Author: sereshk

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Iran, Oil, War and a ‘Lame Duck’ of a President: If You Cannot Make Them Believe, Make Them Pity You…

A 'duck meet', a heap of small ducks for the bathtub.
Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay

‘Lame duck’, the common phrase for a politician or leader of state who is about to leave and therefore not really effective anymore, power waning. But the present president of course will do all he can. The Washington Post reports…a threat against that president? Pityful attempt…

That newspaper is Jeff Bezos’ to do what he wants with it, has been for a couple of years, it says so on its homepage.

Yes, indeed, Amazon founder and Trump follower Jeff Bezos bought it. And we are supposed to trust such reports?

No way.

Let’s also remember a few facts about Mr Trump’s biography: He’s not only a scoundrel ruled guilty in front of a court of law of the US, he has actively swindled thousands of small stakeholders out of  their lives’ savings during the 1960s.

There’s a fine documentary about Mr Trump on PBS FRONTLINE, by Michael Kirk, an award-winning director, called: President Trump. A very painstaking assembly of facts and proven to be true by independent sources.

There was this strange ‘attack’ on Mr Trump about two years ago… ohh how they seemed to pity him; a mere scratch on his ear, not even worth an adhesive bandage.

Let’s remember a few facts:

    • The Trump administration cancelled working contracts with Iran for uranium enrichment control in 2018.
      • Proven to be working by the IAEA.
    • Mr Trump himself repeatedly in front of press representatives has called himself a ‘deal maker’. He does anything to get the other party to succumb to his terms.
      Commonly called ‘scare tactics’.
    • He is known to be a fierce admirer of Putin in Russia. (Link to the New York Times, as yet free press)
    • The EU as well as several Arabic states, have confirmed that negotiations with Iran were well advancing and looking up, more than three times over during this shameful war.
    • The USA are famous for their ‘free roving’ culture of cars around the country:
      • They need cheap petrol for that.
      • It’s also a well-known fact that no president who does not do all he can for cheap petrol has no good basis in votes – or with voters.
    • The industry producing weapons is the largest and most influential in the USA.
      A war opens up the need for more weapons…
    • When the last shah of Iran still reigned, he was actively supported by the US and paid them back with cheap oil. A historical fact easy to be confirmed.

The basic truth is this, let’s remember it too:

Whatever your colour, creed or conviction, you are not supposed to either bother, torture or kill other people. Period. 

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A Pandemic, a President on the ‘GO’ and the ‘GOP’ Fighting a Losing Battle – or: The Wind of Change

A sinking statue of liberty in a stormy sea.
Image by AS Photography on Pixabay

The Head of the National Institute of Health at the time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, esteemed scientist, dared to speak up: Against the present president of the US who is famous for his desperate need for acquiescence and attention. The Administration in the Oval Office at the time for a long time just denied any threat by a virus – or a pandemic.

When it finally started reacting, measures were too little and often too late. Deaths would have been prevented. Dire emergency rooms’ bottlenecks, with triage occurring repeatedly: That method so dreaded by doctors and staff, when for lack of facilities and personnel you have to chose whom to treat first, with too many patients on the brink of death.

That was the reality in the US at the time. Now, the president ‘shortly’ to leave office needs any kind of reason to safe what is left of his threadbare reputation: A scoundrel found guilty in a court of law of the US on 34 counts, a cruel and greedy ‘potentate’ who tried almost everything in  the book, even figured in the Epstein papers…

This would be scraping the barrel, if he hadn’t already, this president whose name I rather avoid naming. Actually dragging such a scientist into court, a hearing; and then holding him in contempt.

The ‘GOP’, the acronym spelling ‘grand old party’ for decades wasn’t so grand anyway, when you think whom they support, whom they made president; or what they stand for. But this is indeed one more low point proving the principle:
Cannot be trusted. With anything.

If it wasn’t so painfully embarrassing for a society that has so much to offer in terms of art, science, music and literature – it would be hilarious.

 

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Grown-up Kids at Play – or: ‘Testing on Wings’ – or: Heart and Brain

Three small ghost figures made from plastics, like toys.
Image by Alexa from Pixabay

We all know them: Those kids who either bully others until they cry, or tear wings from small insects just to test what would happen. I’ve met grown-ups too, who actually behave like those kids, at times: Test others. Push them or try ‘pushing their buttons’ to see how they react…

I always thought that such people are suffering from fundamental character flaws: not realizing that torturing other living beings is cruel, a shame. And additionally probably even suffering from power fantasies: They feel ’empowered’ and important when they can ‘make’ others react. Even by torturing them.

It means: Causing pain deliberately. And it has nothing to do with fun, games or mild misdemeanors. It’s actually a lack of empathy. Maybe the patriarchal side getting in the way: Men are supposed to feel ‘superior’, self-confident. No human being in reality can feel that way all the time. That’s not only natural. It’s part of scientific research into such patterns of human  behaviour and needs.

I have seen these things happen in childhood, was sometimes a target. I still now and again observe grown-up people behaving that way: ‘Testing’ their peers as it were. Perhaps even poking each other’s rips and smirking – if a little uncomfortably.

Because only in a few cases do they not know about the downside of it: Molesting, torturing or plainly causing pain is no child’s play.

Real joy in life is based on other, more ‘mundane’ and completely different aspects: Love, friendship, understanding, humour and trust. None of which can be built in a hurry.

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The Human Element in Europe – Numbers! – Statistics… and the Clear View of Facts

The ‘human element’ can be said to mean several things: It means all those things that are human in a highly technical world. That can introduce mistakes, errors of judgement or downright catastrophes, even. But fear and greed can be among them and these two are not to be trifled with.

How’s that, you may want to ask?

Because, when war raged in Europe during WW II, millions of people were on flight. They were desperate, hungry and often in clear and actual danger of their lives: dictatorships in Spain, Russia and Germany in place – and values and measures at their lowest points.

Overcoming fear, which means courage – can work wonders: We will not only learn more, experience different, sometimes tasty things; we also will keep innovation and science at high levels!

It’s been proven in scientific research (anthropology, archaeology, and similar) that cultures who close themselves off are doomed.

Additionally, all around Europe, the death rates are up, birth rates are down, a little simply but correctly put.

The above EU-statistics show too, though, that migration is a mere drop in the sea: 450 million people living in the EU, around 2 million having been added by migration…

Someone recently said it out loud and that’s a truth: When we start to become afraid, the oldest  areas of our brain become activated: the brain stem which is just able to eat, drink, sleep, or multiply.
Yet, the later parts are what makes us human, called neocortex or cerebrum:
We are able to think complex thoughts, develop new ideas and – empathise, because of those newer parts of our brains.

Fear is part of our older brain. It can make us blind to many of the fine things in life: empathy, clear thoughts and calm and clear judgement.

There have been people for ages, who use our fear to manipulate us. Who use a few exceptions to the rule to make us afraid. Images drawn in dark colours to make us believe that we are in danger from ‘strangers’.

We are what we are in this wonderful region of the world because of diversity. Of many different colours, ideas, thoughts – and emotions.

Let not have a few greedy and power-craving rascals and bullies make us believe otherwise:

We are strong and our values and ideas are rooted firmly in ancient ideas and are modern for civil societies at the same time.

 

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Attacking Peaceful Crowds: NO – Our Society is MORE than Some Little Minds

Image of a red, heart-shaped burning candle on a red background, surrounded by many small red and shining beady.
Image by wagrati_photo from Pixabay

Christopher Street Day in Berlin: Attacked. One more attack on a peaceful gathering. There seems to be a suspect. It’s early days yet. Again, once more apparently motivated by extremist ideas, whatever the exact political conviction. We as an open and democratic, peaceful and diverse society, who know a thing or two about integration by this time, will not take this lying down.

I’ve been around people from all walks of life and from almost any part of the world you could imagine: All continents, many different languages and convictions, political or religious or otherwise.

But, one thing emerges equally and at once: People with hearts and minds for the essentials in life cannot do such a thing.

My heart goes out to all who were affected, losing loved ones in the middle of life! And the wounded: May they rise again, stronger than before and healthy in mind and body.

There are still people around with grudges. Or those who feel left out. Or those who were actually mistreated. But whoever or whatever reason, this is a NO GO.

I for one will always hold up my ideas, my beliefs and the knowledge that only together we are strong enough to defeat the bullies and greedy and misguided people of this world. Because:

WE are more!

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When Disgust Against People Makes You Want to Vomit: The Saudi Arabia Deal

Two hands shaking, only partly visible, shady, on a background filled with falling dollar signs.
Images licensed via Adobe CC, my arrangement

They call it ‘soldiering’ in some places: The thing men do when they feel like playing games, being heroic – and ultimately show off how tough a guy they can be, after all. The bullies of this world and their ‘cohorts’: It’s like a glimpse into the past. Ancient Rome comes to mind – and much later completely rotten types of people that barely retain any sort of resemblance to humans: The present president of the US first and foremost.

Deep inside afraid and downright cowardly, because: He sends others to do his ‘dirty work’. Die.

He sits there in his heaps of money and all that appertains to it and one does not even need to ask anymore: ‘Who benefits?’

Causes and effects: It’s ‘his’ war. The Trump administration in 2018 cancelled working contracts with Iran about uranium enrichment control.

Now what? Closing a deal of billions of dollars for supporting a so-called civilian nuclear development programme. They don’t even feel ashamed anymore.

To think that the US is the first-ever nation owning – and using – nuclear bombs; and the first-ever to use them against another.

In all the years Iran had had time to do so, they did not: They did not develop nuclear weapons.

This is not about peace on earth. Or this role of world police officer the US so like to don.

This is cruel and hard-boiled, selfish greed. Since being in office that sorry excuse for a man Trump actually has accumulated more wealth than ever before.

Two New York Times articles. One makes it abundantly clear how the Supreme Court of the US itself even is infested with boot-licking, greedy followers. The second shows nicely how this person together with his family abuses his office and his power accumulating even more wealth:

I would take up the paper bag for vomiting; but such people don’t even deserve that exertion.

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Missing Elections’ Integrity? – Missing Voters…or: When the Lame Duck ‘Clucks’

Puppet character Kermit the frog talking to a stone figure looking like a smiling woman.
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay

“Lame duck” is the phrase for that state politicians get into when their term is running out: By not being re-elected or simply reaching the end of their final term.

The present president in the US tries all he can to make it appear as if he was in full control of the situation and not the least bit ‘maimed’. Addressing the nation, as it were.

Yet, the signs are there: Claiming that votes were wangled at the time in 2020 and that the US-voting system is unreliable, not to say in danger of overthrowing itself, is a bit ‘rich’ by such a person – when you think of what happened in 2016:

The New York Times and the (then still reliable) Washington Post reported on the fact that elections had been influenced strongly by Russia, by order of Putin himself. In 2016, already.
Yet, nothing ever was said by Trump himself about that…
Why would he?
It was in his favour.

If there had been insecurities they would have been fixed long ago by this time. (Catchword: Cybersecurity).
10 years later.

The contacts between the two heads of state (wouldn’t want to call them ‘leaders’… they miss out on so much that makes a good one…) were known long before that. Trump’s family members regularly visited there…

Let’s hope and pray that not only he in terms of peace but also voters in the US will finally see the light – and smell that rat that just might be a last, though feeble attempt to change any laws, in his favour again…

The Supreme Court has a majority of 4 justices, selected at the time from his followers…

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Putting the Pressure on… Or: USA, Iran, a War, Oil: As Per Precedent

 

Drawing f black feathers falling on a white background.
Image licensed via Adobe CC

It’s been reported more than once and the present president of the USA, whose name I try to avoid naming, even publicly praised himself for it: The scare tactics he chooses to employ. Scare them and then get the deal made into your, that is his, favour.

Cruel, selfish and completely given to the idea that money rules, and power is better, the ‘more the merrier’, for decades he has been part of a group of people who believe that a person is ‘good’ if they have money.

Actually, looking at US-American history, it’s only partly surprising that so many people there believe it:
Religious beliefs are at the bottom of all that.

The Puritans were the largest group to enter the North American continent and originally, in turn, Calvinists.
Calvin, a Swiss protestant, among many other ideas postulated that a human was God’s favourite if wealthy. By granting people wealth God would show his special grace towards them.

Is it surprising that over 300 years later the founding myth of the US, used as a ‘badge of courage’ and a sign, makes people believe strongly in this idea?

Basically: “Be rich and you are a good person”…?

History of mankind and actual events show nicely, how true it is that greed makes people cruel and violent.

The working uranium enrichment control contracts with Iran were cancelled in 2018 by the first administration of this president. Working contracts, officially confirmed by the IAEA.

Additionally, also historical pattern, starting a war is one of the best-liked ‘tools’ to divert attention from graver or downright illegal internal affairs.

The present president of the USA was found guilty on 34 counts of bribery, molestation and corruption in front of a US court of law. He was heavily incriminated in relation to the so-called Epstein papers.

That’s why he needs sensation, a war, to make people forget about all the other atrocities.

 

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250 Years: “Quo Vadis, USA?” – or: History, Intentions, Dreams and Reality

When the first settlers came to the country that is now called the USA, they were looking for religious freedom. Freedom for quite some time was not for all, even there. Viewed from over here, we see all those facts that make it hard to celebrate, especially these days. A bitter reckoning, mostly.

Yes, they made it. Somehow. But the ups and especially the downs are memorable. When someone like the present president from the extreme right is at the head of a government that does everything to revert back to times we have put behind us for more than 300 years… it can become irritating. Namely: feudal structures: A ‘king’ who claims the whole power for himself and would, if he could, reign for ever. Have everybody do his bid.

It’s awfully amazing that someone like that could actually ‘be flushed to the surface’, scum, in a country claiming to be the oldest existing democracy. Due to money: Paying for the necessary advertisements, these days mostly online.

Lives have been lost. The peoples of America, of the whole continent, close to complete obliteration, just because settlers felt they had the right to the land… Cruelty, hatred and death daily; around the world, the latest the war against Iran. For what?
Greed. Power. Money. Oil.

I feel it to be a challenge in face of all this and many more facts, to mention all the fine aspects too:
Literature, arts, painting, music and movies.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Steinbeck, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Harper Lee, George Gershwin… a long and impressive list that here can show only a very few.

“Moving pictures”: To think that some of the greatest artists in that field came from Europe, again: Fritz Lang, Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergmann, Wolfgang Petersen, Hans Zimmer, and many more, and, towering them all like a small yet wonderful figure of heart and brains:
Charles Chaplin.

He developed ‘the flickers’, moving pictures, into an art form, in a career of over 50 years, coming from most desperate surroundings himself. He knew. Bless his heart.

Charles Chaplin who made it clear what life is about: About empathy in the most tragic and desperate situations. About laughter and that smile he even worked into a song, whose lyrics were created a few years later, in 1954, rendered by Nat King Cole in that manner that encompasses it all: Life at its most wonderful and most tragic.

A scene from the Chaplin movie "City Lights"
A scene in “City Lights” that plays nicely with our perception: A blind girl who through hearing the sound of an expensive car door closing assumes a passing man to be rich…
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AI as a Search Hub? – Reliability and Knowledge or: ‘(Never) Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth’

Collage of a horse inside a gift carton and two hands typing and a virtual chat box website in front.
Images licensed via Adobe CC, my arrangement

That gift horse… it’s been around for a long time now… Actually, when you think about it, AI is just a gift horse. That’s why you should really ‘look into its mouth’.

Where does that saying come from and why? A gift horse is one you are presented with, for free. Very old horses though originally were considered to be less valuable. Partly because as horses in farming they wouldn’t have power enough. For riding they might also be unequal.
In order to ascertain the age of a horse you look at its teeth, into its mouth, and with experience and knowledge you would know its age with great precision then.

A gift horse comes free. So, don’t look too closely, it’s exactly that: A gift we would want to be grateful for.

In business, people may appear to give something away. But there’s always a reason behind it.

In the case of the major AI applications and chatbots, such as Google, ChatGPT, perplexity.ai, Gemini, Copilot(s), Apple Intelligence and many more, apparently published almost daily these days – they come with a ‘long tooth’:

When you use them, they gather your data, any data you leave, by asking, by searching, by disclosing your whereabouts or even the cookies stored inside your browser. At least their own.

More importantly even:

    • When you know about a subject well, such as your profession of long standing, you will easily be able to judge where AI goes wrong.
    • On the other hand, you cannot possibly be completely sure, if you are still learning.

How Do I know? And Why?

I have documented AI successfully, with the support by a mathematician at the time and the Product Owner and Designer, IT business. That documentation even was mentioned specially by the US agency Gartner in their Magic Quadrant for Metadata Applications in 2019.

AI per definition does and can do these things:

    • It is programmed for finding and using patterns of – and inside – knowledge in the shape of data.
      • This kind of pattern recognition is based on mathematical probability calculations: Statistics.
    • At first, known data.
    • After it’s been trained, it will be let ‘loose’ on other, more and unknown data to again find patterns.
    • The next step is the re-assembling of those patterns in a likely manner.
    • Or making predictions based on probability: “How likely is it that the cases A or B will occur again, after they had occurred before such and such number of times?“

This means that

    • in cases where you are sure of your ground or the expected results and can double-check them, you are save ‘trusting’ AI.
    • Equally, when you ask about a known text or data such as an image or given page/file, it will use that.
    • But as soon as you would ask it like a search engine to look for answers online, you may find results be faulty.
      • AI will never ‘tell’ you so. Because it is not able to. It does not recognise meaning. It finds patterns in texts and words.
        Reassembling them.
      • Therefore it will always ‘tell’ you in so many words that everything it ‘says’ is of course right. True.
      • Online sources can be anything from a Wikipedia article through to an advertisement on some page mentioning the phrases you were entering in the chat’s search box/field.

The conclusion to all of this:

Look into any gift horse’s mouth that is an AI you can use for ‘free’!

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