Monthly Archives: October 2018

My Stories

The Roma People

Roma Gypsies are all over Europe. They set up their shanty corrugated tent houses/cities along a water source and in most cases it’s right at the entry of a large city.

It’s sad in a way because it gives the city a garbage dump look.

They are not registered, so basically if no paper exists to say they where born then they do not exist.

They cannot gain proper employment, but a very small percentage do gain work however they are paid very low.

They cannot have access to medical services as they are not registered as citizens so their illnesses are treated by their own shed doctors and their children are born in those same sheds.

The Government has no idea how many they number, but what is known is that they are growing.

However the main rule of law for the Roma Gypsies is to beg for money and if that yields no money, they scavenge for throwaway materials or they end up stealing.

This is a general European problem. Every nation has them. For all the wealth the people of Europe flaunt there are millions of people who are not even recognized.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

Missed Opportunities

The record labels and music news sites that benefit from reporting positive articles about the labels, talk about the billions of dollars the music industry made in the financial year just before Napster hit. So from a simple viewpoint, when Napster hit, sales of music started to decline. For the RIAA and the record labels, these two events correlate, so it implies that one is causing the other to move. But actually the sales of music have been falling for some time.

What happened during the 90’s just before Napster went worldwide was a lot of re-purchasing. This is people who had music on vinyl or cassette and they started to re-purchase the music they already owned on CD’s. These re-purchased items, in most cases re-mastered or super deluxe editions with bonus content at higher prices would skew the record label figures to make it look like new music was bringing in billions of dollars when in fact it was people purchasing old catalogue items of their favourites. And once you had those albums on CD, you didn’t really need to re-purchase them again.

Lars and Kirk from Metallica maintain that it was the right action to go after Napster. No it wasn’t. The right action was to build a business model to replace the gap in the market that Napster was servicing. That gap was basically to allow people to share their music collections (bootlegs and original recordings) in a very simple and convenient way. Napster got popular because of it, and the record labels should have created something to match it.

But the labels did nothing, and then a small company called YouTube did fill the gap that Napster was really servicing. And YouTube today, generates billions of dollars. These billions could have been in the profit and loss statements of the record labels but they messed up. Remember, we are 20 years post Napster, and Napster still gets talked about, while the record labels did absolutely nothing to counter it, except scream for legislation and gestapo like police powers.

So going back to Lars and Kirk, creating a service that allowed people to share their music was the best course of action and as YouTube proves a very profitable one at that.

The arrival of YouTube and eventually streaming services put a dent into the traditional sales model, however with the increase in people attending concerts and festivals, one needs to ask the question, did piracy assist in these increased crowds?

Iron Maiden came back with Bruce Dickinson, bigger than ever and played to sold out crowds in countries they’ve hardly sold any recorded product in. Twisted Sister and Motley Crue also came back bigger than ever post Napster and played to their biggest ever crowds until they retired. Did piracy assist in these concert attendances as well?

And what about Metallica?

Having their music illegally available on Napster basically made sure that their music was available in every place in the world that had an internet connection (it was the same deal for Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister and Motley Crue).

In other words, their music was worldwide, which of course led to more fans having access to their music and a correlation of super large concert attendances and highly ridiculous ticket prices to capitalise on their world-wide reach. Even Metallica sold out concerts in countries without really selling any recorded discs in those countries. In some countries their music wasn’t even available legally, only illegally.

And here we are in 2018, with the record labels still trying to kill the market gap that Napster serviced. In this case, YouTube is the one in the firing line. YouTube and Spotify should just become labels themselves and start financing the production of music themselves, the same way Netflix and Amazon create their own content and also license content from others. Then the argument will be different.

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My Stories, Stupidity

More Macedonia

We stayed in Skopje for a night.

The City Centre is fantastic.

Back in the day, the previous VMRO Government borrowed heaps from the EU and started building monuments and statues on a project called Skopje 2014. The opposing SDS Government kept saying that the costs for the project are excessive and they wanted to see the accounting for it.

In the end, the Skopje 2014 project generated controversy because there was no clear transparent accounting with various estimates for the cost. In other words, people took a lot of monies for their themselves. For example, if the monument would have cost 500,000 Euros, the Government would have claimed it cost 1 million Euros. That’s half a million Euros for the pockets of Government ministers.

When the SDS Government came to power they announced a halt to the project and set up a Commission to investigate the possible removal of some of the monuments. The same deal applies here regardless of who is in power. The Commission might cost 20 million Euros and the Government will show that it cost 21 million Euros. That means another million lost which will somehow end up in the bank account of Government ministers.

Regardless of the Government corruption, Skopje for a tourist looks grand.

Macedonian Gypsy Roma people are everywhere in Skopje. The men are hassling you, trying to sell you anything from fake perfumes, watches, wallets and sunglasses. The women are there begging with little babies, while the children who are able are ready to pickpocket you. Let’s put it this way. They are well organized. But we ignored them and they went away.

And the Old Bazaar is brilliant. Cobblestone lanes weave their way through it. It’s on par to those bazaars you see on the Amalfi Coast in Italy which we got a chance to walk in 2016, or even Old Town in Estonia which we saw with this trip.

The drive from Skopje to Struga was interesting. Based on the kilometers to travel, the drive should be between 90 minutes to 120 minutes. But on the current roads it’s between 180 and 210 minutes.

We passed towns with Albanian flags flying high. I asked the driver why is that. He said it’s because the towns are predominantly Albanian Macedonians. And the pollution surrounding Tetovo, an Albanian town is toxic. The Copper Smelter Plant just spews gasses out into the air. The Government wants the Smelter Plant to put filters on. The Smelter Plant says the Government should pay for it. The Government says the Smelter Plant should pay for it. And no one is paying for it and the air quality is poor.

When you hear these kinds of stories, those green house emission targets and pollution agreements in place between large nothings mean nothing to these countries.

There is history there as well with Albanians in Macedonia wanting to merge with Albania. There is history even further back when Macedonian was part of Yugoslavia and the Serbs at the time came down with an iron fist to any Albanian resurgence. It’s just a melting pot and religion is the furnace.

We passed uncompleted roadworks that were meant to have been finished this year. But they are two to five years behind and the Chinese contractor is requesting an extra 150 million Euro to finish them.

The roads that got built when the country was in Yugoslavia are still in service today. Some are getting resurfaced by the current SDS Government and some are just that bad they have turned into rubble and are not getting resurfaced because the other new road is meant to be in service.

As our driver said, these road works are on an old contract that the previous VMRO Government started and it was well funded at the time but somehow the funds went missing. 150 million of them went missing. So when the new SDS Government came in, they put a halt to the project to investigate the missing funds and in the process broke the contract with the Chinese company which meant the Macedonian Government/People had to pay penalties to the Chinese company.

It’s obvious the country has a lot of other issues and the name dispute is just one of many.

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My Stories, Stupidity

Three Identical Strangers

What kind of fucked up world do we live in where people are allowed to use humans as experiments and mess with their lives.

I understand the 60’s was a time of pushing boundaries but some of the experiments pushed the insanity button.

Like MK Ultra. Like the placing of Jewish multiple births into certain families and then lying to those families who adopted the kids and then turning up to observe how the kids are progressing and lying to the families again as to why they were observing the kids.

Lies and lies from Louise Wise. Yep, that was the adoption agency name that worked with the Doctors in this experiment.

And the experiment was to observe the parenting. They separated kids to see if nature wins or nurture wins. The doctors created the families for the triplets. They first placed girls into each of the families and then the separated triplets.

One of the separated triplets who grew up in a strict household took his own life. The other two didn’t. Would he have taken his life if the kids stayed together?

There is a research assistant who knew a lot when interviewed and she has photos with powerful people all over her place so how far did the research chain go.

And that fucker Doctor sealed the research in Yale until 2066. By then all the people involved who are interested in it would be long gone. And there are still twins out there who don’t know they’ve been separated.

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My Stories

Macedonia

I saw on BBC News that they are having a referendum in the country to vote on the proposed name change to Northern Macedonia. And it’s happening on 30th September. We are booked to visit the country on October 3rd. When we booked our trip we really didn’t know this was happening.

And the country is divided. Talk about a volatile situation. This holiday is getting interesting every day. We have been warned of possible violent protests as the name change referendum didn’t get enough votes to pass the threshold.

I read a text on Tsar Nicholas II which mentioned how he and his first cousin, the King of England, didn’t want to have a Macedonia Nation in the neighborhood after the Ottoman Empire started to fade and they made sure that after the Balkan Wars in 1912/13, the nation would be ripped apart with a section given to Greece, a section to Bulgaria and a section to Serbia.

It’s that Serbian section, the one known as the Republic Of Macedonia or Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia that is independent.

And the Greeks are denying that section from using the name Republic Of Macedonia.

If those people are not Macedonian’s than what are they.

I am a history buff and I really can’t see any difference between what the Nazis did to certain races before the War started and Greece’s Foreign Policy towards Macedonia.

Here you have a country denying people of another country the chance to compete economically and to better themselves.

What’s next?

Concentration camps.

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My Stories

NCL Norwegian Breakaway

Being on a cruise ship is hard to explain.

If you want to stay connected and have internet access, you need to pay $280US for the 8 days, plus a one off connection fee of $3.75US. Seriously after ripping you off for 8 days, they also want a connection fee. Bullshit times three.

And if you want to use it briefly, they have a 99c for 1 minute option. Bullshit times 4. It’s the same rate my phone provider offers, but on the seas I have no service.

And you feel like a prisoner on it. A prisoner who paid for the experience.

It’s shit because NCL cancelled Helsinki and Stockholm stops. They used weather as the reason but it happened three days before we are meant to dock. The call was a bit premature.

There is a general feeling that NCL cancelled because most passengers had independent shore excursions organized for those places and since NCL had a small amount it wasn’t worth docking there.

But the big secret that NCL doesn’t tell you is that the ports at Helsinki, Nynashamn (Stockholm) and Warnemunde (Berlin) are piers which cannot accommodate big ships.

In order to try, the ports have extendable piers. So if the weather is perfect, in other words, no winds, the ships will dock, otherwise it will not dock. A lady on the cruise ship has had two Helsinki stops cancelled, while another has had two Stockholm stops cancelled. And the weather was windy.

But NCL promotes these trips. This trip was on my radar because of those stops. In the end all we saw was Tallinn for two days and St Petersburg for two days and three days of sailing.

Also when we docked in St Petersburg, 70% of the ship had independent shore excursions organized and guess what, they made us wait until the NCL organized shore excursions went first. We didn’t start our tour until after 11am.

The shit thing is how NCL did it. NCL said in a note to our room that all independent shore excursions need to get a time slot for a passport check in the Breakaway room on Level 7.

But it was just a stall to get us out later. The passport checks happened at the docking port with the Russian Authorities.

But there is food galore. Some good, some bad.

So what was the point of the trip.

For the $9K I paid to be on the cruise I didn’t get the value I expected. I would have been better off flying to these countries and staying a few nights there.

I did a Royal Caribbean cruise two years ago that totally blew this one away and Norwegian Breakaway did a great job making sure I never cruise with them again.

In the end, the Breakaway captain did what was necessary to keep the crew and passengers safe. It’s a shame his parent company NCL doesn’t have the same ethos and use manipulative marketing practices to trick people.

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My Stories

More St Petersburg

It used to get flooded a lot and from 1980 after they built the dam wall, it hasn’t happened.

The dam wall was the reason why we couldn’t dock as scheduled. The city had rain for a few days, some high tides and if the dam wall wasn’t there, hello flood.

While rockstars rock the world, engineers change it. Sometimes Mother Nature wins.

St Petersburg while lovely is all about power and glory. Showing off is a phrase I would use. Seriously, what is the point of all those Palace’s and Castles and Gardens. And their are so many monuments celebrating war victories.

The Russians don’t speak about politics in the open for fear of being put in prison. And they are still cautious when it comes to outsiders.

The news channel is controlled by the Government and only approved content could be shown. They are also passing laws to control and restrict the internet. This is what a dictatorship government does. And these same laws that Putin is putting in, is what the Copyright Industry’s want in the UK, Euro, US and Australia. And we have stupid politicians on the take agreeing to introduce bad laws.

Piracy is rampant. The few “shops” I saw had pirated movies and music. But I haven’t heard of the Copyright Industry attacking Russia for it.

During the USSR, all houses and apartments were owned by the State. After the fall, private ownership was allowed. Imagine that. The people who owned houses in 1918, suddenly didn’t own them after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was all owned by the state.

Sort of like the music we purchased. We believed we owned it. But the labels lobbied hard to change the laws to state that our purchase was for a limited license to play the music in our own home only.

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