When Irish Eyes are Smiling

By Jamie Douglas

There is a new standard for when Irish eyes are smiling. After suffering bravely through being one of the PIIGS, being the first one of them to grab the steer by the horns, and doing what was necessary to work toward an honorable recovery, the country just won the Irish Sweepstakes, literally.

The Providence Resources Exploration Company announced almost in conjunction with the Patron Saint’s Day, that they found a massive oilfield off the coast of Cork on March 15, 2012. This is the first time that any sort of commercial oil and gas discovery has been made off the Emerald Isle.

The Barryroe, as she has been named, is a mere 300ft deep and has already started to produce 3,514 barrels of Norwegian quality sweet Brent crude per day (over a million US$ every 3 days), and as a by the way, it is also gifting the Irish with almost 3 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. Come next winter, the Irish should stay warm and toasty.

It has been thought for quite a while now that the southwestern continental shelf of Ireland may hold many valuable resources, but the area is still massively underexplored by world standards. All of us are aware of the environmental dangers of offshore drilling, and I sincerely hope that in this and all future discoveries and extractions all precautions will be mandated to keep damages to an absolute minimum. That said, it must be accepted that as long as the planet is energy dependent on hydrocarbons, their exploitation will cause some unavoidable damages to Mother Earth.

It is estimated that the initial discovery could lead to the recovery of up to ten billion barrels of crude as well as trillions of cubic feet of gas. The current field is estimated to hold about one billion barrels alone. At today’s price of Brent crude, that is a mighty $126 billion, more than enough to help the Celtic Tiger’s economy recover.

Ireland is a member of the European Economic Union and is a member of the €uro zone, however, like the UK, it never became a member of the Schengen Zone, thereby freeing the potential expat from a lot of restrictive regulations that cover most of the continent. For most who are looking to move to Ireland seeking work, try Parador instead. If however you are looking to be a self-sufficient retiree, there are opportunities there for you. Additionally, there are lower taxes as well as special opportunities for working artists.

Ireland has a lot to offer to the leisure oriented expat, from the big cities to the lonely countryside, which have some of the narrowest roads in the world. Some of you may find that there is a bit more rain than what you would prefer, but that is what makes it the Emerald Isle. There are many properties on the market right now, due to the sudden infirmity of the Celtic Tiger, many of them being great bargains after the superheated pre-bubble-popping period, but generally still in the medium-high range.

For those drawn to the climate and the economic conditions, my advice as always is to go there for a few months (and not just during the best of the summer months), rent a place where you think you would feel at home, and give it a go. If it works out for you, you can always buy a cottage with an extra bedroom for your favorite expat writer (My wife and I are really good house guests and carry our own weight!).

Ireland is facing a miraculous recovery and will be ready to receive you with open arms. And if you get bored, there is Scotland, the UK, and all of Europe available by way of low cost Ryan Air, Enjoy it. The green, green summer time is coming.

Jamie Douglas

Troubles in Toulouse

By Jamie Douglas

Sarkozy and the Elevated Terror Threat

France has been hit by thee back to back mysterious “terrorist attacks” out of the blue, all having been carried out by gunmen on a scooter with faces darkened out by helmets.

On March 15, three soldiers were attacked, two of them killed while the third one expired of his head wound later. This comes on top of the murder of an officer the week before. Then on Monday, there followed an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, when again, it was gunmen on a motorcycle who opened fire outside the Ozar Hatorah secondary college, killing a Rabbi along with three children and severely wounding another. Now it must be made clear to my readers that two of the soldiers killed in the second attack were Muslims, and that the first headlines released by several French as well as British news outlets immediately claimed it was a racist killer at work. French prosecutors have now confirmed that the killers in the third incident used the same bike as in the other two attacks and the guns used are also allegedly the same.

Some of us are aware that the French elections are a mere month away, and that Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president of France, is woefully behind in the polls. I must reveal to my readers at this point that I have had several opportunities to see how ruthless and murderous the French intelligence service operates (Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, Tahiti, and Martinique). Would I be surprised if, at this critical juncture in the French elections, Sarkozy ordered some type of “black bag” operation to improve his standing in the polls? Not a freaking bit. In fact, I would be sorely disappointed if he did not pull this hat trick so close to the elections. Stand by for more public insecurity in France.

There is a lot at stake there. ...Like who will control the purse strings for the near and distant future! As people in the United States fail to understand, the socialism they have come to fear so much is not Marxism or Trotskyite or even just the regular fare of communism. The UK for all practical purposes is a socialist state, but has also tried to be very capitalist, which has caused a lot of confusion about their priorities. The socialist model of the UK always envisioned health care (NIH) and the pensions of the Boomers. What they failed to do was to have a valid model that took into account the difference in the life expectance between the times the Boomers were born and today, when they are refusing to go quietly to their early graves, as the statisticians had forecast.

Similarly, the socialists in France who are poised to win the elections are not Marxists or any such thing. They do not want to turn their nation into a social welfare state. Au contraire, mon ami. What is poised to turn France into a welfare state are the policies of the government currently in power as well as the two preceding ones: it is the colonialism coming home to roost, and all those benevolent administrations having allowed all those immigrants to come home to “Mother France,” completely overwhelming the social fabric that was so carefully woven over centuries. But now, after exploiting the colonies so brutally and for so long, the government felt that all those multi ethnic people would just come home to Mama and integrate into the French countryside, maybe pick grapes and take on the menial jobs. The country never figured that they were inviting a breakdown of their social structure, ghettos, and riots in Paris and Marseilles.

That Airbus 380 Problem

Well, it just won’t go away! Airbus in Toulouse just admitted that the problem will be with them for years and cost hundreds of millions of €uros. Those little wing riblets that hold the skin of the plane in place apparently are a lot more susceptible to stress than the computer models imagined they would be. A new experimental batch that has flown for less than 200 hours is already showing the same cracks.

The alloys used in the “new and improved” components apparently showed much worse signs of fatigue that the original ones. Now what? This aircraft is the flagship of Airbus’ lineup. If, and I hope it will not happen, there is a catastrophic hull loss midair with the loss of close to 500 lives, it will lead to the grounding and immediate redesign of the wings. But of course, to do that now would spell doom for the A-380. So is this going to be the Pinto of the aircraft industry, or the Corvair?  I have no idea, but rest assured, I will not fly that potential doomsday machine until they have fixed that vexing problem.

Jamie Douglas

Goldman Sucks ...and So Do Most Other Financial Firms

By Jamie Douglas

Woke up, Got out bed, had no need to drag a comb across my head (lack of substantial mass), but I opened my mail and went to my usual sites, and I’ll be damned, there was a banker at Goldman Sachs and Co. who has a conscience! His name is Greg Smith and he was the executive director of Goldman Sachs’ US equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Greg has been with the firm for many years, having started there as an unpaid intern over 12 years ago. One could safely surmise that Mr. Smith has some insights into how these evil greedy firms work. While the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations are people, a decision that will forever taint the legacy of the Roberts Court, corporations are people without a conscience, without allegiance to anyone except the mighty buck.

In that realm we experienced the energy manipulation conducted by Enron energy traders, who while sitting on their asses in air conditioned towers, and were laughing said asses off loudly and on tape about senior citizens not being able to survive the heat wave when their electricity was cut or rationed and how they brought the entire state of California to its knees by not allocating sufficient amounts of energy, even though it was available. There was no shortage, it was all a high stakes fraud perpetrated by USA Inc. against its citizens.

They certainly made a good point for nationalization of the energy grid. Lesson not learned. Every day that goes by, Goldman Sachs and their cohorts are busy squeezing the life out of the planet’s working class. While the working classes are sleeping, traders from the evil empire are busy buying and selling energy contracts in the Far East’s vast unregulated markets. Then, having manipulated the markets there, the secret trades in Ireland come awake, hours before London trading officially starts, and then the whole operation moves across the Atlantic to New York and Chicago.

The opportunist traders at Goldman Sachs are the ones who are responsible for the high gas prices now. It is not Obama or any world leader. It is the free enterprise system, which allows the traders of all these financial products to fleece what they call “the Muppets,” for millions if not billions every day. It has nothing to do with Iran, even though the big news networks like Fox and CNN would have you believe that WWIII will start any moment.

It will, if Israel is arrogant enough to attack Iran again, like they have before. But this time there will be consequences. There is Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, and let us not forget Saudi Arabia. Israel may have 400 nuclear weapons at their disposal, but should they use them, it will be the end of the Jewish State. Regardless of what side you are on, using nuclear weapons is a clear no no!

The US has been busy making huge profits from arms sales to every nation in the region, and the House of Saud is so saturated with F-16s and all kinds of munitions and war materiel that Israel would be suicidal to attempt to start a war in the region, even with the help of Goldman Sachs, which finances many a transaction for weapons by means of sovereign bonds. Who cares if the nations get destroyed? The bonds are immediately bundled with others and sold to the Muppets!

I am certain that a lot you will not appreciate my corporate bashing, but I urge you to read Greg Smith’s resignation letter. It is a sign of capitalism gone wild. There are no more rules. Nobody has a conscience anymore. It makes me nauseous to read stuff like that.

Did He or Didn’t He? Sarkozy and the 50 Million Gaddafi €uro’s

By Jamie Douglas

Just in time for the coming first round of the French elections, which pit Angela Merkel’s lapdog, Nicolas Sarkozy, against his socialist opponent, François Hollande, a juicy scandal that has been making the rounds for several years is resurfacing. According to usually unreliable sources, ranging from the U.S. Department of State (no comment) to the Pakistani Intelligence service known as SIS, to the Hindustan Times, The Malawi Voice (Madonna’s favorite place to buy babies), and the regular news outlets of the world, Sarkozy’s election win in 2007 was financed by the very man who Sarkozy successfully led the effort to dethrone and assassinate.

It is being alleged that the money was funneled to him through Panama, which of course would make a lot of sense, what with one of the most corrupt regimes in power there and more per capita banks than is really necessary. It should be noted however that most of those banks are not doing business with ordinary people; rather they are a conduit that holds secret accounts in their computers.

The rest of this article has been censored.

International Banking: Not As Safe As We Thought

Jamie Douglas

All expats, all over the world, regardless of where they are from and where they are at, have to deal with financial institutions. Those of us who have internet access at home or in public places have always been assured that our transactions were secured by something called SSL Encryption, a method, we have been assured by “experts,” was inviolable. Or so we were told.

Now, in the same month that the CIA has been hacked, researchers, those of the mathematical type as well as super smart cryptographers, have discovered an apparent series of flaws that allow malicious users of the internet to break the code, which when used properly make it theoretically impossible to intercept the flow of information between two encoded correspondents. Yet it is being intercepted and used to generate random numbers.

The chances of your being affected are very small – 2 in 1000. That, taking into account the hundreds of millions of online transactions taking place daily, opens up a giant window of opportunity for the hackers in Eastern Europe, Israel, and China. Our entire faith in the SSL system rests on the assumption that it is inviolable.

For expats or anyone else conducting financial transactions over the internet, there is nothing you can do. The ball lands squarely in the court of the big site operators, sites like Amazon.com, all large financial institutions, the IRS, and other nations’ equivalent thereof. Every individual is a potential victim of this weakness in the system, without having the slightest ability to protect themselves, other than cessation of use of the modern world that brings us online banking and shopping.

These discoveries were originally slated to be published at a cryptographer conference this coming August in Santa Barbara, California; however the urgency of the discovery raised such serious issues that a decision was made to release the findings immediately. The researchers, including the highly respected Dutch mathematician Arjen K. Lenstra, the renowned professor at the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne in Switzerland, used the Euclidian algorithm to examine the public key numbers, and they were able to prove that a small amount of those randomly generated numbers were not so random after all.

In their publicly released findings, they stated that there are almost 27,000 keys that offer no security. “Their secret keys are accessible to anyone who takes the trouble to redo our work” The original work was enabled by the fact that there were databases of the publicly available keys, which were kept at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Another of the researchers, James P. Hughes, a cryptanalyst who worked with the group insisted: “…we were very careful: we did not intercept any traffic and we did not sniff any networks. We went to databases that contained public information and downloaded the public keys.”

They point out that their lack of sophisticated methods make it that much more likely that some malicious hackers have discovered the flaws in the random number generators some time before they did. “The quagmire of vulnerabilities that we waded into makes it infeasible to properly inform everyone involved, though we made the best effort to inform the larger parties and contacted all email addresses recommended or specified in still valid certificates. The fact that most certificates do not contain adequate contact information limited our options. Our decision to make our finding public at this time, despite our inability to directly notify everyone, was a judgment call.”

And a very good one I might add. With the publicity surrounding this issue, it is highly unlikely that any corporate IT security department will ignore this, and I am sure that a lot of midnight oil will be burnt from Berlin to Bangalore until this problem will be patched.

And what can you do to protect yourself? Tell your in-house IT guy or gal to make sure that all the algorithms are in a randomly disarranged row.

With this, I have done my job to disseminate this information to you. Please pass it on.

Jamie Douglas

The USA's Global War on Drugs

By Jamie Douglas

We now have had 3 presidents in the Unites States that, admit it or not, have partaken in various drug consumption. Bill Clinton would have never been elected had it not been for the fact that the compassionate Marijuana Medical use was on many ballots in the states, getting the vote out, which gave him the winning edge in California.

Most of us probably remember his infamous statement, that he tried cannabis, but did not inhale. He did nothing to stop Reagan’s misguided war on drugs, if anything he made it worse. Then came Bush the younger, who was a confirmed alcoholic and mass consumer of cocaine as well as abusing prescription pills. But he prayed himself well, and started two disastrous wars which have cost untold lives and misery. He increased spending for the war on drugs as well, while the Afghani poppy fields yielded the highest production on record. We’ve got too be kind to those warlords that are helping us, you know, that Northern Alliance.

And now we have the great white hope, Barack Obama, who openly admitted that he smoked “quite a bit” of weed and consumed his share of cocaine. He even appointed an attorney general who admitted to having smoked marijuana, so it was with great relief that some of us assumed that the war on drugs would finally follow the advice of the members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and legalize weed. NO! To the disappointment of all of us hopeful for the change he promised, he lied about every change. We still have Guantanamo, we left a horrendous mess behind in Iraq, exiting Viet Nam style and immediately after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he ordered that infamous build up of 50,000 troops in Afghanistan, obviously to protect the Opium trade (just my opinion, but after what I witnessed in Central America I feel qualified to make that assessment).

But since he took office in January of 2009, he has waffled and heed and hawed about the issue of medicinal marijuana in the states where it is legal to dispense the herb to those suffering from a variety of diseases, including side effect from cancer treatment. But regardless of State Laws, The Drug Enforcement Administration and other misguided federal law Enforcement Authorities continue to waste valuable resources which could be used in busting Meth Labs and the importation of Heroin. Just on Monday, April 2, 2012, Obama’s war on medicinal marijuana raided another facility, one which was to bring civility to the medical use of Marihuana. This took place in California of course, where State law is always trumped by Federal goons, wearing Jackboots, camouflage and the latest in urban assault weapons.

This is not just an issue about weed. It is the age old issue about State’s Rights. Marijuana like masturbation is essentially a victimless crime. If only the Feds would form strike forces to go after the wankers sitting at 200 West Street in New York, the Goldman Sachs people, as well as the Bank of America folks, Countrywide’s Lizard Frère, Angelo Mozillo. These people are the ones which have wrought have to the USA, not those who are trying to bring relief to the suffering. And of course, like the old Reagan trickle down economy, the war on drugs also has a trickledown effect. In Mexico alone more people have been killed than the USA lost in the Vietnam War. Had the nation’s drug policies not be so skewered from the outset, the treasury would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars. And our prisons, now mostly privately run for profit, would not hold the largest amount of prisoners anywhere in the world.

Mr. Obama, you promised us change. You delivered lies and more lies. You deceived your volunteers and all those of us that worked so hard to get you elected. And it’s not just about the weed. It is about almost every promise you made. Do you have an “Etch-a-Sketch” yet? If not, perhaps I should send you one! I urge all my readers to send him one because surely his numerous one are worn out.