I share here my learning from experiences dealing with Autism; more accurately called ASD – a spectrum. Intertwined closely with my investigative work, Autism is a tricky one to deal with because while many disorders are easily identifiable (Downs Syndrome, schizophrenia, blindness & deafness for example are pretty easily understood), ASD seems to me to be a broader thing. This means that it requires specifics in relation to how it affects an individual, rather than being able to know from a label what this actually means, practically. Enjoy this layman’s take on ASD.

In the last couple of decades, I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with people suffering from ASD/Asperger’s. My early identification of psychiatric issues with the founder of Ormita came from personal experience and has flowed into the alternative currency space naturally. It seems that those wired differently ‘up top’ can handle creative business better. Commercial barter therefore is a natural breeding ground for those with ASD.

Add in the best part of a decade in Samoa, where everybody there it seems has some degree of Autism, and you’ve got a guy here who while not a trained psychologist has a good layman’s understanding of what ASD means. Correct me please, any shrink, if I get something wrong.

The Primary Issue

Hands down the biggest thing that needs to be understood by those trying to deal with Autism, is that (unlike physical abnormalities such as hearing loss or blindness, which are simply a matter of handicap degree) ASD is a spectrum. It means little to say, “Oh he’s got Autism” – you have to know what aspect of Autism someone is affected by, to properly understand then. It’s akin to saying, “Oh they’re from Asia, or it was a man!” These are labels of broad identification that can indicate certain tendencies but one needs to drill down a lot deeper to understand a specific situation.

Asians come in all shapes and sizes, as do men! Same thing with ASD. When someone says, “Oh I understand him; I know what Autism is!” you can be very sure that they don’t! You have to go deeper, and from my experience it takes a lot of skill and experience to assess any psychiatric condition, and for those without training, it takes a lot of time with an individual to understand the significance.

The other thing is that people are not robots – even those with limited capacity in some areas of human relationships. It is perfectly possible that on some days or in some circumstances the coping mechanisms that those with ASD use, actually get it right, and good things happen as a result! Thus understanding an individual case is much more valuable than knowing that someone has ASD.

Identifying Autism

There are websites and resources galore on the symptoms that manifest when trying to identify Autism related disorders, but the first clue I use is unusual social interactions. While pride can be the basis for self-centered conduct (one talks excessively about oneself for example), when it is driven by psychiatric conditions on the ASD spectrum you see the mix of genuine humility with self-centeredness. Whenever I see people think about, talk about and look after their own interests excessively, I always try to dig down to find the root cause. Is it pride-based or not? Excessive ego-driven conduct indicates a natural cause [pride] – in the context of humility though it indicates a psychiatric cause.*

Strong indicators of ASD are seeing challenges in relation to engaging with others, particularly conflict manifested somehow in a repeating manner – excessive kiss-and-makeups common. Because victims of ASD are not able to read human emotions well, misunderstandings, miscommunications and cross-talk are easy indicators to identify the condition, or certainly as early indicators.

Consequences

Those with ASD will challenge those around them – spouse, friends, business colleagues/partners and employers, often deeply.

Depending on the relationship – be it marital, a wider social one or in some form of business, the consequences can range from a simple sideways look (‘he’s a little bit different’ sort of thing) to full-on conflict and what I call a ‘trail of trauma’.

A recent case I’ve been dealing with where Autism played a factor involved a top-performing businessman who had what an associated party called an “Alphabet Account” – from A-Z, hero to zero and back again for decades. The dramas repeated – this was normal conduct. It could be seen from both perspectives – a bad boy constantly pushing the limits; or from the other perspective – a hugely successful long-term operational relationship where both parties always wanted to kiss and make up, for mutual benefit.

In a marital situation too, such ups and downs can be hugely frustrating, indeed quite hurtful. Betrayal can be perceived as one thing by one party and quite the opposite by the other, which requires a large dollop of cognitive flexibility to accept.

Understanding (or often misunderstanding) cause and effect can be normal. This is the reason why I talk about Samoans all having Autism, a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but with a bit of truth to it. The Samoans have a well-developed kiss-and-make-up process (called ifoga) which is a cultural tool for dispute resolution. A large part of this dispute creation is the lack of what we call ‘common sense’ in the West, but when boiled down is actually a difficulty with understanding ’cause & effect’. When someone is insulted, the boys will often escalate the situation with fists (and more). Later, when the systems of justice in Samoan society kick in, there is often great regret and head scratching as the ‘he was a good boy [but just got bad that time]’ phrase is used. And the pattern repeats. The ifoga deals with this well after the event (as everyone MUST comply), but it doesn’t change the underlying cause, that we see as a simple lack of common sense. If you use your fist, bad things result. Duh!

Autism is often the same with the faulty thinking that a sufferer should recognise the common sense that we all have (or should have) – if you do this then other people will see it ‘this’ way – may be logical for us. Not so for someone who doesn’t get it, because they can’t! Again though it is difficult to generalise when each individual has different issues to deal with.

Dealing with Autism

Most people would agree that it is incumbent upon the seeing among us to assist those without sight. We do not expect a blind man to know of a pothole ahead when he’s walking towards it. We can see it – they can’t. We therefore accept the moral responsibility to alert him before he falls into it. Likewise with deafness, for example if our friend we’ve taken to a cricket match is deaf and announcement that the game is delayed for half an hour because of the weather is given audibly, we feel responsible for sharing the detail he will not have heard.

Likewise with those suffering from ASD. The idiosyncrasies that manifest due to psychiatric issues have to be understood and ‘carried’ by the able bodied. Just as you cannot reasonably expect a blind person to see things, or a deaf person to hear, it is unrealistic to expect someone with ASD to suddenly understand the emotional intricacies of a tricky situation.

This can be hugely problematic as a trail of trauma inevitably follows those with ASD – resentment, broken hearts, ill-will are common as people with ASD rarely understand the human consequences of their conduct. In a marital situation this can be dynamite. In a business situation, while this can often create opportunity (such as advanced performance in design, productivity or sales) this can also be dangerous commercially. Those involved need to take a different approach to matters related to ASD, the same as they would install procedures or assistance for the physical, hearing and seeing impaired, so too the even more difficult psychiatric challenges.

I’ve found that pride [yes, again!], OUR pride is a huge barrier to handling difficult situations like this. When we get over ourselves, we can become a lot more capable of understanding and giving the support that the ASD sufferer needs. If we expect (as of right) to be understood or appreciated by our spouse or partner, for example, when they simply cannot and may never be able to give this, then we are deluded and will suffer. Likewise in a business or other human-relationship situation – if we expect something that can never be given, we will be forever frustrated and conflict will continue. Far better to humble ourselves; get over the missed expectations and work day-by-day for what CAN be achieved with a person wired differently ‘up top’.

I witnessed a most incredible event a while back. One of our boarders had Autism, and quite severely too. She was under heavy care from the authorities as a consequence, but she walked up to one of our neighbours, an elderly lady doing her gardening. “Hello!” she announced a little stiffly and perhaps a little more loudly than normal. “My name is Claire. I have Autism – which means that sometimes I don’t understand things. What’s your name? How are you?”

Obviously taught to say this by her carers, it was an extraordinary engagement as she initiated social interaction; identified herself; explained her difference and what it meant to others; and then chatted away merrily for ages with her new friend. My neighbour understood exactly what the score was as a result of this clean and clear intro. When the wheels did start to fall off later on, I explained to her that this was likely only temporary setback and that very soon, things would be back to normal as if the trouble had never happened, and that’s exactly what occurred.

Recapping

Autism (or anything on the Autism/Asperger’s scale) can be a real b*stard to deal with, mainly because the sufferer is usually oblivious to their plight and the consequences of their actions. It’s not so much that we, on the outside, don’t want to pay the price to carry the sufferer. In many cases we are happy to do this, it is that it is an ongoing trauma – it never ends, and it’s thankless work because the one we are carrying just doesn’t understand, and will never!

When we do ‘come down’ though and humble ourselves, we give ourselves the chance to get into the mind of the ASD sufferer, and that gives us the opportunity to work with what we do have, and that’s often an increased opportunity. My advice when alerted to the possibility that someone we are involved with has ASD (and for me that is often those I investigate) is to seek to understand HOW that ASD affects the victim as soon as possible. While ASD is a broad label, one needs to know specifically in what area this affects people labelled with ASD.

Thanks for swinging by today and also for understanding.

In case you were wondering, no, I do not have Autism nor any other psychiatric condition. According to a shrink with expertise in these subjects, I’m just a pain in the a* to live with because I’m an excessively black and white guy! Now you know, if you hadn’t worked it out before!

* The exception to this is the conduct of conmen, who know intuitively how to manipulate others consciously.

This post is a reply (off-list) to comments & constructive criticism relating to my credibility on a list relating to Alternative Currencies. In essence the commenter suggests that he’s impressed with some of my work but thinks that I shouldn’t be talking about ‘crazy conspiracies’ on the same website as any meaningful commentary on Community Currencies or my reporting of serious investigations. My replies [interspersed] explain that Alt. Currencies, investigations and conspiratorial subjects are all only a part of what I write about, but that as a straight-shooter, I’m a total package. This works both ways, causing shallow thinkers to bounce off but attracting the truthseeker, deeper thinkers and those like-minded. Enjoy!

Previous discussion with all four identities referenced here have occurred. These are all people who know each other from online engagement, years in fact.

IDENTITY 1 > @Dennis – I’d like to make an observation on credibility,

Your feedback is genuinely appreciated @[name]. This list is polarised on virtually every topic that has stuck its head above the parapet.

IDENTITY 1 > since you have taken on a bit of a “crusader” role.

Agreed. Be careful though not to confuse appearances from reality. It may APPEAR that I’m out to get people or companies. I’ve said many times AND I MEAN IT, there nothing here that is personal, not even the [sometimes] ultra-aggressive conman Daniel Evans. I sat down with Daniel and interviewed him face-to-face in a conflict situation for my first report on Ormita in early 2009 then spent more than an hour with him afterwards over a beer. Bartercard refused to talk. Ron Whitney cut off communications with me early on. I conducted extensive private communications with Annette Riggs behind the scenes until she stopped communication. Rob van Hilten too wanted to talk until he read the draft of the first post then terminated communications. I could speak to anybody of these people at any time and despite what they may think and claim, I’d give them all a very fair hearing and as much time as they wanted. [ I am very fortunate that I do have time!]

My crusade is to speak the truth and provide meaningful commentary on what I find. I fight deception, misrepresentation and fraud as a result of asking questions, thinking, analysing and blogging about it. I would note that the crusader role can be passive or aggressive (or in between). I prefer mostly more of the passive but standing for something, especially the truth, in a sea of deception can indeed be a revolutionary act as another smart guy has already observed.

IDENTITY 1 > When I read the comments of the judge in the Dutch case, I found myself agreeing with his dismissal of the veracity of your claims after doing research on your website.

Well done for at least reading those comments – some haven’t, yet they still want to contribute to the discussion – foolishness.

You raise multiple subjects in one sentence, and my answers raise even more, so let’s go:

1. Dutch Court Ruling. I was the one who blogged about and published this ruling! Note that you read the comments courtesy of me, yes, me, because I personally retyped the Dutch that I pulled out from a scanned PDF of the entire dozens of pages of judgement supplied to me via my Tipline. I then translated these parts into English by Google Translate and I posted them to MY website, note that this is ME blogging about credibilty NOT IRTA nor Tradeqoin, as an example used in the fourth of a five-part series on Credibility. Note that this was a series that I started on 29 November 2014 long before IRTA went public with the Dutch Judge’s words and was a specifically about credibility. It was then extracted and put on IRTA’s website with some spin [more on that in a minute] by people who had a vested interest in smearing my credibility!Have you ever wondered why I was the one who even took these supposedly damning words public – in fact did you [a general ‘you’ to any detractor] even know that it was me? And why did IRTA never even acknowledge the source of their information – from the very person that they were out to smear? Perhaps it is because for truthseekers don’t HIDE things for political benefit and others do? Perhaps it is that I know VERY well that independent thinkers will see the IRTA post coming from a vested interest with the political nature of their words and acts – clearly designed to smear one of their detractors! [That happened] I knew also that real thinkers will recognise the stupidity of a Dutch Judge rejecting one argument because of another unrelated belief. [That happened too and still does!] The people that I respect ‘get’ this all easily – not because of just one post but because I’m constantly, week after week, month after month shooting dead-straight. IRTA and Tradeqoin walked straight into a trap (it was a fortuitous thing not designed, BTW), revealing their true colours to the discerning! Please let me repeat this so it is perfectly clear what actually happened:
2. • Tradeqoin took TradeXchange to court in The Netherlands suing them with many dozens of issues
   • The Dutch judge struck them ALL out bar one
   • I took that judgement, translated the one aspect where Tradeqoin ‘won’, published it along with my analysis
   • IRTA took the one judgement (which they learned from me), went to their friend/Board Member, the complainant then trumpeted it to the world as proof of my lack of credibility [thinking I’m sure that they had scored a coup]. I, however play for keeps and have need to manipulate others’ opinions for political gain. Thank you IRTA and Tradeqoin for publishing it, pumping it and revealing your shallowness, incompetence and true colours.
   • I did or said NOTHING until now when my credibility is questioned.
3. All claims in court were rejected bar one. Now what I didn’t do was to translate the screeds and screeds of claims that were rejected, BTW. The court case was a real crack-up! Do you [again a general ‘you’] know that Tradeqoin attempted to get the court to rule that TradeXchange should be prohibited from communicating with me? No, seriously . . . this is fact . . . Tradeqoin sought a Dutch court to issue an order to prevent their rival Dutch Trade Exchange from communicating with a Samoan investigative blogger! This is the stuff of crazy, desperate people who then tout that their opposition lost a court case! Hmmm . . . little wonder that Tradeqoin’s projections, membership and performance all carry a little, what would you say, embellishment? TQ brought so many complaints (dozens) to the court it was comical and they got only one hit – and that based on a logical fallacy at that! So the response of the court was essentially . . . DENIED, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED, AGREED [witness not credible – I’m not going to even read the evidence!], DENIED, DENIED, DENIED etc. Now if the evidence not accepted by the judge contained facts and not opinion (which it mostly did because the judge listened to Tradeqoin’s claim that the defendant’s witness was not credible because he had a blog and believed . . . etc) then it’s a joke on TQ’s presentation of the case as a success, is it not? All those who trumpeted it as a ‘loss’ for the defendant will be shown for who they are – ones with an agenda! Not so me . . . I say all the time that the truth is not in a hurry nor has need of violence. Note also that usually the longer that you leave the corrupt to do their thing, the more evidence one has to convict them, and they often self-destruct.**
4. The Dutch Judge was a SHE and I’ve said before that I think she’s “crazy”. The judge was a her BTW not a he. Simultaneously to this hearing, the Dutch national newspapers were having a national poll to determine HOW BAD (not IF, but HOW bad) the Dutch people considered their judiciary actually were! To the informed being pinged by a Dutch Judge is actually a mark of honour and brings enormous amusement to some and ‘knowing bewilderment’ to those of us who understand issues of natural justice! The judge has also made serious flaw in her judgement misquoting and ignoring key evidence (not even presented to the court because of time constraints for the complainant took up most of the available time!). Should the defendant appeal, and should the judge be found to be in error, what would Tradeqoin and IRTA do then? Apologise and retract? Yeah right!
5. The Logical Fallacies. In the West we tend to think that it is the evidence that matters. Not so in The Netherlands! The defendants would definitely win in an appeal for the judge has used multiple logical fallacies – it matters not whether I believe that the moon is made of cheese nor if I’m a Jew, Muslim, paraplegic or am located in Samoa, it is the EVIDENCE that generally matters in most Western courts. Now what you haven’t seen and something that TQ will never show you is the EVIDENCE supplied to the judge which she totally passed by because of, well you know why . . . ‘I believe something that she doesn’t’. That’s a serious breakdown in justice. I don’t make decisions for other people but I would take the matter further if I was the defendant because I’m a fighter and never give up when I take up a cause. The defendant has to balance his time/resources and political situation in making his decision and I tell you now that despite private claims that I’m tight with the defendant, I simply don’t know why he hasn’t appealed. I haven’t discussed it with him; I haven’t given any professional opinion or advice to him and anything I might have said would have been along the lines of what I’ve just written here: “You would be sure to win an appeal”. That’s pretty much it!
6. Confidential Information.I might not reveal all information all the time, for good reasons too. Often I am bound by confidentiality agreements, which I honour religiously. My informants know this and trust me. In all my blogging for years I am aware of only once when I accidentally broke confidence of someone (a timing issue and not a content issue) and I rectified the issue immediately, explained and apologised. That’s all I could do. Furthermore I often make value judgments and some of this is subjective. For example I called Tradeqoin a scam long before I had completed the membership survey, but I did this based on credible evidence not all of which I could talk about or share. My telemarketing survey simply confirmed and quantified the figures at 6% which was actually a LOT lower than I would have predicted BTW. Someone asked me in confidence in the early days on what I had based one claim I made about them, and when I shared the nature of the information I had and how I got it there was a big expelling of air and the words along the lines of, “Holy sh*t! That’s dynamite!” In regards to the Dutch judge’s comments I have more information than her, than Tradeqoin has and what the public has. I am VERY ready to bring the evidence into the courtroom too!
7. Reserved information. There’s also another reason that I sometimes hold back and it is to give others the opportunity to rectify the problem in a professional manner OR to give them more rope with which to hang themselves. Very occasionally someone chooses to come clean and does things professionally. When I’ve kept some back, I can use that as a test to see whether they are genuine in rectifying the matters. If for example I ‘ping’ TQ for fraudulent membership claims but also know that their trading figure claims are also misrepresented, I don’t have to hammer them on both. If they do things right then I can leave it all alone, but if they try to defend the indefensible and claim that I’m [whatever] then I have more information that proves their true nature. At the beginning I take a lot of flak personally but often as people start to see the ship sinking they step sideways, distance themselves and protect themselves. It happened this way big-time with Ormita once the report was out. It happened a little with IRTA as some long-term members started to get wise to what was happening, and it’s in the early days of happening with Qoin/Tradeqoin. These things build up steam over time. The point here is that strategically I do not always spill all the beans upfront.
8. Researching my website should only be the beginning for those who are diligent and have integrity. My conspiracy page lists subjects that I have researched, some extensively and others only momentarily. That should only be a start. This simply sets the scene, the big-picture and as I say on the page it is not a definitive statement BUT even just doing this (quite rare from what I’ve observed in blogging circles) is integrity at work here . . . I’m not afraid to state my beliefs up-front and pay the political price for doing that.What I’ve found though is this: shallow thinkers bounce off my conspiracy page in a huff over maybe one or two things that they strongly disagree with and usually don’t discuss any details. Deeper thinkers however recognise some that they DO agree with me on, then [usually] acknowledge that I have both brains and b*lls, and work with facts, deeply engaging on subjects that I choose to explore. The other thing is that ALWAYS, without exception I have found that those that disagree with me have done FAR LESS research then me. This is a very telling statistic, for I ask you [general] this . . . “How much research have you done into Michelle Obama? Have you seen the longstanding credible claims that Obama is a homosexual? How many hours research have you done over how many years into the subject? How many photographs have you downloaded, viewed, compared, analysed with male/female proportions overlaid? Have you analysed photos that reveal the box the he has, or his Adam’s Apple? How many photos have you compared and viewed in the light of the possibility that his hair, eyebrows, upper body physique are deliberately stage managed to increase his ‘feminine attributes’ and decrease the very obvious male attributes? Have you seen the Whitehouse response and analysed it?*** The same applies with all other contentious or PC subjects. I’ll listen to anybody who wants to deal with facts but just telling me “I just do/don’t believe this” without having done the research and established the likely facts for ourselves is a poorer quality of living than I want to be involved in.

Truth will ALWAYS out. For those who humble themselves; that do not have an agenda, truth is self-evident.

IDENTITY 1 > To be absolutely blunt, I think that you do raise some good points about the integrity and soundness of various CC models (and the motives which drive some of the player), but you have a major credibility problem.

OK Thanks for the positive feedback, that’s appreciated and noted. Let’s get into this credibility thing more then . . . !

IDENTITY 1 > I went to your website once to follow up some statements you had made about Daniel Evans (which turned out to be right on the money) and was immediately confronted with links to absurd climate change denial and antisemitism. Ever since then I’ve had to take every piece of information from you with a hefty grain of salt.

Fantastic! This is your intellectual integrity hard at work. If you believed what I said just because I said it, then you would be empowering me to do the thinking for you . . . the end result of doing this is always a cult – how do you think Goebbels got Hitler and his team so popular – by encouraging independent thought? Hardly!

BUT equal with that caution should be a willingness to acknowledge that I DO score hits and get things right. Note carefully though that your personal bias comes through in your phrase “absurd climate change denial”. There are people on this list AND more offlist as well who do not share what I believe is your gullibility. You may not agree with those who have come to a different conclusion from you about Climate Change but you show a strong leaning to accept the MSM version of historical events and current reality, and condescending words shows your bigotry more than it does resolve differences in a positive, mature manner.

I know identical twins who don’t agree on everything. For this I say, “Thank God!” but the ability to determine truth for yourself based on evidence, not peripheral factors is critical. There are some things that Daniel Evans, Bartercard, IRTA Executive and the Qoin people have said and done that is worthy of merit – likewise with me. Perhaps we should pick out the ones that we want to comment or engage on and ignore the rest?

IDENTITY 1 > If you’re going to go about exposing the frauds and timewasters, consider the extra cognitive burden you place on those of us who consider you an unreliable witness. You have done a good job with some of these cases, but then there’s the other stuff, which occupies a grey area between tinfoil hats and depressing bigotry.

Sorry, I know it’s hard to keep up with a prolific blogger, and I know that you like most others will swing by and listen when it suits you. My advice – park the issues that do not matter and work on what IS important to you here and now, then work with the facts, using what I reveal and putting my analysis into your own context.

IDENTITY 2: > I guess the question is whether it is better to tell one’s own truth or to be more strategic about what we say to whom

This second commenter raises a critical issue, and that is one of strategy and how that dovetails into our personal objectives. For the record my strategy is to shoot straight no matter what, where or when so that even though people might not agree with every topic, thought or word I write that at least they know where I stand. My aims DO NOT have an objective or an achievement in a political sense but to be seen as a guy who asks questions (including the curly ones and the ones that others don’t think to ask) who can think, and has the proverbial to speak it all out.

IDENTITY 1 > If I was going to go about exposing frauds in a particular industry, I probably would keep my links to alien abduction theories on a different website.

Well that is your approach because you want credibility in one industry but it’s not mine. Community Currencies are a section of my website and blogging, of course an important one but only a part of the many topics I write about. My advice is to ignore my warning that Michelle is actual a Michael and hope like h*ll that you never meet ‘her’ in the showers!*

Furthermore if one thinks that one can gain credibility by getting and keeping widespread agreement in this industry we’re dreaming! In my opinion it is much better in the long-run to stand for something than to compromise and end up with the same (or being the same) as everyone else.

The other thing is that it’s a balancing act between attempting to gain or retain credibility by covering the gaps or denying parts of our full picture and putting it all out there (which is my leaning). You can see the unraveling of people who covered things up or hid them in the early stages in our industry and indeed even in my blogging. For example it wasn’t well known that Rob van Hilten joined as an IRTA Board member without even having a trade exchange in contravention of IRTA’s rules. It is well known now. The same with the ‘IRTAcard’ deal with Bartercard and IRTA. Something done behind closed doors came out to bite the principals quite badly in the end, even worse when they tried to cover it up and make excuses retrospectively.

IDENTITY 3 .. whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…?

Shakespeare translated for those who have an aversion to the classics:

I’ve created a problem with what I’ve said/done . . . .what should I do about it?

My answer:

Return every stone and arrow to the sender with [non-compounding] interest and a bit of TLC.

And later:

Identity 4 > My advice: . . . do something constructive with your time instead of tearing down others with half-baked information, using sources with an agenda and having a crusader mentality.

 

This advice given from a source previously investigated and found wanting is ignored.

For the record the four original posts on Credibility are:

• Credibility of The Good Book 5 – 3 December, 2014
• Credibility With Conspiracy 4 – 2 December, 2014
• Building Credibility in Samoa 3 – 1 December, 2014
• Credibility While Investigating 2 – 30 November, 2014
• It’s All About Credibility 1 – 29 November, 2014

Making a statement

Lastly, for the record, while my motives are exactly as stated, I’m not entirely stupid and I know very well the likely impact from my writing and analysis on others. There’s a hurting world out there and in my book those who profit from others through deception just make it worse. I am fully aware that I’ve revealed a lot of elephants in the room but I’d prefer to be known as the guy that wasn’t afraid to ask, think and talk than to protect the status quo. Shooting straight might hurt, ruffle a few feathers and bowl over the odd elephant in the process. To that I say, “Good!”

Thanks for reading – if there’s something you’ve got a problem with here, just identify it in the comments and I’ll try to fix or address it. Questions are also welcome.

* To those who still haven’t ‘got it’, for goodness sake, just LOOK at him will you? Emperor meet thy destiny! Take away all what you’ve been told in the media and just LOOK at her – real feminine body proportions, bone structures, neck, shoulders, biceps eh? Eve’s don’t have Adam’s Apples, that’s why we call Eves, “shes” and with Michelle/Michael you don’t even need to look down below.

** This is one of the reasons that I generally do not advocate direct action to bring the corrupt down, for it is my experience that if you leave them alone and simply expose them, they will self-destruct in due course anyway. Ormita was different in that the principal had psychiatric issues but take Tradeqoin for example . . . membership numbers a joke, trade volume minimal, unattractive products or [mainly] services and member satisfaction at an all-time low, key staff gone, deception abounding and totally leaderless . . . why waste time attempting to ‘bring them down’ when they’re doing that very well by themselves?

*** This is a trick question! Ignoring genuine conspiracy claims is a deliberate technique used by those who have something to hide. The proviso though is that you need to be able to muzzle the MSM to use it. I think Obama’s team can do this ok!

What is well-known; originally came from China; can’t be seen, touched; is twice the size in India; and Africa also has one? The parable of the blind men and the elephant, or course.

The original parable originated in China sometime during the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD):

It’s a parable of importance to one who is always seeking to understand the bigger picture. The essence of the story for a truthseeker is that wisdom requires a bigger-picture view than the incredible self-centric approach to divining reality that currently exists in the modern world.

Here it is in all its glory.

[Not to be outdone, the Indian version has six blind men and the elephant is in technicolor BTW.]

One day, three blind men happened to meet each other and gossiped a long time about many things. Suddenly one of them recalled, ” I heard that an elephant is a queer animal. Too bad we’re blind and can’t see it.”

“Ah, yes, truly too bad we don’t have the good fortune to see the strange animal,” another one sighed.

The third one, quite annoyed, joined in and said, “See? Forget it! Just to feel it would be great.”

“Well, that’s true. If only there were some way of touching the elephant, we’d be able to know,” they all agreed.

It so happened that a merchant with a herd of elephants was passing, and overheard their conversation. “You fellows, do you really want to feel an elephant? Then follow me; I will show you,” he said.

The three men were surprised and happy. Taking one another’s hand, they quickly formed a line and followed while the merchant led the way. Each one began to contemplate how he would feel the animal, and tried to figure how he would form an image.

After reaching their destination, the merchant asked them to sit on the ground to wait. In a few minutes he led the first blind man to feel the elephant. With outstretched hand, he touched first the left foreleg and then the right. After that he felt the two legs from the top to the bottom, and with a beaming face, turned to say, “So, the queer animal is just like that.” Then he slowly returned to the group.

Thereupon the second blind man was led to the rear of the elephant. He touched the tail which wagged a few times, and he exclaimed with satisfaction, “Ha! Truly a queer animal! Truly odd! I know now. I know.” He hurriedly stepped aside.

The third blind man’s turn came, and he touched the elephant’s trunk which moved back and forth turning and twisting and he thought, “That’s it! I’ve learned.”

The three blind men thanked the merchant and went their way. Each one was secretly excited over the experience and had a lot to say, yet all walked rapidly without saying a word.

“Let’s sit down and have a discussion about this queer animal,” the second blind man said, breaking the silence.

“A very good idea. Very good.” the other two agreed for they also had this in mind.
Without waiting for anyone to be properly seated, the second one blurted out, “This queer animal is like our straw fans swinging back and forth to give us a breeze. However, it’s not so big or well made. The main portion is rather wispy.”

“No, no!” the first blind man shouted in disagreement. “This queer animal resembles two big trees without any branches.”

“You’re both wrong.” the third man replied. “This queer animal is similar to a snake; it’s long and round, and very strong.”

How they argued! Each one insisted that he alone was correct. Of course, there was no conclusion for not one had thoroughly examined the whole elephant. How can anyone describe the whole until he has learned the total of the parts.

From:
Kuo, Louise and Kuo, Yuan-Hsi (1976), “Chinese Folk Tales,” Celestial Arts: 231 Adrian Road, Millbrae, CA 94030, pp. 83-85.

Source: http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html

The Samoans have a story along the lines that:

The higher the crab climbs the coconut tree; the more he sees.

Quite profound in it’s simplicity, really.

I enjoy listening to the Samoa wisdom literature.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons from completing an investigation into Daniel Evans and Ormita. Here are some of them along with winners and losers out of the saga, all from my perspective of course.

Writing The Ormita Report was a big job but a lot simpler than actually undertaking the investigation and working through the mire of human misery that Daniel had caused around the globe.

I intended to write a minimum of 10,000 words. It ended up a 60,000 word tome. The reason was that as I commenced the writing a lot more information came to hand. I either had to rewrite it or keep adding in chapters and subheadings. With a deadline, I chose to include everything. If I started it all again, I could write it in 10,000 words but it would have 50,000 words of evidence and appendixes!

The human dynamics with Daniel can be stressful. I determined that it simply didn’t matter what he said or did, I knew what I was doing, and what I was attempting to achieve. Taking a hit from an angry man out to destroy my reputation or wild phone calls or anything else was just par for the course and to be expected. While not nice, I paid the price but got the job done!

The change in my motives half way through the investigation (from simply wanting to get the truth out there – to actively stopping the rot) was a major decision. Mid January 2014 was the turning point in which my efforts to bring the Ormita fraud to a head started in earnest. Others always wanted to use the report to bring Daniel down, and to stop the con job, and I knew that The Ormita Report would help to do that but determining to stop it all meant a lot more thinking, strategising, collaboration and work.

I lost support from some who thought I was either crazy or doing the wrong thing. Some of that hurt; many stood off and didn’t want to get involved; quite a few helped and there were a very very helpful people, brave and dedicated to getting the truth out there and stopping the conman. It was a mixed bag that helped show me who was who and what their actual characters were.

I found a few skeletons in the closet. The software provider is one. He is still claiming that he was an innocent victim when in fact he was a clear JV partner. The roles of City of London and Z/Yen the dodgy report writer is damning. Not so much because of what they did, but what they didn’t do. That others have openly endorsed the Ormita fraud and put their reputations on the line really has me scratching my head! The ease at which it has been possible for a conman to ‘create’ a supposedly multi-billion-dollar company with essentially web-based materials that are believed is astounding. The poor due diligence undertaken by business people around the globe who got sucked in on the scam is also very revealing. The barter industry as a whole too has things it doesn’t want talked about. The worst skeletons however relate to personal relationships with Daniel that got messed up, dare I say it confused somewhat? Keeping the bedroom and business separate is good grandmotherly advice.

The psychiatric issue is a difficult one. I’m not a psychiatrist, but Daniel REALLY needs help, or he’ll lurch from one disaster in business to another. It’s a lot more than his self-confessed, “Well I’m not good with people” acknowledgement. It is deep stuff that he needs to come to terms with before he can ever live a life without messing others’ up.

And that leads to the sadest part that many people had their hands burned. Country after country; friend after associate after partner after employee all report the human suffering by following the king poncho in the Ormita fraud.

There are a lot of losers. With the disconnection of his latest software, and Ormita licensees around the gobe pulling out and reassessing their options, Daniel has pretty much lost the lot. I will also ensure that if he ever pops up in the barter industry again, that I will sit on his case the instant there is any deceipt or dishonesty in the winds. He’s got few credible options left in the industry.

There are a couple of clear winners in the sad story. Tyler Seamans has picked up on aspects of The Ormita Report with his blog barternewsweekly.com. He’s only playing with his blog, but people are looking at it as a result of Ormita.

IRTA has come out of it looking pretty good. Their promotion of The Ormita Report to the industry following was a smart move, so that even though I initiated it and wrote it, some people do actually associate them with the report. Lucky for IRTA to get credit, for they’ve taken quite a few hits in the past!

The industry has gained a lot, having the pimple on its bum removed.

Lastly, though, in my mind, I’ve won.

I bothered to care; to understand the man; to write the first report to shareholders; to write the initial WARNING Ozone/Ormita etc and then to conceive of the investigation and report.

I committed to it and delivered. I worked with people from many countries at all hours of the day and night, with technology, creating the brand, the resources and the approach that buried the fraud.

The Ormita thing is all done and dusted for me.

Establishing comparative Trade Volumes in the Barter Industry is a challenge. This graph is my best estimate derived from information researched while conducting my investigation into the Ormita fraud.

The graph represents approximate industry Trade Volume ratios as at 2013. It is a little North American-centric (it excludes some substantial players outside of the USA), but is a good guide nonetheless and certainly the only one I can see out there at present.

An issue with developing an overview like this is what criteria we set to define the ‘barter industry’. I’ve taken the position that the pie chart embraces ‘barter systems’ that comprise the ‘barter industry’.

This excludes one-on-one swaps/trades and counter-trade. If we added all the one-on-one trading out there – the number would be massive – but a child trading his baseball cards for an iPod is not part of the “barter industry,” – bartering systems that have either a third party element clearinghouse element and/or an alternative currency debit/credit system.

Another issue is that some operators jealously guard their trading figures. Some also inflate their figures to include a single transaction twice (buy/sell or debit/credit).

I developed the graph here with the assistance of Ron Whitney (IRTA) and others. Thanks for their advice.

Please contact me for usage rights. All I need is

• prior knowledge of usage,
• the statement “Used by permission” and
• a link to www.dennis.co.nz if it is a web resource.

That way I can also inform you of updates as they occur.

In this post I share evidence of a con artist at work, an Australian businessman currently working out of South Africa and currently going by the name of Daniel Mensi Evans. Following publication and widespread dissemination of The Ormita Report, the conman threatened me then attempted to manipulate me (both unsuccessfully) then distributed his own ad hominem attack by way of a claim of homosexual relationship with me.

It’s a ruse that he has used very effectively many times before, often leveraging past bed-mates for commercial and personal means. He is very effective at ‘working’ the homosexual community wherever he goes.

Enjoy the read. It gets exciting!

The ruse works well when people have something to hide or lose. It also doesn’t normally matter if the claim is true or not because most people fall under his spell for fear that mud sticks. In my case however it is simply validation of the key findings of The Ormita Report – that Daniel is a conman and his business Ormita is a fraud – all based on the extraordinary efforts of simply one man.

I actually WANT him to continue to sue me, and to lie, scream, shout, do silly things and make such claims for it is all more evidence that they guy is who I’ve revealed him to be – a conman!

This PDF document distributed recently by Daniel is the first misrepresentation of what will likely be many from a disinformation campaign waged by a desperate and worried conman, currently hiding in South Africa. Daniel pretends that he has the world’s largest commerce network with almost a quarter of a million members in dozens of countries and 3.4 billion in annual trade when in fact he operates what is essentially a one-man-band using smoke and mirrors to dupe investors from around the world into buying an Ormita license.

Here is the non-promotional components of the hit-piece which if you’re interested can be downloaded in full in PDF format.

None of the core claims of the report are addressed. Apart from a puff-piece and just the usual conman’s claims, it is entirely a personal ad hominem attack designed to destroy the credibility of a major report with devastating conclusions by questioning the motives for doing the investigation. Apparently I am supposed to be a jilted lover from years ago and have suddenly got it in for him and invested serious efforts to get back at him!

Let’s get started. I flick between my replies directly to Daniel and others. You’ll get the picture though.

I, Daniel Evans, am the current CEO of the Ormita Commerce Network. The background to Dennis Smith and Daniel Evans Mr Smith and I met in 2003. Mr Smith turned up at my office one day

This is factually incorrect. I have never been into or even sighted any of Daniel’s offices! Daniel first contacted me as one of my companies was a member of Bartercard and his marketing methods for his trial Ozone barter exchange were to approach members of incumbent trade exchanges. So we have started with a LIE and an unethical business operator. Many who known this smooth-talking conman will be saying to themselves right about now – “Yup! That’s Daniel!”.

declaring he wished to start bartering with us (preferably for no fees) as he was using a different barter network at the time.

Nope! People don’t do this sort of thing!Ask any trade or barter exchange operator in the world how many people “walk in”. It’s bl**dy hard work building a membership of any organisation especially barter which is a tricky concept to present at the best of times to businesses unfamiliar with thinking laterally or out of the box.

The truth is that the initial Ozone marketing materials sent to me offered a ONE percent fee structure FOR LIFE for the initial take up

I, along with others took this up, so this is the second LIE,

Mr Smith was running an internet company called GoKiwi Internet.

Correct. GKI established in 1999 was one of New Zealand’s first web development companies.

He was married at the time

Another fact makes TWO. They pretty much stop there though

but conveyed to me that he was having some difficulties in the relationship. The details of this I shall, for the benefit of third parties, keep between ourselves.

A fabrication. For the record [correction 30/2/14 16:08] this was never talked about because there was no conversation about it! A third LIE.

Shortly after meeting, Mr Smith and I entered into a homosexual relationship.

In your dreams Daniel! The closest thing that you’ll ever get of mine to your butt is my boot, unless you stop your BS, get help, sort yourself out and then I’ll he happy to shake your hand, but rest assured that will be it!

This is of course a fabrication. I have remained and always will remain faithful to my three wives over three and a half decades. Homosexuality has no interest to me in the slightest – ask any Faafafine on the street in Samoa and they will all tell you that I am and have always been a waste of their time! Even they worked that one out pretty quickly when I first arrived in Samoa! That’s now four LIES.

Our relationship lasted on and off for almost four years.

The dream gets even more gross! Five LIES

It ended when I realised that Mr Smith was not going to leave his wife.

Nope! Six LIES

He became obsessed with others finding out about, what he termed as “his little secret”.

No secrets around me Daniel! Seven LIES

Towards the end of this period Mr Smith decided he had found God again

Nope! Nobody “finds” God. I never use this phrase for it is a fallacy only spoken by detractors and the ignorant. In my experience it is God who finds us when we are humble enough to listen to Him! Eight LIES, Daniel. You’re clearly a desperate man, I see.

and began writing furiously about religion,

Nope! In the book I am currently working on (Fifty Years A Truth Seeker) I share the paradigm shifting experience of recognising at the age of 20 that truth was not an abstract but rather a person, the person of Christ. I started writing later in life with a blog called VICTUSINAMBITUS that then morphed into my second book Lipstick On A Pig. I don’t write “about” religion, I write about life and living but from a Christian perspective. A second DISTORTION.

his hatred of most things not religious and

Another distortion, making three DISTORTIONS and eight LIES! What the detractor probably means is that he has a conscience and feels that a Christian would hate HIM. Not true! I DO however hate lies and deception and will hunt down his fraud with a passion. I repeat, I HATE lies and deception. Daniel is a liar and a conman, thus he is (i.e. you, Daniel, are) in my crosshairs.

some other pretty esoteric topics.

Great! Some of us go where others fear to tread Daniel!

As with all things he dislikes he decided to “fix” the world.

Absolutely, Daniel. It is called variously standing up for what you believe in, paying the price and doing what you can to make the world a better place. You won’t understand this with your self-serving dirty-tricks campaigns on people who threaten your self-generated reality and your litany of lies, but some of us actually do things for others’ benefit! You call this “fixing” the world in a derogatory manner. To “normal” people however this is a worthy characteristic and we call it helping others; standing up for what is right; or putting our money where our mouth is; or otherwise. Thank you for revealing your hatred of people who genuinely care and do something about the world they live in!

Dennis even started promoting a counter-party to Halloween. He called it the Light Party.

That’s right Daniel. Light Party is an international success story, particularly in the UK and New Zealand where uncountable thousands of people from churched and non-churched backgrounds join under one umbrella brand once a year to celebrate things that are good and happy by their own value-judgement as opposed to that forced upon them by popular culture of the mainstream media/business. Many people appreciate this alternative and for them – great! I’m very glad I did it!

He appears to be going for the throat instead.

You’ve got it Daniel, the throat! Liars, conmen and thieves like you deserve to be outed and dealt with forcefully. Ormita will die as one after another people who you have conned will come forward and say, “Yes, Dennis is right. Ormita is a fraud and we too don’t want a bar of it!” I will also be publicising things as they occur, so that the world can see it happen in real-time, just like they can with your Selina Markham identity theft at www.selinamakham.com.

I understand Dennis Smith feels as though he wants to “destroy” me for,

Please keep writing more stuff like this so that the world can see how your mind actually works, so that there is more evidence of your extraordinary capacity to generate distractions and attempts to destroy others all in order to perpetuate the deceptive practices you engage with in the Ormita fraud.

what to you, is a very personal reason. I apologise for that. Things get messy in relationships, even more so when you’re both involved with women in the background.

Alluding to a fabrication of course – another misrepresentation and making nine LIES!

I know that Dennis is a very hurt individual

You’re dead right on that one Daniel but not for any of the reasons that you misrepresent here!

For the record, this is the pain . . . since 2002 when I first saw the way that you manipulated other businessmen for your own ends; when I observed the pain of countless others that have variously engaged with you, as investors, staff, customers and partners (in both the business and personal meanings of the word) have variously been screwed over and lost various things they previously had at your hands, and when many of them have come to me begging for help and desperate to get some hope back that there is something good within humanity after their experiences with you . . . I’ve writhed in pain.

The reason is that . . . wait for it . . . I actually care!

This hurt that countless people from around the world have shared with me increased to the crescendo in the middle of my investigation that I determined that, as I say in my YouTube video, THIS MAN MUST BE STOPPED.

Many people in pain respond to it in anger like you do. But Daniel, I don’t. I’m a lot smarter than that and I have the patience of Job. I’ve done the work. Watch now Daniel as piece by piece your world of deception comes tumbling down around you as my pain is outworked through an intelligent, well thought-out strategy bringing sunlight in to your world of darkness.

The facts are out now in The Ormita Report. Much of my pain is now gone. When you are in a psychaitric instition with proper appropriate care or scaffolding; or when you are locked up in jail; or when you have ceased conning people in the barter industry, or that you have taken the steps I recommended that you take in The Ormita Report, then and only then, I promise you that my pain will have gone entirely!

and I have attempted to build a bridge with him but he refuses.

Yes that’s right, until you Daniel answer the key questions I asked you in November 30, 2013, I will not engage with you.

For the record for others, Daniel called me when The Ormita Report came out and threatened to sue me, told me that he would conduct an investigation into the SWAP Foundation, that I couldn’t hide in Samoa and challenged me as to my “Christian” conduct. I instructed him on the terms of my engagement, to supply a recording of all calls for “on the record” communications.

Instead he backed out of that and then commenced multiple email exchanges. When he didn’t answer or even address the key questions I asked in 30 November 2013, I ignored him and will continue to do so.

You’re a chicken Daniel and live in a world of deception of your own making. You’re too scared or broke to sue me. You can’t address real issues and have to stop to dirty tricks. You can’t look me in the eyes because you know that I know the truth about you and your issues. You hide. You lie, manipulate and you deceive for selfish means. I on the other hand have “balls” to speak the truth and I do that as best as I can – in full and in public! Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. Any topic – including you!

I don’t think anyone except maybe the complainant in your New Zealand convictions for crimes of dishonesty has ever stepped up to the mark and taken you on like this, but Daniel, in me, you have met your match, for I will continue to reveal to the world your conmanship day by day, week by week, month by month until it stops. Anything that you do or say is on the record and I will have no hesitation of sharing it with the world if it is the truth.

It is certainly not my intention to have a tit-for-tat back and forth between Mr Smith or his friends. I am vociferous about no deficit spending, attracting the right clients and ensuring they can adequately trade. Mr Smith has cost me too much time and money to date and, as he succinctly puts it “I am out to destroy you”.

The truth will actually destroy your Ormita fraud Daniel not me. Whether you go down with the ship is your choice but as I said in my first open letter to you the truth WILL OUT. I’m simply the messenger.

God Bless you Mr Smith and IRTA.

What? Since when did a homosexual conman with a hatred of Christians and Christianity ever start using religious platitudes like this and in a business communication too? What a hypocrite!

I hope you channel your energies into the right directions to promote sustainable trade.

Daniel Evans

I can speak only for myself here but Daniel, this will certainly occur as I expose your criminal past, your criminal present and give business people the world over the evidence of the Ormita fraud for them to choose to back a con artist or work with people and businesses that have some degree of credibility and morals!

Over the next few weeks you will find more and more people who have read The Ormita Report will say to themselves, “Yes this is all true!” It is very likely that you will lose allies and past friends hand over fist as they too realise that one person has stood up and cried out “The Emperor has no clothes!” they can safely do that too.

Bring it on, because every time the name Ormita and fraud are associated online, every document you falsify, every alias you create and use will reinforce the core findings of The Ormita Report which is that it is you, Daniel Evans who is the liar and a conman and that Ormita is nothing more than the fraud it is.

The 200 pages and 60,000 words that highlight Daniel’s/your deceptions are available at www.theormitareport.com.

Daniel, the day that you ‘come down’, slow down, calm down and do the right thing, as per my advice in The Ormita Report, I will be your biggest supporter. Until then, because I stand for the truth fearlessly, I am your nemesis [for those that need reminding, this means: the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall].

I’ve just published my fifth book, (an eBook: The Ormita Report), and it’s been a marathon effort involving risk, intrigue and ethical issues galore. This post shares the inside story of a Kiwi author, blogger and IT entrepreneur virtually single-handedly taking on a guy who has terrorised an entire industry for years.

When I pushed the “go buttons” to publish The Ormita Report earlier in the night, I delivered on a pledge that I made in Q4, 2013. I had promised to deliver a 10,000 word report detailing my findings into a con artist going by the name of Daniel Mensi Evans. It’s all in the Report and various websites but it ended up 60,000 words and when I pushed “go” it felt good – really good – not only because of the contents but mainly to have delivered on time as promised.

Believe it or not, I suffered from chronic low self esteem for the first 29 years of my life. You’d never guess it with the publication of the YouTube video that presents a very serious matter of this fraudster directly and pretty succinctly! The YouTube was done with selfies on an el-cheapo Nokia cellphone, the cheapest ones that Samoa had to offer at the time and put together in eastern Europe under my remote instruction. I’ll be doing more videos in due course with messages that I want to communicate – Ormita and other topics.

I had detractors. I knew a friend from church who was an ex-policeman in a senior investigation position in commerce but he wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole – not even to give me personal advice. That hurt but it toughened me up to back myself. My estranged wife emailed me a cryptic email along the lines that I was crazy – again it forced me to back myself even further. Others slipped in constant reminders that the conman had messed with their lives, personally and commercially and that they didn’t envy me with my undertaking. People on the team failed to deliver as promised. Key witnesses wouldn’t talk. People I respected disagreed with some of my findings. What can you do in such circumstances?

Well, ‘work’ came to mind. I just pushed on no matter what keeping on asking questions of all and sundry, and I got the job done!

I had challenges on the ethics front with The Ormita Report. What started as an idea turned into a mission as I came to see more of the damage that the guy had caused, and was causing around the globe. Exposing him for what he was doing and had done was relatively straight forward, but exposing him for who he is wasn’t quite so simple. I had to work in the full knowledge that he, and his business was very likely to be destroyed once the report came out. I had to be very sure that I had my facts correct and that I had the evidence. I had to be ready for any eventuality – literally anything – and to be ready to deal with very likely an angry man that had a track record of extreme behaviour, stopping at nothing to get his way.

But I had the truth; I worked with only the truth and wanted only the truth.

That was enough for me to push through with the investigation and the writing until completion.

With the work done, I can now take a short breather, handle the various media enquiries and then move into a support role for others to take litigation, lay criminal compaints and deal with the various difficult situations they all face as a result of the Ormita fraud.

I can’t predict the outcomes of publication of The Ormita Report for we are all entering uncharted territory, Daniel Evans is usually the one generating action but I do suspect that Daniel Evans and Ormita is ‘toast’ now and that there will be a series of legal challenges facing the conman and his one-man-band global empire.

I don’t get pleasure from destruction per se, but when something is built on lies, deception and self-interest, and there is, as I say many times, a “trail of trauma” around the globe, then it will be great to see something so poisonous dealt to. The principal of Ormita loves to personalise business matters – it’s a trait of many people unable to deal with human relationships well – and I pride myself on distancing facts from feelings . . . BUT . . . I can also identify the feelings well. It DOES feel good to have gotten it all out in the open – much of it for the first time.

I trust that you enjoy reading The Ormita Report.

Once I’ve gathered my wits about me, I’ll be back and ready for more. I have a few ideas brewing for the next projects and a few people who want to work with me.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me people.

Nice chatting!

26 March, 2014

Open Letter to Daniel Evans (Ormita)

Dear Daniel

Today I published The Ormita Report, a document that is arguably a definitive statement on your true business conduct and the true nature and reach of the Ormita business – certainly as best as I can establish to date.

Before I discuss some of the issues raised in The Ormita Report, I wish to share some positives, for I appreciate your energies and I respect your take on certain things.

For example, I agree with what you have claimed in various postings around the Internet, that undisclosed and/or unsecured deficit spending within a trade exchange is immoral. It’s an area of concern to me too, regardless of whether it is you or others who do this, I agree with you that it is wrong.

I appreciate the enormous energies that you have expended throughout your business career to advance yourself, and to some extent the businesses you have established. As I say in The Ormita Report, you are very smart, have a prodigious output and are clearly a very determined man when you set your mind to a task. I respect those aspects of your character – and I mean it.

I appreciate the incredible chutzpah that you had when you were working with those at the top of the top in the financial world. While of course I consider the deceptions you undertook to be immoral, I marvel at your capacity to conceptualize your dreams, and your resourcefulness at implementation. In some ways it had me spellbound as the evidence started coming in to me via the Tipline.

I appreciate the opportunity too, that you have given me to further my career as an author and a blogger, particularly in the area of our common interest – the reciprocal trade industry and (for me) the alternative currency movement. That’s a bit of a backhanded compliment I know but it is real, nonetheless.

But, you have done and are continuing to do things that hurt others. The crescendo of complaints, funnelled to me, through my single blog post warning about Ozone and Ormita, is shameful. I have many people around the globe contacting me whom you have hurt. They range from those who would love nothing more than to see you destroyed in the most painful way possible, to those who have coped with your deceptions and immoral business conduct remarkably well, but simply don’t want you in their lives any more.

In my opinion Daniel, your business conduct is a disgrace.

I actually believe that you have a god-given right to conduct business the way that you want to conduct it, but when you lie, cheat, steal and act fraudulently then I too have a god-given right to reveal this to the world. I’ve exercised this right by publishing The Ormita Report today.

The world too has the right to deal to you under the laws of the land you have worked in. You’ve definitely exercised your right for more than a decade that I’ve researched. Do not be surprised if others exercise their right to exercise their rights under the law of their land too.

As I’ve explained in The Ormita Report, your approach to a conflict situation is often to threaten legal action but then back off when you have what you want. As I have no interest, nor good reason to sue you, I would like you to sue me please.

I would like the increased exposure that the legal case would bring to your activities and the true nature of the Ormita fraud. I would like the opportunity to present the evidence I have collected from around the globe before a judge in a manner and a format that further increases my international exposure as the guy who ‘took on’ an international fraudster; as a guy who shoots straight and who, a bit like you, never . . . I repeat, never gives up!

Following publication of The Ormita Report I will be working with interested parties to help them commence litigation against you personally and Ormita. I will make my extensive knowledge and evidence available to people who wish to deal to you in various ways.

I will be sharing the information about the true nature of Ormita and your business conduct throughout the Internet; in just the same way as you did, and that you currently do. The difference however is that I do not hide behind deception – I speak the truth and do not use trickery or scheme evil.

As a result of this, and publication of The Ormita Report, it is very likely that you will be facing a barrage of adverse publicity and a sea of litigation that not even you, with all your chicanery, resourcefulness and cunning will be able to escape from. Now that the ‘genie is out of the bottle’, it will never stop until you do.

You should be aware that there are a lot of people around the globe who are now more motivated than ever, from my writing of The Ormita Report. They will be actively ‘onto’ every false identity you create; onto every misrepresentation you make; onto every deception you attempt; onto every con you try to pull off, and they are now either actively out to get you or will be very happy to help others to go after you. I summarise this all by saying that with the publication of The Ormita Report, you can run, but you can no longer hide.

Daniel, as long as they are dealing with the truth too (and this is a very important proviso), I will do what I can to help them.

I don’t threaten people . . . I consider matters long and hard, then I make a decision only when I am totally convinced that I know what I am talking about and know that I am prepared to pay the price. In regards to you and Ormita, I made that decision last year and The Ormita Report is now in the public arena as a result of that decision. I play for keeps.

I also want you (and the world) to know why I wrote The Ormita Report so that you (and to some extent the others) can learn from it all.

When you established Ozone in New Zealand you presented me with a document that contained two references. One of them hardly knew you and the other was embarrassed to be associated with you and couldn’t talk freely because of his high position in a high profile company. You ‘used’ those people and their reputations Daniel, for your own benefit. According to my sense of morality, that was wrong. You continue to do this today.

When you sought funding for Ozone Australia you may have been well meaning but you misrepresented reality to the investors with wild projections. I have no problem with the fact that things may not always go according to plan, and that failure in business is always an option but this pattern (of trashing investors) has continued from you unabated for a decade and again this conduct when based on lies and deception is immoral.

When I established the Ormita Shareholders Google Group, you commenced a series of activities and communications that demonstrated the most despicable behaviour I have ever seen from a director of a company. You changed the shareholding records at the companies office; you presented different share registers at different times; you defended the indefensible; you forged and backdated documents; you attacked your own shareholders; you claimed malice and other bad intent when in fact your investors were simply wanting simple answers to legitimate questions! Again, this conduct is immoral. To this day you have travelled the world freely at others’ expense, yet you have given neither a single word nor even one dollar back to your initial investors. This is selfish and callous behaviour.

Your conduct towards Keith Bowen claiming that he had not paid up his shares when he had, and that he was not entitled to vote when he was, is just one example of behaviour from a person who I believe should NEVER be permitted to direct a company OR to seek funding from others under any circumstances again.

You continue to lie, cheat, manipulate and con others by generating false evidence against them; reneging on deals and making false and misleading statements for your own personal advantage. This is totally immoral.

When we held the Special Shareholders meeting, you actually came to Wellington and hid. You did not even have the guts to speak to the very people who funded your various escapades as well as the very business that gave you the opportunities for you to benefit from in the first place! This was gutless behaviour, but even more unbelievable is your hypocrisy, Daniel. Screaming, shouting, swearing, threatening and more, while it may be normal to you, isn’t to most of the rest of the world. Your conduct was shameful and it continues to this day with your disgusting, vindictive hate-campaign against the principals of IRTA – false evidence that is still online bringing embarrassment to the victims AND damning evidence of your evil into the public eye.

When you knew I was writing the first report, you offered to fly from Australia (supposedly) to meet me and share all the appropriate documents. At the meeting you then refused, claiming, “your lawyer advised” you not to share them. ‘Julia’ wasn’t around then but, my friend, you lied to me. I’ve always found that liars are generally thieves, and visa versa. You are still lying and cheating to this day.

Since publication of the first report, you have avoided communicating with me, but you’ve carried on around the world creating mayhem and as I keep saying, generating a “trail of trauma’ where ever you go. You’ve hidden from me since that report. You’ve hidden from everyone else you’ve lied to and ripped off but that’s about to stop. The world is not big enough for you to hide any more Daniel.

The Ormita Report brings you and your conduct out into the open, once and for all!

Thank you for reading thus far. I will now take this opportunity to preach a simple message to you.

Twelve years before you were born, as a child myself, I had a personal traumatic experience that unwittingly set me on a path as a lifelong seeker of truth. Fifty years ago I started a mission to determine reality, for myself, not for anyone else, just me. At the age of twenty, I had an encounter in which I came to realise that truth is not just an abstract, that it is more than an absolute, but that truth is a person – the person of Christ.

For the record I didn’t initiate this event and I had no control over it . . . it just happened as I was seeking to know the truth, but I did have to face that newfound understanding and determine for myself if it was for real or not.

It is.

In the 34 years since, I’ve come to love the Truth and see the enormous power that it has to cast aside all manner of evil. Just like the darkness disappears with the light of one small candle so too does deception when even just one tiny ray of Truth shines forth.

I share my life experiences through my blogging as I know that you know. I preach from my experiences and then move on not knowing or either really caring the consequences. It matters not to me if one person or a million read my blog or listen to what I say. I just do what I do believing that this is my ‘calling’ or ‘lot’ in life. The reason I’m relaxed about this is that unlike you, I have no agenda. I’m simply interested in the truth and the Truth has no agenda either; it has no need of violence or desperate defence or making noise, for it simply exists.

There’s a passage in the Bible where Jesus is recalled walking into Jerusalem and the people were all excited for Him. They shouted and danced and praised Him but the enemies of the truth sought them to silence. Jesus’ words, “I tell you … if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out ” were a clear indication that nothing will stop the truth from outing – in the end.

Today it might be one man named Dennis that challenges you with reality, the reality of what view as your mixed up view of the world and who you are. Tomorrow it might be someone else, but the three things I can assure you Daniel is that there is a God, there is accountability (in the now as well as in the end) and the truth will out.

Lastly, for the record, I am actually interested in the matters you have raised in regards to the performance and conduct of IRTA, their principals and the true situation in regards to the problems behind the scenes in the reciprocal trade industry. As I say in The Ormita Report and as you very well know, there are others too that share some of your sentiments. In due course, I will likely find out and speak more about those issues.

In the meantime though, as an investor in the Ormita business and an author and a blogger, my focus is and will continue to be on your conduct, and the Ormita business.

As always I welcome your meaningful communication at any time.

Kind Regards

Dennis A Smith
Author, Blogger & IT Entrepreneur
SAMOA

The second level .nz registration process is just about done now with comments closing 5.00pm tomorrow evening. My final comments submitted to the DNC today follow. In essence I can see strategic value in the proposal for New Zealand; I’m concerned at some of the processes that the team went through to get the proposal out there; and their proposed Conflict resolution process is fundamentally flawed, even going against their own core policy principles – in intent.

DNCL – Dennis A. Smith – Final submission (PDF)

A few comments first external to my formal submission:

Clear Prior Intent

First, there was a clear prior intent by some key players to affect the change. I noted this in the wording of the first mention of the proposal, was suspicious and these suspicions have pretty much become fact in my mind. That’s not a problem per se, but they weren’t honest and up-front about it.

Naughty Naught Slippery

DNCL, the people responsible for this exercise have not been entirely open and honest about this. That’s a shame because actually the proposal seems to have merit and if changes to the conflict situation are implemented then for me anyway their sneakiness and devious approach was a wasted effort. By this I mean their use of ‘dodgy’ secret market research. I mention it in my formal response but if you don’t or won’t answer simple questions then you know that BS is in the air. My take on it is that there was no formal research and that the Chair knows it, but still used it for it supported his case. I emailed him privately and invited his comment before I posted the formal response but he didn’t respond, certainly not by close of business so for me, until I hear otherwise, he’s in on it. Getting or presenting majority approval when there was no need for that too is a nonsense. Leaders lead. They listen and then act in the best interests of the people, supposedly. Grovelling around trying to present things as all sweet when they are not will backfire as I think it has by silencing Trade Mark and Intellectual Property concerns. They’ve got majorly offside with a lot of people by misreading their sentiments, trying to bury the matter under various dubious claims and then hoping they can get away with what they want to do and think is best. Basically I think they were out of their depth when changing the rules that affected the whole country and well, screwed up in the credibility and PR department.

Thirdly, this politics is a repeating pattern for me with the Domain Name Commission and InternetNZ. Politics seems to be their middle name and shooting straight is a little less than reality! Again this is a shame because some of their processes on paper are some of the best in the industry, right up there with ISO9000 certification and many other top processes. It all comes down to people however and when they use words like:

keeping the revenue stream for the InternetNZ Group secure

when they mean that they’re going to do very VERY well out of it then they lose my respect. As I say in my formal response, this is the understatement of the year AND last year combined. They are thick if they think we can’t see through that one!

In my case I took on the DNC primarily because of this two-faced stuff, saying one thing but actually doing another – saying that they will listen then finding out that really under the hood, the decision had already been made. These guys are not alone in this sort of conduct but just because politics is everywhere doesn’t make it right – certainly in my book.

Here ’tis:
10 March, 2014

David Farrar

Chair

Domain Name Commission Limited

PO Box 11 881

Wellington 6011

policies@dnc.org.nz

RE: Policy Consultation – .nz registrations at the second level

Dear David

You say,

“Comments are now sought on the final proposed policy changes to implement registrations at the second level.”

Thank you for giving further opportunity to comment.

My comments are:

1. My increased support

During the consultation process I have seen stronger reasons for the proposed change and can see more of the benefits of the proposal, especially in the longer term and if my concerns expressed herein can be addressed.

In particular your comments here make a lot of sense to me:

On both a domestic and international level, the Domain Name System (DNS) is constantly changing.

and

A decision to retain the status quo is therefore in effect making a call that the .nz space will remain relevant in the future with its current processes and that no change in .nz is required. DNCL does not think a decision to continue the prohibition on registrations at the second level will be beneficial for the .nz name space in the medium-term.

But I have however seen no cost-benefit analysis, nor projections. I find the total absence of any positive cashflow projections following on from this initiative. More on this in a minute.

I note also your wholesale rejection of the direct application of Trade Mark and Intellectual Property rights but call foul on that one in the spirit of “first-come-first-served”.

I note also the total absence of any positive cashflow projections following on from this initiative, which I find intriguing. More in a minute.

Of course I accept the change as you decided in 2013. Well done.

There are however some considerations in implementation that are still of concern to me, one previously raised and simply not even addressed (!) and others as a result of recent changes and potential problems as a consequence of the changes.

2. Exposure as a result of ‘dodgy’ research

The first concern not yet addressed relates to the two surveys, or research that (unless I have missed something) are a still a big mystery. In claiming support for the proposal you have referred extensively to these two surveys yet you have failed to respond to my challenge regarding these surveys. In my first response I said,

“15. In regards to the second suggested reason for visiting the proposal, I doubt that the questioning to gauge feedback has been thorough or professional market research. Surveys are notorious at divining low-level thought. If it was done professionally then I would want to see the methodology and questions asked in order to see how such a percentage of people agree. For example if I was asked out of the blue in the street if New Zealand should have my .nz name the same as Canada or Germany I would probably answer in the affirmative too, that is until I thought the issues through further and weighed the pros and cons. If I thought that I could get [myname].nz if I had missed out on [myname].co.nz then I would be even more positive about change.”

Failing to provide information on who did the surveys, the methodology and so on wouldn’t matter in the whole scheme of things if it was only used as preparatory work for the proposal, however you introduced the results of these as MAJOR FACTORS in your recommendation of September 2013, thus the Board used this “research” as a key component of their decision-making as a direct result of YOUR WORDS.

I quote:

The support received during the consultation reflects the result of research undertaken in the past that also showed there was support for allowing registrations directly at the second level. While in 2003 only 25% of New Zealanders showed a preference for being able to register domain names directly at the second level, in a 2011 survey 59% of registrants said they prefer myname.nz. In this study, only 31% said they preferred myname.co.nz. In a 2012 study that exclusively targeted business owners, 59% said they supported a change that would allow them to register domain names directly at the second level, with only 14% opposed. In this same study, 41% of businesses also said they would use a anyname.nz name in preference to their current domain if they were able to, while 39% said they would stick with their current domain. That suggests that around 200,000 businesses would remain unable to register the name they would prefer, if there is no change to the policy. Both these survey results, and a number of the submissions received, indicate there is support of the proposed change by the Local Internet Community.

Unless you can support this all properly, they are just 188 weasel-words that lean heavily on two “secret” surveys upon which the Board has made an important decision, in the Board’s own words:

“. . . noted that this project was a significant one for DNCL . . .”[1]

This is clearly important information for again in the same recommendation document, you say,

“A number of the submissions received illustrate that support for change, and this aligns with research that has shown that second level domains in .nz are considered desirable.”

What research?

I believe that the Chair of DNCL should be not only working with facts, but to be seen to be working with facts, not generalizations the nature of which look like to put it politely – a piece of political ‘spin’.

You personally and the entire decision could be exposed very badly if for example I find that either the work was actually only anecdotal, or that it was undertaken, funded or supervised by a vested interest, or that the questions were leading etc.

I have observed the wording of your various materials develop over the time of the proposal and there are fairly strong indications to me that a small sector of the industry has been pushing a particular agenda, has secured the political support necessary, used the systems well and won the day. I don’t mind that IF it has been done fairly and openly but I actually want to see this information and assess the basis upon which you have developed your recommendations.

If you do not make this information openly available along the lines of the transparency that InternetNZ is supposedly proud of then you are exposing yourself and the entire process to possible claims that it was all a jack-up by vested interests, regardless of the validity of any other arguments. Simply not addressing this issue that I raised at the outset is for me suspicious. Why have you not published this information? You personally have commercial interests in the research field. What was your or your company’s involvement in these “potentially dodgy” but very clearly important research/surveys? Do you not respond in detail because of something personal with me? Or do you know there is something less-than-kosher about this early research work? Or do you build your various careers on thorough quality research, with open and honest business practices with quality thought based reliable sources of information?

I note also that others have sought transparency however they too appear to have been totally ignored, for example from Deborah Hassell-Haak of Baldwins Intellectual Property noted at the outset,

“We are somewhat surprised by the results of this opinion survey and would be interested in seeing the full results and the survey’s methodology[2]“

I think that in the interests of all, this information should be made available, and preferably before any active publicity campaign starts, for the last thing you will need is doubt raised in a public forum from a “detractor who hasn’t had his basic questions answered” just as you will no doubt try to show the world that you are professional, thought-leaders and that you conducted a full, fair and transparent process.

Please provide us (the industry and the public) with meaningful information that addresses this concern. Obviously I respect your personal analysis of surveys and market research and I trust that you would already have made assessments on the quality and source of this information. I would like to see your personal take on who did what, when, for what return and why to establish these figures and to know how you personally derived them. I actually don’t care if you were paid under the counter to beef-up the hidden agenda for vested interests or not, but I do want to know the facts from you so that I can blog my support or otherwise of DNCL’s processes.

Facts surrounding these surveys/research are conspicuous by their absence and as you know well know, silence invites conspiracy.

3. Conflict resolution

It is my submission that the current proposed solution to a potential conflict resolution is fundamentally flawed; runs counter to a core InternetNZ policy principle (that of first-come-first-served – certainly at the big-picture level), is unnecessarily complex, doesn’t handle conflict constructively and is just downright unfair.

In your recommendations you say:

Prioritising existing registrants is considered appropriate however. The .nz space has always operated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis . . . . There is no reason to move away from a key policy principle for .nz

Yet in your proposed conflict situation you actually do this!

In your recommending document you say,

“the decision not to decide who had the ‘greater right’ in the case of conflicted names, are also consistent with the TLD principles. There is nothing in this proposal that creates a conflict with the published document.”

That may be technically so but it misses the points I have made above and introduces problems that do not suit the underlying intent of the existing published document.

Who would have thought that this situation would exist when writing the core principles? The reason that first-come-first-served is widely appreciated is that it seems fair – because it is fair but this potential conflict situation is definitely not!

In reality THERE NEED NOT BE A CONFLICT SITUATION – just follow the heart of your own policy guidelines[3] and structure the rollout as if it had happened in real-time historically, that is by date of first application which of course is only . . . fair!

What I think is an error in your logic has occurred because you believe that because .nz is a new option that is it therefore optional. This is technically correct but in practice it is not and will never be, which is why so many people including me have objected to aspects of this proposal as it stands. They and I, invested into .co.nz believing that it was and always will likely be the default for business in New Zealand. You are (from their perspective) unilaterally changing the playing field and this potential loss of control is a major concern. This potential conflict is not just a case of legitimacy, it is a potential conflict BECAUSE YOU CHANGED THE RULES! Legitimacy has to be established in an entirely new scenario, for this situation has not risen before.

The key point is that whether you like it or not .nz WILL BE the default standard and highly desirable. We all know and accept this so by playing the “well you still have your original name” card, DNCL is working on the wrong assumption. Many Registrants quite naturally feel that they will have moral legitimacy for the .nz version of their names based on their FIRST registration of their name, usually their .co.nz version. It is head-in-the-sand stuff that denies reality to pretend that this is just a level playing field and “too bad if you cannot agree amongst yourselves, then nobody gets it!”

If DNCL accepts that (and clearly wants) the .nz name to be the simpler default standard for a primary New Zealand brand/entity, then they should be approaching the conflict situation from the other angle, what’s fair in terms of first-come-first-served. The solution to conflict resolution is to avoid the conflict in the first place, amend your proposed conflict resolution process slightly and use the Sunrise period to determine Preferential Registration Eligibility based on the date of first registration.

This would simulate the real-life scenario where Registrants that were keen to secure or protect the primary Internet real estate in New Zealand for their name/brand would have (historically) registered the .nz equivalent at the same time as they did their first choice (most commonly the .co.nz equivalent).

The problem is that DNCL talks constantly about the first-come-first-served policy, yet when it comes to handling conflicted names as I see that you totally abandon this principle. Registrants have all invested into their online brand and Trade Marks to some degree, some quite heavily. Taking an approach that .nz is “just another option” does not acknowledge the reality that the .nz version will become to be seen, and the proponents by their own words WANT it to be seen as the primary New Zealand reference point and that YOU have changed the rules on them. Either you know that or want.nz to become a valuable resource (in which case you will need to favour registration date-based prioritizing) OR you believe that it is just another option (in which case you should simply make it a lottery and have a ballot system). You can’t have your cake and eat it at the same time!

I registered dennis.co.nz in January of 2000. Someone else registered dennis.org.nz years later and the name has been and is currently parked. At this stage even though I was years ahead of others in the domain space and have invested massively into this space, it looks to me as though someone who has come into this space relatively recently can potentially prevent me obtaining or using what will of course become the primary domain dennis.nz, AND potentially, FOREVER!

If I had known that DNCL was going to change the rules that would in the future have prevented me from having something that I consider commercially valuable and something I wanted to secure (which was the prime Internet real estate for “dennis” in NZ) then I would have unhesitatingly done whatever it would have taken to secure that, even registering every single variant of the domain to protect my position. In this regards I feel for the Trade Mark people and larger companies who can potentially see their investment into protecting their brand from the earliest days possible totally destroyed.

So, if I became aware that in the future, .nz would be the primary extension, I would have registered .co.nz AND .nz in January of 2000. Years later the organization that sought and registered dennis.org.nz AT THAT STAGE would not have had any options on dennis.nz because I would have been there, years before!

It’s simple natural justice, AND the basis of all Trade Mark principles AND Internet policy principles that the .nz domain be at least offered to me first, and then only if I’m not interested to others down the chain of Preferential Registration Eligibility based on the date of first registration.

My advice is that you MUST walk the talk and incorporate the DATE of first registration as the ONLY factor in a conflict situation – nothing else. ALL conflict situations will then disappear, period.

To me the matter is very simple if InternetNZ’s policy is first-come-first-served. You’re introducing a new option that will become (and I guess you want to become) a new default standard. So simply allow the first registrant of a given name the option to register their .nz equivalent. If they pass on that opportunity, offer it to the second, and so on based on the first date of continuous current registration and you have no conflict situation. The proposed systems can still be used to facilitate this exploration of Preferential Registration Eligibility but it will be based on the date of first registration and the Registrant’s exercise of those rights rather than complex who says/thinks/feels something.

The policy would then be based on your own values, principles and standards; it is logical, easily understandable and is perfectly fair.

I would also venture to suggest that you would have immediate support from many in the Trade Mark and Intellectual property industry with this simple change.

4. First-Rights forever?

God help Internet NZ’s reputation if high value domains end up in unresolved conflict situation and large companies or organizations are required to “settle” with very lucky people who get big windfalls as a result! The .nz namespace will end up a laughing stock of the domain world.

Should you persist with what to me is a crazy solution that a name remains in “conflict” potentially forever then there are further complications that you will need to address:

1. How are you going to maintain this status? Is it potentially forever? Literally? Are you kidding me?
2. How will I know when the other name(s) lapse or are cancelled? Do I sit there every 59 days checking to see that the holding owner didn’t cancel it? All this just in case his name is cancelled or lapses and then his priority rights are dissolved? Or are you going to advise me of this changed situation?
3. Are you going to record the fact that I have a lien on the name dennis.nz simply because I want it? Did I pay anything to have that privilege or can I still have that first right forever?

All this of course can be resolved by removing any conflict situation and allocating priority rights by date-based formula.

5. The Generic Name Nightmare

DNCL is entering a minefield with any reference to Generic Names. Which Registry in the world in which jurisdiction currently determines “generic use” and on what basis and why? WTF is a generic name anyway and who is going to judge this and at what time and place? Before I can register a name? After it?

You are introducing the same sort of problem that we had to deal with back last century whether or not certain combinations of letters represented good, bad, desirable, offensive or illegal use of a domain name. The industry long before DNCL or its predecessor even existed decided on a hands-off approach so that classification of names was entirely technical and not social. Now in 2014 we’re classifying names based on ‘genericity’?

Use of the word Generic Names into any legislation will invite problems. If I name my dog Wellington then what is that – generic or not? I want to have dennis.smith.nz. Now what? Is Smith generic now? Is a name generic or not? If so, then why? If not, why not? What if I change my name by deed poll to [whatever] will dotcom (or whatever) be a generic or not?

I recommend that you remove all references to Generic Names and solve your perceived problems another way.

6. Financial

I consider your treatment of financial matters to be glib and naïve if you expect others not to understand the financial enormous windfall to the industry (that includes yourselves). In regards to the financial aspects of the recommended proposal you say:

It is not primarily a financial decision, though it is acknowledged that as part of securing .nz’s future, it is also keeping the revenue stream for the InternetNZ Group secure.

DNCL has approached the decision as a strategic one, not as a financial one, and anticipates that InternetNZ shares this view as being the appropriate one. This is why the focus of this paper is on the strategic aspects and is not a financial business case. The rationale that the change has always been for strategic reasons and not for financial gain was expressed in our consultation documents.

Again, as with the missing research and survey information you recommend a major proposal without ANY reference to financial matters, other than stating essentially that there will be some additional costs.

Excuse me?!

Where are the cashflow projections? Where is the projected analysis of what it will cost various businesses in additional fees? Has nobody done anything to predict what will happen to the coffers when the doors open to .nz and after the two-year free-registration is up?

It is inconceivable that a Board would look at strategic only and not discuss financial matters, and especially with a major decision like this.

You say,

One of the InternetNZ TLD Principles is that “domain name markets should be competitive”. InternetNZ has no intention of abusing its dominant position for New Zealand domain name registrations but likewise also wants to ensure that .nz remains competitive against other TLDs for when New Zealanders are making a choice about where to register their domain name.

My .nz domain name costs will double in two years. Your newspaper headline will be “.nz domain name costs will double in 2 years for most businesses”.

I would bet a lot that, not only will the turnover of all parties in the chain see increased turnover and profitability, but that you will even pronounce success with the massive uptake of .nz domains.

Great. I will then look forward to seeing the costs of .nz domains halve then, or by then.

Sir, I venture to suggest that your words of acknowledgement that your proposal will be,

“keeping the revenue stream for the InternetNZ Group secure”

are nothing less than at best a slip of the tongue and at worst a deliberate deception.

Let’s be honest about it, it will be nothing of the kind, rather more of a major windfall and mark my words, a very large return on investment for your stakeholders!

Thank you for the opportunity to comment yet again.

Kind Regards

Dennis A Smith

Author, blogger & IT Entrepreneur

SAMOA

As the New Year dawns, like millions of others around the globe, and for the first time in my life, I’ve made a pledge . . . I’m not going to work with, live with, put up with or deal with any more idiots, ever! [and do I hear you thinking that I might then be ready to leave Samoa?]

Keeping Short Accounts

I’ve never had the urge to make New Years’ resolutions. I think this stems from my approach to always ‘live the moment’ to the maximum – 100% a hundred percent of the time.

I’m actually happy with who I am and what I do from moment to moment and have learned over the years to run very short accounts with God.

It’s not that I’m perfect, nor that I get everything right – more that I don’t really have a desperate need to change things for the better when I’m always doing my best! It’s a very clean way of living and leaves little room for regrets.

I call this VICTUS IN AMBITUS (Latin for ‘living on the edge’) and my book Lipstick on a Pig details this lifestyle nicely.

Apparently it is a good read too, according to a guy I met a while back and gave a copy to. I met him on the street yesterday and he told me he read it every day and loved my humour. He even confessed that “I used to read a bit to my wife each night before we went to bed. I know that we should be reading the bible but . . .” and he smiled!

A note here, don’t ever write a book if you want to make money. I’ve given away more than I’ve sold!

The funniest one was a guy who was reading this same book (Lipstick on a Pig) while I was driving. He chuckled every now and then as he read. He then said, “Hey listen to this . . .” and then started quoting me my own words. Ah, yes, sir . . . you realise that I am the author? I wrote the book you realise?

“Oh!” he said, “Yes of course” then chuckled a little and carried on reading my book to me.

Crazy, but funny eh?

The really funny thing though is that I read it again myself every now and then and apart from reminding myself of some past event, sometimes I actually learn something! I’ll sit there and say things like, “Wow! That’s profound,” and it’ll make me think. Is that crazy, or what?

It’s crazy to submit to Crazies

I met a girl yesterday who applied for a job with me over a year ago. I remember the conversation well for she struck me as an intelligent girl, ready to give anything a go for the benefit of her family – she is a solo mother. The thing that I remember most about the interview was that when it came church things she said, “Oh I can’t afford to go to church!” and she didn’t. A smart girl I thought. Some people are like that here . . . the costs are too high, so they simply don’t go. They’re the lucky ones for many have no choice and the village will fine them if they do not comply.

She went down in my estimation a lot though as I found out that not only does she now go to church, but she’s totally dedicated to it and her life is very different she tells me. Her new denomination has some pretty strong teaching that I don’t accept but I listened to her graciously. I watched in sadness as basically I saw an intelligent independent thinker that I respected had in the interim period been converted into a ‘subject’ who was now dogmatic and compliant.

I have another guy who did the same thing . . . got into a fringe church here that is even more dogmatic in their belief system. They not only claim to have an exclusive lien on the truth, they use that claim proudly as a basis for dividing themselves from the community. When I asked why he joined, he said because of his wife. OMG! Sounds very like the Garden of Eden revisited to me. He’ll still be a friend no doubt but that could change in the future, for I know their belief systems and how that outworks in practice. What an idiot!

Just like an idiot Aussie lawyer I’ve had the ‘good pleasure’ of dealing with recently.

Idiot Lawyers

A guy I’m working with sent me a really simple txt today that summarised his take on idiot lawyers following up on an earlier email where he bagged an Australian lawyer for causing complications.

The background was that we had done up a simple Heads of Agreement that detailed the business relationship we were entering into with another party. All of us were happy, in agreement and the other party just “let her lawyer run through it” before she would sign it off.

M-I-S-T-A-K-E!

The lawyer made heaps of changes – many cosmetic, one that was a good change, half a dozen that introduced problems and three changes that were really bad errors. I’m thinking positively that it was a rush job done at Christmas time because the end agreement had some people owning the wrong business, changed the whole intent of some clauses, caused complications when none existed, made assumptions that were not correct and removed key clauses that all of us had previously agreed to.

I analysed the new document, detailed the myriad of changes, sent off my recommendations and got an email back from the guy I’m working with along the lines of, “I don’t know why people have to do this when we all had agreement. It’s almost like they’re trying to break up the relationship before it starts.” You could tell he was an inch away from adding, “IDIOTS” on the end of email, but didn’t. Welcome to the world of lawyers sir . . . you are entering a grey zone!

The txt he sent me later though was a classic, “THE LAWYER IS BEING AN EGG”.

I think he would have really wanted to say it more, “IDIOT LAWYERS!” but phrased it politely.

How many people would say that after having a good relationship messed up with legal to-ing and fro-ing with legal intricacies that brass any normal person off in 3 minutes flat?

Now there are times and places where legal expertise is important, but I try not to use lawyers now, for I’ve yet to have an enjoyable relationship with one or that I’ve considered a beneficial win-win when looking back on it. I think the feeling is probably mutual for I don’t just take their advice without questionning it in detail but as I’ve blogged about before, my previous lawyer’s chargeout rate is 272x more than the people earn around me. Something is VERY wrong here, methinks

From idiot Lawyers in Australia to idiots in Europe now . . .

Deductions from Fallacy, Assumption & Faulty Logic

I rarely do this, as I generally want to keep doors open, but I disengaged with a professional recently after a whole heap of emails and Skype calls. I won’t mention the industry or the actual person but the guy was clearly a very clever and intelligent chap in the theory department with an excellent grasp of the mathematical concepts involved in what I was doing but he simply wouldn’t answer the one simple question I tried to ask him.

As far as I could see his logic was really sound and I could follow him clearly, to a point . . . but them when it came to the practical implementation, he inserted an assumption and deduced that the assumption would always apply, therefore concluded that his deduction was sound. To me he’s crazy.

Thousands of words and a good week or more later and he apologised for winding me up but seemingly to me he didn’t have a clue how to connect his theory into real life situations. I showed him logically where he was incorrect on fact and where he had justified his terminology on weird interpretations and had developed a rule on an assumption. It seemed to matter not to him in the slightest!

Except for the fact that his core theoretical work was arguably some of the best in the field, I would have called him an idiot too. After reading his last email about it all I just stared at the screen and thought, “What was that all about? This guy is from Mars!”

Who knows, maybe there’s something I don’t understand about it all, and he probably thinks I’m the idiot but hey at least we’re not going to have any further conflict if we’re on the other side of the world and just agree to disagree!

Idiot dogs

I made a mistake with one of my little puppies. I normally give all the boys away but I kept him until he was really just a little bit too big to give away. I thought that because he was still a teenager he’d be OK to relocate, but it’s actually been a bit of a problem.

My idea of dogs differs to that of the locals here. I want dogs, lots of them, preferably the bitches because they give me puppies, whereas the males don’t. Samoans seem to want all the boys, maybe because they defend better and don’t deliver hoards of unwanted puppies.

So, while not all Samoans but the ones I know want the boys and I want the girls, everything goes nicely here. ‘Rocky’ the male dog down the road is a smart, loyal, strong, handsome dog with a beautiful temperament and is very happy to swing by and service my ladies when the time is right. Suits me!

Sox, one of his offspring is has inherited his father’s personality and physique, but unfortunately he’s inherited his mother’s brains. She’s not the smartest kid on the block, so unfortunately, while Sox has ended up a strong, handsome dog with a lovely temperament he’s not really the kind of father I want for the rest of the dogs I breed. On top of that I didn’t want inbreeding so he had to go. I did a deal with a mate down the road. He could take Sox and I’d take a stray that they had recently picked up, a little bitch called ‘Jungle’. Jungle took to her new home OK. A couple of days on a chain and a bit of TLC and she was fine.

Sox however wanted to return home – to his harem and of course his traditional source of food – me. He did that. It’s now five times over three days that he’s done that. Each time I growl him, pick him up, take him down to his new home, tie him up and return to my ladies. Each time I do that though he equally bites through his rope; breaks his chain or escapes from whatever we use and comes back to his old home.

It’s not good. I increased the ‘discipline’ somewhat – still the same.

I have several options:

1. I can put him down. Yup, it’s not a nice one, but it is an option.
2. I can try and find someone at the other end of the country to take him. The problem is that he will likely end up running away again and then will get lost, turn into a stray and then probably have a hard life. Not the best.
3. I could buckle and just accept him back, but then he would be mating with his sisters or half sisters in due course and I don’t want a hundred dumb puppies, or
4. I toughen up the training process, increase the security level and force the matter.

I’ve elected for the fourth option. He’s a lovely dog and the new owners like him. He’s just got to learn that his loyalty should now be with other people from the owner he’s always known (and I dare say trusts, loves, respects and, yes, even fears). This is hard because you can see he’s genuinely confused but it’s made heaps trickier because, let me put it simply – he’s thick!

Dumb dogs abound here in Samoa it seems but this one, for all his physique, personality and loyalty is just an idiot. He doesn’t get it. Hopefully I think I’ve actually got it through to him and I think that he’ll stay put now because for the last time he returned, he knew that he was in trouble the moment he saw me AND he got a very BIG hiding, much bigger than anything before. So, hopefully my very loyal, handsome, loving teenage boy should have gotten the message that he has a new home. His cuts and bruises in the ‘learning process’ will all heal of course.

I think to myself, “I-D-I-O-T dog! Why can’t you just get the message the first time? Why do you have to be so blinkin’ loyal?” and of course it hurts to see him go.

Idiot mates

I have a friend whom I think is a total idiot. Yup, I seem to surround myself with these sorts of people. He’s a mate, the sort of mate that you can’t help but love – the sort of friend that no matter what happens or however much you can disagree, unfortunately he’ll probably always be a friend. I reconnected with him recently after a few years of no meaningful contact and it wasn’t long before he got onto his pet hobby horse and we were into it . . . religion, Christianity to be specific. He hates it and with a passion!

Now before I go into the details, let me make it perfectly clear for those who haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting me in person, I NEVER preach AT someone in person EVER. Most of the time I don’t even talk about by faith unless THEY initiate the conversation. Sure, I ask many questions that can often prompt people to raise matters of faith and I am always sharing my own experiences and opinions, but in person (my books and blog are slightly different in that I always just preach assuming that people are reading it because they want to) I ALWAYS show the utmost of respect of people individually retaining their right to think act and live as they so choose. I do this by the way because according to my understanding of the way the world is built, the Creator did the same thing – He gave us the freedom to think, act and live as we choose.

True, I’ve led many people to the Lord, but I always, always, ALWAYS simply perform the introduction and encourage people to step out in faith but I NEVER lead with a yoke and collar and I ALWAYS instruct people to build their own relationship of faith with the Creator totally independently of me. All of my ‘victims’ have all chosen to do what THEY wanted to do with my totally independent scaffolding.

So when my mate started off into his rant about me being sucked in and just listening to words and teaching that has come via mere mortals and is all BS I asked him on what basis he thought I was deluded. “Well you’re a Christian aren’t you?” he replied. I agreed . . . and then it all started, thousands of words about what he believed and why the church and therefore I was wrong, deluded, stupid and so on.

Hmmmm. I’ve seen this all before. People go on and on at you because you are a Christian (you believe something – more specifically KNOW someone) and it bugs them, eats away at them and they lose all sense of reality. I knew my idiot mate though so I made a mental note again that he had some pretty decent chips on his shoulder and carried on engaging as best as I could with him!

So in the early stages of our discussion, I asked him where he got his information from and on what basis he could say what he said, for I consider myself a genuine independent Christian thinker, outside of mainstream Christian circles and probably far less controlled or influenced by others than most.

The bottom line was that he knew all the answers and I didn’t. He couldn’t see the logical failure in his position, accusing me of listening to others when he was shouting at me trying to get me to listen to him! I was the one asking him questions and listening and understanding him! I was simply an independent truth-seeker who had chosen to accept the truth of Scripture, had tested the validity of the bible over several decades, was open to discussing alternative viewpoints but had continued to reinforce the validity of that position daily. He on the other hand knew the answers, wasn’t open to other possibilities and thought I was a fool. The guy’s an idiot.

It’s worse than that because in the middle of our discussion I asked him what he thought I was really good at. He replied that it was “process” – due process, in other words logic, thinking clearly. Oh dear! Pride blinds.

So rather than argue about religious abstracts or worldviews I steered the conversation around into one specific subject where we entered into detailed analysis. In one of his rants he had informed me in no uncertain terms that evolution was a proven scientific fact. He was emphatic and questioned my sanity if I believed otherwise.

I first started by clarifying the difference between macro-evolution and micro-evolution. He didn’t know that there was a difference, which indicated to me that he had not investigated the subject thoroughly. For the record, I have serious issues with macro-evolution but none at all with micro-evolution. The former is the idea that is mockingly called the “goo-to-you-via-the-zoo” theory, gunk somehow becomes an animal and then becomes mankind. The latter is the idea that living organisms can change over time based on genetic mutations, basically adaptation. That’s observable and is clearly fact.

Macro-evolution however is revealed as a nonsense the more you study it from a big-picture AND at a detailed level.

Calling macro-evolution a theory however is actually a little flattering for a whole bunch of reasons I won’t go into but the idea that sludge somehow turns into a bacteria, lizard, bird, cat, dog, monkey and man is just insane. I know that people throughout the Western world believe it but that’s only because they’ve been indoctrinated from birth and haven’t really thought about it.

People that have thought about it properly and still believe it are just idiots. They are either selective in their research, deceived, deluded or they have an agenda. Protecting their career or perceived social position is one agenda. The anti-god agenda (particularly the anti-Christian god) is another agenda, quite a common one too. Pride is usually the root cause of this stupidity. The main reason however is that people have not actually researched the whole thing properly, rather just taking the stuff fed to them by others – incidently the very same thing my friend accused me of doing as a result of being a Christian!

It’s my experience that when genuine truth-seekers research BOTH sides of the macro-evolution fable that they ALWAYS end up saying the same as a recent guest of mine did over the moon landing hoax, “Well I see what you’re saying. It does sound a bit of a story, doesn’t it?”

My guest said this after we had discussed lots of different aspects of the moon landing thing. He had promised to research things that he hadn’t previously thought about and was open to the possibility that it was a hoax after I had given him good reasons to question some of his previous understandings. When I laughed and said something like, “Hey brother, stop a minute and think about it. Look at the complexity of the Shuttle and their spacesuits and current limitations . . . now look at those flying bathtubs they claimed went to the moon and back . . . Really?”

My mate though who was ‘onto’ it with the science that he claimed had proved evolution definitely wasn’t open to other possibilities like my recent guest was. Convinced that science had proven macro-evolution, he trumpeted a commonly used tree of life image found on the Internet.

Hmmmm. So that’s the depth of his research? A picture that is well known to be contentious and disproven, even by adherents of the macro-evolutionary ideas?

Talking deeper about the subject though we discussed the idea of Intelligent Design, a well-established discipline that has had a lot of effort put into it over the last decade and a half. The ID movement simply looks at reality, assesses it from a design perspective and deduces that there clearly is considerable evidence of design. Unbelievable and stunning evidence in fact.

To this my friend could agree but he immediately insisted that the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jesus was a nonsense. The fact that I never mentioned God but talked about ID, yet he kept raising the Christian god thing was a sure-fire indicator that his agenda was actually based around a chip on his shoulder with the Christian god thing, but that’s beside the point.

His answer was that creation designed creation. I won’t go into the detail but yes, that was his take on things. My take is a little more straightforward. If there’s evidence of design, then there probably is a DesignER. Who that designer is however is a secondary issue of course.

Not to be outdone, my mate did some research and slipped me a link to CMI where he trumpeted the great news from a Christian organisation that claims macro-evolution and the Bible to be compatible. God used evolution is the essence of their belief system.

OMG! One link to one article on a highly confused, contentious, American-based, bible-compromising, “Christian” organisation appears to be enough research for my mate to rest in peace, knowing that he was right all along – macro-evolution is fact and proved by science he believes. My mate’s an idiot!

CMI by the way has highly contentious stance compromising the bible, trying to mix the mainstream scientific conclusions with biblical interpretation. The end result is pretty much the same as mixing milk and arsenic – it’s still poisonous. Others, including people with a non-Christian viewpoint do a much better job of debunking their centralist position showing how illogical their take is. My views are that reality and truth are elucidated much better at CMI, where Ken Ham and his team take the bible literally, nothing is off the discussion table and pretty sound logic is applied across the board.

So my mate’s rapsheet is this. He:

• Is totally convinced that science has proved evolution.
• Knows this as a fact.
• Didn’t know the difference between macro-evolution or micro-evolution.
• Has done no real research about alternative viewpoints
• Confuses the core idea of Intelligent Design with issues of who is the Designer
• Has a chip on his shoulder with the Christian god
• Ascribes Intelligent Design to the created beings themselves
• Leans on a dubious compromising organisation to validate a dumb belief, yet . . .
• Acknowledges that I am a man of logic

And after all this, and knowing that I’ve spent thousands of hours, yes thousands of hours in active research over several decades, he thinks I’m the idiot!

I know my mate. He’s rude, obnoxious (deliberately), disrespectful, a weetbix short of a breakfast, deluded, I’ll never shake him and he’ll probably be a dark shadow around me until I depart. That’s what true mates are like though, they stick by you through thick and thin, so I can tell already, on the first day of my New Year’s resolution that I’ll never achieve my goal.

I’m STILL going to be surrounded by idiots!

Have a good year this year people . . . hopefully we can all lift the intelligence level of the planet a little this time round!

Please note that there has been NO mention of local Samoan idiots in this post. It’s been deliberate. First of all, I had no need to with idiots aplenty from all around the globe and secondly, I daren’t get started!