Piss off US Government

Disclosure : This blogger is hopping mad and this post is written in a state of fury . Readers beware !

Why is it so difficult for the United States to understand a simple principle - the laws of the United States apply to the geographical boundaries of the country. It does not apply globally. It certainly does not apply to me.

The trigger for this rant is the case between the US government and Microsoft that is now up before the US Supreme Court. The case involves the US government demanding that Microsoft give up emails of foreign citizens stored in its server in Ireland. Microsoft refused. Hence the case. As the case wound up through the layers of the US justice system, two lower courts ruled for the US government. However the Appeals Court in New York ruled with Microsoft. Now its in the Supreme Court.

The US government's position is that Microsoft is a US company and therefore its laws apply worldwide - a notion that is seductive, but flawed. We've been there many times before. What is a "US Company" ? Is it because it is headquartered in the US ?  If that is the logic, then its easy to beat it. My contract when I use Microsoft services can easily be modified to be with Microsoft India, an Indian company. That will make it outside the US jurisdiction.

Wait a minute, will say the US worthies. Microsoft India is a subsidiary of Microsoft US. So ultimately it is a US company. So, is beneficial ownership the norm ? That's easy to refute too. Who are the shareholders of Microsoft US ? Bill Gates holds most of the shares but there are foreign entities as well. Take Citibank. The largest shareholder is the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The second largest holder is Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia. So , Citibank is an Arabian company subject to GCC laws ?

Complicating the matter is the obsolete US constitution. The constitution , which  Americans swear by, is written in prehistoric times. They have a system where the constitution can never be amended. And they have packed the Supreme Court with "originalists" (RIP Antonin Scalia), who interpret the words literally. Nobody ever thought of globalisation and the Internet when the US constitution was written. The protection is only under the Fourth Amendment which relates to unreasonable searches and seizures.

The country actually most pissed off by all this is Germany which has strict privacy laws. The German Government has declared that if the US chooses to read every email and access every data, it will simply stop using "American" companies altogether.

Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean that its a good thing to do. Here is a poser to Americans. Consider a situation where E Bay is acquired by Jack Ma (an entirely plausible scenario). Alibaba is a Chinese company. So if the Chinese government decides to monitor every transaction on E Bay and required Alibaba to hand over all details to it. Would Americans take to that meekly ? 

The right thing for America to do would be to execute treaties with other governments on data sharing and then operate under the framework. Sure, that's difficult. But that is the right thing to do.

The US won't do that of course. It has never done that. Principles of natural justice apply only when convenient. They poke their ugly noses into every aspect of my life - I am still signing the damned FATCA forms . I can only rant and rave. Hence the title of the post.

This post is being stored on a Google server in the US. Presumably this will be handed over to John F Smith II from Topeka, Kansas (the American equivalent of Ramamritham). I hope he can see my middle finger !

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The awful Zero Hours Contract

This eminent and good friend has often remarked that I have turned into a socialist (even a communist) in my old age. He claims my writing in this blog is veering constantly to the left. Other readers of my blog ,might wonder, if this is left leaning then what will the true loony left be called. But I know I am going to get a mouthful from him for this post, which is admittedly leftwards tilting.

On matters relating to labour and worker law, I have often argued that countries have brought excessive legislation defending the existing worker and making it expensive to employ any more.Who in his right mind will employ a worker in France, for example. All this misguided legislation only keeps out a large portion of the young out of the workforce. Companies need some flexibility to ramp their worforce up or down based on conditions of their business and marketplace. Minus this flexibility, no modern company is going to hire.

But companies have gone to the other extreme and misused the flexibility to create completely unfair job practices. Take the case of the "Zero Hour Contract" - a British invention and used to the hilt by a wide swathe of so called respectable companies. As a worker you enter into a contract with the employer . but there are no working hours guaranteed, hence the name zero hours contract, You are expected to sit glued to the telephone. When they want you, they'll call you. You have to jump like a jackrabbit and run to the office or factory or store or whatever and you work for the hours they tell you to. You get paid (often the minimum wage) for the hours that you do. Then off you go without knowing whether you have to return tomorrow or not. Back to the vigil by the telephone. During this time, you cannot accept any other employment, even if the phone never rings. And when it rings, if you cannot come to work, you've really lost it and won't get an opportunity for quite some time.

Sports Direct has become the notorious poster boy for this with apparently 20,000 of their total 23,000 employees on Zero Hour Contracts.

This sort of behaviour is why companies and businessmen are hated by the general public, who think they have no scruples or morals in the eternal quest to make more money. Flexibility in the labour pool is one thing. But to keep 90% of your workforce 'flexible" and not even telling them whether they have to come to work tomorrow or not, is surely extreme. There is no business in the world which cannot know how many workers it needs for the next one month at least.  Some sort of rostering is surely possible. And preventing the guy from finding work elsewhere when you have nothing for him, is positively outrageous.

In such an atmosphere, how can there by any training or skills building. What sort of employee commitment can you expect.  Will the worker have one good word to say about the company. And you think this is an efficient business model. And this is a sustainable approach for success . Only a moron can think so.

Peculiarly, one of the organisations discovered to be using this rather widely is Buckingham Place !!  Pip Pip, Your Majesty - this is just not cricket !

Employers have to understand, and demonstrate, that if they want softer laws, they will have to behave reasonably and not exploit. If they can't, or won't, then they should stop moaning about excessively rigid labour laws.

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A touch of madness in California

Californians are the best example of the concept that it is a thin line separating genius from madness.  The genius of Californians is well known. If there is one single place that is deemed to be the most creative in the world, it has to be somewhere in California. Many of the world's greatest inventions originate from there. Maybe its in the water; maybe its in the air, but something makes creativity flourish in California.

It is then a mystery as to why such creative people are adept at scoring own goals. California adopts a particularly virulent form of voter activism. All sorts of ideas are presented to voters in referendums and if passed, have to be observed. A series of such voter passed Propositions have made California virtually ungovernable, at least financially. Witness the annul ritual of theatre in passing of their budget.

In keeping with that tradition, California voters  passed two years ago Proposition 2, designed to create humane standards for farm animals. Laudable objective. Considering that California is well known for tree huggers, this is entirely understandable. We shall pass lightly over the fact that such a law would make Texans double over helplessly in laughter. In keeping with lawmakers' known enthusiasm for pedantry, they have passed laws to state that  egg-laying hens must be able to fully extend their limbs, lie down and turn in a circle within their enclosures.

California's egg producers are scratching their heads in dismay. In keeping with industry's long standing tradition of screaming foul (pun fully intended), they yelled that this was discriminatory and that egg producers from other US states would ruin them. The Governor dutifully signed a law stating that all eggs sold in California, wherever the hens might have laid them,  must be subject to the same rules - hens should be able to flap their wings, etc etc without touching other hens. I know Arnold Schwarznegger is more renowned for his brawn than his brain, but surely did it escape him as to how on earth could he implement this ?

Meanwhile the argument is descending into outright farce. Apparently if you build too big a cage, the hens get frightened and start to huddle together. Then of course they cannot flap their wings without touching each other. So what is an ideal cage. Fertile ground for research and a Phd thesis. More rule making and more law suits. To avoid this, some egg farms thought of making the birds roam free,  with no cages at all . But this causes even more problems. Dominant hens apparently kill weaker hens. And because they are running around in their own $@*&, they catch infection - so antibiotics are needed. That risks violating some other law.

The bird industry is no doubt lobbying furiously, with lobbyists doing good business. Equally so the pressure groups that want humane treatment of animals. They probably employ counter lobbyists. Nice good economic activity all around.

There will be less fun in the world without California. They create iPhones. They also research on hens flapping their wings, turning a full circle and lying down without touching other hens.

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Now you can't sue me

Well, almost. You can sue me, but your chances of winning have considerably diminished. In a landmark ruling yesterday, the British Court of Appeals ruled in favour of the science writer Simon Singh in the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA).

Simon Singh is a British science writer. In a column in The Guardian in April 2008, Simon Singh criticized the BCA making these comments

“You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments”

The BCA objected to this. The Guardian offered them the chance to write a rebuttal. They refused this and instead brought a libel suit against Simon Singh.

To any sane man, this libel suit is strange, at best. However the British libel laws, being what they are, apparently the burden of proof rested with the defendant. If I say that in my opinion you are an ass, then it means that I am implying that factually you are an ass and if you bring a libel suit against me, its up to me to prove that you are indeed an ass. The original court upheld that an opinion Simon Singh expressed, was actually an implied statement of fact . He went on appeal and has now won. But in the process his career as a writer has been ruined and he has been financially compromised - having to spend some ₤200,000 in legal costs, although others have contributed. And the story is not over. The BCA has threatened to appeal against the current ruling.

Apparently hundreds of cases are brought against people expressing opinions that somebody does not like. Faced with ruinous legal costs of defending, they simply capitulate, back down and censor themselves. Somewhat similar to the strong arm tactics employed by a number of gentlemen sharing the surname Thackeray.

A significant angle to the libel laws in the UK is that it promotes “libel tourism”. It does not matter if you live in some other country and publish something there. If it was capable of being read in the UK, you can bring a libel suit in the UK. The community it affects the most are bloggers. If a blog is capable of being downloaded in the UK, then the libel case can be brought in the UK. With such libel laws, the UK has become the capital for libel tourism.

This is actually a strange position. Anybody even remotely familiar with the UK knows that its newspapers hit abysmal lows every day in scandals and sleazy journalism. And yet it seems to have the toughest libel laws around. I simply don’t understand this.

This blogger is notorious for being highly opinionated and expressing them freely, sometimes passing them off as fact. For example, here’s a tip for Gils. A few days ago, this blog featured some comments about his sartorial colour preferences. He has every right to claim to have been libeled. Now this blog is definitely capable of being read in the UK, although nobody really does. However there is at least one reader who has commented here in the past and she lives in the UK – clear proof that what is written can have ramifications in Her Majesty’s land. So the logical course of action for Gils would have been to sue me in a British Court for libel. Unfortunately he is a bit too late – he should have done so last week !!

Bloggers beware !!

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