Now The Files Are Closed.

Now that the files are closed...

A long time ago, the Russian (Federal) Security Bureau inserted some operatives into the London private membership club scene – this is where rich kids and wealthy and time-abundant wastrels go and think they are hanging out with genuine high society. Unlike the popular images of such places, in reality they are all either run-down inside and rather shoddy-looking, or just plain monuments to poor taste.

The importance to you is this – you only imagine you know anything at all about the infamous collapse of Shearson Lehman... You only imagine you know what really went on with Bernie Madoff...

But now that the files are closed, I will tell you what you need to watch out for when a confluence of events and types of people come together.

When I say, the files are closed, I mean the Russian files. Western files are pathetically sad contrivances invented by Oxford graduate-types to create facades meant to convince the theoretically dumb public about who is doing what to whom.

What Ghengis Khan might look like,
if he were around today. Or not.

Here is a picture, a very generously flattering one, of Robert Tchenguiz, the ex-Lehman top-line securities dealer, who went on after he left Lehman's to becoming one of the seriously well-off owners of property in London's Mayfair. He's not a Russian operative however. No indeed. But he was one of the people being watched very closesly.

And the meaning of that is that almost nothing that has happened in the so-called world of high finance over the last ten or even twenty years has escaped the strategic analysis department inside the control centre of 'Ancient Ruhm...'

The world is supposed to believe without question, that Madoff burnt $65 billion from only the world's most esteemed banks and finance experts. And by the way, in this same vein, Tchenguiz (who changed his family name from Khadouri although even then, he's actually Jewish) has $1.8 billion of personal wealth. These are all amazing people. True geniuses. Even Madoff really, since he was able to sell rubbish at will to only the world's most celebrated financial houses.

Which brings me to today's world. It isn't so easy to see where the rich young kids who have made their billions from gadgets and software go to drink alcohol and flirt with females (government agents unbeknownst to them). It isn't going to be so simple to thieve from these. Oh, am I saying that various government agencies steal from rich people? My my. Fancy saying such a thing.

All the same, not so easy to send agents to Mongolia to see the latest high fashion shows being attended by the new rich kids – especially not when the actual 'lords of Mongolian cashmere' are already British and will be able to detect a few inconsistencies in the sudden 'casual' appearances of English roughnecks and toughs dressed in cheap Hugo Boss pretending to be fellow members of the idle rich. What am I saying here?! My god. Nothing bad ever happens to English businessmen in China! Does it?

Mongolian fashion designer Ochirjantson's work

As I say... Now that the file is closed.

Put it this way though, if you are a rich new kid, and you see a rough guy dressed in a cheap Hugo Boss suit moving in your circles, don't get taken in by the story that he hails from Mayfair. People who sell wind-up radios into conflict zones because governments there ban the sale of batteries also often hail from Mayfair. Plenty of money to be made in war zones. And not always through the sale of actual exploding things and ballistic items. I knew this German industrial sales rep once who positioned himself in Asia and kept his eye out for sudden large production runs of wind-up radios. And he always said he could tell who knew a war was going to start well before it happened, and therefore regularly also, as far as he was concerned, who was really behind it. And I can also tell you the only two countries that he ever specified in particular, and the USA, by the way, was not one of them. When the frozen orange juice futures went up, he reckoned, it was already far past the point where the radios had been made. FOJ meant the US was going somewhere. I don't think there is a wind-up radios futures market. As far as I know.

David Brown's Speedback GT.
Out now. Retro-modern.

Smoke And Dirhams

The United Future World Currency is a gold coin that is promoted by people who think that the US dollar should be replaced as the main world currency.

Here we see Medvedev holding an example of the UFWC coin up and smiling.

Said the Pieman to Simple Simon...!

And here are some examples of the Malaysian State of Kelantan's Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham.

A silver Dirham and a gold Dinar

One of the most underscored criticisms of gold and silver as currency these days is the inability of gold and silver to genuinely be able to express as an exchangeable 'token,' sums such as the one that Facebook's founder recently paid to buy Oculus Inc., the company that sells a computer gaming accessory – i.e. $2 billion.

Personally it is difficult for me to see where this '2 billion dollars' was or is or went, from out of Wall Street where it was supposed to have emanated from and been exchanged.

Perhaps it was secreted into a custom-made vault deep deep deep, under the sea, far far far away in the Southern Indian Ocean not just a few hundred uncivilised kilometres outside my own window here in Perth, Western Australia...

From whence it need not ever be looked for since it probably would not be found either... If you know what I mean.

And thus, let us all rest assured in our beds, that yay verily, these vast and great and legitimate sums do exist forsooth. But you will never have the opportunity to see them and nor will I for we are most unworthy.

'New Hope' wine by Mondavi

Behold, here is another pic – this time of Robert Mandavi Jr.'s new livery of his family's wines. And this time we see an act of altruism – namely, that a percentage of the price goes to one of several charities. I see that Mondavi's highest selling wine – which by the way is something of very very great excellence indeed – has been able to be the benefactor to a charity for 1 million dollars. My my. What a vast sum from the world of the wealthy and the elite. And I do hope you to understand by this that what I am saying is that whilst Mondavi is clearly a man of substance, worth, compassion, and charity, his numbers call into question what is really the truth when it comes to the vaunted sums and 'deals' and money flows of the business leaders we are told about, every day in the media.

Alas. Count me in for the Dirhams and the Dinars and all other complexions of gold and silver. Oh, great sinner that I am!

And to think that tall tales of levitation used to be the stock-in-trade of the Arabs and the Musselman generally. Now we get fairytale explanations from the West, of why things failed to levitate, and where they got to once their days of levitation were over, and where now not to look for them due to the trouble it would take you or I to look so we must just take the word of the fairytale salesmen about it... But look, yonder, surely I see the Dow flying?! Oh magic of magics. Wonder of wonders.

When the daylight comes shall all of these Xanadu palaces of the rich and famous shrivel up and die and then disappear in a gigantic puff of smoke? Or several large puffs of smoke around the globe wherever the scam has its franchises distributed.

 

...It is twenty minutes to daylight.

 

Calvin J. Bear

Making Money From Delusionocracy

I have known a few politicians over the years. The last ones that I considered were not delusional were in office back in the 1980's.

That's a while ago now.

If you spend your life trying to deceive others, and at some point you forget which bits were lies and which bits not, you could easily end up on the verge of a serious kind of madness.

All of you will know and realise – those of you who bother to follow this blog – that at least for a year now I have been steering away from offering a view on things like Benghazi, or the Boston bombing attack, or Syria, or Bahrain, or Sochi.

And that is because I have known, among other equally vexed matters, all about the present events in The Ukraine and their likelihood of happening; I considered it a very sad situation and not worth my bothering to scream blue bloody murder, well, certainly not from a pathetic little blog-site. Over the last year I have considered it virtually inevitable, and fully-intended by the Western politicians who have the reins of power in our world today.

I am very sure that a while back I made mention of ex-London Met policemen John Yates and his ideas about 'kettling' of protest crowds and the ideology of using force appropriate to the violence of the protesters.

And I am sure I have spent a lot of posts carrying on about various things Russian.

Alena Gorchakova Russian Jewellery

You could say it's just a co-incidence.

A 'Delusionocracy' is a term I just now made up, but I intend it to mean a system in which people actually trade in foolish and obvious frauds but have grown into the habit of accepting them as a sort of meaningful fiction that satisfies them on some schizophrenic emotional level and even grants them a living just like say a pulp fiction writer might eke out.

I say 'eke out' because I have had major doubts for a good long while that all of these people have the purchasing power that the nominal sums of dollars they claim to possess should grant them.

By my sources there are only about five thousand real disposable wealth rich people in the world... And that is far far short of the figure even for the vaunted 'new' class of China market millionaires alone. But I prefer to rely on my own sources – they have proven many times to be more reliable than other data providers.

One of the conclusions of this perspective is that you can make money from the Delusionocracy, although it is problematic. Yet at the same time, the pathway to enabling such profits is clear enough: indulge them in the deceits and delusionary beliefs and ideas that they are addicted to.

Give them more of what, evidently, they want.

Sheepskin = badguy, no wait, gun = badguy

Of course it's difficult for me to do this kind of thing; I can't help but focus on intelligent strategic assessments that have the ring of truth and reality to them. It would be very hard for me to think that Putin is a different kind of person than the one I know. But I suppose the thrill of acting and even dressing, like an olden days sheepskin and ushanka sporting Russian spy, would be a bit of fun. Afterall, I clearly recall sticking something up here about what to eat like Russian spies do, where to hang out, like Russian spies do, and how to quote Dostoevski: 'the ability to add two and two and make it add up to five has its attractions.'

Wait a minute, I never quoted that before. But I will be using it a lot in the near future. It seems to fit into the spirit of the times. Zeitgeist – a German word, of course.

Intelligent strategic analysis would say that the Russians and the Germans are allies though, right now. You mightn't want to believe that. But only if you were deluded into the idea that the Germans love the USA. Or that the Germans forget who the Black Hand, is.

Don't ever think for one minute that Syria and The Ukraine are not linked. And I believe I've covered that before too, in the piece about Mansour Ojeh, the then publicly-known owner of Maclaren Racing (not that he's got anything to do with it, but he is symbolic of the money involved and the circles trailed). I wonder what's going to happen with the Russian Formula One race? Ah well, certainly a place I can wear that old sheepskin anyway. My that will be fun. Wonder if Vanity Fair will take pics. I think I'll get an agent though, before I have to be like Snowden and live all alone and off donations. Lol. 'Look look he's a spy, he looks like one!'

I'll tell you what delusions are – thinking that the Russians have no idea what is going down here and are being reactive. Or, what is NOT going down, in fact, much to the chagrin of someone, somewhere.

It's so fucking ridiculous. Watching the news.

Any newsman with half a brain has a brace of tickets to the Russian Grand Prix come October 12 of this year. I think someone's gonna get knocked off. Someone in a 'hospitality tent' with the big league of super wealthy super powerful people. An appropriate and commensurate use of force, do you not think. I don't have inside knowledge. It just seems so irresistable, given that there was prudent restraint before the bs in Kiev. I'm not sure what moral value would pull Putin back now. I am telling you all, the FSB knows all about who, why, where and when, and did so well before the matter got right out of hand. And common sense tells you that I am right too. So, do you not think Putin has been incredibly, extraordinarily patient and restrained? I mean he knew, same as the NSA knows. Maybe not by the same means seeing as his people go around in sheepskins and ushankas still, apparently. I don't think there's anything that is going to hold him back now and I think there are a few people living in a state of serious delusion if they think the CIA or the NSA or anyone is going to be able to 'protect' them from here on in. For one thing, they are not innocent. Did Berezovsky die? He did. Must have been an accident. I notice John Yates wasn't on hand to give him mouth to mouth. Perhaps his consultancy fee doesn't cover that level of service.

 

Fucking dickheads. The lot of them. People like Yates, with his bigheaded wilfully aggressive attitude dressed up as 'professional' anything, exacerbate and enflame lunatics who have inordinate power in undemocratic places and actually promote violence by using it and subscribing to it. Fucking moronic dickheads. That is the language that these people deserve. They are the people, that are sending your kids to war and to die. Or worse. And they are bugging your house. And they want respect too.

You can make big money in a Delusionocracy. Whether you ever get to spend any of it is another thing.

(I think I'll be taking this down after a short while. But don't forget what I've said.)

 

Calvin J. BEAR (get it?)

The Mysterious Spirit Of Design...

Jason Castriota is a relatively young man still. He was responsible for the design of the current Maserati Gran Turismo, under the Pininfarina Team name.

Jason Castriota

Understandably, I suppose, car design – even great car design – has a tradition of involving some fairly young people. One cannot but help think of Marcello Gandini at the top of a long list – virtually a raw youngster at the time - who penned the amazing Lamborghini Miura.

They say that underlying the technical aspects of architecture is just one single mathematical relationship – it is the one about mass and force.

Fortunately for all those who live intellectual lives in the world today, access to knowledge of the history of design and engineering has never been better! We all can read up on the lives of Juscelino Kubitschek, Paul Ritter, Marcello Gandini, Chelsia Lau, and now, of Jason Castriota as well. Not that one should expect Castriota's best design days to be behind him so that we must only look into, (albeit recent) history.

Expectation of the amazing is something that is not an unreasonable position to hold in the present era, even if it seems unfashionable at the moment. I make a clear separation in my own mind between the nature of the economic policies that we find enacted upon us in the wider sense of national and international or global economics and politics, and what a Da Vinci is doing in the dead of any given night with undertakers as his companions.

Ralfy Mitchell of 'Ralfystuff' on YouTube

Er, well, but then I can point to one certain Ralfy Mitchell – undertaker by profession or trade – who now is far and away the best whisky reviewer and whisky drinker's mentor or guru online and everywhere, really, who gives out his very very regular 'malt marks' on YouTube from inside his cold 'Manx bothy' (a casual temporary dwelling or shelter for farmers and shepherds and so on). What a wonderful fellow he is too. I come from a line of engineers (and warmongers), and I can attest that whisky has some mysterious connection to great engineering. Thought you might want to know or at least consider that, and even to give such a connection a go yourself. That is, after you sleep with your 'Up Bracelet' on all night, and run through the park (or virtual park) with your ReCon Jet augmented reality eyewear on in order to give the ethylene transport in your bloodstream a good clean out. I have absolutely no idea of the scientific basis for any of this, but I do know that I want any excuse, reason, or justification that is readily to hand to watch Ralfystuff on YouTube with a Glencairn glass next to me. You see I think I am still something of an athlete. And so I will require an excuse for all of this.

 

Thanks a lot Ralfy! No Maserati driving for me today. Or tomorrow. Mind you, never ever had a hangover from drinking Jameson's, or James Grant's strangely enough... Wonder why. Hmn, notes of plum pudding, vanilla, prunes and good quality motor oil, you say... Castrol motor oil, perhaps. Or old Burma Lubricating Oil from the Singer Sewing Machine. Know what you mean, Ralfy; I do know what you mean!

Calvin J. Bear

Be Wary Of THIS

There are kinds of conspiracies that fit neatly into the theorizing that goes on more and more nowadays – afterawhile they all seem quite banal though.

And then there are those conspiracies that would likely be utterly meaningless to most people, and yet that have huge negative consequences that are hard to undo once they have been exercised.

A conspiracy is what you call it when several people agree to overcome objective fairness or even previously agreed social standards and rules, in order to benefit themselves at the cost of those who are not in their own small group.

The Guardian Newspaper's photo of the BBC iPhone

Society operates on such complicated bases that sociologists and historians and political scientists and economists have been a long time at deciding what really makes it tick; and they still don't all agree. But all the same, society is larger than a few media chief editors and their unseen Svengalis.

I see a conspiracy.

It is the one whereby people make unilateral decisions about terminologies, and unilateral decisions about meanings to words in common usage. I'm not being jocular here. I really mean it.

By 'unilateral' I mean 'not what the common usage or definition already otherwise is.' I mean that the few and the monolithic overcome the many and the diverse by force and not by logic; 'the few' in this instance being the 'unilateral' part of what I was saying above.

This type of conspiracy has existed in the past and it typically occurs when there is some kind of dictatorship in control and where the leadership goes mad. No one is able to challenge the leadership because of overbalanced sheer power, yet virtually everyone realizes the falseness of the dogma that is being decreed.

Now there are a lot of simple words that the public uses which don't require a lingustic scientist to attest to their 'actual' meaning. The english language being what it is, actually ascribes meanings to words that common speakers also ascribe, and any other donation of meaning has traditionally by english teachers and literate people been called the employment of 'jargon.'

This position is changing, or has indeed already changed perhaps, on account of a tribe of leading people insisting, often or most usually through the media, that they alone give imprimatur upon meanings of things, meanings or words, and just plain meanings fullstop.

And so you will at this minute see the BBC deciding to slip in one definition of the word 'beauty' (such an innocuous thing, you would suppose) when offering to the public that a maths formula is where 'true beauty' resides... And in the instance of the radio version of the story – which appears to indeed have about five variations and guises that it appears under on different websites and locations – it is specifically the formula for the dynamic movement of fluids, that is claimed to be one example, attested by a lady scientist, of sheer and utter true beauty (the formula, that is, not the scientist).

I am not sure why there have come to be so many recent examples in the media of the twisting or misinterpreting of Plato and other ancient philosophers... Beauty is many things and not just one; one facet of something may be imbued with a quality of beauty, but it itself is not 'beauty' per se. Thus it is not 'true beauty.' And never can it be. It is a sensible thing seen through the dark glass of the human senses. That is what Plato actually did say – but here in this recent narrative there is this implication by association of 'maths' into things that the argument just given in the media has the weight of traditional and classical academic thinking. And it certainly does not.

A single maths formula may have the quality of beauty but it is not itself 'beauty.' The whole complicated area that the ancient Greeks went into when they explained what they meant by the purity of beauty, is today mashed up with words like 'pure' and 'austere' and 'perfect' and a lot of other 'extreme' or absolutist words to give you a 'sense' rather than a manifest list describing the standard definition. And it is very dangerous to have people in positions of blanket power, especially media power, start this business of working on people's feelings when they claim that they intend to arrive at specific technical meanings. I always get the feeling then of someone trying to play around with the public's sentiments, and I ask myself why? Maybe it's just a mistake and an accident...

Beauty is a very complicated thing indeed.

2014 Zegna Limited Edition Maserati

For example. Zegna is going to have a go at their idea of a beautiful rendering of the interior of the Maserati Quattroporte this year. Well, you see, it's actually not their idea – because if it were just their idea, the risk is the cars would not sell. No indeed, these vehicles will need to find notes of desire within the hearts and minds of the wealthy buyers that they are in harmony with. It is a public idea of beauty that Zegna will work from. And they mean it to be that.

A premium Champagne manufacturer in France is making a Champagne with deliberate hints of Russian caviar in it, and one could think this is a stupid idea. I don't know; I haven't tried this Champagne. But juxtapositions do work when it comes to art and things of beauty, and it's not even as simple as to say that subtlety is the key. It may not be. Many a great building is brutalist and not subtle at all, and some even combine quite outrageously conflicting themes – a pickle, crystal, steel, open office plans, spiralling motifs – and yet they do work together.

Luvienz 'Caviar' Champagne

No I do not fear the accidental or mistaken gestures in print and media, but the deliberate and shameless and highly-sophisticated high quality types of propaganda.

Oh no, when the establishment thinker starts all this nonsense of measuring the unmeasurable, and determining for you by a scientific method what is 'best' for you – there is something actually serious afoot.

Of course you are quite free to think that media time on the BBC is cheap or free and paid for by the altruistic British citizen and taxpayer who thinks that intellectual wheelspinning by highly-qualified academics is just the thing for any dull afternoon when there is absolutely nothing else going on that could capture the attention of the public or requires to be reported to them since they are the very heart and soul of democracy and have to be served.

Is there something about the maths formula for fluid flow dynamics that can be applied to the flows of money in an economy...? And if so, is it a thing of beauty? And to whom?