Stop Enabling the Oligarchs

 I'll start my latest entry with some good news for a change: I have begun my master's course! I don't start in earnest until April 7, but the UoPeople has set up a handy dandy three-week orientation schedule that is a lot like three weeks of regular classes. The first week of work was uploaded to my Moodle dashboard Thursday morning there, which is Thursday night here. That's when the regular week's assignments will be uploaded during the real thing. There was a reading assignment in which we learned about the school, the American university system, and our courses. It answered a lot of the questions I had about the whole thing and was a pretty informative bit of reading. 

Then we had a few assignments. We had to update our profiles and calendars, which I had already done, and we were given a sample discussion question to think about. In a normal week, we'd give a "substantial" response to the question and post it. Then other students would read your post and evaluate it. You are responsible for evaluating three other students' posts as well, and the prof evaluates all of it. Then you write a journal, which only the teacher sees, and you get a quiz. We didn't do any of the writing or grading this week, but we had a quiz on our reading and I aced it. 

We were told that over the years the students have averaged out to about 15 hours a week of study per course. They say 17 hours might be needed for extra careful, (or slow reading) students like me. I will be taking two courses in the first and second terms, so you can see why I'm off work. This'll be 30, I'm guessing more like 35 hours a week. By the end of August, I will have 4 of my 13 courses completed. If I kept it up from April 2022 until June 2023, I'd be finished. I could have an M. Ed. by summer of '23! 

As nice as that sounds, I won't likely be able to keep up with that pace. I reckon I could keep up with the study load, and the university fees for the entire course will be VERY reasonable, so that won't be the problem... it's just living while studying. THAT will be my only limitation. 

I'm not just talking about living in Korea without working. That's gonna be tricky, but I think I will be able to manage. They are not issuing visitor visas during the pandemic, so that won't be an option, presumably because you need to go out of the country, then come back in to get one, and with the whole pandemic, lockdown, quarantine business, visitors to Korea have been cancelled until further notice. Although, I've heard that that is close to changing. We'll see...

My plan is to change my E-2 work visa to a D-10 "looking for work" visa. I've made an appointment for Friday the 25th to try that. My visa expires on March 31, so I'm counting on being able to do it. I know what you might be thinking, if you don't live and work in Korea, "Why didn't you do this earlier? You had almost two months off for crying out loud!" Well, I couldn't have done anything until my last day of work, the last day of February, had come and gone. Then, and this is SO Korea, you are encouraged to wait till the end of your sojourn (i.e. the last minute) before changing visas. I've heard of people being TURNED AWAY for trying to change their visas too early! So I'm not expecting to be refused. But I probly shouldn't say stuff like that...

The D-10 process will require me to bring my passport, ARC, the requisite photo, my housing contract, 130,000 won (135 Canadian bucks (GAH!!! the exchange is really BAD!!!)), and two forms fully filled out. One is the all purpose form that I've filled out for almost everything I've done at immigration over here, but the other one is new. I have to fill out a "plan for seeking employment" form, which sounds like I might have to bullshit, but I won't. I AM actively seeking employment. Since most universities are embracing the master's degree or nothing policy over here, I may not get a job come next semester (September) and might need to renew my "looking for work visa." Then I'll have loads of questions. Can I extend a D-10? How many times? Will it be another 130 grand? If the travel restrictions are lifted, will I need to leave Korea? But, I AM hoping to land a job at a uni here on the strength of having started my M. Ed. The uni positions are ideal here for that. Some people study even during their semesters. I don't think I would do that. I want to give my students a hundo p of my attention. (heh heh)

The plan is to find a job that has the full semester break off. It is just about the perfect length of time to do a term of study at the UoPeople. So two years of teaching with 2 courses during each semester break comes out to 12 courses. If I'm not mistaken, number 13 is the thesis. I don't know if you have to register for a whole course for that or not, but I'm sure I will find out along the way. I know a guy here named Mike, who's doing the same, exact course, so he can probably answer a lot of my questions. That's nice.

Alternatively, if I can't land a job for the September semester (and beyond) I could go full time for another two or three terms and get two more courses per term. That would nearly get me across the finish line with only taking a year off work. That would require renewing my D-10 or changing to a visitor visa, which requires a trip to Japan or somewhere. I feel like that is the thing to do, but I just don't know if the funds will hold out. EVERYTHING is more expensive in Korea and inflation seems to be increasing every day!

Take a year off to get 10/13 courses of my M. Ed. I've gone here before, but let's go down this path again, shall we? What university wouldn't absolutely LOVE for one of their teachers to do that? Any REAL school would probably support the efforts of the teacher with guaranteed job upon completion or even partial payment. I'm going out on an awfully thick limb to say there isn't a university in Korea that would do either for a foreign ESL instructor. If I'm wrong, please let me know because THAT'S where I am going to apply. Somehow though, I don't expect they'll be hiring. People probably hold onto those jobs. It's really hard to know. But to stay positive, I am trying to increase my chances at landing a better job over here. Or even somewhere else. Every bit of study gets me closer.

Now to switch to the negative stuff. The heart of my blog beats negatively, so I hope none of you thought the above would last. Not sure what that means. A negatively beating heart would make you younger with every beat, no? Anyhoo, today I got a message from Nord VPN. Well it wasn't exactly from them, it was an anonymous attempt BY them to take a year's worth of payment out of my bank account. It wasn't their first attempt either. Or the second. It was the fifth. No email asking whether I'd like to renew or to tell me they were trying to FUCKING STEAL my money. Okay, calm down, Dave. You can do this...

Another well trodden path on this blog is the absolute immorality that we allow, nay encourage in the world of finance. I have blogged specifically about automatic rebilling and how it should be illegal. I can't see any grey area here. It's bulllshit and only scumbags do it. Period! The link, if you didn't read it, is to an article that came out quite some time ago, the NY Times may have broken the story, but I'm not sure. I know they had it in their members only website that may or may not include automatic rebilling if your membership fees expire. Folks, why is this legal? Even though they're Trump supporters and they got what they paid for, I still feel sorry for these chumps. This is absolute assholery run amok! Don't give me any drivel about, "Well it was in the fine print of the contract," either! If I bought an apple from Safeway and mumbled under my breath to the check-out worker, "This transaction renewed indefinitely at no further expense to the customer," THAT'S like fine print isn't it? But if I went to that store, grabbed an apple and walked out eating it, I could go to jail. Why? What's the difference? The only difference is us. The little people. We are used to being treated like shit and we refuse to hold our "betters" accountable the way they do us. 

In fact, I bet I could read the entire Nord VPN contract and find NOTHING about automatic rebilling. They just do it knowing full well they won't be prosecuted. I posted long ago about a gym membership in Vancouver making a point of charging by the month that kept charging after I quit. Luckily they didn't have my credit card, but they sent me a notice to appear in court for non-payment of debt. At least they sold my debt to a collector who tried to bully me with that crap. And it WORKS! We pay! WHY??? Well I didn't pay. I didn't even go to court. I would have won if I had. You see, I kept the contract and there was absolutely NOTHING in it that allowed them to keep charging me after I quit. But fuck them, I didn't have the time to argue. They COUNT on this being our reaction.

I'm not paying Nord ever either. And I'd like to take this moment to encourage you to never buy it. If you use it, stop now. It was way too invasive, it constantly ran in the background doing who knows what and a recent "update" caused major problems. They suck and I'm glad they can't get any more of my money. The reason they can't is another post or two from a while ago. I was getting OTHER automatic charges taken out of my account from China and Holland. I think it was from a Christmas present I bought online for two friends. You send a pic of the friends and an artist turns the pic into Simpsons characters and puts it on a T-shirt, bag, mug or whatever. I paid, sent the pic, and never got the products. I sent messages to the site on Facebook and got basically, "Nyah nyah!" from them! So I reported them to an online scam FBI/Interpol site or whatever. IT was probably fake too. ANYWAY, I tried to get my bank to put a stop pay on charges from the sources that were fraudulent. THEY were the ones who traced them to China and Holland! They KNEW who was jacking me up but were, "not at liberty to disclose any information about them." Again, the customer isn't protected, but the scamming company IS. So I asked why I couldn't stop the payment and the reason was something similar. In short, they believe the company, not you. They were telling me without telling me that I was being legally charged by a law-abiding company even though I had gone to the bank more than once and reported the same fraudulent charges more than once. Okay, they might believe I was lying the FIRST time, but when it happens again... they... still don't believe me. So I cancelled the credit cards, which wasn't easy let me tell you! So the folks at Nord can continue to try, but unless the bank ALLOWS them, they won't be able to get any more money from me. I know the banks are kind of IN ON these things, as outlined above, but I hope they're not THAT in on them. 

But we can't go around cancelling credit cards after everything we buy. The simple solution, which always seems to be the very last one investigated in matters of finance, would be to make laws against this sort of crap. I hear about new scams and fraud all the time, but I don't know of any time I have EVER heard of a new law being drawn up to limit this stuff. Oh wait, yes I do, it was the Dodd Frank Act in 2010 that was drawn up to limit the disastrous fraud committed by banks and all sorts of financiers that lead to the meltdown of 2008. Oh yeah, that was basically scribbled out by the Sharpie of the biggest fraudster president ever in 2018, wasn't it? So that doesn't count.

Our owners give us misleading terms like "consumer protection," "regulatory relief," "economic growth," "privatization," "free market," "de-regulation," and many more euphemisms for the screwing they're doing. Take Pfizer as just one example. They made 37 billion on vaccine sales and the Covid 19 Paxlovid pill is gonna make them even more. Their annual revenue is more than the GDP of most countries. While the whole world is grateful for the good Pfizer did, they jacked up prices, enforced copywrite laws, withheld vaccines and without a doubt were the largest pandemic profiteers on the planet. And what are we, the labourers, consumers, grunts of the world going to do when boner pills go up in price this year? We'll demand an answer from Pfizer, that's what! And they'll shrug their shoulders and say, "Hey, pandemic..." Then we'll Pavlovically bend over, spread our butt cheeks a little wider and loob our hoops with a product probably MADE by Pfizer whose price has recently doubled. "Because Covid... "

I warned of this before and we're starting to see it. We can fight it, but we'll probably just force ourselves to get used to it like we usually do. Look, if ANY Pfizer product goes up due to "pandemic inflation" that all the owners' companies have started claiming, somebody needs to go to prison! But that won't happen, will it? Everyone alive today has already been subjected to more inflation than a body should be forced to endure. If the rulers of our world had even a Grinch heart amongst them, they'd LOWER prices after the pandemic. Wouldn't they? Remember, I warned you of this. We're going to see politicians, the mouthpieces of our rulers, tying bullshit into bows and selling us our newly inflated costs of living as patriotic austerity measures or some other bullshit bows of that ilk. If you haven't yet heard it, just wait... But most importantly, recognize it for what it is and DO something about it. And I don't mean vote. Most of our political systems have been all but Pfizerized against the vote changing plutocrat rule. 

That word, "plutocrat." I recently watched something in which it was mentioned along with "oligarch" as a fairly new word in English. Probably a lot newer than the practice, but... It may have originated from the Russian "privatization" program. Remember that word? Interesting... It's the people who have too much money, and, therefore, power. There are a virtual handful of them who run things on this planet and if they aren't stopped, we'll all be blown to smithereens. Evidently, Russia is one of, if not the, best example. We're seeing oil prices soar and being told it's because of the war in Ukraine. Again, bullshit. Like Big Pharma was a pandemic profiteer, fossil fuel companies, who are experts at this, are using the situation in Ukraine as an excuse to jack up prices. Hell, for all we know (Dave dons his tinfoil hat) the whole invasion might have been orchestrated as an excuse to do just that! As I have mentioned before, Putin is a huge name in fossil fuels. He probably has what amounts to controlling stock in Gazprom, which is Europe's main supplier of natural gaz. Oil too. We're all told the fighting is not going as he had planned. Who's to say? I wonder if Putin's stock value is dropping while fossil fuel prices go through the roof like a bomb on a Ukrainian elementary school. I don't think so. And how could he make his net worth increase even more? Just drag the war out as long as possible. 

I'm not saying any of this is definitely happening, but you should understand Ukraine better to understand my skepticism better. Again, not saying I'm any sort of Ukraine expert, but here's a little video of interest. It gives an idea of the THOROUGH corruption Russia perpetrated on Ukraine, the fighting against it, which we could ALL take a lesson from, and the alternative to political control that ANY super-powered, unhinged, maniacally, money/power hungry oligarch is capable of, military invasion. 

What a tangled web, eh? 2014, as the video doesn't really tell you, was what happened when Yanukovych, a total Russian pawn president, finally stopped pretending like he had any intention of signing an association agreement with the EU. Remember, this is also the guy who basically fucked Crimea by renewing the Russian lease on military bases there in exchange for... you guessed it... cheaper Russian natural gaz. This is what made the 2014 annexation of Crimea possible. He got THAT done before he split. And watch the video. Look what he had before splitting! And what he probably took with him (who's to say?) WHEN he split! Is this what has to happen before we stop the voluntary ass rape elsewhere around the world? Can't we see that this is inevitably where enabling oligarchs will lead? 

More than 100 people died in the protests. This traitor was evacked by Russian helicopter and he took the Ukrainian treasury with him! Of the money he FUCKING STOLE, 1.5 billion was traced and frozen. Sound familiar? This is what's being done in response to the Ukraine invasion today, but should really be a matter of course worldwide amongst thieving oligarchs. It isn't because, as the video shows in this particular situation, oligarchs buy the courts, lawmakers and politicians who can enact such financial penalties. The "genius" financial wizardry starts happening. Yes, we have become accustomed to PRAISING financial fuckery like this that hurts us all. 160 million of the frozen FUCKING STOLEN money is "bought" from an unnamed salesperson for 30 mil and a private jet. They sell frozen illegally stolen money to someone with the power to make it "legal" again like my gym sold my unpaid membership fees to a collector. Their world is not our world. 

The oligarchs who bought the FUCKING STOLEN money "remove the arrest" by getting a favourable ruling from a judge. A judge they can afford to buy. This is what happens among the filthy rich. This is what they do while you and I do Wordle or play Yahtzee with friends. How much MORE of the 1.5 billion has this very same thing happened to without being exposed? And how much MORE than 1.5 bill. did Yanu-clepto-vych FUCKING STEAL that wasn't traced? It's a very good illustration of how corruption is a way of oligarchs and politicians collaborating to pilfer from the passive public. And don't kid yourself, it's not just in Russia, it's all over the world. 

And what do you know! The main players in this scam all have connections to one Donald Scumbag Trump. Yanukovych, Quickpace, Onyschenko, Chesterfield, Kurchenko, Foxtron, Fynel, and the Fuchs were all Fuching the people of Ukraine without giving any Fuchs. Why would they? People like that don't go to jail. So long as banks are too big to fail, they'll be too big to jail. People with too much money and power feel untouchable. Imagine doing something dead simple like driving down the street as an oligarch. First of all, you'd have your choice of any car. It costs as much as a coffee to you and me. You can go any speed you want because a speeding ticket is even less. Completely negligible and a non-deterrent. Even driving drunk is fine. Go ahead. Alice Walton of Wal-Mart oligarchy killed someone while driving drunk and got away scott free. The Texas trooper who had the nerve to stop her and not just let her go after finding out who she was, mysteriously got suspended. Her charge was expunged because of that. And the statute of limitations has lapsed. 

We might imagine living in a world like this would be nice. But what happens to people like this? Go back to the video to the Ukrainian lady at the end saying that she doesn't sleep well. She said this before we learned that all the bad guys got away with it. And now we know what might well have kept her awake at nights. The fear of some bored, untouchable douchebag swooping in on her country that had shown itself to still be ripe for the picking despite the revolution, taking by military force, violence, and criminal acts that don't stop short of murder, that which he failed to take politically. Putin is what happens to people who have too much money and power. To the majority, US, he is a monster created by a world full of greed. To the owners of this world, THE OLIGARCHS or PLUTOCRATS, he is a template, a fucking hero! This needs to change. 

I have little hope that it will happen, but I'd LOVE to see Putin busted down to a commoner. I want to see him begging for borscht. And it is my fondest wish for this to become more common in our messed up world. It won't as long as I keep seeing people talking about and posting things like how we should all be grateful for our blessings and thankful that we are not suffering like the people of Ukraine. Really? "Things are shit. I can't get a good job, so I'll keep working the shitty one I have. Inflation is killing me. I'll never own my house or retire. My kids will never get any help from me for their educations and have an even bleaker outlook. But HEY, at least we're not being bombed." All I can add to that stupid kind of thinking is the word "yet" because if you keep thinking like that, you are enabling the oligarchs and just might get bombed. Stop enabling the oligarchs! Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.