Murdering The Top Brands

I have relayed to you all, that the numbers of official exhibitors at this year's recently ended 'Basel World' Watch Trade Fair were down by more than half.

And following closely behind this item of business and marketing data is the news this week that Burberry - the London-based English brand that came from Basingstoke originally in 1856 - has burned, as in literally destroyed over fifty million US dollars of product (clothes, bags, perfumes, other accessory items), with the objective of decreasing supply and thus I suppose presumably making the branded articles lower in supply than perceived demand in order to buoy up prices.

I guess.

This thing is a real thing, and it exists and it works -
and it is made by Aston Martin

Now in the case of Burberry there are other factors than 'ordinary' and typical current-era market economics as taught by these industrial manufacturers of idiots and professional stupid people. Liz Claiborne, the CEO, passed away not that long ago altering much of the dynamics of how the place was even able to be run, between the creative department and the financial management area.

However, when you also look at other London brands such as Aquascutum, and its extremely dodgy 'bankruptcy' and subsequent 'sale' to a holding company for not much more than ten million bucks, to be re-sold again very quickly for upwards of 150 million... ...then you can stick on your paranoid skeptic hat and think about the effect of the silly 'China-money' and the ethics of your average London 'businessman' and what happens when those two things get together.

Another brand which in my view is rapidly moving towards its demise is, wait for it, don't gasp - Bentley.

Oh yes, unlike the German Rolls owners, the present owners of Bentley are hardly what you could readily call 'good custodians of the brand.' In fact, right from day one of their buy-out arranged by the criminal-minded fool Margaret Thatcher (that last bit was written by John Lydon, by the way, not me...), they completely moved straight-away, towards contemporary Germanic design concepts and AWAY from the traditional Bentley shapes and ideas, except that they claimed Bentley was always already doing this 'vorsprung durch technik' design philosophy, so that's what 'allowed' them to do it... Yeah, right, except that it was from an English point-of-view what original Bentley were doing, ya idiots, not the fractured optic nerve perspectives of German 'masterminds.' (LOL). 

And this is a real Savile Row jacket - can you tell?
Not that many left doing it for real in London now...

When it comes time for you to spend your big bucks now, think ten times first now - remember you are living in a world of mixed virtues: highly advanced technologies that indeed definitely have their place, even though they are being used or exploited by people from completely different parent brand ideologies - all mixed up with for the most part falsified, spurious representations of previously genuine authentic luxury or expensive functional things.

I totally agree with Aston Martin over their unveiling this week at the Farnborough Airshow which is still on for a couple of days - of their flying car. This is where carbon fiber and composites and F-B-W and computers and drone technology was always legitimately heading.

But if you want a real authentic sports car (carriage which goes on wheels and tyres on a road), call me up and I'll privately introduce you to the people who still actually make them in England; same goes for shoes, suits, shirts, watches and just about everything else you can think of.

Even Mysore sandalwood - the authentic stuff - is literally no longer actually available even in Mysore. The best of that thing comes from here in Western Australia where the Maharajah of Mysore started some official plantations out in literally the semi-desert wilderness here. So there ya go!

Why Don't 'They' Say?

The internet is nothing if not a vast receptacle of 'things you were never told...' People make such claims all the time, it seems, nowadays.

And some of these 'things' indeed seem to me quite legitimate in the sense that they have been 'suppressed' as information down through the years, for what reasons no one will ever really know, I suppose.

What aftershave, for the well-heeled?

But if we are smart modern minds, we simply have to take into consideration the effects of sophisticated Western marketing, and the way this tends to skew popular beliefs, or to grab the focus away from actual hard facts and onto the media 'message.'

I'll give you an example of something that is part of my standard family background 'knowledge base,' I guess you could call it, but which would not occupy too many people's attentions unless they were in a particular industry.

Here's the example: regardless of the fact that people do know about the 'spice trail/s,' and its history, they still are unable to apply common sense to for example, the eventual outcome of the spice trail on French perfumes... ...for instance. No one ever, not even Luca Turin or Roja Dove in any of their books will say that clearly, the traditional methods and ingredients in perfumes manufactured in the Orient or in India, found their way into what was MARKETED as 'French-invented/created' fragrances.

You see, the fact is, even now, if you purchased a 'big brand house' name French perfume, you will pay a substantial amount of money - for what is essentially a re-packaged, re-branded, stock standard traditional Indian-made essential oil which has been added to an alcohol solution.

You might pay ten dollars in India, or via an on-line purchase direct from the traditional India manufacturer, and pay literally a thousand dollars for the actual exact same thing, albeit the latter diluted in alcohol solution and held in a neat glass bottle.

Russian Leather - totally unisex

Things like Muguet, or Russian Leather - are formulations that have been made by several big names - Chanel, Guerlain, Floris (the English house), Coty; all have made the same thing at different times, since originally, the creators would sell their formula to several manufacturers.

And so, even in the most authoritative reference books, the list of ingredients and the way of formulation is in fact wrong. You see, the belief exists and no one even inside the industry will challenge it because they just lack a lot of common sense and are stuck in the hubris of their positions - that various ingredients now known by certain nomenclature (for one example, take cypriol...) were 'invented' at a certain place, at a certain time, by a certain person or persons...

And even when they tell you, what they think is the truth, when you examine it, it is just plain silly.

'Nagarmotha' fragrance extract- which is called 'cypriol' (extract from the nagarmotha plant) was created by the M. L. Ramnarain perfume house of Kanauj, in India. According to the experts. And that is partly quite correct.

Cyperus or Nagarmotha plant - common nutgrass 

Except that it was 'invented' a lot earlier than supposed.

Cuir de Russie (Russian Leather) by Chanel (original Chanel version, invented by Ernest Beaux in 1921) contains nagarmotha extract - and that is because those people knew about the spice trail, they knew people from the actual authentic spice trail, and they got their ingredients from the actual authentic spice trail. That's what 'secrets' were all about back then; they were genuinely exotic things and real 'secrets.'

Nagarmotha is a very common ornamental plant you can find in any suburb. Almost everywhere in the West it goes by the name of 'nutgrass.' It is neither the tiny hard nutty seeds nor the small short-lived flowers which produce the essential oil or 'fragrance,' but the roots.

Nagarmotha from M.L. Ramnarain is harvested wild from the lower sections of the Himalayas, so yeah, that is pretty exotic... But otherwise, you can get the same stuff from more or less anyone's back yard here in the suburbs.

So cypriol they will make you believe is a few decades old. It is, in Western perfumery at least as old as a hundred years. And in ancient traditional Indian perfumery, many many thousands of years...

And I tell you all that to tell you this: if you believe the Russia collusion narrative began with Peter Strzok or someone like that, or in the FBI or something like that, and that the actual Russians (be they Russian government or just 'Russians') hacked computers to 'meddle with elections' you have no memory, and you are - like most of the modern media, and the common population as well, totally nuts.

Soon, my lad, soon my gal, we will be looking at what really happened, and knowing that, then, we will be able to know what is happening, next. Or now, as in fact it is happening now. Right now. Oh yes; exciting days.

So why don't 'they' say? Because 'they' don't know.

Counterintelligence And The UK

Counterintelligence, as a dedicated, systematic, officially-approved activity, really only began in the United States in the late 1950's with the launch of something now known as 'COINTELPRO.'

But the fact is - and it really is a genuine fact - that this move by the United States government, was merely a reaction to the knowledge that the United Kingdom has been 'indulging' in so-called 'counterintelligence' activities for many decades. And I say 'so-called' because it really is just a set of criminal and illegal behaviors that appears to be nonetheless officially sanctioned by government; it isn't sanctioned... 'Counter...' '...Intelligence' - means exactly that: to counter, or interdict the actions of a foreign hostile power, and especially, to convince that foreign power that it is receiving accurate, true, intelligence (information) when it is really receiving false information.

It doesn't mean that it is suddenly okay to murder, extort, disrupt the business activities of legitimate people and businesses, or harass the innocent. And yet, 'counterintelligence' has taken on all of the aspects of gross illegality that you can imagine, and some that you likely will not even imagine(!) - and largely these are the same activities that have led to what everyone now calls 'the Deep State.' In other words, such measures and activities are used by one political side to disadvantage the other side, or even, as in most cases - one particular clique's economic agenda.

Worse still, there is an awful lot of personal prejudice that goes into what is enacted by covert and clandestine arms of government bodies, as - 'counterintelligence.'

Here is an old old pic of an interview of Martin Luther King by the BBC:

The man with his back to the camera is Richard Hugh Burnett,
who was not just an MI6 spymaster, but a SUPER-spymaster;
one of those whose proteges still run many spy programs inside and
outside of the UK today.
(And, obviously, the man in the middle of the frame is Martin Luther King).

It was not ever the USA that first messed around in people's lives, private and/or public, in such a way that those doing it gained enough actual power to enable this animal known as 'the Deep State,' it was spies and spymasters in the UK but even these had to find funding for nefarious activities that could never be approved of by any Parliament - and that is why we have today, the atrocious circumstance of these criminals having exploited their positions in the fall of the Soviet Union, and also the aftermath of WWII where the 'disposal' of Reich possessions became part of the purview of 'counterintelligence' for whatever misconceived reasoning.

This is why people like Bill Browder can 'afford' to throw 400 thousand dollars at the US DNC to regain some ground lost to the Trump machine. Browder, as also the UK covert establishment, is on the losing side of history, if for no better reason than that they can only get money from theft, and not creative and open genuine business and enterprise - and their days are numbered when it comes to operating in the shadows. The internet has seen to that. There is a fight left of course, but a fight they will utterly lose. It will get very nasty, and there will be killing. Anyone who thinks the US and the CIS do not have personnel in their military arms that could take on any would-be and fake 'Licence-To-Kill' 'James Bonds' are mistaken. It is absolutely a fact that the Five Eyes group is a rogue, a renegade body which has blood on its hands and they have been exposed for what they are and the next time they try some nonsense they might well find themselves in front of Navy Seals lying in wait for them.

Which will of course not stop them. That's what stubborn people do - they walk into the fire knowingly. Because they are arrogant. And not too bright. Let's watch the body count. (And I'll have to edit some of the last two paragraphs out in a short while...).

The Hidden Hand Of...?

A quick note on the comments posting facility: this was somehow disabled without my knowledge but has now been re-enabled - due to the alerting of a friend who reads here. Thanks to Bill - for that heads up. 

...It was 'almost as if a hidden hand had -,' et cetera.

Now moving on from previous posts, and particularly for those who are living in the United States, which is presently experiencing some marginal increases in domestic monetray circulation velocity, and some consequent pick-up in official rates of employment combined with the stock market holding its values close to all-time highs - something that needs to be watched very closely is 'economic diversity.' If this is not evidenced inside the domestic economy then there are extremely bad consequences later on down the track. 

The old Porsche style

You see it's the diversity that allows for broadening of monetary flows, and not just simple velocity increases down the same old paths - because there are upper limits to efficiency in any vertically-integrated channel, as there also are with horizontal channels if these are not part of a growing 'dendritic pattern.'

The whole thing about decadence and final collapse is that everything 'thriving' is bloated; functionless but sucking up ever larger amounts of capital. And then like all giants, they are top-heavy and can be made to keel over quite easily.

As investors we have to face the reality that somehow, the hidden hand of some occult intent, drew off the cash money supply by over-emphasis firstly of 'credit cards' and then 'debit or cash cards' and the abandoning of 'wage packets,' and next so-called 'cash reporting' requirements - and this has resulted in the total destruction of all kinds of economic activities inside the usual domestic economy: from sandwich bars and tea rooms, to milk shake bars and Avon(!)... ...all kinds of activities which largely used small amounts of cash as the medium of exchange, but which when multiplied out across the whole national economy, provided huge business opportunities and employment opportunities to many.

Effectively, modern politicians have actually destroyed the Western domestic economies of the world and replaced them with nothing at all.

Just A Conversation

The way I approach these blog-posts is that they are 'just a conversation between friends' or hypothetical friends, anyway. Some people I know personally, don't necessarily leave comments here and I speak with them regularly.

But even for those of you who neither leave comments or email and so on, the general intent of what I am saying is not supposed to be something set in stone and that 'no one can disagree with ever!' On the whole though, I'm sure you yourself have found that virtually every 'luxury channel' will refrain from open or outright criticism of any of the brands or subject matter of their content - and that is because they are, clearly, operating from the position of in some way acting for the brand or brands; promoting and marketing them in some respect.

These are just bottles you can buy - they are
'etched apothecary bottles' with clever words on them!

The trouble with this kind of myopia though, from the brand houses and their commercial supporters, is that regularly they literally bury themselves by digging heedlessly in some errant direction - they can and often have ruined their own brand franchise by their own bloody-mindedness to enforce some kind of change in style or standard of the brand and its product.

My own experience of people has been that ordinary normal people all have a very good sense of what 'high quality' is - they don't particularly need advice as such, probably only key information if it happens to be scant on that front.

I suppose one of the saddest things is that a significant brand or branded product has built up its strength over time, and the power in its value can last a long time, even when it is assailed by lessening standards or miscreant owners and managers. And the underlying presumption in this 'sad thing' is that it is all too often the case that whatever mentality is in management control of something often gets to that position in the first place entirely without genuine merit - and even institutions can be subverted silently over time and what is automatically taken on the outside as 'merit-based' is in fact a fallacious assumption to be indulging in by some observer.

You do not need me to tell you what 'things' you ought to buy!   

But how do 'the wrong kinds' get into power and control - of material things and organizations and human institutions of influence? Because everything that has a good or great reputation is desired after widely - and lusted after also by the most devious and miscreant. And they have no boundaries of ethics or morality. 

A lot of other, bottles...

The amazing thing about this universe, is that scattered in the dust, among the detritus and the rocks and flints, are things of staggering import and value and desirability - and that are undetected and unseen by the unworthy; and if they but knew, they would kill and stand over heads and bodies clambering to grasp.

I personally have no need to 'see' aliens arriving to hand over all this precious 'technology' they are presumed to possess  - and surely will possess, if indeed they had to 'get here' from some extreme distance away through space...

I do need to know where there are a half a dozen interesting, worthy, intelligent human or human-like individuals whose personality and character provide a suitable template - an example - we might use to guide our own thinking and style and styles of behavior.