In return you can have a McDonalds franchise

The following statements are all fact:

(1)The USA is by and large responsible for this Global Credit Crunch turmoil.

(2)They were also the first nation to kill millions of humans with the first atomic bomb.

(3)They are the biggest exporter of war, espionage, economic & military threat, and blackmailing of sovereign nations.

On his political blog, Real Clear Politics, Dennis Prager says,

“One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world — so widely held it is not disputed — is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony. “

Although the piece has a heavy right-wing bias, and goes on to say that its largely leftists that hate america and further that there is a lot about America that is also loved, especially by those on the Right, he does finish by asking:

“So what America does the American left love? That is for those on the left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question. “

BBC poll

It seems that many common Americans do not even realize that they have since long surpassed the UK and other colonial countries as the most hated nation in the world. So this article is about our American friends’ confusion over whether they are hated or not and why?

According to a new BBC poll it wasn’t just George W. Bush’s personality that made America so unpopular but there are underlying foreign-policy issues,” says Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the BBC poll. “[Obama’s] election alone is not enough to turn the tide. People are still looking to see if there are significant changes in US policies.”

Ex President Bush said that these terrorists hate democracy & freedom and therefore attacked the USA. I beg to differ, those attacks were a result of anti-American hatred more than anti-Democratic sentiments. America, as a self-identified military big brother has been harassing much of the developing world for multiple decades.

“Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process – or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world – seems almost entirely absent.” The Guardian, Sep 13 2001.
The main reasons for the overwhelming cry is that the USA has bombed, suppressed Islamic Nations and restricted them financially, commercially and politically. This has snowballed since the demise of the perception of a communist threat. There is utter desperation that Washington is crusading against Islam and that recent events are only an excuse to continue a Christian oppression. Many Muslims believe that the American people have been deceived by their government. Others just want the endless poverty and strikes to stop. There is a strong feeling of repression and of being hated. A mood of resentment toward America and its behaviour around the world has become so commonplace in their countries that it is bound to breed hostility, hatred, and then renewed physical violence. The West calls it “terrorism”, they call it “retribution” against the American symbol of Western oppression. Another sore point is that the USA continues to protect, encourage and finance Israel’s 6 decades of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The USA thwarts every humane gesture by the United Nations. The USA encourages and financially supports the slaughter of several hundred innocent people in Palestine every year by the Israeli death squads.

Global leaders in consumption

To sustain their lifestyle US citizens consume about 10 to 20 times the resources per capita of the average of the rest of the world including Europe. Americans think they’re the most productive people on Earth. They are not. They don’t produce the most. They just consume the most. Just as one example, they burn about 25% of the fossil fuels which are consumed by all people on Earth, but US citizens are only about 4% of the population of the Earth. So that means that they consume about (25/4)/(75/96) = 8 times the average of all other nations. US citizens consume about twice the fuel of western Europeans for approximately the same standard of living. But when countries which supply critical materials to the USA threaten to deny supply, the USA is quick to go in with the military to ensure continuation. Americans think that their excessive consumption is an indication of their moral superiority, but in fact the opposite is true.

An eye for an eye makes the World blind

Of course, there is no possible moral justification for killing 3000 innocent civilians on 11th Sept 2001. The 9/11 terrorist attack was a deep blow for the USA and the West as a whole. However in the grand scheme, this loss of life was but a mere drop in the ocean compared to the suffering inflicted on the world by the USA. Perhaps I should mention that the murder rate by guns in the USA is about 110 per million per annum or about 30,000 deaths each year for the whole country. So the deaths on 11/09/2001 equalled a typical 5 weeks of murders in the USA. The USA has killed about 150,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq since 11/09/2001. That’s a 50-to-1 revenge ratio.

You can’t make someone love you by beating them with a stick. Americans should find ways of feeling good without killing people. Killing foreigners is not the only way to feel proud to be American.

Sometimes I wonder if the USA has been using a “Killing the chicken to frighten the monkey” strategy. In other words perhaps the US government does not care if they are killing the wrong people. Maybe they just kill tens of thousands of Muslims so that there will be general fear of the USA to make the world respect the USA. The “chicken-killing” strategy was used by Lenin in 1917/1918 when he ordered thousands of Russians to be killed at random to terrorise the population in general. One of his followers asked for trials so that the innocent could be spared. But Lenin said he could not allow innocent people to feel safe. He said that no one should be allowed to feel immune from the terror.

The USA in many ways is an excellent country. The real reason why the USA is rich and powerful is research. There is no country on Earth that invests so enthusiastically in real research as well as the USA. The problem is that this research is so often at cost to the rest of the world both in wealth and lives. Many of today’s achievements would not be possible without the help or aid of the USA. Many medical or technological advances and much human aid and third world relief comes from this rich nation [As an aside, I remain sceptical about the lunar landing - watching the hollywood film “Capricorn One” did not help the case either.]

Machiavellian mindset

any means (however unscrupulous) can be used by a ruler in order to create and maintain his autocratic government

The USA has only 4% of the world’s people. So having friends is really essential, but Americans won’t make friends as long as they think that other countries are populated only by barbarians and theme park attendants.

America is perceived to stand for its commitment to democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and free speech, which ironically are the very source of the disappointment. It is the country that has a “World Series” of baseball with teams from all over the “World of USA”!

Maybe investing some profits from the USA global positioning system [GPS] into teaching basic geography to the ordinary Americans would help them realise the presence of other poor souls sharing this “world” with them.

Some fresh punches have recently been thrown in this 60 year old boxing match between the two South East Asian nuclear rivals. The latest game was started after the Mumbai attacks when the Indian government blamed Pakistan and was adamant that surely the Pakistani government couldn’t be totally unaware in such an incident when only 10 insurgents caused havoc for a week for the Indian special [and not so special] forces.

Pakistanis have responded by saying that as yet no concrete evidence linking any official Pakistani government agency or even any individual has been provided. I guess they have a point.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument we take the line of reasoning that if the insurgents are proven to be from Pakistan then this fact by itself will prove that the Government of Pakistan was indeed involved in the Mumbai attacks. Then it can be argued in the same fashion that surely the Indian Government is involved at the highest level in the recent high profile Satyam espionage case at the World Bank!

For people unaware of Satyam this Indian IT company is/was run by Ramalinga Raju who has been hailed as one of the leading lights of Indian enterprise. The World Bank who were one of the bigger clients of Satyam discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank’s Washington headquarters. Was Satyam used as a tool of espionage by the Indian government to steal proprietary information from important agencies, companies and countries?

Frances Karamouzis, an analyst at Gartner says “This is a crisis of trust, it’s not really Satyam at stake; it’s the India Inc. brand”. As a result India’s Sensex index tumbled 7.3 percent on Jan 7th 2009 led by a 78 percent plunge in Satyam after Chairman Ramalinga Raju said profits at the company had been inflated for years and then resigned. Satyam American depositary receipts fell $8.42 or 90 percent to 93 cents before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, which then halted trading in the stock.

This has brought out into the open that outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly dangerous and the service delivered by the Indian IT companies is in a continued state of decline. Not only is this reflected in the quality of output but also in the falling standards of plain old fashioned business ethics. According to The New York Times of 8th January 2009 “The financial fraud at Satyam is rippling through the technology services industry, as customers scramble to line up other suppliers and rivals look to pick up business. Already, competitors are angling for a share of Satyam’s nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. The big winners from the fallout are likely to be two American companies Accenture and IBM”.

Gartner evaluated 30 countries in three world regions that could address enterprise companies’ outsourcing needs. Considering 10 key criteria, Gartner scored the potential of numerous cities to provide the right mix of English language proficiency, local government support, infrastructure and technical considerations such as data security and “privacy” [yes guys the key word here is privacy - the next paragraph explains.]
The future of offshore telemarketing in India was thrown into doubt after UK’s Channel 4 Dispatches Program revealed the incredible lack of security in India’s call centres. Channel 4 senior reporter, Sue Turton exposes the seedy world of the trade of personal data in Indian call centres. In a 12-month undercover investigation, Turton infiltrated criminal networks which trade British consumers’ bank and other confidential information for huge profits in India, the world’s new call centre capital. The show showed how the process works from beginning to end. Call centres dialling for mobile phone companies extract credit or other banking information from people they sell to which is part of a legitimate sales process. This data including credit card numbers, expiry dates and security codes is stored by the call centre and even though the data is sent through to their clients in the UK, a copy is stored on the databases at the call-centre. This data is then taken out of the call centre through a variety of methods including memory sticks. It is then sold through a network of middlemen to other clients or to criminal gangs for between £5 and £25 per record. In some cases the call centre owners are involved in the sale of this data.

The latest Gartner report confirms that India might not be the only country that comes to mind when considering outsourcing work overseas. The location selection is a key factor companies need to consider when thinking of sending work overseas. The city they choose will impact the success of the offshore engagement. “Whether you have a country-led or vendor-led approach to offshore services, you must understand the offshore location landscape,” according to a presentation by Gartner research vice president Ian Marriott. He further adds “Determine which vendors are the right fit for your organization, don’t just seek the leaders”.

Something tells me Pakistan stands to benefit from the unfortunate Indian turmoil because Gartner had previously released a report titled, “Analysis of Pakistan as an Offshore Service Location” which placed the country in the First Category destinations and also acknowledged that Pakistan’s labour costs were 30% lower than India’s, while Telecom costs were the lowest of any outsourcing destination. No wonder Pakistan had a USD 1Billion worth of outsourcing business closed in 2008.

Even in this time of Economic doom and gloom [mostly caused by confusing policies and not enough action by the ruling Pakistan People's Party] Pakistan’s private sector is ever inspiring and has the power to impress and lead. I would start by mentioning that Pakistan enjoys the world’s largest WiMAX network. Wateen Telecom rolled out WiMAX in 17 cities throughout Pakistan – can USA catch up?

Futuristic chalets in Islamabad

Perhaps I should also tell our scientifically minded readers that Around 27 Pakistani scientists and technicians took part in the flawless start to the CERN’s LHC [Large Hadron Collider] ‘Big Bang’ experiment that will re-enact the first moments of the universe. ‘Fifteen physicists, ten engineers, five Lasers and Opto-electronics experts, six computer professionals and six students from National Centre for Physics (NCP) and Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are involved in the experiment.

Pakistan has also bagged 3 of the 16 APICTA [The Asia Pacific ICT] 2008 awards. However I am not too happy to report that Karachi based Integrated Dynamics are providing the state-of-the-art UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] to the US border protection service which are probably indirectly being used to kill fellow Pakistanis! These UAVs, with their sophisticated navigation and monitoring software [also written in Pakistan] have been deployed to protect the borders of the United States. Even Wired magazine covered Pakistan’s growing UAV capabilities in one of its articles.

Staying on the old adage of building a tank and then chasing after an anti tank weapon, Pakistani scientists are also developing a sophisticated system to hit high flying spy planes as recently confirmed by Federal Defence Production Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan Jatoi. Much of the involved technology is in networking the disparate radar systems – writing detection software and applications that can interpret large amounts of raw data emanating from passive sensors deployed over vast geographical areas. Sophisticated UAVs, especially those covered with Radar Absorbent Materials provide a very small RCS [Radar Cross Section]. Herein lies the challenge of detecting them. It’s not very different to an air defence that can detect and tackle stealth aircraft. In some ways, perhaps even more challenging since the audio signatures from slow flying stealth UAVs are smaller than those of their manned counterparts.

No wonder the Indian government stopped its forces on attempting any “surgical strikes” within Pakistan. According to an Indian defence analyst the Indian army lacked key artillery equipment and adequate ammunition supplies. According to him “The 400-odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for want of spares. The 600-odd Shilka anti-aircraft cannons are in desperate need of upgrade. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he wrote, quoting an unidentified retired general. The same general disclosed that India’s numerically vast tank fleet was in poor shape and it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of.

Most of the Indian armaments are still of Russian origin and due to Soviet breakup there is no backup for servicing or spares. The Aamir Khan starring bollywood film “Rang De Basanti” was also based on the ever crashing historic Indian ‘flying coffin’ MIG aircrafts. The Indian military is in tatters and feared that the Pakistanis would take Indian territory in case of a war. Moreover the US forces are using Karachi port for its supplies to the troops in Afghanistan and the Indian Govt just could not take the chance of any of their “surgical strikes” taking out a US convoy or plane because then uncle Sam would send Bruce Willis to kick some butt.

In comparison Pakistan has a ready churning program of Al-Khalid MBT [main battle tank] and joint strike fighter plane JF-17 Thunder built in Pakistan with the co-operation of long standing friend China and with the help of France a Mirage Rebuild factory is in full swing. Pakistan also has acquired the technology from France to manufacture Agosta class submarines. A few squadrons of F16s and A5s are also ever ready for some special urgent pizza deliveries to Indian hot spots.

What does all of this say about our dear countries of India and Pakistan? You won’t be surprised to know that Pakistan is spending a major portion of its budget on defence to keep India at bay. No doubt India does the same. Why oh why????????

It’s not like Pakistan and India don’t have more needy causes. The recent terrific bollywood flick Slumdog Millionaire gave the most honest and raw version of the poverty rife in the Indian heartlands. Unfortunately this tends to be hidden from the world’s attention through the perverse portrayal of sari-clad super-rich clans propagated daily on satellite channels like Zee TV and StarPlus. The ever conspiring women depicted in these never-ending screensaver soap operas are always in full makeup during the rain, in the bed or even at the death bed. They talk only in hundreds of millions and every man in the cast has either married them or else is manipulated by them! Bravo to directors like Danny Boyle, who has shown a glimpse of the reality for the impoverished Indian underclasses in Slumdog. There were some great performances by Dev Patel (Jamal), Madhur Mittal (Salim) and Freida Pinto (Latika). However Anil Kapoor (gameshow host) was straight out of one of the Zee TV dramas mentioned above.

Big Brother points gun at Little Brother

Unless we have an epic scenario of drifting sub-continental tectonic plates, causing Pakistan & India to get separated [now THAT would make a great movie – any director listening?] both the countries have to realise that they are conjoined twins. India’s side may have a few more heads though! Anyway pun aside India definitely has had better rulers than Pakistan, for example the current Indian President Manmohan Singh is definitely more educationally polished then his Pakistani counterpart. Manmohan Singh earned his DPhil from UK’s Oxford University as compared to Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari [zard-aaree = yellow saw] whose biggest and only qualification is marrying Benazir Bhutto [RIP] the twice Prime Minister of Pakistan. Zardari is also responsible for telling the US VP Candidate Sarah Palin that she is “gorgeous” and said: “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you”. When the photographers asked the two to keep shaking hands, he replied: “If he insists I might hug you”. This was just one day after he delivered an emotional speech at the UN in NewYork waving a photograph of his deceased wife who was assassinated only a few months prior.

It should also be mentioned that India are a stronger democracy with the proof that their Army unlike Pakistan so far has never intervened in the country’s affairs, not even when leaders like Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated.

I have said this before and I am saying it again – Pakistan and India are two nations full of energetic and very intelligent individuals. Together we run the worlds IT networks, and we make up a large portion of the western world’s health and telecommunications professionals.

No prestigious educational institution on the face of this earth has been without a Pakistani or Indian student coming on the top. For the sake of saving and developing our economies this boxing rope-a-dope has to end. Let’s face it, both countries cannot risk to use nuclear weapons against each other because both are scared of the fallback, both are aware of the MAD [mutually assured destruction]. So why are we wasting our energies and resources on trivial issues fighting each other? Why can’t we use our brains to better our peoples’ lives with food, health, clean water, security, communication…? Anyone?

jq@ultranomics.com

The national broadcasting corporations of both countries, the BBC & PTV, resort to demanding a television fee from almost everyone who has a television. Pakistan does it through adding a nominal supplement of Rs.25 to the electricty bill of each one of its 13.9 million electricity consumer base. Pakistan Television [PTV] started to earn a hefty amount of Rs 4.1 billion annually from 2004 onwards through this method. Prior to this arrangement people had to pay their television fee as a separate tax. This addition to the electricity bill was a hundred per cent jump from what the corporation was earning previously (Rs 2.1 billion from approximately seven million television licence holders in the country.) In the UK the annual licence fee is £139.50 which is paid by more than 25.3 million UK households equating to £3.4 billion of monopoly money for the BBC.

The latest audit report submitted to Dr Shahid Masood, PTV’s Chairman/Managing Director, found some serious irregularities and inefficiencies in the channel’s operations. One serious oversight and missed opportunity was that prime time advertising rates had not been raised since 1999! The comprehensive audit report also pointed out that PTV’s operating cost per employee is Rs 420,000 per annum while revenue per employee is Rs 418,000! Dr Shahid Masood is now being offered other BIG responsibilities elsewhere – perhaps some Pakistani bureaucrat or politician was displeased by his efforts to streamline PTV’s affairs?

As for the UK TV Licence Fee, a recent Ipsos Mori survey asked people whether the licence fee, which raises a total of £3.4 billion a year, was good value for money. A significant 47% thought it was not. Sir Antony Jay the co-creator of classic BBC sitcoms Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister has asked “what was the point in the BBC spending £200m just to get Formula One away from ITV? How does that benefit the licence fee payer who could watch it on either channel?”.
Is it just me or can you also see the similarities between the BBC & PTV’s affairs, like governmental control, national broadcasters being used as a money making machine and a propaganda tool, heavy involvement of red tape/bureaucracy, inherent inefficiencies etc? The list goes on. Since we are based in the UK I am more dented by the BBC fee so it’s no wonder that the BBC takes most of my attention today.

I strongly believe that paying £6 million per annum for the talents of the likes of Jonathon Ross out of tax payers money just cannot be justified especially during the credit crunch. For those of us immune to his cheeky chappy charms and mundane film reviews £6m p.a. is too much to pay for Jonathan Ross. The fact that a chunk of that fee goes to pay Ross’ sidekicks to laugh at his terrible fortune cookie jokes explains the real reason for those laughs! How can the BBC justify extorting £140 each year from me and 25.3 million others to pay for it?

The BBC is a public service broadcaster funded by a compulsory ransom. In these troubled times why doesn’t the BBC take a 50% pay cut? In the case of Jonathan Ross let’s make a special exception of a 100% cut and release him from his contract to find out if he is as valuable as deemed by the BBC bosses and whether the market holds him in such high regard to be head hunted by another channel for the £6 million salary. The recent Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand affair has tarnished the already tainted BBC reputation by bringing into public focus the ridiculous sums paid to its so called star celebrities. On top of that they could sack a few people keeping in line with all the banks and major UK companies in these tough times and cut out a few obscure channels. Then they would surely be able to halve the license fee or better still get rid of it.

According to figures obtained under the freedom of information request by the Lib Dems last year £10.4m was spent by the BBC on flights, out of which £3.1m went on business or first class tickets. The BBC’s own guidelines say that flying business class should only happen in ‘exceptional circumstances’. Party transport spokesman Norman Baker said the costs were “staggering” and money should not be “splashed around”. Mr Baker also said “It is hard to believe that there can be £3m worth of exceptional circumstances in a single year”. The BBC spent just under £5m on train tickets last year, about £520,000 of which went on first class travel. This total for 2006/07 was £4.8m. So why is it so important sending a bunch of reporters to foreign countries for reporting the same news from multiple locations in the same country? Surely one person would be enough! It just seems like the BBC enjoys squandering our money.

This just in… surprise surprise! Yet another example of the constantly falling standards at the British Broadcasting Corporation. The below findings conclude Ofcom’s investigations of audience participation in the BBC programmes broadcast up to and including 2007:

[Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:36] Ofcom has today fined the BBC a total of £95,000 for breaches of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code (“the Code”) in respect of its services Radio 2 and BBC London 94.9FM. The fines have been imposed for the unfair conduct of competitions. Ofcom has found the BBC in breach of Rule 2.11 of the Code (“Competitions should be conducted fairly…”) for inviting listeners to enter competitions in pre-recorded programmes that were broadcast ‘as live’.

Ofcom considered that these breaches of the Code were serious. The investigation found that BBC had repeatedly taken pre-meditated and deliberate decisions to include audience competitions in pre-recorded programmes. The BBC invited listeners to enter these competitions at the time of the broadcasts, in the full knowledge that the audience stood no chance of either entering or winning.

The full adjudications are available on the Ofcom website here

Perhaps if you didn’t actually think it was okay to force an entire country to subsidise the viewing habits of a decreasing BBC fan club this would not be happening. Next is the issue of compulsion of payment. People are given no choice about whether or not to pay for the BBC. If they have a TV they must purchase a licence. That to me and all of the people who signed this petition at www.petitions.number10.gov.uk/FairpayTV/ is unacceptable. This petition which was submitted by David Cormack at the Number 10 Downing Street website asking the Prime Minister to “Abolish the UK TV licence and permit advertising and other means of finance generation to the BBC” had this response from the government:

“During the latest review of the BBC’s Royal Charter (completed in 2006), the Government considered whether the television licence was still the best way to fund the Corporation. We also sought the views of members of the public on this and other BBC issues as part of the Charter Review consultations. When compared with the alternatives, the television licence fee was widely considered to be the best way to pay for the BBC for the period of the new Charter that is to say until 2016. None of the alternative funding options would enable the BBC to continue to provide its full range of public services while safeguarding the Corporation’s independence. It was therefore agreed that no changes would be made. We intend to review the scope for alternative funding mechanisms once we have the conclusions of Ofcom’s review of public service broadcasting (due to be completed in 2009). This will take in account the final costs of switchover and the outcome of the wider review of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) funding to which the Government committed in the Charter Review White Paper”.

John Lloyd writes in the Financial Times in his article The Shadow of Prison Bars on TV Screens :
This ad which was put out by consortium of companies contracted by the BBC TV Licensing is a disaster. You may have seen the posters of a huge memory chip which, vastly magnified, looks like a cityscape. Beneath it are written the words: ‘Every unlicensed address is in our database. Evasion is not an option’ (look on my database, ye viewers, and obey!). What are they thinking of those who collect our TV licence money? It reminds us that if we have a television we must support the corporation on pain of criminalisation (licence fee evasion accounts for more than half the criminal convictions among women.) It does so by giving substance to a “surveillance society” as mentioned in the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty Four where Big Brother spies on the population through telescreens.

TV Licence Evaders Beware - Big Brother is watching

A spokesman for TV Licensing said: “If you only watch the iPlayer and watch or record no live programmes, you don’t need a television licence, although very few people are likely to do that.” What that spokesman forgot to mention is that more than 700,000 viewers are downloading BBC programmes every day through the iPlayer service. Launched at the beginning of this year it is expected to have one million daily users by Christmas and can be watched without a licence fee!

Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, spelt out the limits of the current system when he told MPs on the Culture Select Committee that “if you watch live television through a mains powered device, you have to pay a licence fee” and that “live content is the key point in the current definition”. Most content on the iPlayer has been transmitted previously so the service is not classified as live. Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats’ culture spokesman said: “It does look like the BBC have shot themselves in the foot a little by creating this licence fee loophole with the iPlayer.”

The BBC is funded by TV License fees paid by anyone in the UK who watches television. They don’t have to watch the BBC but have to pay this license fee in any case. Although it is called a “fee”, since you have to pay it regardless of whether you receive the service it is actually a tax and was recently officially acknowledged as a tax. So by calling it a “fee” are they not misrepresenting something that is a tax?

Looking at this TV tax deeply with the help of ultranomics spectacles you will find that it’s not just that it’s a nuisance for TV viewers of all denominations, whether BBC watchers or not, it also has far reaching implications like forcing poor families, especially women, into criminality as mentioned above. According to the Daily Express of 24th November 2008, last year the BBC prosecuted more than 150,000 people for licence evasion. It is claimed women are much more likely to be caught because they are more often at home during office hours when the TV inspectors usually call. In the The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Christina Pantazis & David Gordon have stated that “The purpose of this paper is to identify and address important gaps in criminology regarding the extent and nature of female criminality. A neglected area of academic interest is investigated namely offences relating to television licence evasion”.

The BBC should find a way to place their usage taxes on the signal and not the device itself. Why can they not make it a pay as you go subscription service which is technically possible and practiced by Sky premium movie channels and many Asian channels like Geo TV, Sony ARY Digital etc. or better still abolish the fee altogether like Australia and many other countries did and make it free by resorting to advertising and by selling BBC “quality” programmes internationally. It’s just not fair to keep demanding ever increasing TV tax from people who feel the BBC does not suit their tastes and who have a lot of alternatives to watch instead. Maybe a zero tolerance approach to government bureaucracy might work as mentioned in this edition of The Daily Reckoning.

For PTV I would say it should now be privatised because gone are the days when we used to have quality comedy programmes like fifty fifty or dramas like waaris which had a cross border fan following and had the actual effect of bringing traffic to a standstill whilst live on-air. School children bought each episode in small pocket size story books [I was one of those kids]. With the advent of private channels and the Indian media invasion PTV now stands for Purana [old] Tele Vision rather than what it used to be i.e. Pakistan Television.

For the BBC I would like to quote an excerpt of an article written by Emily Bell of The Guardian newspaper “We are still no nearer to deciding what exactly the BBC is, given that it is now much more than a broadcaster”.

I used to read stories of the Indian and Pakistani police when the British were ruling and just after the partition. In those days they knew the art of investigation. Back then they used people called “khojis” [the C.S.I. of back then] who could find the clues and track the foot steps of the criminals helping the law enforcers to the motive of that crime! Coming back to these Bombay….oops Mumbai….attacks sit down and relax and then think why don’t the police or investigators with all the modern tools of the trade not actually investigate and plainly start naming names of their arch enemies [or ex arch enemies]? Could it be procrastination or maybe some ulterior motives – but tell me one thing if you can, who has most to gain from an on going Pakistan India scuffle? Now narrow it down to one nation. I don’t have to write the name you know it already.

Imagine India & Pakistan at peace with no lingering Kashmir or river water issues then we can move on to become an economic hub of power, with China we can take on the world, but somehow this probably won’t happen – the “un-named” nation won’t let it happen.

It is all to do with the Art of War which incidentally is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It has had a huge influence on Eastern as well as Western military thinking, business tactics and beyond. Its writer Sun Tzu was the first to recognize in 6th century BC the importance of positioning in strategy, and that your position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of the competitive actors [there may well be an Oscar category for politicians] in that environment.

He taught that strategy was not about ‘Planning’ in the sense of working through a to-do list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions [for example in recession create a war to get the economy moving or in case of the subprime crisis create an arch enemy or better still create an alien attack].

‘Planning’ works in a controlled environment but in a competitive environment competing plans collide [race to the moon, missiles and anti-missiles defences etc] creating unexpected situations [9/11, attacks on Pakistan, attacks on India]. So WAR is indeed RAW [incidentally RAW is also the acronym for the Indian spy agency Research And Analysis Wing!]

New World Order

Somehow this reminds me of the term New World Order which refers to a conspiracy theory in which a powerful and secretive group is plotting to eventually rule the world via an autonomous world government. This powerful group would apparently replace sovereign states and other checks and balances in world power struggles.

H.G. Wells advised in his 1940 work “The New World Order” that “when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people will hate the new world order and will die protesting against it”.

You may ask it can’t be. How come sovereign governments are following old bygone theories of H.G. Wells or Big Brother like controlling tactics thought of by George Orwell in 1944 but look around you. Isn’t this world full of seeds of doubt sprinkled everywhere, surveillance cameras to protect us! [normally they are not where protection is really required] speed cameras to protect lives [see my article on speed cameras] biometric passports to protect our identities [we need more protection from bureaucrats losing our identities in the first place] identity cards to protect our freedom from invaders [to be trialled on poor foreign students who have no say hence are targeted to up the statistics in the labours' favour] pay as you drive road charging system that keeps track of your movement! And best of the lot is an airport scanner that can read your mind [for George Orwell's thought police in action see Tom Cruise's action flick Minority Report]

Read the full story here of the real thought police in today’s world

Need I say more to prove that we are slowly moving towards a totalitarian police state at least in the Western world [I am humming hold me kiss me thrill me kill me as I type].

One of the more enduring myths in Western society is that wars are somehow good for the economy. Many people see a great deal of evidence to support this myth, after all World War II came directly after the Great Depression.

I believe it is a faulty belief which stems from short sighted and shallow economics thinking. Let me explain. The flawed logic of this myth is an example of something economists call “The Broken Window Fallacy” which is brilliantly illustrated in Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 book “Economics in One Lesson.”

In it Hazlitt gives the example of a vandal throwing a brick through a shopkeeper’s window. The shopkeeper will have to purchase a new window from a glass shop for a sum of money say £250. A crowd of people who see the broken window decide that the broken window may have positive benefits after all. If windows were never broken what would happen to the glass business? Then of course the train of thought is endless. The glass merchant will have £250 more to spend with other merchants and these in turn will have £250 to spend with still other merchants and so on. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in an ongoing stream.

The logical conclusion from all this would be that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace was in fact a public benefactor [Britain has quite a few of these benefactors in ASBO rich areas although they have yet to stir up some economic activity - perhaps not enough bricks - Gordon Brown may consider distributing free bricks at Tesco].

The crowd is correct in realizing that the local glass shop will benefit from this act of vandalism. What they have not considered however is that the shopkeeper would have spent those £250 on something else if he did not have to replace the window. He might have been saving that money for a new set of golf clubs, but since he has now spent the money he cannot do so and the golf shop has lost a sale.

He might have used the money to purchase new equipment for his business or to take a vacation or maybe to purchase new clothing. Instead of having a window and £250 the poor shopkeeper now merely has a window which was there anyway. Or as he was planning to buy a suit that very afternoon instead of having both a window and a suit he must now be content with the window or the suit. If we think of him as a part of a given community then that community has actually lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being and is just that much poorer. So the glass store’s gain is another store’s loss hence there has not been a net gain in economic activity. In fact there has been a decline in the economy of that community!

No wonder I see the sun of tomorrow shining in the east and it is shining its brightest over China because the only bricks they carry are for building new projects. They don’t seem to plan on breaking neighbourhood windows or even the windows of the next town and they are certainly not trying to “SORT” the world.

The Specs 3 gatso

Can anyone hear the climatic horror movie music when the dude is about to get it? Ching ching ching AAAAH. Well ching ching ching was the cash clocking music to the ears of the British Government and guess who gets stabbed countless times everyday? The poor British motorist that’s who!

The Association of British Drivers, which campaigns against speed cameras also made an interesting point about the Specs3 as they would make, “People put the car in cruise control and the mind in neutral. It’s so boring driving through these sections at a constant slow speed that people are going to drop off.”

Maybe I’m missing something here, but why does the UK government allow cars to be sold that are capable of achieving almost twice the 70mph speed limit which was set back in 1977 when the Ford Anglia had a stopping distance of 2 miles or so. If according to their laws no cars should ever go over 70mph why don’t they simply force the car manufacturers to install speed limiters in every new model and fit one in every existing car during the yearly MOT? The simple answer is that they don’t want to because the UK government would make less cash from the car industry & less cash from the speed fines.

Every UK driver has to go through the stringent British road test which tests the drivers to their limit. Oppressive tactics by the police like constant detection and dictation are an insult to their intelligence and road manners. The new average speed cameras known as Specs3 will appear in clusters of 50 working in a network and will monitor “every” driver’s average speed as they travel. Not only that but an ‘eye in the sky’ helicopter targeting speeding motorists in Essex at a cost of £1,000 an hour is adding misery to the once enjoyable driving.

This recent Canadian report (Review and Analysis of Posted Speed Limits and Speed Limit Setting Practices in British Columbia) has a clear view of the role of speed limits and speed enforcement.

It includes such straightforward common sense items as:
• The majority of motorists drive at a speed they consider reasonable, and safe for road, traffic, and environmental conditions. Posted limits which are set higher or lower than dictated by roadway and traffic conditions are ignored by the majority of motorists.
• The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal.
• A speed limit should be set so that the majority of motorists observe it voluntarily and enforcement can be directed to the minority of offenders.

Ready for another eye opener, this time from the Australian police! Apparently a recent survey by the Herald Sun has found that more than 70 per cent of Victorian police believe speed and red light cameras are more about revenue-raising than preserving road safety. A point every motorist [or majority of] has tried so very hard to get across.

The politicians will keep on preaching that speed cameras are there to promote safety and the high fines associated with them are just to slow people down, well this is a baseless argument because the truth about this hypocrisy is coming out. The UK Department for Transport first funded and then suppressed a study that shows a 55 percent increase in injury accidents when speed cameras are used on highway work zones and a 31 percent increase when used on freeways [or non freeways as I would like to think] without construction projects. According to the Transport Research Laboratory, the “non-works [personal injury accident] rate is significantly higher for the sites with speed cameras than the rate for sites without.” You can see the full report here.

Sher Shah Suri turns in his grave wondering why he didn't think of Speeding fines

So what should the regular Joe think about BBC Topgear now when he sees the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May blast their gravity busting 500bhp+ monster machines? Is this entertainment or fact based “drama”? Where are those roads where they drive at a million miles an hour without the fear of any Specs3, gatso or speed camera ever passing them by? Why is it that the average Joe is now under the £1000 an hour surveillance eye in the sky?

With modern technology there are better ways of keeping drivers to the speed limit. Unfortunately none puts money in the government’s, council’s or police authorities’ pockets. It would be perfectly possible to install a GPS based device, not dissimilar to a SatNav, in every car, telling the driver what the speed limit is for that stretch of road. The signal would automatically change when the car entered the next speed zone. Should the car be speeding (easily assessed from either a gps signal or directly from the speedometer) an alarm in the vehicle would sound, alerting the driver to the fact he is going too fast similar to the ones installed in BMW cars. The only way of silencing the alarm being to get the speed back under the speed limit. This ensures the driver’s attention is fixed on the road and it’s hazards, not constantly watching the speedometer. Attention to the actual driving is increased and therefore the roads made safer. No need for [you should have gone to] Specsavers Speksy3 and other gizmos – but I don’t see that happening because how then would the UK government milk its cash cows?

But there is still hope for the joy of driving as long as good Samaritans like Swindon councillor Peter Greenhalgh are taking the common sense approach. It is after he objected to the central Government receiving all the cash from fines while Swindon council paid £320,000 a year for the cameras’ upkeep that the Swindon Borough Council became the first to ditch the yellow boxes. Now towns all over the country are joining the rush to get rid of fixed speed cameras. Portsmouth, Walsall and Birmingham may copy Swindon in ripping out the hated cameras, and others are expected to follow suit.

Unfortunately Dubai is no laughing matter now, especially not for the property investors from all over the world who now stand to lose a great deal. A friend currently working in Dubai sent his woes in an email. This one line sums it up “sh*t has started to hit the fan over here in Dubai”. News is that one major Dubai property developer has begun laying off staff, and another is reviewing its recruiting needs as the available global finance becomes thin. The case in point is Emaar who is considering job cuts in the wake of the tumbling market. To keep you in perspective Emmar is the Gulf region’s largest property developer by market value, 32% owned by the Dubai government and is the developer behind the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Dubai.

Emaar shares are down nearly 80% this year to 3.19 AED a share. Realtors have now begun to identify worrying trends of rapidly declining house prices, a stagnant resale market, the inability of off-plan property investors to keep up with their payment schedules, a marked decline in hotel occupancy rates and wage and hiring freezes in property companies. To make matters worse, they have highlighted the government’s indebtedness [Yes Dubai is not as rich as you thought - it's Abu Dhabi which still has oil]. Dubai has borrowed heavily in recent years to finance all of the physical infrastructure needed to support its construction trend. So much is the fear of a Dubai Doom that the UAE President, His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan had to reassure the people of the UAE that their economy is supported by a healthy and robust national banking system [do you believe in a healthy bank these days?! Lol and chuckle]. A royal effort indeed to save the Dubai Dream.

The Palm Jumeirah in Dubai

Still phenomenal projects are being announced in the Dubai heartland similar to existing ones such as Burj Al Arab and the Indoor Skiing Resort in the Emirates Shopping Mall, but I don’t see anyone buying these new projects. Local Urdu and Hindi channels in the UK are saturated with Dubai Exhibitions and to be honest they sound somewhat desperate. I know someone who bought property two years back in Dubailand and though on paper the value has gone up he has no buyers interested in taking it off his hands. There is virtually no resale market at all for these new apartments. Once you buy one, you are stuck with it.

There has to be a clear difference between bravery and sheer stupidity because if you jump from a skyscraper it better be a suicide attempt or you should be Lois Lane sure to be saved by Superman. The only hope for Dubai is in its cash rich Capital Abu Dhabi which can save the day (Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour recently played Clark Kent with the UK’s Barclays Bank taking the role of Lois Lane) – but the question is will they? If you ask me my money is not on Dubai, at least not for now. I don’t plan to go down with the new Atlantis.

This smuggling of foreign currency has apparently resulted in a massive downward slide in the country’s forex reserves, which have depleted from over $16 billion in Oct 2007 to now at below $7 billion. What no one mentions is that Khanani & Kalia were only the brokers so who actually owned those $10 billion dollars?

A private TV channel reported that Khanani and Kalia had offered to return the foreign exchange transferred outside Pakistan if the government released them and they have also promised to bring the dollar back to 72Pak Rupees from 78 at the current rate. I mean WOW they surely are the George Soros of Pakistan! But wait a minute, if just 2 Pakistani businessmen have the ability to bring the dollar price down by 6 rupees then what about the masses of wealth of Pakistan’s ruling class [and opposition alike] stacked in European banks and offshore accounts?

I heard the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Interior, Rehman Malik in a press conference saying hundi and hawala are illegal. Really? Since when? There are at least a 100 money changers in Rawalpindi alone right at the door step of the Pakistan Army’s General Head Quarters.

Pakistan has been turned away by all western powers and even China [who we tout about as our bestest buddy] and for what – a measly $5billion to save the country’s economy? Our very own Kalia saab could have done that alone with his special friends!

What I want to say is that instead of looking at the IMF and to beg rich nations all we have to do is have some sharam and sort our tax network and get rid of the double taxation [general sales tax]. So all businesses pay a low amount of tax as compared to a few paying high taxes which in turn gives rise to bribery and corrupt tactics as they try and change the tax rate incidence.

I would start with some moans and groans to set the temperament! Then in the coming days we will look at possible resolutions to the ongoing painful points of Asian Economics (particularly in Pakistan) through the “common sense” approach. They say that common sense is very uncommon and honestly speaking not many brain cells seem to have been used so far otherwise Pakistan would not be in the current mess and would not still be banded among the third world countries, even though it is an atomic power.

The basic needs of a human being in today’s world can be summarised under the headings of food, shelter, power, health, safety, communication and transportation. Now if you live in Pakistan please look around and honestly answer as to how many of the population has access to all of these let alone a single one! Pakistan was created “60” long years ago and so far we don’t even have a proper international airport for the capital Islamabad and still are using the old Pakistan Airforce site.

It is shameful that being an agricultural country we are struggling to feed our own people, who in some cases are now forced to sell their own children in order just to get by and pay the bills. What happened to the Muslim Caliphates’ philosophy of being responsible for feeding even the single stray dog? George Orwell wrote: “All men are equal, but some are more equal than others.” I guess this stands true for the people in the driving seats of our poor country Pakistan’s throne who travel in expensive, third-world -country-budget-busting, lush bullet proof cars and eat lavish meals in comparison to a common Pakistani man who is struggling to pay his bills and only striving for daily grub so tell me how can we send a mission to the moon like India did, can anyone answer? Anyone from Suparco!

The Planning Commission of Pakistan believes that around 35 per cent of the Pakistani population are falling below the poverty line while the Pakistan Finance Ministry estimates only 22.3 per cent in accordance with the latest official survey [really have you ever seen a surveyor outside your door?]. This controversy if not resolved immediately, could potentially block the World Bank loan worth $500 million for Pakistan [I thought we had broken the so called kashkol] under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Credit (PRSC), which is desperately required to improve the depleting foreign currency reserves of Pakistan. Under the World Bank conditions Pakistan will have to prepare the PRSP setting targets to reduce the prevalence of poverty and establishing social safety nets in order to obtain a credit line of $500 million from the PRSC. The Finance Ministry is preparing the PRSP document for presenting to a visiting mission of the World Bank but is clueless about which figure is the official line. This really is mind boggling because if we cannot even get our statistics right then how are we supposed to plan our future. What happened to the professional norms and attitudes of the civil servants?

Why do all of the Pakistani roads have to be rebuilt every year? [I have to say the Pakistan motorway is an exception - credit where credit's due]. This is fuelled only by the kickback culture. Call it potato, call it potaato – the word though is “bribe” and will lead to hell fire. We will never know the real reasons why the Karachi bypass fell within days of its opening killing dozens of innocent civilians, so who will pay for their blood and the misery of near and dear ones? Can you put a price tag on anyone’s life? Can you price your own life’s worth?

We were taught in school that the essence of democracy is that it is for the people, by the people and of the people, it is the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and the judiciary with all of them being independent of each other. In Pakistan no such arrangement exists so far. The Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary is a case in point who has yet to get any justice, so does a common Pakistani stand any chance of fairness in his trials?

Though it is true that states such as Pakistan with a weak economy and weaker political structure cannot hope to safeguard their sovereignty from arrogant superpowers such as the US, most Pakistanis still expect their rulers and armies to make a real effort toward this end instead of making hollow claims and raising false hopes [once is enough in 1971 war]. With such low credibility the ruling elite cannot hoodwink the people who now, thanks to the communication revolution and open access to the world media, are much more informed and enlightened and should not be taken for granted because they are able to fully grasp any given situation and arrive at intelligent decisions. We really need to take heed from the strong reaction of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which described the killing of eight Syrians in the attack as a “cold-blooded war crime”, demanded an apology and warned of consequences. With week knees if Pakistan cannot even stop its so called “allies” from attacking its borders then how are the Pakistanis going to get some favourable decision on the good old Kashmir issue?

Questions, questions and more questions! I will end this first journal perhaps for you to ponder and will touch all of the above and more Pakistan and Asian core issues, however my aim is to discuss a way forward and eventually suggest some solutions, yes solutions because we all know the problems by now and its time to get rid of them for good.

jq@ultranomics.com