Operation 'Old Hat'

The White House hacking story was released - or broke - on the 8th of April.

And you read something suggesting that kind of thing here on the 2nd of April.

I know I shouldn't do this because there are some rules one of which says 'don't harass people who might end up as your opponents.'

The actor Gary Oldman doing a
Spy Master - or analyst's - face

So but what's the actual point of hacking private or at least confidential email and files of people who are in the higher circles of the White House? That's the basic question Russian media is asking in an attempt to cast doubt on suggestions the Russian government has some hand in the recent hackings.

You may recall a so-called 'Operation Aurora' in which the US government accused China and North Korea of hacking US government computers back at that time. Every year a new hacker!

There are two (well three if you include the real objectives) main aspects of the hackings, both of the White House, and currently, of TV5Monde in France.

Firstly, there are the actual people who are doing the hacking (more on this presently).

And secondly, there is the way in which general media releases the stories.

Back to the first aspect - everyone hacks everyone else; yes the Russians do it, and the Chinese, definitely Japan does it as well, the Germans have a system but it doesn't include actual computer and internet hacking of US government files, and the British have a (possibly illegal) backdoor anyway. One particular foreign country has a low latency process straight into US secret computer files and internet traffic.

None of the countries except the last one have the least bit of real access to the mainstream Western media. The CIA's media channels are too well-known for any of this to have been from them.

And so Admiral, apart from the source of info about what you had for dinner last weekend, would you like to understand what this is all about? (I'm sure you do know, but some readers here who are citizens and taxpayers might not).

In the case of a genuine external hacker, they will want to know who in the White House was talking to whom about arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the last year or two. And they will be able to tell simply by observing who jumped when the hack story came out - whether they even actually hacked anyone or not!

And in the case of the supposed Islamic State hacking of a French TV Station - cui bono.

For in this case it wasn't about information as such, it was a 'denial of service' operation. The media has theorized very quickly that Islamic State just wants to irritate and harass the French people and the French media. 

Her ex-boss was given a new identity...
As well as a fake funeral,
but you're not allowed to know that.

What strikes me as completely odd, rather than just report the facts, the media appears hell bent on speculating about who is doing things! North Korea does Sony, Russia does the White House, and Islamic State does French TV. Cases all solved. So there you go, just run along now sonny. No need for the FBI or anything like that; Rupert will tell us right off the bat.

Where is Gerald Ronson, by the way? Does anyone know? What is he up to these days? I see Ed Miliband goes to his charity do's. I wonder whether Gerald and his mates at J. Rothschild will end up with the UK bits of Total. The last time he tried this kind of stuff with his mates he went to jail, but then, European Court judges ended up saying the British Courts and prosecution were all wrong. Just shows what low latency (in this case high up in the various judiciaries) can procure for you and what harm it can do to unsuspecting people like Jesselyn Radack by comparison.

Operation 'Old Hat.' Is that what it's called? Never saw that in any mainstream Western media now did you! 

Winner's Talk

Well, on Friday the 17th of November of 2014, and again on Friday the 13th of February 2015, I posted about an Australian racehorse called 'Chautauqua.'

This afternoon, Chautauqua beat the best sprinting racehorses in the world over 1200 metres and collected the main prize money for the TJ Smith Stakes - the top sprint race in Australasia -  a race worth 2.5 million dollars in total prize money and held at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney.

Chautauqua wins $2.5 million TJ Smith Stakes

It won, coming from last at the turn, and it won by what looked to me pretty much like a nostril - but it was a clear nostril.

It was not the favourite by any means at all and paid a very healthy dividend to those who backed the horse - about 5/1, and even 8/1 on track at moments.

So what makes it possible for someone like me to 'know' beforehand? 

It's easy for critics to say, oh well you could tip a lot of horses and then bang on when one of them wins.

But as those of you know who have been reading at this place for awhile, I don't do that kind of thing; Chautauqua was one of only two or three I have ever mentioned - and as you will know, all of them have won, and big money races too.

So what makes it possible? And are the techniques similar to or the same as what you will have to use to make more standard 'investments' in financial markets.

Race horse betting markets are financial markets. They just occur over a highly compacted time-frame on the day of the given race, or any given race, in question.

And what horses like Chautauqua prove time and time again, is that the 'market' and the apparent, and publicly-known professionals are regularly quite incorrect in their assessments and analysis.

Seafood cassolette,
good riverboat fare... 

I remember talking to a great Western Australian bookmaker a long time ago - Eddie McAppion - who asked me once: 'this race is impossible to sort out, no one knows what will win this one - if only I knew which horses to lay... What do you think?' (To lay means to attract more money for some horses as the bookmaker, in the belief those will lose the race, and thus win the bookmaker extra money).

And I told him that I thought the mare Bungling would win and moreover, she would win in a photo finish by a nose - the shortest possible official margin.

'Ridiculous!' He said. 'No one knows that kind of thing.'

Anyway, as you will have guessed Bungling did in fact win in a photo coming through along the inside rail and literally by a nose in a photo finish.

Afterwards, he questioned me as to whether this was luck or something else, and I said an experienced trainer had once told some kids arguing about the relevance of a 'parrot nose' on a racehorse, whether this had something to do with the line of breeding and indicated some bloodline - he'd said to them: 'no, but an extended front lip could help you in a photo finish.'

Now this all sounds completely ridiculous but I'll draw your attention to an old movie starring Cameron Diaz and Al Pacino 'On Any Given Sunday.' D'you remember the coach's speech about the difference between winning and losing being a matter of inches? But that the inches were all around you... In front of your face, between your fingers, at the ends of your arms, where your eyes were looking, everywhere.

Black Russian cocktails - after you win,
never before.

Eddie was so irritated at me, that even in the photo, where bookies were offering odds on which horse got up, he bet against me. And of course lost. And was irritated all the more.

I like to position myself in investing, in the role of the gambler, and not the 'house.' And I'll tell you why. Being the house is about an oligarchy. And oligarchies create fat, slow, envious, lazy, angry people at the tops of those systems. Their capacities to enjoy themselves is extremely constrained, and a lot of what they do is underscored with fear and jealousy and even a kind of rage. And often, they resort to cheating to 'win.'

And that's the best thing you can ever hope to have, as an investor, because it is when the so-called supremely powerful fuck up, and they do it big time.

I could tell you how it is possible to pick winning race horses from such a long way out. But seriously, that would involve some real serious talk!






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Black Velvets

Patrick Macnee of John Steed/The Avengers fame introduced the idea that the Chelsea Boot was 'the thing' for a well-dressed man.

And, I see Daniel Craig in a pair the other day in one of the shoots in Rome. Not sure Fleming ever considered the Chelsea Boot for Bond but hey, so what, this is 2015.

I mean for god's sake, who even knows what being a real bon vivant is, anyway?!

A 'Black Velvet' cocktail

One may read that Bond ate 'dressed crab' and downed 'Black Velvets' but has anyone you know eaten dressed crab recently? Apparently, even Maryland crab dishes served in Maryland hardly ever have actual Maryland crab in them now. It's more likely to have seafood filler made in a factory owned by Goldman Sachs or Warren Buffett in Vietnam. 

And so, if it comes to fantasy Bond - which it all pretty much is these days - or fantasy bon vivants, I think frankly we can kick a few asses here.

Of course, I'm sure you all know that this current adventure in Yemen is entirely, and I do mean entirely a scam to sell weapons to a few of the ME countries. Do you know how many actual armed fighters the Ansar Al Zaidi army has? We're talking easily over a million. And so 500 dead in the air bombing by the House of Saud against the 'House of Houth' (which the media is calling the voting public of all of Yemen) is a touch silly to be brutally honest. But that hasn't stopped a massive build-up of naval warships from a dozen Western countries zoning in on the Gulf of Aden. If there were a real Bond and he had on a Chelsea Boot it could do no better than being sent rapidly up the backside of Salamander, King of Saudi Arabia. Won't happen of course.

Actual MI6 are more interested in participating in the flow of gravy from the new, open Cuba, and the anxious King Salamander and his minions purchasing extravagant amounts of special, intelligent, pin-point targeting weapons - now that Yemen, like Egypt actually had democratic elections for once. Jesus, we can't be having that around here!

Anyway... 

Baked, Stuffed Crab - excellent!

Personally I prefer baked crab to dressed crab, and although you will not easily find it on the internet, deviled baked crab is the most amazing thing. Baked crab is difficult to prepare and execute well; time-consuming to present  - and you see that by flipping through pics on the net of it. It seldom looks any good in these photos... But, it is simply one of the most amazing dishes if you ever have the chance to get a good version of it. 

Yes, a Black Velvet cocktail - champagne and Guinness stout - is perfect with virtually any crab dish, and certainly with oysters and caviar too. But I think we can go a bit further and try what is known as a Riga Black Balsam with our baked crab.

And our strictly fantasy bon vivant may prefer a pair of Gaziano & Girling benchmades.

Gaziano & Girling's

All of these little things will, I'm quite certain, be appreciated by Admiral Mike Rogers, current head of the NSA, who has a sense of humour, and, as I believe, has even got himself a little disinformation section who go around nightclubs in Dubai spreading rumours about alien landings off Yemen. I kid you not.

Our Bond is of course, unemployed by - unemployable - by any of your usual Western governments. 

Admiral Mike Rogers favourite dinner dish is... yes, you guessed it, baked crab.

Check your cooks, Mike; check your lowly, lowly, cooks. Get some food tasters. Even buy some of those chemical detector units from Germany (I think C. Melchers can source that for you). Better buy them from Germany too, and not from Israel, who don't like you.

Good Production Design v. Script

I'm sure a few of you have seen by now, the early release teasers for the latest Bond movie 'Spectre.' Spectre was originally created by Kevin McClory not Ian Fleming, but we shan't hold that against anybody.

I have to say that from what I have seen this is the first time in the new era of Bond that I have seen excellent production design qualities in one of the newer iterations of the Bond story in film.

Craig finally looks right

And, the action sequences involving Daniel Craig are much more advanced, complex and sophisticated than all of that silly train-top running and just general running that seemed to be the vogue at the time for all of the action stars from Cruise to Matt Damon and everyone in between including Jackie Chan!

But that doesn't mean to say they aren't going to once again completely stuff up the film due to a dreadful script and story-line. However, it is a good sign that the early production design is so good. For once at last in these recent years, Bond appears in a certain glimmer-shadow of elegance, wearing clothes that actually fit the actor and not the actor attempting to fit some fixated concept and image of 'James Bond.'

As far as remaining faithful to books, if you put a stopwatch on the amount of time the Bentley Continental was actually seen in Casino Royale I don't think you'd get more than a few seconds, not even. And yet, for all the claims that the recent directors are sticking to the books, they jump-cut the Bentley into this same old flash-flash pseudo-drama visual scam that modern directors appear to believe will pass for excitement and thrill.

'Spectre' is not exactly any Ian Fleming story or book as such, although it featured as the main 'villainous thing' in a short story and a number of books.

What will it - the movie - turn out to be in the end?

Fleming's idea of dinner

You have some great actors there - Bellucci, Craig... And some average ones and some complete unknowns for the present. A vast budget. Really great production design, from all indications. 

But these people behind the production have never shown any respect for writers at any time in the past, everyone knows real writers get paid nothing - even Eszterhas had to use camera angle tricks to get a professional money-earning reputation!

A real fictional villain - smash his face, James,
take his watch off him! Shoot his ass with your Walther PPK.

We were all lucky that Fleming's wife came from the literary family who owned the London Daily Mail. Fleming was not a good writer but he still was one.

Make me a believer, Sam Mendez. I'm giving you a big chance. But don't think you're a writer, because you aren't one. Get one. The production design deserves it.

Writers, real writers are more powerful and mysterious than you know... Think the Bhagavad-gita, Ulysses, the Gospels, the fucking Koran for godsakes! Buy a writer, Sam. It will be worth it.

The Substance Of Ideology

An ideology is a system of ideas. A system.

There is often a misconception or confusion that ideas in the hands of people - especially well-known or respected people - are necessarily logical or derived from correct observation and analysis. In fact, usually, they are ideologies and not simply ideas - based on a particular characteristic system that is recommended by the individual. And it is the system, thus, which is paramount; not 'ideas' as such.

I think this is a scene of human ideas at their best.

Ideas, are particular discrete (as in, consistent describable or categorize-able) conceptions that the human mind has inside of the instruments and chemical and neural structures of the human's brain and extended 'brain-space' you might call it (or 'mind,' in this vague label we have to use). When a person is said to be 'of sound mind,' typically, one expects these 'conceptions' to come from some process of relational logic - and if dependent on the data and its quality, sometimes we say the process is only rational and not guaranteed to be always deriving a correct conclusion in the absolute sense.

An insane person may still have 'ideas,' yet they will potentially have disconnections from function, from actuality, and from true logic based on quality data and the necessary relational connections that make them 'sane' ideas. But once a system has been formed in the mind of the crazy person, that person becomes ideological.

Many ideologies are functionally useful, even though they rely on definitions that are extremely vague. Mathematics, or perhaps modern mathematics is one of these systems of ideas with vague but necessary definitions.

For example, all real integers have square roots... except (now here's the 'definition' and exception because of the 'definition:') for 1 (one), and 2 (two) the latter of which is an 'irrational' number and the former of which is, is, is... well they don't say, but it is an 'exception' to the rule about ALL REAL INTEGERS.

Oh and of course '0' (zero). And there is some other fanciful 'definition' that 'explains' what the problem is with 'zero;' it's not a number, or not a real number, or not er er er er, et cetera.

The true 'problem' with the ideology of modern systems of mathspeak is that it deliberately or maybe even just accidentally by habit, doesn't understand the definition of 'boundary.' A thing is not some other thing, because of the boundary concept.

Michelin 3-Stars is a system,
Robert Parker's wine rating is a system,
but genuine self-assurance is cultural and functional.

Sure there is some lip-service paid to boundaries in physics and Riemann space and things like that - but this already is in the upper reaches of weirdo (or at very least nerd!) maths and physics and not the commonplace maths taught in most schools.

You see the problem of the current financial and banking world and the economics obtaining there, is that 'definition' maths is iterative, and not generative; it relies on someone else having previously created something new and valuable, and then copying this endlessly using a process and a systematic plan of undermining inputs including time even to the extent of producing a counterfeit or substitute product and accepting that.

'Idea' maths - or logical idea maths, uses function as the means of ultimate proof, and defines difference through another, separate, discrete idea, namely - 'boundary' or 'boundaries.'

When difference is defined too vaguely, you can get into 'systems' becoming the substitute for logic - and then you have the presence of 'ideologues' in your midst.

And then you get this modern cult-ish nonsense of litanies (text books/'bibles'/platforms/ manifestos/manuals/extensive lists) of iterative slight changes with technical terms like you would find in the vocabulary of a separate language - but that are meant to cover 'everything' so that the 'system' becomes the universal; able to enclose all things.

Unlike a functional cultural memory of things that happened, this 'language' is theoretical but it's also like a fanatical religion. It doesn't work or function but one cannot argue against it or try to contradict the priests of the system.

But the main point is, it doesn't work.