Category Archives: Finance

September 30, 2019 · 12:23

Mad(e) in Sweden

We have seen the news for weeks now on how one activist named Greta Thunberg, one activist who will be exactly 201 months old in 3 days is shaming politicians all over the world on environmental issues, and she is 100% correct. Even now as I see how she privately met with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and how she is urging to do more for the environment, the media is eating it up and spewing how one girl is fighting the established order like David met Goliath, yet that is not what is in play is it?

When we see the tweeting sarcasms giving us ‘Make America Greta Again‘, we see what happens but we ignore the issues at hand; as does the media to the largest degree. In all the news articles I read there is one massive part missing, one part that is at the foundation of environmental failure, from Southern California to northern Canada, from the East of China to the West of Russia, they all accomplish the not mentioning of the one element that has been the foundation of this failure.

The non-politicians

We see that the noted climate change sceptics are all doing someone’s biding, yet we do not see who they are ‘fighting’ for. We have entered an age of Corporatocracy, they are the powers in the US, in Canada, and they seemingly have the largest sway in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. They have large footing in most monarchies and for the most they have a larger iron grip in Russia to the degree we never fathomed. Through Corporatocracy the growth of billionaires has never been stronger and they want their wealth and they need it to keep on growing. Over the last 8 years their combined wealth went from $2 trillion to $8 trillion whilst the amount of billionaires dipped a little, it is harder to enter that pool whilst those in that pond are growing fatter day by day, in that pool the premise of environment has no hope of survival and until these governments take back the power from these corporatocratics and give it back to the people and the established order there will be no change, it will only get worse.

The fact that the EU gravy train can continue almost completely unhindered is evidence still to a failing much larger that anyone fathoms and as these corporations are shareholders, stake holders and advertisers, the media will only respond to actions that the controlling corporatocratics find acceptable. That is the failing in this entire matter and the fact that the media is ‘catering’ to her is only a viewpoint towards populist stages that are under control of the corporations, it will instil them to make ‘environmental’ donations, but only as long as it can be wielded as a form of advertisement and exploitation down the road. For them it is a double whammy, because Greta Thunberg is doing the right thing and she is fighting all the right windmills, as she is seen as a larger greater good, the people will herald her, yet in their hearts they know that almost nothing will come of it. For the ruling of Corporatocracy is bound to the needs of Wall Street and surpassing those set markers. As they play their games they basically surpassed the Gnomes of Zurich, the Swiss bankers that dictated economic policies for decades, yet as economic dictates moved more and more towards Wall Street and as the Gnomes of Zurich revoked their legendary discretion matters we see that Wall Street becomes the more powerful voice and without the balance that the Gnomes of Zurich brought to some degree we see that only the bottom line remains, a bottom line that is about profit and set on a stage of ‘contribution’ (a better stage of profit metrics), as such the environmental stage was mostly removed and in Sweden it is still at an all-time high because monarchies are about the whole nations, not just the actual consumers and facilitators, like New Zealand their environment needs are among the highest. So whilst the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/27/greta-thunberg-justin-trudeau-meeting-climate-strikes) gave us: “I really believe in Greta’s movement. She is doing amazing things and it’s great that she’s able to press politicians to act on climate change, during an election“, the quoted was 13 year old Annabelle Vellend, the reality is that whatever gain she makes, it will be small and optionally overturned within 2-4 years. In the end when it crosses the needs of Wall Street hard choices will have to be made and in that stage there is a close to 100% certainty that the environment loses.

That is the reality of the matter and the media knows this, they merely like to sprout the fairy tail (pun intended) and when that tail gets shortened it was not due to a young lady of 200 months, it was merely the heart of the economic matter, yet it will be voiced in such a way that it still reads lovely, because that is how the shareholders, stake holders and advertisers need it to be, and as long as the corporatocratic engine is not shown in the out and open this game continues.

In the end Corporations will claim that the desire from Sweden was nice, but in the end not attainable, it was mad to think it ever was, when you see those words consider who you elected and who they enabled in the process, it does not matter which side you elect, corporations have elected beneficiaries on both sides of the political line, it makes continuation a certainty. And whilst we see the positive spark of ‘planting of 2,000,000,000 trees‘ consider what some forests will be valued at for cutting in 3-5 years, and who gets that profit?

In the end this is not a failure of Greta Thunberg, it merely shows the world where the media is at, did you consider that part of the equation?

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Tagged as Annabelle Vellend, Canada, Corporatocracy, France, Germany, Gnomes of Zurich, Greta Thunberg, Italy, Justin Trudeau, Monarchy, Spain, Sweden, the Guardian, US, Wall Street

September 27, 2019 · 12:28

Branding

An Apple original, a Netflix original, Stan presents and so on. This is the view I started this morning when the trailer ‘For All Mankind‘ hit the screens. The game has changed and the value of IP has gone through the roof, finding quality IP is going to take on a new level of interest. Not merely finding the IP, getting there first means something now, it is a new form of Armistice and it is a game designed for all the creative Masters of Art out there. Yes there is the anticipation of new hits and movies we want to see. We look forward to people like Nicholas Cage (Primal), and Robert de Niro (The Irishman). Yet it goes further than that, the amount of movies that are popping up with references to ‘Basically, How to Write a Netflix Original‘, we see new cash cows coming into existence. Yet the basic need is not to write the story, it is to have the idea in the first place. I can, at any given moment drum up a new story; I have been writing my blog for several years now, creating over 1200 articles. All the articles have news references and have references to events, but creation was key! And that is not the stage, the stage is not the Wall Street journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-chips-down-saudi-arabia-finds-little-goodwill-in-the-u-s-11569495606) giving us: ‘With Chips Down, Saudi Arabia Finds Little Goodwill in the U.S.‘, this is a given and required little creativity, yet the creative eye will spot beyond the quote “Two-thirds of Americans now have an unfavorable impression of Saudi Arabia, according to a Gallup Poll earlier this year, the highest percentage the survey group has ever recorded for the kingdom. It is higher now than it was after Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi“, it would be able to see that the anti-marketing machine that even included the United Nations (the essay by Agnès Callamard), where even with a lack of evidence the Saudi Arabian crown prince was painted as the guilty party, Eggy Calamari even gave us: “The killing of Mr Khashoggi thus constitutes an international crime over which other States should claim universal jurisdiction. I call on those States to take the necessary measures to establish their competence to exercise jurisdiction under international law over this crime of extrajudicial execution,” we cannot deny that the likelihood that the life of Jamal Khashoggi was ended in an unnatural way with a certainty approaching 100%, no one denies that, yet the who remains an issue and the reference “for which the State of Saudi Arabia is responsible” can only be made through circumstantial evidence (and it still remains dubious at that), whilst the use of that evidence leaves too many gaps, giving a clear failure as ‘beyond all reasonable doubt‘ is not met, yet in opposition these same state facilitating players have ignored actual evidence of Iranian actions of assaults and bombing of Saudi Arabian civilian targets. As such there is a creative engine in play and that engine is targeted at Saudi Arabia (the connections will make sense soon enough).

The actions by the UN to stop escalation with ‘US-Iran tensions escalate despite UN efforts‘, gives us the light that clearly produced evidence is ignored and shunned by the UN, giving us the stage that the discrimination of produced evidence is set aside, the western media to a larger extent has been accommodating to that, in the one case where the Washington Post could get a reprieve, even now when we see mere hours ago headlines like ‘Iranian president: US should end ‘maximum pressure’ policy‘ and ‘As tensions boil in the Persian Gulf, Iraq seeks to rein in Iran-aligned militias‘, we should notice that the Washington Post has gone to extremes to keep the mention of Saudi Arabia as a victim to an absolute minimum.

It is a new kind of branding, it is anti-branding. The western world is scared, too scared at present. First there was Huawei that has the hands on the largest bulk of 5G IP ever made, and it reduces several nations to an Intellectual property joke at best, the cream of all 5G patents is in the hands of Huawei (China), in this Reuters reported less than 12 hours ago ‘Huawei already producing 5G base stations without U.S. parts‘, more important, in 2020 that production line will be doubled, add to that that Norway is not siding with several EU nations not to block Huawei as a 5G solution has the US on the ropes, they are about to lose billions upon billions. It is the price of iterative complacency and it scares Wall Street. You might think that I switched topics, but I did not. There is a clear line.

As Saudi Arabia is more and more committed to build its Neom city, Huawei is now ready to implement their 5G solution and that pushes Saudi Arabia forward in ways never seen before. The academic consideration that Neom City will be on par with the latest Silicon Valley solutions has never been seen before and as that trail picks up speed, the IP consideration will be passed to other regions too, at that point IP firms registering their patents and Trademarks will rise in China and the Middle East even further, it is exactly the play I had in mind when I created my IP and even now I am looking at a golden parachute the size I never held possible ever before.

All this still reflects on the hindrance that pushes these technologies and there we see that Iran is becoming the larger problem in several fields. Even now, as we see projects grow, we also see the larger field that is fuelling this endeavour. The National gave us “Neom’s contribution to the kingdom’s GDP is projected to reach at least $100 billion by 2030” and that is a pessimistic view, as the 5G boundaries are met in Saudi Arabia, there will be a growing workforce trying to get their 5G apps on the ground as this could fuel millions in revenue for any app maker that makes it, and the most important part in this is the fact that being there first gives a lot more benefit for a longer amount of time. This path gained momentum as Huawei started to cater to 5G needs 6 months ago in both India and Pakistan, for Pakistan the middle East and in particular Saudi Arabia will give rise to more apps, better apps and stronger commerce; yet it is not merely in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates is also pushing for this boundary, as is Qatar. The experience in app making will spread form Pakistan further and further giving these entrepreneurs’ futures they themselves never thought possible under the stage of 4G and it makes them all hungry for success.

Creativity

It is there where creativity and needs interact. Whilst the arts are claiming a larger group to write idea’s for streaming TV, the creative engineers are pushing new telecom boundaries in 5G, setting a stage for a new kind of facilitation, one that is not limited to the iterative community, as they were trying to cater to the needs of guided anticipation, the innovators are going where iterative makers did not consider to look, 5 of my IP trains are on that track going decent for now, I still have a little more than 2 years to set the final stage, whilst the stage is curving to my desired needs more and more. That we see when IT Wire gave us ‘US seeks funds to remove Huawei, ZTE gear from rural providers‘ only 2 days ago.

As we see the quote: “Legislation supported by both sides of politics in the US seeks a sum of US$1 billion to help small and rural wireless providers replace equipment made by Chinese vendors Huawei Technology and ZTE Corporation“, we see a growing failure in the US. Don’t get me wrong, the US is allowed to do what it is, but instead of fuelling innovation forward, it is wasting $1,000,000,000 to remove rural equipment, whilst the supporting quote “helping small and rural wireless providers root-out suspect network equipment and replace it with more secure equipment” cannot be met with evidence on any level. Even the term ‘more secure equipment‘ is a grey remark open to interpretation, all equipment form 2018 onward will be more secure than the equipment that was installed in 2012, even with the latest updates this statement remains true, as this is the nature of the technology beast. What is adamant in all this that the lack of security in Huawei equipment was never proven other than one specific 2011 example, an issue that was apparently addressed and settled in 2013.

Even now, no espionage evidence by China was ever given in any way, shape or form. As I personally see it, this is all about economic foundations and progress and the non-Chinese solutions lack technology, innovation and quality to compete with China, now that the Middle East and Europe (to a larger degree) has allowed Huawei to get there, they will reap the benefits of it all, consider that over the next 5 years Neom city, block by block will be 5G ready whilst the longest changes in most parts of the world will be still upgrading, it will create a clear need for to use what is available and now we get to the union of both.

As we see the testing grounds of Saudi Arabia being there, the makers of streaming services will have a place to test and create 5G IP (or was that create and test). We have seen Hollywood, Bollywood and now there is a case to be made for Neomwood as well. If Saudi Arabia plays its cards right, there would be the stage for implementing and creating 5G streaming services and the creation of originals (to some extent) of TV series, shows and movies. People seem to forget that there are around 2 billion Muslims in the world, and the ability to cater to 25% of a global population, whilst the other creators have neglected this group offers a larger opportunity than most people realise.

Even as we accept the story of the 60’s where in the new production called for all mankind we see the stage and setting of the first woman on the moon, there is nothing stopping the Middle East of creating Islamic series that are about furthering their goals on the big screen and the little screen. The lack of actual quality TV in that regard (as far as I can tell) becomes more and more visible. There has been great controversy regarding the TV series Omar, I understand that thousands are stating that the show must be stopped because they believe such depictions are forbidden by Islam. Yet there are other ways to give light to Islam, to educate the non-Islamic community, and I believe that a larger stage could become apparent there. Also, the entire stage of soap series is seemingly ruled by Bab Al-Hara, a Syrian show by Bassam Al-Mulla that has been going on for 10 seasons, as I see TV watching people, they are never content with just one series and to be able to stream globally on 5G will be the larger need soon enough, owning the studios, production, IP and delivery will give whomever gets there first a much larger cut of the winnings and they can be huge, especially with 2 billion Muslims looking for more. I am still smirking (on the inside) to seek a way to make my idea: ‘How to assassinate a politician‘ a reality and optionally get it selected for Emmy and Oscar’s consideration (that is how I roll, never stop dreaming). In this, as I stated several times in the past, the slogan of FX (a filmmaker) is the best ever: ‘The story is everything‘, it is the holy grail that Apple, Stan, Netflix and all other streamers, as well as all other forms of medium are pursuing, it comes from creativity and as creativity overlaps from creation to technology we see a much larger shift in innovation, Whomever doubts that look at Big Brother and consider why it was a success. The overlap of technology, innovation and creation is a direct result of that is something that John de Mol Jr. saw immediately, it took a little while for me to catch on and it was an eye opener (I personally never liked the series, but I admired the approach of innovation and technology towards creation), now creation drives innovation and technology (as it should), yet I also accept that this interaction tends to be symbiotic and the direction of these streams can go in either direction making it the closest to a perpetual system, in this iteration will be the death of it and that is why I have been frantically against iterative designers.

In this, branding has been too much about iteration, Google and Huawei being the obvious exceptions, yet they are at present still the exceptions to that rule. I see that branding can be about innovation, but not the marketed innovation that Apple claims it is. Innovation as Heineken marketing shows it to be is a much better example, even as their product has not changed for the a longest time, their marketing has been on the edge of what is possible for over a decade, if we can keep creativity on that scale we have the making of long term success, no matter what field we move in, that is what the US fears, as innovation grows through Huawei, they see a dip that turns into a revenue canyon, the lack of forward momentum. Even now we see how economic momentum in the US is lost, whilst their IP investments are at an all-time high. If IP becomes the currency of a nation the UIS is indeed in a dire position and their stalling and delays of 5G will not help them, it is exactly in that part where we see the anti-Huawei weaves becoming a disaster for those embracing a non-Huawei solution. The fact that the hardware is not on par with Huawei is one part, the implied accusation ‘But Can They Scale Operations Timely‘ is a much bigger danger, as the markets evolve, scalability will be key and in that (for now) Huawei is far ahead of the others, making any non-Huawei advantage short lived, in addition to that part we see the earlier mentioned solution that Huawei is on the road improving and upgrading the base stations without US parts, when that one hits the US economy will take a much bigger hit, and as latency and delays add to the 5G part, those who want to be at the head of streaming will need to consider where they will be running from, as I see it there is a case to be made (to some degree) for Neomwood, when that happens, the revenue streams will change even further giving the US to live with the realisation that the entire Huawei war was the worst of all idea’s, especially when there were alternatives and especially as the security risks have never ever been proven.

I believe that due to data options there will be a larger change in trademarks in the next 5 years, also in that regard IP will decline in the US a lot more, as data is key, any delaying factor to 5G will have larger impacts over the next 24 months. Those who want to be ahead need to select what gets them there and not listen to fabricated fears and speculative events that have so far not been proven. As creativity shows, those who can dream the new stories, those who can consider the next idea will be catered to, because if the story is everything, the value of a poet and a writer outpaces the accountant by a lot. We can get all kinds of accountant a dime a dozen, yet how many poets are there? How many story writers and story tellers are out there who can spin a story that makes you sit down and relax? Consider what you watch on streaming services and what you are willing to pay for, now consider where the market is and you will see a large gap, a lag that was ignored for the longest of times. In 2020 alone we see a need to invest close to $50 billion, $6 billion by Apple alone for start-up; do you think that there is a higher need for a book keeper or someone who can create a story? As WarnerMedia buys back the old TV series Friends for $245 million, ready to spend $11 billion on content this year alone, how much are they willing to pay for an original idea?

Branding starts with a dream, or a thought that is actually original, how much originality could we find in the Islamic world that has ignored that path for decades? It is a path exploring, especially with 2 billion optional content customers. A path to a larger success that is currently written off through the fear mongering of governments and media needs, whilst there was not ever a need to do so; the facilitation of iteration pushed non solutions and whilst that happens, originality in content and technology will take a backseat to facilitate to the people who no longer should have any voice on the matter, their need to delay and slowdown innovation made it so.

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Tagged as 5G, Agnes Callamard, App making, Apple, Bab Al-Hara, Bassam Al-Mulla, Big Brother, China, Emmy, For All Mankind, FX, Huawei, Intellectual Property, IP, Iran, Jamal Khashoggi, John de Mol, Neom city, Neomwood, Netflix, Nicholas Cage, Norway, Oscar, Pakistan, Primal, Robert De Niro, Saudi Arabia, Stan, Syria, the Irishman, UN, Wall Street Journal, WarnerMedia, Washington Post, ZTE

September 25, 2019 · 13:23

Mental health or Medication

We have seen the premise in a few stages in the last decade and for the most people lean towards one or the other and that is fine, it is a hard choice to make and there is no real evidence which of the two is better in the long run. Mental health needs treatment, medication is at times not a cure, merely a way to create a timeline for treatment, or to minimise the impact of the situation. Yet there is also a medial state that is not mental health based, for example treating people with cystic fibrosis who have two copies of the F508del mutation, for them there is Orkambi. Yet, what is the status when this involves a politician? How delusional is a public speaker allowed to become before he is considered unhealthy and unable to perform his function?

That question came up when the Guardian gave me ‘Labour pledges to break patents and offer latest drugs on NHS‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/24/labour-pledges-to-break-patents-and-offer-latest-drugs-on-nhs). So not only is he making claims, he is basically pronouncing war on the World Trade Organisation, abolishing the TRIPS agreement and throwing it all overboard. As we realise that the World Health Organisation gives us: “As of February 2005, 148 countries are Members of the WTO. In becoming Members of the WTO, countries undertake to adhere to the 18 specific agreements annexed to the Agreement establishing the WTO. They cannot choose to be party to some agreements but not others“, the UK and the EU are both signatories, so Jeremy Corbyn is stupid enough to set a stage of war that endangers millions. To give a little consideration to the metrics, we get the numbers on Cystic Fibrosis, not merely those with these two mutations (a specific subset), we see that more than 70,000 people worldwide are living with cystic fibrosis. Approximately 1,000 new cases of CF are diagnosed each year. More than 75 percent of people with CF are diagnosed by age 2. More than half of the CF population is age 18 or older. Now this is not a good thing, we admit, yet we are looking to a population that is less than 0.001% of the entire population, more important the people that need Orkambi are a mere subset of that. And for the UK it would linearly mean that it affects only 0.1% of the 0.001% that optionally have it. That is his ‘limelight’; can someone please kick this idiot out of the Labour party (preferably out of UK politics altogether)?

And in the second part, no political party has any business being in the pharmaceutical industry, there is a reason why industrials should never have any political power (well, we lost that one ages ago, but still). His voice giving us: ‘party will create company to make cheap versions of drugs‘, whilst the metrics give us that it will be a population less than a 100 that have this version of Cystic Fibrosis that is what he is fighting for? He cannot even properly represent his constituency and now he is starting patent wars as well as a war with the World Trade Organisation on abolishing or severely changing The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)? Not only does it not make sense, the impact could be devastating for the UK. This is a person screaming ‘election’ and then spinning silent when it was offered.

It is my personal view that UK labour is better off getting the clown Ronald McDonald to do the Labour party bidding, and it will do a better job than Jeremy Corbyn ever could. His promises are no longer empty, they are now right-out dangerous.

Pharmaceuticals

There is a larger pharmaceutical issue and it has been going on for well over a decade, the issue that patents are reapplied well over 30 years after date, often in a slightly changed form, only barely passing the innovation line is the largest concern for generic medication, yet there are dozens of examples and Orkambi is nowhere near the top 10 in this. Lyrica (Pfizer), Rituxan (roche), Cialis (Eli Lilly), Xolair (Roche/Novartis), Restatis (Allergan) are 5 of the top 10 expiring patents with a value of a little over $16 billion in total, and those owners would like a little longer exclusivity, because the expiration will hit their bottom line in a real hard way. In that list Orkambi does not even stack up to any decent degree and we have larger issues gaining patents with a generic option and Corbyn’s need to make war with TRIPS, whilst the NHS has larger issues, especially as it was Labour who botched the NHS IT project losing £11 billion and small change to the degree of several millions is not one who should be casting voices on ending patents.

The sentiment is not wrong, but the chosen field is a little beyond stupid, making us wonder whether the man is personally dealing with mental health issues. We all have had that moment where we wanted to stand in front of Dwayne Johnson calling him Tinkerbell, not really wise, but we all have those inflated moments of self, to do what Jeremy Corbyn does worse hiding behind one 9 year old with: “Luis is denied the medicine he needs because its American manufacturer refuses to sell the drug to the NHS for an affordable price“, so this is not some Cystic Fibrosis case, this is a very specific case and the medication required many millions to create and pass FDA approval. A medication for CF patients with a rare mutation. With two specific mutations in a disease that knows more than 1,700 mutations that had been found in the CFTR gene. Orkambi works for patients with the F508del mutation in both copies the CFTR gene, the most common mutation in people with cystic fibrosis worldwide. So even if it is the most common, there are 1700 mutations meaning that his war on one medication to a specific subset that comes down to a lot less than 100 patients in the UK. So this idiot (read: Jeremy Corbyn) goes to war, promising to abolish TRIPS and leaving the WTO, all for a subset of people, too small to fill a village? Now consider that the UK has Pharmaceutical interests as well, the top two players in the UK are GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca representing almost £132 billion pounds, because if he does what he does, then those two will vacate as well, this is how stupid Jeremy Corbyn is, but he is hoping that you will not notice this as he is in feigned tears for one nine year old child. I only mentioned the top two, the field is larger than that, but Jeremy Corbyn is willing to throw it all in the air.

Can you please explain to me how the government budget will be met when two companies representing a taxable £100,000,000,000 leave the UK? This is the kind of short-sighted, BS carrying ventures that Jeremy Corbyn is handing its constituents. His claim is ‘In England about 5,000 young patients could benefit, but the NHS said it could not afford to pay the bill‘, if there are worldwide 70,000 Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients the UK cannot have that many, the claim of “US drugs company Vertex priced Orkambi at over £100,000 per patient per year” might be true and for 100 patients that is still serious money, but we need to recognise that we cannot hand every working person a Ferrari, we do not have the money, and it is that extreme. We are in a position where until a patent ends, the maker gets to set the price, or not sell the product. In light of the numbers I see, I want Jeremy Corbyn to give us an exact list of these 5,000 patients and what medication they need. I reckon that the picture shifts a lot faster at that point. And we agree that larger changes are required, yet making a direct case to the WTO that patents cannot be extended above the 35 years is a lot better than abolishing the WTO. Yet Jeremy Corbyn has no options to do that, so he comes with a delusional plan to start a company that ‘create company to make cheap versions of drugs‘, whilst there are plenty of companies doing that, the case remains that patents hand exclusivity until they expire, this year 26 drugs are facing patent expiration and yet, Orkambi is not among them, but 26 patents will become generic, before 2022 42 patents will expire and that is good for a lot of people, yet this system is already in place, we do not need some delusional politician to add his need to become a rich pharmaceutical cat as well.

To be honest, I have never had such a low regard of UK Labour ever before, the fact that I have twice the regard towards LibDems than towards Labour at present is something I never thought possible in the age of Ed Miliband, whomever thought that Corbyn would be a worthy successor deserved the title ‘Joker of the Year‘, as I personally see it, it is actually that bad at present.

So whomever is happy that this optional mental health case is running the UK labour party is in desperate need of some medication (generic NHS funded options will be available).

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Tagged as Allergan, AstraZeneca, CF, CFTR gene, Cialis, Cystic Fibrosis, Ed Miliband, Eli Lilly, F508del mutation, FDA, generic medication, GlaxoSmithKline, Intellectual Property, IP, Jeremy Corbyn, Lyrica, NHS, NOVARTIS, Orkambi, Patents, Pfizer, Restatis, Rituxan, Roche, the Guardian, Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, UK, UK Labour, WHO, WTO, Xolair

September 22, 2019 · 14:11

It was foretold

So as I went into a howling rage of laughter when Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif told the world that ‘it will destroy any aggressor‘, I almost called +98 2139931 to ask Mahmoud Alavi whether it was allowed for the Foreign Minister to pronounce National governmental acts of suicide. In all this Iran had been the greatest aggressor of all.

His response was due to the events we see in the BC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49781350), ‘Iran warns it will ‘Destroy aggressors’ after US troop announcement‘. Even Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said Iran was “ready for any scenario“, yet he too is mistaken, the issue is not merely the attacks on Saudi Oil (which finally has woken up the west to a larger degree), the idea that both the State of Israel as well as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is ready to take the battle to Tehran is not something Iran has foreseen, it would be a challenge to deal with either, dealing with both and optional support by American troops is something they have not seen coming. It is seen in other ways as well. Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has changed his tune, it is now all about “if Saudi and UAE stop their war on Yemen, they will not be in need of squandering more money to fund it and buying the costly defense systems against the drone attacks which, in turn, will inflict heavy losses upon both of them“, this person (read: tool) conveniently left out the part where Hezbollah members were part of the atrocities in Yemen themselves and we have not forgotten that, the forces will be overlooking whatever the state of Israel is about to give Hezbollah and its supporters, they can come cry and hide behind the UN skirt, but in the end, they created this mess themselves and now that Iran is pulling support more and more Hezbollah is suddenly in a place without the support they had 2 years ago, so Hezbollah is soon the crying child awaiting ammunition and whilst they await arrival crying for international help and offering talks, a game they have played for too long. I personally expect to see another flag for talks going up before the end of October, the sincerity of these talks are basically towards the timeline for fresh supplies and optionally until Iran backs them again with more. Yet the truth of the matter is that Iran is now engaging in a three pronged strategy that they cannot afford. Hezbollah, Houthi and Iranian attacks on Saudi interests is now striking back in almost every way, the Aramco hit made that possible. The spike was the rude wakeup call and even as the price has so far subsided by 1%, the engines of defence will require a lot of oil products soon enough, which could be another marker for increased fuel prices soon enough.

Yet it is the issue that we did not see that matters, it is the view on the precision of the attack that has intelligence analysts baffled to some degree. No matter how we slice the data, the numbers actually favour Iranian abilities, even as Iran remains in denial, the fact that this attack was more than merely successful leaves 5 players who could have done this: America, NATO, China, Russia and Iran.

It is perhaps the first time that Iran gets mentioned next to these other four on this scale. Iran cannot admit as this would be admitting to an act of war, yet this is centre stage in all this. I personally still believe that someone painted the targets, but beyond that, if that was not the case, it implies that an orchestrated drone missile attack is something that Iran has mastered to the degree that the other four have not shown ever. That is the baffling part, yet we know that the other 4 can do the same, yet that puts the Iranian drones on the same level as the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, which is a stretch on a few levels I might add, in addition, the drone operators that the US has are not to be underestimated, the fact that the attack was this successful grades Iranian pilots a scale higher than I ever have before. Let’s not forget, Iran is proud of its air force, and the fact that they delivered last week is rather unsettling. the truth is that there is no way that Houthi forces have anywhere near the skill, the materials and the setup to do this, that is what shows the Iranian forces to be the guilty ones and now they are calling the bluff of others to try and attack. I myself am all in favour to call out to them and merely ‘borrow’ a reaper to install free air-conditioning in that building using a GBU-12 Paveway II. Did you know that the GBU-12 Paveway II is awesome for immediate installation of air shafts and holes in buildings to facilitate for air conditioning? #JustSaying

A light situation?

Some people might think that I am making light of the situation, well, yes, but that has been the media for months, until Aramco was hit, over half a dozen attacks on Saudi Arabia, Saudi locations and its citizens was left unreported by the western media, only now, only when oil spikes, do we see action from those ignoring Iranian transgressions and acts of aggression, so in that, I am in full view of righteous when I laugh at the Iranian sentiment of ‘it will destroy any aggressor‘, as they have been the aggressor all along.

I agree with the BBC point of view giving us: “What seems clear is that this remains a game of brinkmanship, with all sides still hoping to be able to pull back from a direct military confrontation“, however on a personal note, I believe that it is too late for that, I believe that Iran will keep on playing this game for as long as they can wave the ‘nuclear deal’ carrot in front of the EU, delaying matters for as long as they can. I personally believe that it is a stage most overdue that a direct action against the Iranian military forces has become essential, they need to see direct and material damage in Iran (Tehran would be best) to show them that there is no more leeway for Iran. On other departments, I would happily offer my design to sink the Iranian fleet to SAMI, see if we can get it working, there is nothing like watching a minister of defence praising their new Sahand whilst it is appreciating the Horizon of Iran from the bottom of the Sea of Dammam (a reference to an earlier article), and to be honest, I want this design to work just so I can nose thumb DARPA, as stated before, I do have a sense of humour.

There is however another side, Iran is losing its ability to get things done soon enough (sooner would be better), even as their economic picture shifts, the Financial Tribune offered less than a day ago ‘Iran-EU Trade Tumbles 75%‘, whilst the quote “Iran exported €452.65 million worth of commodities to the European Union, indicating a 93.67% fall, and imported €2.55 billion in return to register a 52.13% year-on-year decline“, offers that Iran will have other setbacks in several fields, however the largest issue is not Iran, these numbers give out that Iran needs to focus all resources on Iran in a few fields, leaving nothing to Hezbollah and whatever they get now will be short term and would optionally deny them long term help. That is unless Iran finds a replacement supplier, it will have larger national resource problems soon enough.

There was more in the Arab News a few hours ago. As they give us ‘Only a united front will thwart Iran’s war games‘ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1557771), where we see: “Israeli sources continue to make it clear that they regard Iran’s proliferation of advanced missile technology to their allies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq as a red line“, as well as “I largely believe Zarif when he says Iran doesn’t want war, but with one small addition — “on someone else’s terms.” If war comes, Iran would be happy to fight in a way that plays to its own strengths; asymmetrical, grey zone, widely dispersed, damaging to global energy flows, seeking to spread conflict uncontrollably and in particular dragging in Israel” and there we see the crux of the entire matter: ‘on someone else’s terms‘, when we take that away and make a direct statement against buildings and refineries, the hit and run tactics will no longer work and whilst Iran sets up for a massive defence the winds of support will be removed from the Houthi and Hezbollah sails to the largest degree, possibly completely removed for the long term. That was the largest need in Yemen for three years and now that this stage has arrived, actual progress will be possible in Yemen. The part here I do not agree with the writer Sir John Jenkins is the part where he gives us “We don’t have to play that game. But to impose our own, we need strategic patience, an enhanced defensive capacity against Iranian provocations, a much better communications strategy and, if necessary, a willingness to respond ourselves“, he makes a really good point and he does not shy away from ‘a willingness to respond‘. The problem I see is that the operative word is ‘willingness‘ and actual response is an essential part at present.

We cannot afford to let Iran keep on playing their hit and run guerrilla games whilst letting others take the credit/blame. this has worked for them as others need to set the stage of expenses, when a direct attack comes they lose the initiative and accept open war if needed, at that point Tehran will lose a lot more, infrastructure gone, essential needs cannot be met and international help would be their only option, allowing for the people to take a different position against their army and clergy control. there is the added need that their clergy has not seen actual losses for the longest of times and that keeps them in the delusional state that nothing bad can happen to Iran, that delusion needs to be popped like a balloon, and soon.

The issue is not merely Iran and Saudi Arabia, at some point someone (most likely Iran) will do something really stupid and get the UAE involved because of that, at that point there will be less chance of talks and less options for short term actions with a diplomatic solution at the end, it would turn into a long term event with no diplomatic options for the foreseeable future, that is a stage no one really wants, yet it would be an unavoidable danger for as long as Iran is playing the game it currently is.

Their guilt was foretold through evidence, their denial was a given by media inaction for the longest of times, now that the two meet, we see several options, but until any direct action is undertaken, I fear that the long and harsh theatre of war is the one we are in danger of staring at for now and that is a path we need to avoid, or as the American often state: ‘the best defence is a good offense‘, I would speculate that this is exactly what we need to do in this case, if only to wake Iran up to the notion that ‘on someone else’s terms‘ is no longer an acceptable strategy.

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Tagged as America, Arab News, Aramco, BBC, China, Eu, Financial Tribune, GBU-12 Paveway II, General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, Hezbollah, Hossein Salami, Houthi, Iran, Javad Zarif, Mahmoud Alavi, NATO, Russia, SAMI, Saudi Arabia, Saudi oil, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Sea of Dammam, Sir John Jenkins, the Guardian, UAE, US, Yemen

September 21, 2019 · 11:50

The first changes

We have arrived at the point of the first changes; the next 12 months will give a much larger view of the consumers and the changes that they are willing to accept. The Huawei P30 Pro is the beginning of this; at $1249 this choice is a lot cheaper than its competitor Samsung $1849 (a difference of 32.5%, whilst the Apple at $1999 will set you back an additional 37.5%, this adds up to a lot! Yet the price is not the issue, the fact that the Huawei now comes without YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail among other software, it also does not feature Google’s Play Store. It is an Android game changer; Huawei has pre-loaded new alternative apps of its own. It was the step we expected, the trade wars with China and the persecution of Huawei and the discrimination against Huawei was actually THAT stupid. Now that we are confronted with the changes we will see a new optional change. When an equal mobile is well over $500 cheaper we see the changes that matter. As the people get accustomed to other apps, apps that replace social media solutions we see a shift of consumers, I personally believe it will be a lager change. I do recommend that there will be an upgraded LinkedIn and a new Facebook available, yet there is a situation where the Asian population in Australia will embrace the Chinese solutions, there is in addition a larger need for affordable phones, so there will be a larger shift. Yes, most will hate being without Facebook, yet the credibility Facebook has lost in the past, the people might just keep these solutions on their laptop/Desktop. Yet there is already word that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp would all be available via Huawei’s own store, called the Huawei App Gallery, so all is not lost, but the fact that Google will lose millions of people who will now go via the Huawei App Gallery is almost a given. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49754376) also gave us: “He added that the firm had set aside $1bn (£801m) to encourage developers to make their apps compatible, and said more than 45,000 apps had already integrated the firm’s technology. But he did not name any of them“, so $1,000,000,000 to corner a market and get a handle into the Chinese app user market. It will be found and it will create momentum. I changed my mobile less than a year ago, so I have no need to change for now, yet there is every indication that the upgrade to a new Android version will see me change as well and why would I not do that? Perhaps I am part of the population that thinks “Maybe they’re just trying to ride it out in the hope that they eventually get access to those Google services later“, I am most likely on that fence, however when I check the amount of options that I desperately want on my Mobile, I am limited to WordPress and LinkedIn, and they are not essential, merely a nice to have on my mobile. I can do either on a desktop. I am not alone, as thousands will shift from one side to the other month by month, Google will feel the pinch. Consider that there will be a close to immediate shift on YouTube metrics, implying that the Google Ads department will start requiring new metrics to keep their push going, we see a larger impact on Google, it will not be immediate, but it will be there and growing from the beginning, even as Google and the US will debate on how wrong the metrics are, they too realise that the American corporations will see the impact on their business, it will be visible and direct, merely because a war on greed by flaccid politicians and surpassed technologists was stated to be in denial.

The US did not to its homework, it neglected the choirs they have and are now pushing their losses on other markets. Even as we contemplate what the impact of “side-loading” Google’s apps onto the handsets and that phone store staff would advise customers how to do that. They are wondering how it would limit its impact as long as the usage impact remains close to 100%, when that falters a few times the consumers will be offered alternatives that are 100% and that is where we see the shift towards Chinese commerce.

Now that Huawei has been informed on my 5 parts of IP (hopefully bringing me decent funds too), there might be a larger shift as the issues in 5G cybersecurity and propagating 5G commerce is still lacking at least 3 elements, I feel that I will win in the long run. All the players that are behind ‘T-Mobile gets closer to launching nationwide 5G on low-band spectrum‘, I have seen that Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telstra, as well as BT have not implemented certain parts and even what they designed lacks certain small business needs, as such I feel a lot more confident on my IP. They had 3 years to look at it and they have the same short minded and shallow approach to business ignoring the Small businesses (a little over 400 million of them) to the larger degree. All elements that were clearly visible moved from the 4G premise of ‘Wherever I am‘, to 5G ‘Whenever I want it‘, that failure alone gives Huawei an additional push. As the numbers rack up towards Huawei and Chinese innovation, we will see a larger change towards the business needs and so far none of the non-Chinese solutions have addressed these changes.

As the Chinese app user market explodes in activities between now and December 2020 we will see a larger shift. With Huawei market share at 19% and Oppo at 9.5%, we see a larger growth towards 5G, as Apple is now declining to 37%, we see that Apple in 5G will lose close to 15% all these parts matter, because it does more than increase the market share for Huawei, it actually gives China a larger option to grow in a few directions that it had no real option to grow in previously, the anti-Huawei steps were THAT stupid and now we start seeing the impact. The only way to stop this is for American brands to start offering their phones at the same price as Huawei is. And that is how we see it, Google took that step and offered the Pixel 3XL at a mere 16% extra and that might be a reason to switch to Google, but in the end the others are now pushing themselves out of the race quicker and quicker.

There is a larger need to consider, as the US is getting its thanksgiving and as we are all facing Christmas (and the Dutch will get Saint Nicholas as well) the consumers will have a limited option, yet an essential need to tickle themselves, when you consider that place, would you accept the $1249 that gives you what you need, or would you spend 37.5% for what others market you towards your needs? When you realise that the essentials can be done on the smaller budget, in a time when budgets are still tight and the dangers of recession remains, can you really afford to spend those hundreds of dollars more?

The bulk of the people I know cannot afford them, they often will accept a more expensive contract, yet in the stage when 5G is about to come, would you really want to tie yourself down? And when all the small business owners realise that the current stage will hurt their business for 2-3 years, would they really want to take that chance when the commerce slice is the one everyone wants, at that point can they tie themselves down?

The first changes are here, but they also signal larger changes towards a stage where commerce will be the deciding factor and the bulk of them merely looked at their needs to sell, they to a much larger degree forget to consider what their consumers needed in the 5G environment, that failure will rear its ugly head soon enough, as I see it, Huawei is finding themselves ready for that shift. In the end that is the third stage of innovation that lazy Americans ignored, I wonder how much that will cost them this time around. As I personally see it, 400 million small business owners was too large a group to leave in the cauldron of non-decisions, yet that is exactly what they did in Europe and the US.

Forbes

So as Forbes gives us ‘Shock New Google Warning For Anyone Buying Huawei Mate 30‘, we see how the writer Zak Doffman gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/20/shock-new-google-warning-for-anyone-buying-huawei-mate-30) “Despite impressive hardware innovation, the media write-ups went straight to the lack of full-fat Android, the lack of YouTube and Gmail and Google Maps, the lack of the Play Store” which opposes the BBC, who did give clear mention and as implied so did Huawei. So there we are, already we see issues with the media bringers. After that we see the barricade “24-hours post launch, the reality of the Mate 30 is firming up. It seems highly unlikely there is any Google workaround” yet the reality is that these users get a first glimpse that it is possible to be without Google on their mobile, we do not have to get bothered every minute on news we did not need. In addition with a functional browser we still get what we need, we just will not get it via an app (for now), and believe me when the numbers start slashing into the Google needs, they will want a workaround as desperately as possible. The writer even ends with: “And so for any of you enamoured with the Mate 30 hardware who can live without Google for an unknown amount of time, maybe this is a risk worth taking” which is at the heart of the matter, not the heart we choose and not the one Google choice, because when the numbers start proving that there is real life after google, those numbers will give growth to an exponential growth of people accepting Chinese apps and accepting non-Google solutions. I feel certain that it will happen, merely because the browser is still going to be there and it will show that there is a larger need in people, even if it is to show that the want to prove that dependency on Facebook and Google is a solution, even if it is a mere point of ego, they want to prove that they are not the slave of their mobile. That alone will be a driving factor as well.

No matter how we slice it, within the next 12 months we will see an almost polarised population, those who want the best and fastest and those who need some Google solution, both will have their own validity and merits, yet in the end as small business owners see that Huawei 5G solutions can cater to both, they get to win and that is the real victory, soon thereafter the US will change the blacklist, the moment that there is a clear invoice to the losses and Google will hold the US government accountable to these tax deductible losses, at that point will we see a strong push to find some middle ground, the US will have to give is with every additional billion dollar loss and market shift towards China. They basically have no options left, their inability to deal with Iran is one view, their inability to deal with Syria is a second stage of evidence, and within the next 12 months we will get several other pieces of evidence get released to the larger audience. And that is not the end of it, as the cases regarding Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Purdue Pharma, OrbCare, Insys Therapeutics Inc and their bankruptcy issues are rising, they matter to the regard that the US government is seeing the pinch from 3 directions at present, and that is only whilst California is able to keep its head above the waterline. All these impact are also the impact on 5G propagation, installation and implementation. When you doubt that, consider the Government tech source hat gave us “5G won’t roll out to much of Southern California for a few more years, but companies such as Verizon and AT&T are beginning to install the necessary infrastructure, including those small cells pole by pole, across the region” last April, the fires and other calamities only made things harder, so whilst we see the FCC stepping in, we only see more hindrance for these people, not less and that is the impacting issue from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, and that is only the most visible one. The infrastructure is getting a second hit as we are shown that “the Federal Communications Commission is now restricting how much cities can charge the companies to install equipment: $500 for up to five cells, $100 a cell after that and a $270 annual access fee for each cell“, it is a loaded issue no matter how you slice it and whilst they are trying to figure out how to resolve it, the truth of the matter is that Huawei had this issue solved already and that is how California (and other states) end up getting limited 5G for 2-3 years, all whilst the Huawei case is growing more and more outside of the USA. It is a situation where the technology is not up to scrap and the diminished amount of funds available allows for no alternatives either; now add to this the consumers shifting to some degree away from Google who relies on Google Ads more and more and a near perfect storm is created, a storm that slams the US and gives growth upon growth to China and Chinese interests.

As the EU is accepting Huawei and as Huawei is now embracing a shift towards cloud systems, and as it grows the needs, and sets the growing stage towards 21Vianet, we see a much larger shift and in all this, the first changes brought a push in directions we never considered before. It was only a day ago when Microsoft President Brad Smith requested that the United States should end its blacklisting of Chinese giant Huawei Technologies, we might not realise it, yet the changes allowed for Huawei to look into a partnership with 21Vianet, which will directly impede Microsoft Azure business that is not in Chinese hands (outside of China), in this stage 21Vianet will have a direct option to offer services to European players, as it will not be their solution, but a Huawei solutions and the group of small businesses that are in Europe (a nice slice of 400 million companies) they too will select ‘the other’ Chinese solution. All instigated by a Huawei war that was not based on facts or on reality, it was to address the need of greed and now that it bites back, the US will find itself at the dinner table where only humble pie is to be served. When they buckle (and they will) the shift becomes larger and faster, because at that point the consumers will have the additional questions that will be met with denial on every level conceivable.

Huawei would need to do one additional thing to make that wave a lot larger, I wonder if they will do just that before the end of this year.

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Tagged as 21Vianet, 5G, Apple, BBC, Brad Smith, British Telecom, BT, China, Facebook, FCC, Forbes, Gmail, google, Google Ads, Google Maps, Google Pixel, Huawei, Huawei App Gallery, Huawei Mate 30, Instagram, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Oppo, Sprint, T-Mobile, Telstra, Vodafone, WhatsApp, Youtube, Zak Doffman

September 20, 2019 · 11:48

Tethered to the bottom of the ocean

Perhaps you remember a 1997 movie, about a ship that decided to take a fast trip to America, the HMS Titanic. We all have our moments and what you might not know is that there is a deleted scene that only a few limited editions had. The captain (played by Bernard Hill) was asked a question by one of the passengers: ‘Is land far away?‘ The response was: ‘No, it is only 3900 yards to the nearest land………straight down‘. OK, that did not really happen, but it does sound funny. You see, the image of a place can be anything we need it to be, dimensionality is everything and that is where we see the larger problem.

This is actually directly linked to the article I wrote on September 18^th, the article ‘The Lie of AI‘ gets another chapter, one that I actually saw coming, the factors at least, but not to the degree the Guardian exposes. In the article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/18/the-lie-of-ai/) I gave you: “more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree“, now we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/19/thousands-of-reports-inaccurately-recorded-by-police) a mere 8 hours ago ‘Thousands of rape reports inaccurately recorded by police‘, so we are not talking about a few wrong reports, because that will always happen, no we are talking about THOUSANDS of reports that lack almost every level of accuracy. When we consider the hornets’ nest the Guardian gives us with: “Thousands of reports of rape allegations have been inaccurately recorded by the police over the past three years and in some cases never appeared in official figures” Sajid Javid is now facing more than a tough crowd, there is now the implied level of stupid regarding technology pushes whilst the foundations of what is required cannot be met and yes, I know that he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not that simple, the simplicity is not seen in the quote: “More than one in 10 audited rape reports were found to be incorrect“, the underlying data is therefore more than unreliable; it basically has become useless. this is a larger IT problem, it is not merely that the police cannot do its job, anything linked to this was wrongfully examined, optionally innocent people were investigated (which is not the worst part), the worst part is that the police force has a resource issue and there is now the consideration that the lack of resources have also been going in the wrong direction. The failing becomes a larger issue when we see: “The data also found that a number of forces failed to improve in subsequent inspections, with some getting worse“, the failing pushed on from operational to systemic. Now consider IT, the laughingly hilarious step of AI, even the upgrades to existing systems that cannot be met in any way because the data is flawed on several levels. It is a larger issue that out of the national police force in this regard only Cumbria, Sussex and Staffordshire past the bar, a mere 3 out of 36 forces did their job (above a certain level) and it gets worse when you consider that this is merely the investigations into the sexual assault section, the matter could actually be a lot worse. Consider the Guardian article in July ‘Police trials of facial recognition backed by home secretary‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/12/police-trials-facial-recognition-home-secretary-sajid-javid-technology-human-rights), as well as ‘UK police use of facial recognition technology a failure, says report‘ from May 2018 (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/15/uk-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-failure), you might not have made the link, but I certainly did. When you take the quote: “Police attempts to use cameras linked to databases to recognise people from their face are failing, with the wrong person picked out nine times out 10, a report claims“, now consider that a victim reported the assault on her, a report is made and at some point the evidence is regarded and looked over, the information is linked to CCTV data and now we are off to the races, whilst 3 out of 36 forces did it right, there is now a stage where 91% is looking at the wrong information, inaccurate information and add to that the danger of 10% getting properly identified, even if the right person was picked out, there is still a well over 75% chance that the investigation is going in the wrong direction and optionally an innocent person gets investigated and screened, in the meantime the criminal is safe to do what he wanted all along.

Now we get the good stuff, in 2018 home secretary, Sajid Javid gave his approval and now as he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he approves the invoice and also sets the stage of handing out £30 million to a system that cannot function in a system that is based on cogs that were not accurate and are transposing the wrong data. Even then we see “the BBC reported that Javid supported the trials at the launch of computer technology aimed at helping police fight online child abuse“, a system this inaccurate, not merely because of its flawed technology is set in a stage where the offered data is not accurate either, this simply implies that until the systemic failure is fixed the new system can never function and it will take well over a year to fix the systemic failure. So tell me, what do you normally do to a person who is knowingly and willingly handing over £30 million to a plan that has no chance of success?

We need to stop politicians from wasting this level of resources and funds merely to look good in the eyes of big business. I also feel that it is appropriate that Sajid Javid will be held personally accountable for spending funds that would never be deployed correctly.

The reasoning here is seen in the quote “Recorded rape has more than doubled since 2013-14 to 58,657 cases in 2018-19. However, police are referring fewer cases for prosecution and the CPS is charging, prosecuting and winning fewer cases. The number of cases resulting in a conviction is lower than it was more than a decade ago“, the stage is twofold, we see a doubling over 5 years whilst convictions were down from more than a decade ago, it will in the end link to conviction rate on data, whilst the data numbers are not reliable. The quotes “the case was not recorded as a crime“, as well as “noting it as an incident“, in both cases rape registered as something else, and there is no conviction required on ‘incident‘, the underlying questions is whether this lack is optionally intentional to skew that statistics. You might not agree and it might not be true, but when we see a 91% failing from the police force there is something really wrong. The problem intensifies when we see the Guardian statement that “West Midlands was found to be ‘of concern’ and had ‘not improved’ rape recording upon re-inspection in 2018” this implies that the work of the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) is either not taken seriously or is intentionally ignored, you tell me which of the two it is and connected to this is Sajid Javid ready to ‘upgrade’ to AI (that remains funny) and spend over £30 million on that system, as well as the funds wasted on the current CCTV facial recognition solution, which is not cheap either.

I wonder who the CCTV will point to arrest for the person allegedly having sex on the desk of the Terry Walker, Lord Mayor of North East Lincolnshire. Images show that the local police might be seeing Noel Gallagher as a person of interest at present.

I wonder how that data was acquired?

In opposition

There is however the other side and even a I did not give it the illumination, there was no intent to ignore it. The options to ‘AI to reduce the burden on child abuse Investigators‘ is not to be ignored, it must be the task that will burn out a person a lot faster than they would transporting bottles of nitro-glycerin by hand through a busy marketplace. I am not insensitive to this, yet the Police Professional gives us: “The development will cost £1.76 million from a total investment in the CAID from the Home Office of £8.2 million this year“, which is different from the £30 million given, as I see it additional questions come to the foreground now. Yet there are other issues that are not part of this. There is the danger of misreading (and incorrectly acting on) seeded data. In SIGINT we see the part where data fields are used to misrepresent information (like Camera model, owner, serial number), when we start looking in the wrong direction, even if some of the data might be correct you are in a different -phase and the problem is that no AI can tell you that a camera serial number might be wrong, or right. There are larger data concerns, yet I do understand that some tasks can alleviate stress from the police, yet when we link this to the lack of accuracy on police data, the task remains equal to mopping the floor whilst the tap is running spilling water on the floor. None of these steps make sense until the operational procedures are cleared, tested and upgraded. A failing rate of 91% (33 out of 36) makes that an absolute given.

And for those who missed the Gallagher joke, please feel free to watch the movie the Grimsby brothers. There are actually two additional paths that are an issue, it is not about presentation, it is about the interpretation, as well as the insight of sliced data, they interact and as such a lot of metrics will go wrong and remain incorrect and inaccurate for some time to come. Data will get interpreted and optionally acted on, which becomes a non-option when accuracy is below a certain value. So feel free to be anchored to the ground in the approach to data surveillance employing AI (I am still laughing about that part), yet when you are tethered to the bottom of the ocean, how will you get a moment to catch your breath?

Precisely, you won’t!

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Tagged as AI, CAID, CCTV, Chancellor of the Exchequer, CPS, Cumbria, HMICFRS, Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, North East Lincolnshire, Police, Sajid Javid, SIGINT, Staffordshire, Sussex, Terry Walker, the Guardian, the Police Professional, UK, West Midlands

September 19, 2019 · 12:06

What if they redid it?

I got lucky last week. I stumbled upon Cash converters with a Mass Effect Andromeda (for Xbox One) for $2, even as I had the PS4 edition, replaying it for $2 was just too nice to pass up. There was another reason to not get it for any more than that. I was hugely disappointed with the game. The makers were holding a huge pastry in front of us, only to offer a mere outdated carrot in the end. Still, the graphics were nice, the game remains flawed on several levels and the goals are for the most too linear.

It was at that moment that my mind redesigned the game again (I did that exercise after I finished the PS4 edition). And I wondered about the one question that needed answering. What if I created Mass Effect Andromeda 2 (MEA2), whilst upgrading the first game from a 72% game to a 91% game or better, would you replay it?

In this stage the game would be 3 discs with the first game (mostly), the second disc would be the Nexus and the third disc would be the second game called Mass Effect Andromeda: Debellatio.

First off, the first game would end up being twice the size, the entire memory segments part would be on the Hyperion alone, the Hyperion would be roughly 20 times the current version, whilst the playable part of the Nexus is 10 times larger and the view makes it 200 times the size. The missions of the first game would remain (there would be more of them) and the story would be amped up to give a larger storyline to the Kett, the scourge as well as the Angara. The question is: Would you seriously consider playing it again?

I believe that this could work. The game would be massive on the consoles (200GB), yet the stage created would give close to 200 hours of gameplay. The original touched on great topics and then let them simmer, which was a waste on a few levels. Still, there is really good material to work with and if the maps are enlarged by well over 50% it becomes more of an exploration. We could also fix the flaws in the first version by making the second tier (after the vault is restarted) a lot more challenging and rewarding. The mining part required upgrades, so that there is a direct link in building the nexus and completing it linking it to the resources found and mined. These are all elements that add to the game and add requirements to the need of exploration.

Lastly, the arks, all 4 (with an optional 5^th) will be found by the end of the second game, making it part of the main storyline and not some DLC. Consider these elements and ask yourself, would you buy a game at $160 that offers all that? I believe it would, especially when the multiplayer part is upgraded to a Mass Effect 3 level. It could be a new wave of multiplayer hungry admirers, it will of course come with the guarantee that I get to cut off the head of any EA executive that messes with that concept or forces the buying of loot boxes, the Mass Effect 3 formula was utterly perfect, so let’s not ever mess with that again.

It took a mere hour to consider the steps that could get this game from 71% to 91%, and I get it, there are budgets to consider. The question becomes what does an EA executive see as the difference of a budget toward a 70% game versus the one delivering a 90%+ game? I wonder if they can really set a number to that. Consider that the first version was staged by a budget of C$100 million, which included marketing and research costs, whilst I designed in my mind improvements over a mere cappuccino. There is a benefit of having been a part of gaming since 1985, and I believe that I know what pushes a decent game to a great game. If the EA/BioWare executives make that claim, I wonder why they failed the first time, whilst they had 3 examples in front of them and they owned the IP of it.

Even as Forbes gave us in 2017 ‘EA Is Now Singing Mass Effect Andromeda’s Praises As A Revenue Driver‘, yes it is true, but the bulk of all these were people who had played the previous games and hoped for a glimmer of greatness. And a revenue driver sounds nice, but if it cannot be repeated it becomes lost IP, and who ever won a war by losing its IP?

The important part was that the combat part did not suck, it was a good combat system and that is at the core of the success that was and the greatness it could be. There is also a business case to be made, as Anthem is seen as a failure by more and more, we need to recognise that EA desperately needs a win, one that will allow them to be regarded as an AAA developer. The news ‘BioWare Loses Lead Producers for Both Dragon Age 4 and Anthem‘ that got out two weeks ago supports the placement that Bioware (EA as well) are no longer the high end developers they used to be. It is about business and profit at the expense of gaming, a disastrous formula well beyond twice over. I would go as far as stating that until these two players do not learn that lesson, they have lost their ability as an actual game maker.

The fact that there are options for both EA and Bioware is merely a stroke of luck on their part, hugely due to the previous designers who did do an excellent job, even now, one generation later Mass Effect 2 is still seen as one of the best games ever to grace the Xbox 360, moreover, the Xbox One has only produced games that equalled it, optionally with the exception of Assassins Creed Origin, a game that did break all the records.

And even now when we realise that a few months ago we got ‘EA ‘learned a lot’ from Anthem but doesn’t apologize‘ gives us the larger stage, we don’t need their apology, we need them to make an actual game (if they still can, and sport games do not count).

Yet the premise remains, what if the first MEA is added to the second and upgraded, would you pay for it, and would you play it? I personally believe it to be the case, especially when you realise the amount of times the first two games were played to be a nice and a naughty Shepard, optionally 4 times if you wanted to do it all for the ‘he’ as well as the ‘she’ version of the game. The groundwork was decent, but too largely unfinished and the amount of stages where the game failed on a few levels was just mind boggling, Mass Effect 3 had a few of these issues, but not as much, and they were less irritating I might add.

Why?

All gamers (including me) we yearn for the high of really good gaming and we want that feeling again and again. It is not just the sound of the achievement; the feeling of getting to the end of the game; and not to forget the entire journey to get to the end. We will go through great lengths to get that feeling again and again, hence the power of the Franchise, even after 5 partial failures, AC Origin made up for that and for the most we feel really happy that we got to that point. Ubisoft has seen this personally, EA might say that they learned, but it is still unlikely that they actually did. For the most EA became a pool of business graduates and there is nothing against that group, yet the business is gaming and not spreadsheets. You might want to keep it for your numbers, yet profit is no valid KPI of joy, the KPI of joy is excellence, it always was joy, Elder Scrolls, Ultima, Fallout, Dark Souls, Witcher, and God of War, not to forget the latest new RPG franchise Horizon Zero Dawn. They all know that excellence is what keeps you in profit, EA (optionally Bioware) forgot about that part and now they are bleeding, the amount of damage cannot be seen, it can only be seen in how they survive and whilst they think that profit and margins are the most important, these two players will miss the ball again and again. This is such a shame because before 2016 the Mass Effect franchise was a great achievement, the question becomes are the makers ready to fight for greatness?

Gamers care for that and even as we realise that others are vying for our attention and our allegiance, they now see that the time of options like Anthem is transient at best, the fact that gamers are willing to pay full price for a well-made remaster of the original three, even now after 10 years is the part that matters. You either rely on old games for a little while or you up the ante. It is at Ubisoft where we see that optionally become reality, even now, as far as we can tell, they went all out on Watchdogs 3: Legion and so far all the response is raving, and the fan club of those wanting to play it in the first hour is still growing non-stop, even after its initial view several months ago. Watchdogs had a speckled past, but they upped their game in the second game and it seems that now, in the third game they up it all in a very different and very novel way, the path a gamer did not see coming, the most enticing drug of all, the surprise path, EA and Bioware should learn from that.

It is important to learn and important to up the game because serious games do that and they are up against a larger community of games, games that will include Cyberpunk 2077, God of War 5, an optional Horizon Zero Dawn 2, Watchdogs 3, all games that have (seemingly) upped gaming and both EA and Bioware will be up against it. If they are to be considered an AAA developer they have to equal and surpass that opposition, a lesson that business graduates often did not learn, it might mirror the US stupidity in the Middle East, it is based on the American standard of ‘Money talks, Bullshit walks‘ it is there that the middle east policy failure shows it for what it is. It is the same in gaming, you need to flaunt it, but to do that, you have got to have it, there is no other way and business graduates are too often of the path: ‘Fake it till you make it‘, it merely keeps you afloat in an ocean of gamers, all well versed swimmers mind you.

I have seen excellence in gaming since 1984, I can recognise it almost instantly and it is not linked to micro transactions. I saw the excellence of Elite on a CBM64 in 1985, is still lives today as Elite Dangerous, 30 years later it creates a large following of over 4 million gamers, not a bad result. There were more games and there are even games that are successes and I missed them, I cannot be everywhere. Yet I have never failed to spot good games and I have seen the path to improve bad games several times. I believe that the Mass Effect Andromeda franchise could be resurrected as a great game; I wonder how far Bioware and EA are willing to go to make that happen.

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Tagged as AAA Games, Andromeda, Bioware, EA, Forbes, Hyperion, Mass Effect, Nexus, Ubisoft, Watchdogs 3: legion

September 18, 2019 · 11:06

The Lie of AI

The UK home office has just announced plans to protect paedophiles for well over a decade and they are paying millions to make it happen. Are you offended yet? You should be. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/home-office-artificial-intelligence-ai-dark-web-child-sexual-exploitation) is giving you that, yet you do not realise that they are doing that. The first part is ‘Money will go towards testing tools including voice analysis on child abuse image database‘, the second part is “Artificial intelligence could be used to help catch paedophiles operating on the dark web, the Home Office has announced” these two are the guiding part in this, and you did not even know it. To be able to understand this there are two parts. The first is an excellent article in the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science), the second part is: ‘AI does not exist!‘

Important fact is that AI will become a reality at some point, in perhaps a decade, yet the two elements making AI essential have not been completed. The first is quantum computing, IBM is working on it, and they admit: “For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don’t have enough computational power on Earth to tackle them.” This is true enough and fair enough. They also give us: “it was only a few decades ago that quantum computing was a purely theoretical subject“. Two years ago (yes only two years ago) IBM gives us a new state, a new stage in quantum computing where we see a “necessary brick in the foundation of quantum computing. The formula stands apart because unlike Shor’s algorithm, it proves that a quantum computer can always solve certain problems in a fixed number of steps, no matter the increased input. While on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases” This is the first true step towards creating AI, as what you think is AI grows, the data alone creates an increased number of steps down the line, coherency and comprehension become floating and flexible terms, whilst comprehension is not flexible, comprehension is a set stage, without ‘Quantum Advantage with Shallow Circuits‘ it basically cannot exist. In addition, this year we get the IBM Q System One, the world’s first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use, we could state this is the first true innovative computer acceleration in decades and it has arrived in a first version, yet there is something missing and we get to stage two later.

Now we get to the Verge.

‘The State of AI in 2019‘ published in January this year gives us the goods, and it is an amazing article to read. The first truth is “the phrase “artificial intelligence” is unquestionably, undoubtedly misused, the technology is doing more than ever — for both good and bad“, the media is all about hype and the added stupidity given to us by politicians connected the worst of both worlds, they are clueless and they are trying being dumb and clueless on the worst group of people, the paedophiles and they are paying millions to do what is cannot accomplish at present.

Consider a computer or a terminator super smart, like in the movies and consider “a sci-vision of a conscious computer many times smarter than a human. Experts refer to this specific instance of AI as artificial general intelligence, and if we do ever create something like this, it’ll likely to be a long way in the future” and that is the direct situation, yet there is more.

The quote “Talk about “machine learning” rather than AI. This is a subfield of artificial intelligence, and one that encompasses pretty much all the methods having the biggest impact on the world right now (including what’s called deep learning)” is very much at the core of it all, and it exists and it is valid and it is the point of set happening, yet without quantum computing we are confronted with the earlier stage ‘on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases‘, so now all that data delays and delays and stops progress, this is the stage that is a direct issue, then we also need to consider “you want to create a program that can recognize cats. You could try and do this the old-fashioned way by programming in explicit rules like “cats have pointy ears” and “cats are furry.” But what would the program do when you show it a picture of a tiger? Programming in every rule needed would be time-consuming, and you’d have to define all sorts of difficult concepts along the way, like “furriness” and “pointiness.” Better to let the machine teach itself. So you give it a huge collection of cat photos, and it looks through those to find its own patterns in what it sees” This learning stage takes time, yet down the track it becomes awfully decent in recognising what a cat is and what is not a cat. That takes time, yet the difference is that we are seeking paedophiles, so that same algorithm is used not to find a cat, but to find a very specific cat. Yet we cannot tell it the colour of its pelt (because we do not know), we cannot tell the size, shape or age of that specific cat. Now you see the direct impact of how delusional the idea form the Home Office is. Indirectly we also get the larger flaw. Learning for computers comes in a direct version and an indirect version and we can both put it in the same book: Programming for Dummies! You see, we feed the computer facts, but as it is unable to distinguish true facts from false facts we see a larger failing, the computer might start to look in the wrong direction, pointing out the wrong cat, making the police chase and grab the wrong cat and when that happens, the real paedophile had already hidden itself again. Deep Learning can raise flags all over the place and it will do a lot of good, but in the end, a system like that will be horribly expensive and paying 100 police officers for 20 years to hunt paedophiles might cost the same and will yield better results.

All that is contained in the quote: “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking, and that means your algorithm could be performing well for the wrong reasons” more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree.

The article ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” which is true and more important, it is not AI, the fact that we were not really informed about, there is not AI at present, not for some time to come and it makes us wonder on the Guardian headline ‘Home Office to fund use of AI to help catch dark web paedophiles‘, how much funds and the term ‘use of AI‘ requires it to exist, which it does not.

The second missing item.

You think that I was kidding, but I was not, even as the Quantum phase is seemingly here, its upgrade does not exist yet and that is where true AI becomes an optional futuristic reality. This stage is called the Majorana particle, it is a particle that is both matter and antimatter (the ability to be both positive and negative), and one of the leading scientists in this field is Dutch Physicist Leo Kouwenhoven. Once his particle becomes a reality in quantum computing, we get a new stage of shallow circuits, we get a stage where fake news, real news, positives and false positives are treated in the same breath and the AI can distinguish between them. That stage is decades away. At that point the paedophile can create whatever paper trail he likes; the AI will be worse than the most ferocious bloodhound imaginable and will see the fake trails faster than a paedophile can create it. It will merely get the little pervert caught faster.

The problem is that this is decades away, so someone should really get some clarification from the Home Office on how AI will help, because there is no way that it will actually do so before the government budget of 2030. What will we do in the meantime and what funds were spend to get nothing done? When we see: “pledged to spend more money on the child abuse image database, which since 2014 has allowed police and other law enforcement agencies to search seized computers and other devices for indecent images of children quickly, against a record of 14m images, to help identify victims“, in this we also get “used to trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation to see whether they would help track down child abusers“, so when we see ‘whether they would help‘, we see a shallow case, so shallow that the article in the Verge well over half a year ago should indicate that this is all water down the drain. And the amount (according to Sajid Javid) is set to “£30m would be set aside to tackle online child sexual exploitation“, I am all for the goal and the funds. Yet when we realise that AI is not getting us anywhere and Deep Learning only gets us so far, and we also now consider “trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation” we see a much larger failing. How can voice analyses help and how is this automated? and as for the term ‘trial aspects of AI‘, something that does not exist, I wonder who did the critical read on a paper allowing for £30 million to be spend on a stage that is not relevant. How about getting 150 detectives for 5 years to hunt down these bastards might be cheaper and in the end a lot more results driven.

In the end of the article we see the larger danger that is not part of AI, when we see: “A paper by the security think-tank Rusi, which focused on predictive crime mapping and individual risk assessment, found algorithms that are trained on police data may replicate – and in some cases amplify – the existing biases inherent in the dataset“, in this Rusi is right, it is about data and the data cannot be staged or set against anything, which makes for a flaw in deep learning as well. We can teach what a cat is by showing it 1,000 images, yet how are the false images recognised (panther, leopard, or possum)? That stage seems simple in cats, in criminals it is another matter, comprehension and looking past data (showing insight and wisdom) is a far stretch for AI (when it is there) and machine learning and deeper learning are not ready to this degree at present. We are nowhere near ready and the first commercial quantum computer was only released this year. I reckon that whenever a politician uses AI as a term, he is either stupid, uninformed or he wants you to look somewhere else (avoiding actual real issues).

For now the hypes we see are more often than not the lie of AI, something that will come, but unlikely to be seen before the PS7 is setting new sales records, which is still many years away.

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Tagged as AI, Deep Learning, Home office, IBM, IBM Q System One, Leo Kouwenhoven, London, Machine learning, Majorana particle, Netherlands, RUSI, Sajid Javid, Shallow Circuits, Shor's algorithm, the Guardian, the Verge, think-tank Rusi, TU Delft, UK

September 17, 2019 · 11:44

What mattered most

I refrained from giving a view for two days, I saw the attacks on Sunday and I was ready to give voice, but then something happened, a change in the wind was there and it was important to look at that side of the equation. It all started on Sunday (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49699429) with ‘Saudi Arabia oil facilities ablaze after drone strikes‘, yet that was not the real trigger for the west, there had been other attacks and the west ignored them, as I reported in several articles. It was: “Oil prices ended nearly 15% higher on Monday, with the Brent benchmark seeing its biggest jump in about 30 years” that woke people up, now there was finally a reason to report it, not the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been under attack for a month, it was the fact that fuel prices were going to rise.

And of couirse, the US ever willing to be late to a party gives us: ‘Attack on a major Saudi oil facility originated in Iran, U.S. intelligence indicates‘, which is weird as I had handed out evidence out weeks ago to show that Iran had been facilitating resources to attack Saudi Arabia, yet for me it is nice to know that I am more able in intelligence after 3 decades than the US has ever been. As such it is not interesting to read: “American intelligence indicates that the attack on a major Saudi oil facility originated in Iran, three people familiar with the intelligence told NBC News“, that part is not interesting, it is the part where we have known that Iran had been supplying drones to Houthi forces for the longest time, for many months, it would have been nice for US intelligence to hand out that information months ago, but I reckon until the prices of fuel soared there was no reason to show support for an ally, they claimed to be an ally of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, yet they never released the intelligence giving rise to lash out at Iran to any degree. That does not make for an ally that is the foundation for being an exploitation tool (at best).

And it gets to be worse, when you consider NBC News. The quote: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Saturday that Iran “launched” what he called “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”” seems nice, but it only seems so. I wonder if the US officials are really about the ‘world energy supply‘ or the consequences of oil price hikes and the increased value it has on Aramco? It is the impact of the headline ‘Saudi Arabia oil and gas production reduced by drone strikes‘ that is scary to Wall Street, as production reduces, prices go up, the need increases and it changes the economic models for Wall Street, so again it is not really about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or about being their ally, is it? It is about the profit margins everywhere else that is the actual debate behind closed doors.

So when the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126) gives us ‘U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran‘ we do not see anything new here. The issue is how the drones get moved from Iran to Yemen. We also see through the faded “Monday’s assessment, which the U.S. hasn’t shared publicly, came as President Trump said he hoped to avoid a war with Iran and Saudi Arabia asked United Nations experts to help determine who was responsible for the airstrikes“, just a moment to delay moments of decision making. The culprits are known. It is not the real fear, the real fear is “Higher fuel prices pose another threat to the world economy” and that is the real issue for the US and for Europe. The response: “Saudi officials said the U.S. didn’t provide enough proof to conclude that the attack was launched from Iran, indicating the U.S. information wasn’t definitive. U.S. officials said they planned to share more information with the Saudis in the coming days” makes perfect sense. As the attack was claimed by Yemeni Houthi, the proxy war stage stays intact, it is the intelligence on how the drones get into Yemen that counts and so far (until now) the US, UK and French have not been overly willing to keep closer eyes on it, they all need degrees of freedom to deal with Iran and their so called Nuclear treaty, that has been in the way for the longest of times.

There are two parts in this and both came from CNN. Part 1 gives us: “A Yemen armed forces spokesman was quoted by the agency as saying the Houthis successfully carried out a “large-scale” operation with 10 drones targeting Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais“, part 2 gives us “CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen said there have been more than 200 drone attacks launched by Houthi rebels from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, and none have been as effective as Saturday’s attack, lending credence to the belief that the attack did not originate from Yemen“, I personally agree with both. From my point of view the attack on Khurais has too many issues. It is close to twice the distance getting the attack from Yemen instead of from Iraq. It is dangerously close to Riyadh and when we look at the track record from Houthi attacks, we see a very different pattern. There are more reliable parts in all this when we consider Hezbollah or Iran to be the direct acting agent here. I have to mention Hezbollah as they have been involved in the past with attacks on Saudi Arabia. Abqaiq is right on the border of Bahrain and close to Qatar. The Houthi skillset does not give us any credibility on their actions, yet they claimed it, as a tool for Iran that could have been done to muddy the waters more, yet there is another matter in all this. I believe that there is a larger concern that is not open for viewing. We see this in the quote: ““It is quite an impressive, yet worrying, technological feat,” he said. “Long-range precision strikes are not easy to achieve and to cause the substantial fires in Abqaiq and Khurais highlights that this drone has a large explosive yield.”” The part not seen or spoken of is not that the attack happened, but it was completed with assistance nearby. The precision is not from the drones, it was most likely achieved as someone used a laser to paint the targets (one of a few optional examples) in the final minute. If the laser was small enough it would not be noticed, but for the drones it is like a searchlight guiding them to the explosive points. That part would make sense in more than one way, and it is the foundation that counts. The claims that were made by Yemen make sense and grow in validity when they have resources on the ground. That part is not merely on the stage of drones, there is a larger concern for Saudi Intelligence now. When they accept that the drones got their final guidance on the ground nearby, we see the impact that explosive drones would have and will have again. Iran has been staging this proxy war for the longest time and it is time for us to consider doing something about it in a more serious way (that is when Canada is done selling intelligence data to interested third parties that is).

There is additional support for my view and it comes from the BBC. They gave us: “One official said there were 19 points of impact on the targets and the attacks had come from a west-north-west direction – not Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, which lies to the south-west of the Saudi oil facilities” to be this precise requires drone technology only the largest players have (like the US and the UK), Iran does not have software that sophisticated and to succeed to this degree required the most likely culprit Iran to have assistance nearby. Painting the targets makes the most sense, but it is not the only option, merely the most likely one. It there were 19 base stations guiding a drone, it would require resources Yemen does not have, it has merely attacks in small clusters of less than 5, the images from the US government satellites involved showed the spread and size of the targets, when you consider resources required to be this precise and the pilot skills involved the shift towards support teams nearby becomes a clear issue. Still there are gaps in the intelligence I admit to that, however, when we look at the maps, the size of the attacks and aligned parameters, an attack from Iraq or Iran are the only options remaining. That in itself is not evidence, yet the premise of what was required is clear and even as we can prove that more basic drone attacks could not have been done by Houthi forces because they lack all levels of infrastructure to create and guide drones to the degree required, we see Iran to be guilty by elimination of other players. The precision requires well trained pilots which the Houthi are not; again we are left with Iran. Actually Iraq might have been party to this, but their drone abilities (read: with additional lacking skill sets to consider) are nowhere near the level required.

This now gets us to the New York Times part which gave us: “Administration officials, in a background briefing for reporters as well as in separate interviews on Sunday, also said a combination of drones and cruise missiles — “both and a lot of them,” as one senior United States official put it — might have been used. That would indicate a degree of scope, precision and sophistication beyond the ability of the Houthi rebels alone” it is the ‘a combination of drones and cruise missiles‘ that pushes Iraq out of the consideration circle leaving Iran all alone. We should consider the skills Iran shows here, and it will also be their undoing. When we consider that only Iran remains as an optional player to do this and when we see that Europe and the US will not actually act, but ‘force’ talks, that is the first instance when Saudi Arabia needs to consider that their allies are nothing more than paper tigers, pussycats that make a lot of noise, but when you know they are sculptures the enemies will come, Saudi Arabia needs to realise this fast and we need to consider that the EU, the US and the commonwealth needs to create an actual plan of attack on Iran. This evidence was handed to us almost 2 weeks ago when we were given ‘Iran puts pressure on Europe to save nuclear deal within 60-day deadline‘, Iran keeps on holding the Nuclear deal as a juicy carrot and will use it to stop a direct attack on them, a path that should now be considered to be totally unacceptable. I for one would like to ‘loan’ a Saudi Eurofighter Typhoon (EF2000) and see if all my hours on a Microprose flight simulator (knights of the sky) were well spent and let’s face it, I do have a quirky sense of humour. I would be able to test my knowledge in guiding that Typhoon to Tehran and level a military building or two, on the other hand seeing their oil fields burn might feel equally rewarding. And there is the optional reward to answer the eternal outstanding question: Can you hear the GBU-16 Paveway II bomb explode whilst you fly a plane?

You think that I am making light of the situation and to some degree I am, the basic need for everyone to realise that Iran has been steering towards war whilst employing the oldest Italian excuse (read: It was not me, I know nothing); This stage has been months in the making and now that the drums of combat are approaching, we will see more and more politicians peaking up offering to start talks. I believe it is too late for that, it is almost 6 months too late for that, but that might just be me.

Yet there is one other voice we need to consider. It is the voice of Fabian Hinz, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Monterey (via the Washington Post). Here we get: “photos of the remnants of a missile in Saudi Arabia show a weapon both too sophisticated to be produced domestically by the Houthis and never seen in Iran“, I only partially agree here. ‘Photos of the remnants of a missile‘ is merely partial evidence that should not be ignored. A multi-tiered attack makes perfect sense, it is the scope of the attack and patterns used that makes Iran stand out; it also gives a larger consideration that their new drones are a lot more powerful. There is also his quote “Is Iran secretly designing, testing and producing missile systems for exclusive use by its proxies?” A quote that is not accurate and not wrong. I believe that earlier evidence showed the need for Iran to scrap all identifiers form their electronics, make clean system boards, in addition, it altered the export drones to trade accuracy in for yield (which maximises the Houthi outstanding debt to Iran), in addition to that they had to make a more idiot proof operating system (the Yemeni are nowhere near the academics they need to be to pilot drones). This is not because I want Iran to be guilty; this is because the elements are so overwhelmingly clear that Iran could not be innocent. There are too many parts in play that require the war machine that Iran has to develop what we see in action at present. And there is every indication that the 60 day nuclear deal deadline is used to stage more and more attacks whilst the indecision of Europe and the US remains in place. If there is one small blessing than it is the stage where the Israeli Defence Forces have even less consideration for Iran than Saudi Arabia has and there is every indication that what is created now in Iran will be shipped to Hezbollah soon enough; forcing Israel to act as well.

When this escalates beyond a point of no return the people in Washington, Wall Street, Brussels and Strasbourg need to consider that when they have no options left and they are no longer considered a voice on the issue: ‘What mattered most to them?‘

Because these considerations with the inaction we see is what drives the war no one can prevent. Saudi Arabia has a clear right, Israel has a duty to its citizens and Iran never cared for anyone but themselves. So when we see cries for talks when the bombs fall, remember that this did not start last Sunday, this has been going on for well over 6 months. The news merely decided not to report on much of it that was until the fuel prices went up, now they are all over it, but way too late.

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September 14, 2019 · 11:33

That one sentence

You have all faced it before, the moment where that one sentence stops you in your tracks. I am not talking about the sentence a partner states when they come with ‘If you get naked now, we can have sex‘, most people jump at that point. No, it is the ‘if you value your life‘ moment. It is not always a threat, and more important, it is not a sentence that is an imminent danger to you, that would be a reaction as well, but one of another kind. It is the sentence that makes you realise just how dangerous the stage is. I saw one today that came from Warsaw. It was an opinion piece, but the issue is not that it was an opinion; the issue is that this opinion is shared and it shows just how essential Brexit is to the UK. Besides the two failed stimulus events and a new one rolling off the bankrolls as we speak, a third, or perhaps more accurately stated a second mistake in a three part plan that goes nowhere. We now get that sentence ‘The Financial Times editors, heads of German business and many economists argued that Germany should start spending which it does not intend to do‘ this sentence is dangerous and idiotic, there is no relief in spending more, there is no relief, not merely because a government spends more, it is idiotic because Germany has a debt that surpasses 2,250,000,000,000 €, more important, their debt increases almost €2,000 a second. So every person in Germany has a €27,500 debt to deal with. A nation in that position is not in a good place and needs to reduce debt, but the deception and the brainless issue is that Europeans are all in a stage to take on more debt, whilst the ECB is playing with trillions in stimulus. That danger is too large and leaving the EU is the only option to get a handle on the debt every European faces.

The danger that these exploiters face is that the UK can pull it off, and when the first economic victory is scored. all those EU members will stand still and look at how they can pull it off, the people behind the scenes, the people handing us this contrived stories will then have to report to the large corporations and the custodians of the European corporatocracy that they have failed and they will no longer matter or be considered valued. That is the larger game and whilst the UK moves closer to proving that point, others keep on fear mongering as much as they can for as long as they can. Yet the dangers are becoming real and they are increasing in visibility. The Local in Germany (at https://www.thelocal.de/20190913/should-germany-give-into-pressure-and-boost-spending-to-revive-europe) gives us: ‘Should Germany boost spending to help revive Europe?‘, yet its economy is slowing and they are close to a €2.5 trillion debt. Still, for the economic value of Germany it does not seem much, but it is not a multi-billion valued debt, it is a thousand times worse and people do not seem to get that this debt pushes nations towards a corporatocracy where the banks and corporations are in charge and that danger is not understood anywhere, except perhaps the boardrooms of the Fortune 500 and they are extremely unwilling to explain it to you. As we see the stage of corporatocracy growing, we should also notice the lack of media looking into that matter. I would state it is because the media aligns with Shareholders, stake holders and advertisers and corporations are in charge of all three. So in a stage where we see: ‘a day after the European Central Bank warned it had reached the limit of its powers to avert recession‘, we get two things. The first is the stimulus that is coming, and second German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz gets the news: “Germany faced renewed pressure on Friday to boost public spending and help revive a sputtering European economy“, neither will solve anything and there is now the crux, because if the UK exits the EU and gives a real first sign of improvement (which will be year 2 or 3 after Brexit), we see a change, Germany will anger to a degree not seen before and the German population will demand Gexit, AfD (Alternativ fur Deutschland) is already pushing in that direction, but it is not powerful enough, the first UK signs will push it to such a level that Gexit would optionally happen overnight. That is the problem for the fear mongering lot and they are scared because Brexit is still on the road, and the second problem is that it will bring a better stage to the UK, which also means that Germany will get out as fast as possible. At that point the EU can no longer continue, with three trillion in debt it will collapse. I had actually expected for France to leave as a second country, yet with France electing an investment banker, that danger was temporarily averted. Now as Brexit is in a higher stage the Germans start looking at the ACTUAL issues and FACTUAL problems and benefits that the EU leaving stages bring, it is the one part no one had considered to the degree they needed to. Fear mongering remains a virtual issue and the real facts are not in line with the fears created and now that this void is becoming visible, a lot more people are realising that they were played and that will give the entire EU collapse a speed boost, but in all this, it is the UK that pushes what happens next, that is why we see UK Labour cold calling on every door with some hilarious moments (at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9924096/homeowners-brexit-rant-terrorist-corbyn-democracy-labour-caller/). Yet they are merely stalling and buying time, at present Labour has no political power to their position, Jeremy Corbyn and his stupidity destroyed the Labour party, so he decided to openly support (read: hide behind) the remain groups. It is a valid strategy, yet the truth is also that more and more people are aware just how dangerous remaining has become and the British people have one full faith, they have full faith in Britannia and in that setting there is no EU, large corporations never understood that, it is not Wall Street, so they cannot comprehend.

So there we see it all and this all started with that one sentence: ‘Germany and others need to spend more‘ and when we see the debts rising and rising more and more people realise the one urging thought ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?‘

The smallest level of consideration would have been given if the second stimulus has shown levels of victory, it did not and now we have and a €3 trillion debt and no restored economy. The truth does not come from economy, it was Albert Einstein who gave us: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results every time“, it is the realisation of that truth that is now sinking in and spending more and more helps corporations, it helps banks, it does not help people, and that truth comes clear when it all collapses and all the pensions stop existing. That will be the next step and still the ECB will remain in denial, this entire matter is staged around organisations and gravy trains that have no bearing on our economic benefit or our economic long term stability. It serves them and the members of their teams, and more people are figuring that out.

As we are brought more and more revelations on how there will be a new recession, we see others come with news, fake news, bad presentations and so on. The Guardian in 2018 gave us: ‘We are due a recession in 2020 – and we will lack the tools to fight it‘, the recession is still coming, the tools are not there and more debt is coming in at the same time. This was always a formula for bad tidings. More important, it will hit Europe and the US both to a larger degree. It will not be a 2008 event, but it will be bad and as I see it, as Germany has the best economic position as their debt is merely 60% of GDP, they have the best chances to get through it all. The UK follows after that, yet they too will be hit and now we get the kicker, if Brexit has been completed, the drag, the huge drag that the UK would get because it had to tend to the 27 member states will no longer be there, so they can rise faster and sooner. That lesson, when we see that in reality will be the trigger for Germany, France and Italy to get out as fast as possible. It will end the EU, it will make a lot if issues messy yet it is only after that that a global economy can be grown in proper ways.

This was not a mystery, this was not a consideration and it was not a devil plan. It was merely that application of nature. Consider that any economy has high tides and low tides that is how it was, like the seas they have an influencer. For the sea the larger influence is the moon. There is nothing we can do anything about it, yet these tides are also regular, so for a larger part they are predictable. Now consider that tides fall away, on a planet with 24 time zones, we decided to place 4 of them in one group. Then we decided to nullify the tide (which was unnatural) and now we are all screaming that recession is our bane, it never was, economic cycles are as normal as the tides and we all face high and low, it is not something that corporations like and they designed a way around it. They failed, nature always finds a way and that is where they are now. They want to stall as much as they can and they are willing to sell 500 million people in the EU down the drain to keep their profits, and now as we all realise that these times have come and gone, and as we realise that debt helps them, it does not help us, people wake up and decide to find a way to end their struggle. It will be a long fight, but at present we could win it and end the EU cycle called corporatocracy, the nations, their monarchies and republics get to win. There will be a mess, it will not be pretty but it will get better.

So what one sentence woke you up today?

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