The Freedom Fiddle

The question on everyone's lips at the moment is did Russians attempt to affect the America election, now I do not have access to any high security files or even some fake ones however I can apply some basic common sense to the situation.

First off like the UK the popular vote does not guarantee a win, in the case of the 2016 election Trump lost by 2,864,974 votes however he won more states than Clinton so when the Electoral vote occurred he won but only by 14%  which makes it quite close indeed although the previous 2012 election was close on states but higher on the Electoral vote.  The whole thing just gives me a headache an overly complex system if you ask me.

To affect the Popular vote you would require a huge amount of manpower or they could use fake news articles which whilst it failed in the outcome of the Popular vote it, it could of had enough of an affect to win enough states so that the Electoral vote was effectively in the bag.

However did fake news articles really do all that damage are we really that gullible (yes I know they sold Brexit to the British people from the side of a bus) but still there are other possibilities we have not yet considered.

Gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries.  I understand this occurs in America somewhat, the Washington Post has this to say on the subject: without-gerrymandering and this is technically legal.

If all else fails you pick key states and lean on the Electors, does such illegal activities occur in America politics and are the Russians involved?

Well fake news articles did appear mostly by a bunch of kids in the Balkans who were making a packet on the advertising they had no political agenda they just learned how best to leverage the election in their favour.

What were the Russians speaking to the Trump chaps about then or did they just learn from the kids and add to the fog of dodgy news.  Then there is Clinton's emails of which I have read a few on Wikileaks obviously I have not read all them but the ones I did read, are mostly spam, junk and quite pointless emails. Clinton's email server was hacked several times during 2012 and 2013:

"The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. Sixty-five of those emails were found to contain information classified as "Secret"; more than 20 contained "Top-Secret" information. Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey. He added it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the three classified markings meant..."

Considering the small number of messages you have got to wonder whether they are even real or not especially since Trump did not pursue the investigation.  Why investigate something that you know is a hoax or if not a hoax something you cannot win?

The timing of the pubic statements right of the middle of the campaign, yet more nails in Clinton's Election coffin.

Can you fix an election yes, just use lots of nails.

Land of the...OMG!

Well Trump has done something that most politicians never do when gaining office and that's attempt to fulfill election promises although I maybe generalising like I always do.  My previous post back in early November last year was perhaps a little bit optimistic:

I read Trump's policies after he had won to see what what we were in for and what effect he would have on the world, to say I was surprised would be a somewhat understatement.  Zero evidence of a southern wall and in fact very little of what was said in sound bytes throughout the campaign appeared in his official policies.  His policies are heavily watered down versions of his rhetoric, unfortunately his ideas on huge tax cuts, deregulation and massive public spending looks like a recipe for disaster.  Although since he is a successful businessman I would like to think he has a better understanding of managing money and running a country than Hilary Clinton.

Well the last part was, in the last few days since he has taken office the policies he intends to invoke will effectively cut American off from the rest of the world in terms of trade, science, basic human rights and the giving of aid.  It is only five days into his presidency I hate to think what it will be like in a couple of years time.  I would not be surprised if they started teaching Creationism in schools.

One wonders if half the population of the America are xenophobic since they voted for a man that is showing all the qualities of one.  Perhaps the election was rigged after all.

His recent statement about Iraq's oil is deeply disturbing I can only hope it was one of those sound bytes that is used to misdirect the public away from other news.

That news being the Trump administration is placing a gag order on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding all webpages, social media and Twitter feeds that have climate-change information.  In the land of the free, free speech just went out the window.  America is taking its first steps towards a police state, historians (if there are any left) will place a marker on this day in the timeline it will say: Beginning of America's fall.  There is a similar marker from last year when we in the UK voted to leave Europe.

Back in 1963 another President was killed for trying to change things for the better, maybe history will repeat itself but this time as a farce.  Not that I would ever condone such an act being the pacifist that I am but it would not surprise me if Trump did not finish his full term.

Trump's Tax plan mostly benefits the top 1%, so yet again the rich get richer.

Updated 26.01.17, what a surprise NOT: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-38760792

Flotsam #2

DOD endorses slave labour oh wait it isn't just iPhones, what's the inside scoop who is worst?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/07/19/us-army-ditches-android-for-faster-iphones/

Well its better than cherry picking the statistics to make it sound like you can save $£350 million, unfortunately it also means you cannot measure Boris's lack of success.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/boris-johnson-britain-should-not-commit-to-migration-target-to-a/

Who will teach the children about freedom now?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/19/turkey-sacks-15000-education-workers-in-purge 

That's the problem with a British Democracy its all red tape designed for what one thing to slow down the people in power from doing something really stupid, hey maybe that's a good thing...

https://next.ft.com/content/d37cf850-4da9-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc

It is simple really play Ingress look where there is a big clump of XM switch to Pokemon, wait several days for the App to load or not at all and then...

http://www.lazygamer.net/mobile-gaming/poke-rader-another-service-thatll-help-track-missing-pokmon/ 

Err we are having been living in 1984 for a long time now, how is it you have just noticed?  Perhaps you were too busy with your phones.

https://next.ft.com/content/dc5e2104-4d88-11e6-88c5-db83e98a590a 

Not aware of his surroundings, I cannot see a smartphone anywhere.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/19/marathon-runner-smashes-his-you-know-what-into-a-post-6016167/

Where Anything is Possible

Next Thursday is the EU referendum and sorting all the arguments is a complete nightmare but lets start by looking at the bigger picture that is currently evolving from the EU camp first the German finance minister threatens Britain that we would not be allowed to enter the single market if we left and now the French minister Mr Macron says:

"Leaving the EU would mean the 'Guernseyfication' of the UK, which would then be a little country on the world scale. It would isolate itself and become a trading post and arbitration place at Europe's border."

It seems to me that the EU are doing their best to scare us and perhaps they think it is a little bit of reverse psychology in that they pushing us away to make us stay.  No offense to the voters out there but that is probably a little too clever for anyone to pick up on.  The last time Germany made threats we ended up with two world wars and I am sure nobody in their right minds wants to see that again.

What does it mean to be in the single market (good and bad):

• Free movement of goods - no customs at borders, goods are inspected at the traders premises
• No tax on goods - that's a good thing.
• Free movement of capital - this is brilliant news for terrorists far easy to conduct Money laundering.
• Free movement of services - which includes Internet purchases, how much do you buy from Internet because it is cheaper?
• Freedom of establishment - Set up a company anywhere in the EU (barring non-profit) great for avoiding paying taxes (sometimes)
• Digital Single Market - Internet, Telecoms (no more roaming charges), Delivery rates, copyright
• Free movement of persons - That means anyone in the EU can work, play or retire anywhere else in the EU plus there are no border controls.

The key issue is Freedom, remove these freedoms from the EU and you get a Police state.  Leaving the EU means leaving those freedoms behind will that change our internal freedoms hopefully not but by leaving we would be entering unknown territory effectively swapping the order of freedom with the chaos of freedom.  Chaos is where anything is possible good or bad.  Which would you prefer to do stay safe in the status quo or risk everyone's freedom, are we that selfish?.

Should we leave then other countries may decide to leave too which could create a snowballing effect to the breaking apart of the EU.  We would back to the 1940s (or worse the 1920s and the depression) and you only need one country to get too ambitious.  History repeats itself again and again, humanity makes it look easy.

Then you will have World War III, it is as simple as that (by 2030).

We all live on the planet for a short time and we are all abysmal at getting along with one another.  Mostly because we want more.

When I first started writing this article I was prepared to be swayed to the leavers side, I thought rocking the boat would be a good idea that chaos in a limited form would be okay but when you follow the simple logic through, the future prospect of a war in Europe is too great to ignore.  I have not directly experienced war (only the desensitized knowledge of what I see on the news) but my parents have.  They do not talk about it, why would want to talk about something that made you feel completely helpless.  In World War I we lost a complete generation of men and women, the second version was far worse.  A lot of the voters in this country have never known war and probably do not see it as a potential future threat but it is very real.

The problem is that most people do look that far ahead maybe five years maximum me included in fact I barely look a year ahead.  With a decision like this you have to look at least twenty to fifty years ahead which could be quite easily beyond many the current voters life spans but it is not beyond their children's.  When I give to charity it is always a children's one because they are our future, should we vote to leave then we could be taking their future from them.  How selfish are we?

There are arguments on both sides but this is the only one that really matters.

Chaos without Order is Anarchy and that only leads to a death.