passed me by in terms of not really worrying about it.

Now a recent report in GQ Magazine seems to be gathering some momentum: once again, it’s about how your cell phone may be hazardous to your health. It would be too easy just to dismiss this as just another poke at a very successful technology but something about this article caused me to write this Post – make of it what you will.

Here’s an extract:

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He’s a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn’t used, so I’ll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. “Not for nothing,” he said, “but in investment banking we’ve been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone.” When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. “I got a sense that he was pissed off,” Jim told me. A handful of Jim’s colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn’t a coincidence. “I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors,” Jim says. “Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways.”

Continue reading “Are you really sure about your cell phone?” →

“FACE” and the Human Spirit

Putting on a face with deadly consequences!

I worked for 10 years at ISUGA, a school in Quimper, France dedicated to multi-cultural understanding and international co-operation in business. This was an extremely rich experience at a school where the majority of the foreign students were Chinese.

campus_isuga — The campus at ISUGA, Quimper, France

It is also, incidentally, the place where I had to good fortune to meet Jon Lavin and Paul Handover, fellow authors on Learning from Dogs.

I like to think that I have always been sensitive to the cultural differences between different nationalities. Having lived abroad for long periods in both France and Germany, the idea of living in a sort of English enclave somewhere, jealously guarding such cultural practices as endless burgers and fish and chips, is totally anathema to me.

I am human first and English second and if I live in Germany, France or anywhere else I want to live like the natives as far as possible …

This also means making an effort to understand and accept their “culture”. Now this normally poses no problem, but with my Asian friends there is one aspect of their culture that I could not accept. And of course, if one DOES put one’s humanity first, then there is always the risk that the culture of one’s hosts – in some respect – may have to take second place. The “culture ” of Germany in the 1930s was fascist, and I certainly could not have lived with that.

No, what causes me problems with Asians (and particularly Chinese) is this question of “FACE”. One is supposed – and one learns this on “cultural-understanding” courses for businessmen (which of course I organised at my school!!) – to so arrange things that EVEN IF the Asian negotiating counterpart is a complete fool and/or makes the most idiotic errors one must ALWAYS find a way to avoid humiliating them in any way.

Well, “humiliating” is too strong a word in fact … one is supposed to arrange things that they never seem to be in an “inferior” position in any way.

My problem with this is that it is in fact the antithesis of everything this site stands for, which is integrity, truth and honesty. Now if a negotiating partner does in fact make some sort of mistake then to pretend otherwise just to preserve their “face” is dishonest, isn’t it? And what are we in fact preserving? An IMAGE and not the reality.

It is, in fact, totally AGAINST the Human Spirit. We are all fallible. I know of no perfect men or women (though Claudia Schiffer comes close 😉 ). It is simply DISHONEST to deny this to preserve “FACE”.

The current British government could have done with learning this lesson. For YEARS there was never ANY acceptance that, yes – perhaps – they might have got some things wrong. Funnily enough, this is coming now in short bursts, but not enough to be convincing – shame!

“FACE” is of course a FACADE. I no longer am interest in facades, but the truth. But the worse aspect of this Asian FACE thing is that it is so totally accepted by them (and by us, but that’s our fault) as being “normal” and acceptable. No, it is NOT acceptable.

The stimulus for this post came from the recent execution of a British drug-smuggler in China. Now it is quite clear from what has been revealed that this guy was A) not fully compos mentis and B) was set up as a mule by a handler. He was caught, tried, sentenced to death and executed by the Chinese. No, I have no sympathy for drug-smugglers, but Mr “Big” he was not.

What muddied the waters even more was that the British Prime Minister made a special plea for clemency, which might very well in normal cases have been granted. But these were not normal circumstances. Just before this incident the British had severely criticized the Chinese for their stance on Global Warming at the Copenhagen Conference. Now, ANY criticism of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party) is likely to be taken as a “loss of face”. One suspects – but there is no way to know – that the Chinese refusal to listen to Prime Minister Brown’s very strong plea for clemency was the CPP’s way of putting the British government in its place and restoring its “face”.

The point is, BEING WRONG is HUMAN. Pretending to be RIGHT all the time is NOT HUMAN. It is IMPOSSIBLE. We should accept this and learn humility. Sadly, the words “humility” and “Chinese Communist Party” are unlikely bedfellows.

By Chris Snuggs

[When Chris wrote this Post, he was unaware of one that I had written that was published on the 28th. Interesting parallels! Ed.]

Faith!

Learning from Dogs big time!

This Blog came about because of a conversation with fellow Blog founder, Jon Lavin. Jon was talking about integrity and how it applies to us in the sense of Truth and Falsehood: that leading truthful and integrous lives is much more than the rather warm and patronising way that the phrase might come over.

Indeed, understanding the power that comes from leading truthful lives and how an individual’s power and level of consciousness can be enhanced through greater integrity, understanding, and compassion could be the most remarkable discovery that any one person could make. Dr David Hawkins, who has written extensively on this subject, has said;

A science of consciousness developed which revealed that degrees of truth reflect concordant calibratable levels of consciousness on a scale of 1 to 1,000. When this verifiable test of truth was applied to multiple aspects of society (movies, art, politics, music, sociology, religion, scientific theories, spirituality, philosophy, everyday Americana, and all the countries of the world), the results were startling.

Returning to that conversation with Jon, it was pointed out that dogs have been calibrated as having a level of consciousness of 210. As a score of 200 is the boundary between truth and falsehood, according to Hawkins, this made dogs integrous, hence the inspiration for starting this Blog. My German Shepherd, Pharaoh, sleeping on the floor close to Jon and me, made the point. Despite being a difficult dog at times, he had always demonstrated a consistency of integrity that was impressive.

Anyway, to the point of this Post – a dog called Faith.

Fear!

Capitalising on people’s fears

I often feel that a situation is manipulated by fear. The word is regularly used on television and in the newspapers, and once the thought is planted it is easy to influence the masses!

I was not surprised to read that the Head of Health at the Council of Europe, Dr. Wolfgang Wodard, had said flu drug

makers had influenced the World Health Organisation to declare Swine flu as a pandemic so they could rake in millions.

Earlier virus outbreaks of Bird Flu, SARS, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and West Nile virus all had major news coverage lasting weeks, but despite the scare mongering, only six deaths, for example, were attributed to Bird Flu. 1.5 million chickens were slaughtered!

The initial “breaking news” regarding Swine flu warned of 65,000 possible deaths, however the campaign of panic provided a golden opportunity for representatives from the drugs companies to lay the golden egg.

To date only 251 deaths have been attributed to the N1H1 bug, and Dr Wodarg, who made the accusation, said it was just a normal flu. The swine flu scare was faked by greedy drug companies, he claimed.

I wonder how, as if by magic, the research, testing and the availability of millions of injections could be there ready for this unexpected outbreak.

In America a few years ago, the news about Anthrax being sent through the post to a government office lasted weeks. Cheap news, Scare mongering, Fear.

Have we moved on to a situation where we create commercial business at the expense of ourselves.

Big business? We wait now for the emergency debate on the issue at the end of the month.

By Bob Derham

Criminals or enemies of the State?

A reflection on what ought not to be a legal difficulty

Yesterday, Dr Sherry Jarrell strayed outside her normal field of economics and voiced the feelings of an ordinary US citizen. That is that the “underwear” bomber should be seen as a combatant, not as a common criminal.

It’s easy to share the frustration of others that someone who allegedly was committed to blowing up an American airliner was clearly behaving as an enemy of the State and, therefore, should be treated and tried in a military manner.

What is the history of such definitions as combatants? WikiPedia provided an answer. (NB. Good reporting should cross-check a source with another source. I spoke with a Barrister friend of mine and he confirmed that the entry under WikiPedia appeared to be legally correct and reliable. Readers are asked to make up their own minds on this issue.)

Blogging and jail!

Is blogging the same as journalism?

There is a very interesting Post on the Blog TechCrunch. Let me quote a little from that Post:

Last week two bloggers, Steven Frischling and Chris Elliot, were visited by TSA agents and threatened with jail time if they did not reveal their source of the TSA Travel Directive that they each published shortly after the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day. Frischling caved immediately and handed over his computer. Elliot did not. Since then the Department of Homeland Security has dropped the subpoenas, but there is a bigger issue here. The protection of sources is a cornerstone of our freedom of speech.As bloggers, we have a duty of confidentiality to our sources. And that means keeping information confidential even if threatened with the tyranny of government. And even if the legislatures and courts haven’t decided that as bloggers we have real rights protecting us from that tyranny.

I’ll never be surprised by a tyrannical government. In a sense, it’s their job. It’s our job as bloggers to stand up to that tyranny, even if our liberty has been threatened. Journalists have gone to jail rather than disclose their sources. If bloggers want the same level of respect, and protection from government by the courts, they need to stand up for what’s right.

Establishing “cause and effect”

In this second of two posts on John Bougearel’s guest post at Naked Capitalism, Sherry Jarrell provides an economist’s response.

Response to “2010: Foreseeable and Unforeseeable Risks …”

In this wide-ranging and comprehensive piece, John Bougearel warns of the repercussions on the world economy of the steps taken to remedy the financial crisis. He warns of the impact of the Federal Reserve absorbing the toxic assets and shaky collateral on its balance sheet, and of the unsustainability of Social Security and Medicare in an aging demographic. On these basic facts, I agree.

One of the most difficult things for any writer to do when talking about economics and finance is to establish cause and effect. In trying to analyze past policy decisions and recommend future actions, however, it is absolutely imperative to distinguish cause and effect. In my view, Mr. Bougearel’s overview is either silent on this issue or implicitly assigns blame to the markets, when it belongs squarely on the doorstep of misguided government regulations. Continue reading “Establishing “cause and effect”” →

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