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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-015
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> [E]very U.S. president since Bill Clinton has, at Israeli insistence, signed a secret letter upon entering office that effectively pledges the United States will not “press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continued to face existential threats in the region.”
…
the U.S. government has promulgated a regulation—described in the U.S. Energy Department’s Classification Bulletin WPN-136 on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities—that threatens government employees with severe punishment if they acknowledge Israel has nuclear weapons. Naturally, the regulation is withheld from public release. <
> "Nothing has changed. Biden claims that Trump's policy of maximum pressure was maximum failure… But for all practical purposes, they are pursuing the same policy," he said.
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Elsewhere in his remarks, Zarif said that those alleging that the JCPOA has to encompass more subject matters than it already has should be sure that it will “absolutely not.”
The US and some of its regional allies have demanded that Iran’s missile program and regional influence be included in the nuclear talks. Tehran has roundly rejected any such prospect, saying it will not renegotiate “a done deal” and that its defensive activities and regional might are not open to any negotiation. <
> And in fact, Joe Biden’s administration will not cancel anything which was done by Donald Trump except for leaving the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Democrats are returning there now. <
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Other issues:
Xinjiang:
The piece below partly builds on our previous one: Why Do These Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?
Sputnik Vaccine propaganda fail:
> “We still wonder why Russia is offering, theoretically, millions and millions of doses while not sufficiently progressing in vaccinating its own people,” the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, told a news conference this week. “This question should be answered.” <
> “There will absolutely be excess supply in Russia. I believe that around 30% of Russian-made vaccines will be ready for export,” said Vitaly Shakhnazarov, quality director at COREX, a pharmaceutical logistics firm working through Russia and Eastern Europe.
…
Kulish believes that the RDIF’s estimates of 30 million Sputnik doses manufactured monthly by March — 10 million of them in Russia and the rest in countries including Brazil, South Korea and Kazakhstan — may be conservative, and that by June the Russian pharmaceutical sector could overshoot its ambitions and produce up to 40 million jabs monthly. <
Covid-19 U.S. failure:
> The 2.7-year drop in life expectancy for African-Americans from January through June of last year was the largest decline, followed by a 1.9-year drop for Hispanic Americans and a 0.8-year drop for white Americans. <
Covid-19 On variants of concern:
Boeing:
The cause was fan blade off (FBO) event on a Pratt & Whitney 4077 engine. This is the THIRD time this happens (UA1175 13 Feb 2018, JA8978 4 Dec 2020, UA328 20 Feb 2021). All incidents were contained and all three flights made safe landings. But one of these days an FBO will not be contained and a 777 will come down from such an incident. An FAA investigation of the 2018 event found unsafe procedures during P&W routine inspections of the fan blades : NDI Process Failures Preceded Boeing 777 PW4077 Fan Blade Off (FBO) Event (United Airlines N7773UA) – Aerossurane
Use as open thread …
I’ve been following Scottish independence closely now for about six months, and so have formed a view of the protagonists. Nicola Sturgeon puts me in mind of Lady Mary Archer, someone I knew for about four years. She is oh so sweet and polished on the outside – indeed a High Court judge famously said of her “is she not sweet? Is she not fragrant?”. But on the inside….phew!
I believe it comes from a sense of impunity, a sense they can do anything they like, however disgusting and depraved, and there is nobody that can touch them because they are best female friends with Queen Elizabeth II. And the result is, well, abomination.
Let me give you some insights.
The source of wealth for Lord Archer is Lloyds of London, specifically the asbestosis fraud. The quotes I am about to relate come from David McClintick’s “The Decline and Fall of Lloyds of London”, Time Magazine Europe, February 21 2000 vol 155 no 7
Caressed by a soft breeze, Ralph Rokeby-Johnson and Roger Bradley surveyed the forbidding fourth hole of the vintage Walton Heath golf course south of London. It was a bright Thursday in early October, 1973.
”Orator, you’re not orating,” Rokeby-Johnson said. “Have I upset you?” Rokeby-Johnson had been needling the normally loquacious Bradley for inside information since they’d teed off in the autumn golf outing of Lloyd’s of London, the world’s pre-eminent insurance market. Bradley and Rokeby-Johnson were leading executives at competing firms in the market and Lloyd’s men maintained a spirited rivalry in golf as well as business.
But as they shop-talked their way along the first three holes, “Orator” Bradley had fallen silent, because he sensed that Rokeby-Johnson was himself harboring information that could prove explosive: the threat to Lloyd’s posed by asbestos, the ubiquitous, benign-looking insulation material that was slowly but surely infecting workers in the asbestos industry with deadly lung diseases–asbestosis and cancer–prompting lawsuits and insurance claims in America.
”What can you tell me?” Bradley finally asked as they idled on the fourth tee, waiting for the players ahead to clear the green.
”What I can tell you,” Rokeby-Johnson replied in a stage whisper, “is that asbestosis is going to change the wealth of nations. It will bankrupt Lloyd’s of London and there is nothing we can do to stop it.”
It was Jefrey Archer who devised a means to turn an impending disaster into the Midas touch.
Fast forward to February 2000. Over a quarter of a century has passed since Ralph Rokeby-Johnson shared his apocalyptic vision with Orator Bradley. Legendary Lloyd’s of London, pioneer of the insurance industry and synonymous with it, has escaped bankruptcy. But the organization that was once part of the very bedrock of Britannia has been devastated by losses including massive compensation claims from American workers afflicted by asbestosis and lung cancer. The wealth of nations may not have changed dramatically, but Lloyd’s fundamental character has changed, and thousands of Lloyd’s investors–the so-called Names who pledge all their personal wealth to underwrite insurance policies issued by Lloyd’s syndicates–have been ruined.
The decline and fall of Lloyd’s, like all engrossing tragedies, has been building to a spectacular d?nouement. The final act is now upon us and waiting in the wings are a group of Names who could yet prove to be Lloyd’s nemesis. These are the dissident investors, including members of the so-called United Names Organization, who have refused to settle their asbestos-related debts with Lloyd’s because, they claim, they are the victims of a massive and calculated swindle. Back in the 1980s, they argue, Lloyd’s duped them into becoming Names by fraudulently misrepresenting its profitability and concealing the ruinous asbestosis losses that were in the pipeline.
Do they have a case? The truth, they say, will soon out. Later this month, in what could prove to be the trial of the new century, the Lloyd’s dissidents will claim in England’s High Court that they have been the victims, not just of negligent underwriting, but of one of the greatest fraudulent conspiracies of all time. They will argue that they were recruited to Lloyd’s at a time when the 300-year-old institution knew it was facing massive asbestosis claims and needed extra capital to absorb its forecast losses. The dissident Names will further charge that this massive fraud was not the work of a few posh-mannered, money-grubbing Lloyd’s underwriters, but was condoned and indeed orchestrated by the Lloyd’s hierarchy itself.
How much was involved?
Admonished by their partners to stop the shop-talk, Bradley and Rokeby-Johnson dropped the subject until after the game when they settled with drinks in a corner of the tweedy bar of the clubhouse.
”Were you serious about asbestosis destroying Lloyd’s?” Bradley asked.
”Of course,” Rokeby-Johnson replied. On the back of his scorecard, he then proceeded to calculate that Lloyd’s could be swamped by claims far in excess of the market’s ability to pay–perhaps as much as $120 billion by the year 2000.
”Do you mean ‘million’ or ‘billion’?” the incredulous Bradley asked.
”Billion,” Rokeby-Johnson stressed. “It’s the time bombs that worry me.”
”What are the time bombs?”
”The time bombs are the young victims [of asbestosis] who will gradually develop lung disease. When they die, the lawyers are going to have a field day. Pick a figure, but it won’t be far off what I’ve told you. See whether I am right. I shall be gone long before you.”
The day after the golf match, Bradley recounted the conversation to a senior Lloyd’s colleague who warned him against repeating it to anyone else. It seemed to Bradley then that at least a few Lloyd’s insiders were aware of the looming asbestos problem even as they recruited new Names to bolster the market’s capital base.
And recruit they did. The number of names soared beyond 7,000 in the early ’70s to 14,000 in 1978 and reached over 34,000 by the late ’80s. After nearly three centuries of genteel, discreet one-by-one recruitment in Britain, Lloyd’s salesmen fanned out across the world, especially North America, touting Lloyd’s as an exclusive club offering secure investments to only a select few who qualified for membership. According to many of these new recruits, the Lloyd’s sales pitch promised not only risk-free profits, but the opportunity to join an elite and prestigious “society” which had existed for 300 years and whose membership included titled British aristocrats. New investors signed up in droves. As one Name recalled later, “You don’t need to drop the names of many English earls to attract a bunch of North American dentists.”
Evans says the clinching argument for joining came again from Coleridge, who boasted to recruits that Lloyd’s was backed by its own act of Parliament. “He said, ‘Parliament would never have passed the act had Lloyd’s accounts and regulation not been impeccable.’ I thought to myself, if Parliament has given its seal of approval to Lloyd’s, what more do I need?”
None the wiser, Parliament on July 23, 1982, gave Lloyd’s its exemption from lawsuits. It could be held liable for damages only if a plaintiff could prove “bad faith,” which is difficult to establish under English law where the “buyer-beware” principle is more firmly established than in the U.S. (an obstacle the Jaffray suit will have to surmount). Not only was Lloyd’s still self-regulating, it was empowered to determine itself what was meant by the notion of self-regulation, unilaterally making rules governing its operations, without answering to any outside authority, even Parliament. Lloyd’s secrets were still safe.
And Jeffrey Archer, what was his big idea?
In 1986, Lloyd’s quietly added a clause to its contract with investors. Any legal dispute over the investment would have to be resolved in England under English law. Investors were not told that Parliament four years earlier had effectively inoculated Lloyd’s from lawsuits in England…..Most lawsuits by private investors against Lloyd’s in the U.S. were stymied, too. The fraud allegations for the most part never got a hearing because Lloyd’s invoked the clause it had slipped into its contracts with investors beginning in 1986 calling for any legal disputes to be litigated in England. Even though the investors argued that they had been tricked into signing that clause–and Americans’ rights under U. S. securities laws generally cannot be waived by such contracts–U.S. appellate courts ruled that the contracts were valid and that Names had to sue Lloyd’s in England.
Archer has a plot in one of his books where a contract is central. One protagonist asks another “Did he sign”? And the other replies “Yes, he didn’t see that, nor any of the other three clauses I had slipped in.”
If you understand what happened you will understand why Lord and Lady Archer are such favourites of the British royal family.
But my point is about Mary Archer, and the blackness within. It was not enough for this person to reduce others to absolute penury, oh no. She had herself appointed as Chair of the Lloyds Hardship Committee.
If you tell Lloyds you cannot pay your bill you can claim hardship. But you will have to justify yourself before this committee. Can you imagine Mary’s joy and pleasure at making others beg for mercy? Her ecstasy as she noses through the most personal matters of other women she has just cut down to size. She probably became quite moist at the excitement of it all.
No, this is not my imagination. When “Lady” Archer got rid of her secretary for “disloyalty” she didn’t just fire her. She sued her, took away her house and bankrupted the poor woman. Remember, she’s best friends with the Queen.
These people are monsters. And Nicola Sturgeon is one of them.
Note to b. I do not have a link to the Time Magazine piece, but i’d be happy to post the entire text if your readers are interested.
Posted by: John Cleary | Feb 22 2021 14:10 utc | 114
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