THE WEATHER REPORT #9

Weather Report #9 (08.11.17 - 15.11.17)

Baghdad will be ticking along with more of the same daily perfect winter sun over the next 7 days. even Spain is chilly at night now, but not Baghdad. the week ahead is going to be a rather lovely 27C (81F) at its highest and 22C (71F) at its coolest. almost every day will be beautiful sunshine, with 1 overcast morning forecast late in the week. no vitamin D deficiencies in Baghdad, no sir-ee. other vitamin levels are… patchy, but hey, you can’t have everything. after last months incredible Baghdad Fashion Week - WINTER COLLECTION (BFW 2016/17), organiser would like to thank everyone involved and confirm that submissions for BFW 2017/18 - SUMMER COLLECTION - are now open! either go to the BFW Facebook page and PM them - they typically respond within an hour, give them a call on 009647713987348, or send them an email at info@baghdadfashion.com. come and get involved! 39,632 people can’t be wrong. can they?

was sponsored by all these guys, now sponsored by HUMANAUCTION

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

EUROPE - LONDON: uber guilty of choosing to “deprive workers of their rights”. they lost their appeal to provide drivers with trivial working rights - minimum wage, sick days, holiday pay… uber are one of the major players in the so-called gig economy – which they claim is what employees want from their jobs. so it is time for the next set of uber's on-going legal tennis matches - we join it at the end of the the second set, the score is 0-15. Uber to serve:
104mph and it’s about: people choosing their own, highly flexible, working patterns.
the people fire it back down the line though: you want to make any money? because THEN you are going to have to work the most unsociable, most socially valuable, most important to enjoy hours. if you want to form healthy, stable relationships, not destructive, shallow, transient ones.
0-30
uber serve with a massive 110mph and: also, no contracts, because contracts are so late 1900’s. uber is a modern, fast-growing, start-up business model.
people go for the lob: illegal, morally bankrupt, business model designed to create a massive demand for an unsustainable service.
0-40
uber try some spin, it comes in at 92mph as they describe: competitive pay, the choice to decide how much to earn, work as long as you like. you know to help our drivers out.
but the people smash it, straight at uber: antisocial and irregular shifts, minimal employment rights, a skeleton crew for support. more likely to cause mental health problems than solve them.
Game the people, set the people. the people lead 2 sets to Love. the people to serve.

this is now going to take potentially years to reach a resolution, that would be ok for uber, because during that time uber will continue to operate. and because the one thing uber has always had is money - lots and lots of money - that could drive everyone else out of business. until driverless cars come in and if they aren’t on that, someone (amazon? google? apple? - see: paradise papers) will try to do to them what they did to the taxi industry). effectively, they will just pay some tax, somewhere, just by another name. until they’re the only option left - then expect prices to skyrocket (when it is THE ONLY solution to multiple unique requirements). payment to drivers will remain low. Uber publicly announced it will appeal the appeal, just to make sure everyone knows their drivers are worth less than shit to them. and they didnt even buy them a drink.

want to be your own boss but don’t have a car? sick of paying $10 to fuck a professional in the ass? New, from Uber - it’s Uber-FUCK

CHANNEL ISLANDS - JERSEY: the paradise papersit the baby of the panama papers or see:weather report #8 but written in a suitable font. Jersey is a tax haven. a tax haven is a safe place where poor displaced taxes who have lost their families - like mummy capital income, daddy second home, brother savings account, sister sports car or aunty share-option - can go when they are facing “persecution” (aka governments) from Police Dog Units (e.g. HMRC). it’s a bit like Israel for the Jews. or Liberia for the emancipated American slaves. actually maybe Liberia isn’t the best example. to be fair Israel probably isn’t either. whatever, you get the idea. anyway, who is involved? well, pretty much everyone famous not formerly accused of being corrupt, a paedophile, rapist, racist or financial market manipulator has been snared by the old tax evasion scam. it is a list so vast - 13.4 million documents, big - there is no way to present it. here is a link naming and shaming though, which is all we really wanted to know anyway. special mentions? well apart from the corrupt, rapist, racist, people (Big Harv(ey) et al): Amazon; Apple; Nike; Twitter; Walmart; Barclays; Diageo; Standard Bank; Gazprom; Sun Group; Allianz; Deutsche Bank & Post; Bayer; Royal Dutch Shell; the Montreal Canadiens (yup, the NHL team); Lewis Hamilton; Justin Timberlake(NO! NOT JUSTIN!); El Cordobés (bullfighter); Avril Lavigne(?!); famous hypocrite, Bono; the Hindujas; Robert Kraft (i.e. Kraft); Pierre Omiyar (Ebay); Paul Allen (Microsoft); Daniel Maté(one of several of Glencore top-brass); Roman Abramovitch; Bakr bin Laden - chairman of the Saudi Binladen Group & brother of the man himself; George Soros; the United States Secretary of Commerce - Wilbur Ross; Colombian president & 2016 Nobel peace prize winner Juan Manuel Santos; Prince Charles of Wales; and, of course, Elizabeth II - Queen of United Kingdom & the Commonwealth; Government officials from everywhere; MANY members of Legislatures; several Heads of Governments; hell, even as we have seen several of Heads of State! the technical term for this kind of situation is a clusterfuck for sure as all the money they don’t have (which is why they haven’t paid their taxes, of course) - oh no, wait - turns out they might have it after all. now that, er, well, yes.
so, if anyone was wondering why none of us seem to have any money let alone run competitive and successful businesses in this [free market economy] we are now well and truly stuck in? well, your competition hasn’t paid tax, ever, not even a little bit. and you have been paying as much as they can bleed you for. just, you know, putting it out there...

live in the USA? earn more than $10k a year? then you pay more tax than all of the above. COMBINED.

MIDDLE EAST - YEMEN/SAUDI ARABIA/IRAN: it’s Hell In A Cell down in the middle east, and Yemen is losing because, well, no one really cared about them until last week. in a nutshell - Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting a proxy war and using Yemen as a testing ground. this isn’t anything particularly new, but there has been some sort of curtain almost like a blackout or something over Yemen resulting in its near-complete isolation from the world, especially concerning information or news. nothing has actually been allowed out of Yemen for quite a while, except for, the Saudi PR machine says, the occasional rocket aimed at the Saudi-sponsored Wahabbis who they definitely don’t fund. the most recent trouble is over a rocket the Saudi’s claim was fired at Riyadh by the definitely not Iranian funded Houthis, and shot down by the Saudi air force. the saudis did. shoot it down. the saudis. the same Saudis who couldn’t hit a stationary donkey with several heat seeking missiles, in a freezer, at 20 paces. but they intercepted by jet, did they? a ballistic missile flying at up to 5000m/s. that’s 5,000. METRES. PER SECOND. you know what Saudi measure would have stopped a rocket hitting Riyadh if one was launched? the building it hit when it landed. in Riyadh. the Saudi airforce, really. anyway they blockaded Yemen, again. then the whole world, suddenly interested because,well, no one knows, really. but probably stuff like this on the telly when we are trying to eat our meals in peace about blockades killing infants. it really annoyed our early-evening plans so everyone demanded the blockade be lifted. and now it has been, so it’s ok, they aren’t going to starve and we don’t have to endure stories like this one about kids, death and starvation, and we can go back to the old Yemen, say last year, when we were lucky enough to read stories about… well, yes, ok, starvation & death. of kids. in Yemen. also known as how well Yemen is always doing.

Saudi Arabia - learnt everything they know from us

MIDDLE EAST - LEBANON/SAUDI ARABIA/ISRAEL: sandwiched in between the above story, Saudi sources confirmed on the 10.11.17 that the Lebanon Prime Minister Saad al Hariri was definitely not forced to stand down by Saudi Arabia. France almost immediately went on record (via Le Drian) saying everything is fine. he’s fine. it’s all fine. okay? then the rest of the world displayed their collective outrage at this obvious massive miscarriage of justice and France changed Le Drian's mind for him and then changed her relationship status with Saudi Arabia to “ask me tomorrow”. Hive account@therealfrance also tweeted that maybe he isn’t quite as free as their Foreign Minister, by the way, Jean-Yves Le Drian previously stated. the seeds of doubts sprouted, giving momentum to the idea Le Drian might just be a corrupt, vile, sycophant and horrible little yes-man, when Hezbollah released a statement backing Israel (who maintained he was being held quite firmly in place). HEZBOLLAH agreeing with ISRAEL? additionally there is the small fact that they also backed Hariri himself - their (non-jewish/Israeli) Public Enemy (public hezemy?) #1. this is lending some credibility to the kidnapping and forced confession claims as, traditionally, Hezbollah are globally infamous for being epic-assholes and playing very poorly with the other children in the international playground. they don’t have any real friends and their social media friends & followers are the people no one else will like or follow. so their support for anyone or anything that isn’t "BECAUSE ALLAHU AKBAR!" - is exceedingly out of character and, officially, unprecedented.
for a world all out of original thoughts or new ideas, there are a lot of “worlds first X” taking place of late. unfortunately they are unprecedented acts of terror, violence, corruption, paedophilia or just general, but endemic, shenanigans. the Saudis are turning into prize-wankers even by Saudi standards, but their adopted family (UK, US & Israel) must be so proud. because as if not starting enough shit already, Hezbollah released leaked documents alleging Saudi ties with Israel concerning the US-led Israeli-Palestinian peace effort (that has nothing at all to do with peace, in case you were wondering). having now massively destabilised the entire middle east, its purpose is to galvanise the region against Iran, and the eventual invasion and installation of a pro-western government. just watch.