Category Archives: Law

September 18, 2023 · 00:14

A dark journey

This journey isn’t for every one. I have hd the same setting earlier and the same conclusion as well, but I was never outspoken about it. I got there via two articles. 

Overdose
The first article is given to us by BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-66810832) where we see ‘UAE seizes billion dollar amphetamine haul’ there we are given “A portion of the 86 million Captagon pills police in Dubai say was seized”. You see, there is literally no reason to be this stupid. This amounts to 10 tablets to EVERY citizen in the UAE. The UAE has a remarkably well organised detection team as well as a well organised cyber investigation team. This was never going to go right. And lets be clear, the idea to set a market to serve 100% of a population is just insane. And I am not the only one thinking this. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are thinking pretty much the same thing (my speculation). This is either a distraction or it is about destabilisation. How? Your guess is as good as mine, but I see o other setting than these two. Perhaps they whistle this load whilst 100Kg (or more) gets safely transported via other places. Now, that would make sense. The materials cooked are not the issue. If you can make that much, you can make 100Kg more. But was it really about the drugs or the distraction. Perhaps it was about finding the right people to assist them in this endeavour. As I said, your guess is as good as mine.

The second article is also from the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66826895) with ‘How the fentanyl crisis’ fourth wave has hit every corner of the US’ there we are given “the US witnessed a grim milestone: for the first time ever, drug overdoses killed more than 100,000 people across the country in one single year. Of those deaths, more than 66% were tied to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.” It seems that the war on drugs is not working. I see only one solution. After the arrest, just put drug dealers to death, no long trial, no long Rebuttal. As their stuff kills millions, they too should die. And after Breaking Bad, drug dealers have been romanticised. No matter how this plays out, we need to change the game. All this lame war on drugs is as useless as anything we see. Its like throwing your 17 year old daughter naked in a room full of horny sex depraved men thinking she will still be a virgin in 300 seconds time. It is time to change the game with deadly precision. The talkative weak minded liberal politicians have had decades and nothing was achieved. 

Consider 2000, the movie Traffic is released. We see several sides of the drug market and that market had been growing for decades, now a quarter of a century later, it drains healthcare, it drains prison space and it drains the patience of the parents of the victims of drug trafficking. 

Patients and funds are gone. Now, why didn’t I speak up earlier? I did, but not to this degree. You see when nations are attacked and the intent is destabilisation of a government it becomes a very different problem. You see it might start in the US, but the greed driven are never satisfied. The EU is next and after that who knows? With the UAE it becomes a different game, but when you see a board and you do not know whether the data refers to Chess, Checkers or Go it is a hard issue. The hard issue is whether the data supports the view, whether the game presented reflects the real issue or whether it is merely a smokescreen telling us it is one of those three. This matters because in an age where we cannot afford these leaps, we need to make sure that any false leaps are stopped and fast, which is why I am on this dark journey.

Is there another option? 
It is a fair question, but the death graphs from the US implies that it is already to late for that. Before this is stopped hundreds of thousands will die. Now, we have plenty of people (8 billion), so this could go on for a little while longer and if it does the US will be without healthcare funds. This will not take long, I reckon that it collapses within 5 years. So what will we do after that? What will the US do, what will Europe do? Your guess is as good as mine. I reckon that the UAE and other Arabic nations will see that the US is on track to lose it all, and after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia locked down on drug offences and last year performed at least 20 executions for drug offences, the UAE might follow that course. When the deaths and the cost of healthcare starts adding up, it might not have another option open to them. The fact that they captured 13 tonnes of amphetamine pills smuggled in furniture is one side, the other side is that there is no prediction on what got through via other means. It is speculation on my side, but when you consider the data, I am very likely to be right on this (a little less on the reason on why it is done).

Enjoy the day, Monday is almost here.

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September 8, 2023 · 09:28

Has the world gone mad?

Yup, this was my very first thought, it was not a nice thought (I’ll admit to that) and it was given to me by Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/6/us-eu-uk-officials-visit-uae-to-discuss-russia-sanctions-cnn-report) where we are given ‘Western officials visit UAE in efforts to halt exports to Russia: Report’ the byline of “The Wall Street Journal initially reported plans to jointly press the UAE to halt shipments of goods to Russia” does not help much. In all honesty, who the fuck do they think they are? You see, we were only given a week ago ‘Beer giant Heineken sells its business in Russia for one euro’ (at https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/beer-giant-heineken-sells-its-business-in-russia-for-one-euro/news-story/1f6e65254890bfbd6d1757d70deb351c). In part I think that it is nice that it happens after well over a year when things should have stopped, but let things flow (especially beer). You see, the largest problem is that places like Align Technology (USA), Cloudflare (USA), BT Technologies (UK), Fenzi group (Italy) and a whole range more are according to sources still operating in Russia. Yale is giving us a list (at https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-1000-companies-have-curtailed-operations-russia-some-remain) where we find ‘Over 1,000 Companies Have Curtailed Operations in Russia—But Some Remain’ after 560 days of war. I admit that the list is from 2022, yet there Heineken wasn’t even on the list. So I would kindly like to request that the representatives from the United States, British and European Union who are visiting the United Arab Emirates amid concerns regarding shipments of goods, including computer chips, to Russia that could help Moscow in its war on Ukraine would kindly ‘Shut the fuck up’ and clean their houses first. This group of snivelling little clowns do not get to tell anyone anything until their citizens and corporations seized all operations. I think that same message could be given to anyone visiting any Middle Eastern nation with a similar request. I do not disagree with the sentiment, but to do that whilst your places are still operating in Russia is just too hypocritical for any consideration. And even after that, there is still China to consider, they will never consider that request beyond certain levels and as such, why is this request coming to the UAE? Are the American parties making money of puppets in the UAE to keep their hands clean? I cannot say that this is happening, but there are plenty of ways for zero tax nations to make a bundle being the front person of a large deliverer. Oh, and by the way in 2021 on September 20th, Jesse Benton and Doug Wead pleaded not guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to charges of making a straw donation to the Trump campaign in 2016 on behalf of a Russian national. So is that case going? I am just asking, because On February 17, 2023, Jesse Benton was sentenced to 18 months in prison, the other one died in time to avoid conviction. With the US in shambles and the US setting up all kinds of foundations of avoidance by US Republicans into stopping assistance to the Ukraine, I think that envoy should take a breather and stop being silly. Some of that ‘anti-assistance is less than a month old’, as such I wonder who on earth would be this stupid. So when we are given “The senior Western officials arrived in the Gulf nation this week to discuss sanctions on Russia, as concerns mounted that Moscow was bypassing them through various means, a US embassy spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.” All whilst the US, UK and EU are still very much invested in Russia is just too crazy for words. 

I am not stating that you should believe me, I added the sources that were available to me and that list, I made mention of it earlier this year (might have been in 2022), so when I saw this article in Al Jazeera I wondered why the other media are shunning investigating businesses with vested interests in Russia, there are apparently well over 1000. So why is the UAE such an issue? I honestly do not know, but the idea that there are western politicians with a ‘look there’ all whilst they are filling their pockets (the Trump Case) is just too silly for words and these representatives should take a hard look at what they are not doing at home. Just a thought to entertain.

Enjoy the upcoming weekend that is for most a mere day away.

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August 30, 2023 · 23:53

A king sued tomorrow for issues today

Yup this happens, Kings, Emperors and admirals, they all get sued. In this case it is King Burger, or as you would know this force of nature namely Burger King. The story (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66654440) gives us ‘Burger King faces legal claim over size of Whopper’ a story a mere 9 hours old and that matters in this case. You see, in September 2015 (yes, almost eight years ago). I wrote ‘Ronald McDonald died!’, the story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/09/05/ronald-mcdonald-died/) gives a similar setting.

I even added graphics with my finger as a reference. So this stuff is not new. To be honest, I never had size issues with Burger King, I did have one with the McDonald clan of fast foods. With added references on profit margins for an extra slice of bacon which is set well over 400%. Here in today’s story we get “The lawsuit accuses the fast food giant of misleading customers by showing the burger with a meatier patty and ingredients that “overflow over the bun”. “The plaintiffs’ claims are false,” Burger King told the BBC.” A setting for the courts to decide, yet when was the McDonalds case? And when we consider that this has been going on for almost 8 years, at what point did certain parties consider taking a long hard look at the fast food industry? Because I give you now that this is not merely a ‘Burger King’ setting. As such the supporting line “Rivals McDonald’s and Wendy’s are facing a similar lawsuit in the US” comes a bit late, well over half a decade late. We are also given “The class action lawsuit against Burger King alleged that the Whopper was made to look 35% larger, with more than double the amount of meat compared to what was actually served to customers.” To this I am not saying that this is not the case, I am wondering how many graphics they have to support this. I am asking because one image does not give you the sunshine of summer, so this case has all kinds of issues and this is not pro-BK (even though I love their stuff), and they are not alone as my 2015 story shows, but the larger setting is that the stage of ‘deceptive conduct’ has been out in the open for a long time, so how many cases made it to any court (in any nation) and how many cases were settled? All what I consider to be good questions. Yet in all this one setting is “US District Judge Roy Altman said it should be left to jurors to “tell us what reasonable people think”. However, he dismissed claims that Burger King misled customers with its television and online advertisements.” To be honest, I am not certain where I stand there. You see, there is a side we aren’t looking at. How EXACTLY are the advertisements made? How insulated is that marketing team? What is the foundation that drives the claim of ‘deceptive conduct’? These are elements that are connected and not just to Burger King. McDonalds is in a similar boat. I go for similar, because if the stage gets differences in adjustments, they could not be in the same boat. Other cogs are connected to the stage we see here. They are optionally all ‘deceptive conduct’ but if different approaches were made, different claims are open to interpretation and that is a much harder stage to settle. So are all advertisements done by the American HQ of BK? How would that impact Canada, Australia and Europe? If BK paid each continent to do their advertisements, the stage alters. We can accept the defence of “Burger King had earlier argued that it was not required to deliver burgers that look “exactly like the picture”” and we accept that, but the fast food industry is based on machines for replication, as such my question becomes ‘Why not?’ And that question applies to both BK and the big M in the same way. There are more questions and I am a little surprised that the BBC did not cover them, but they have no fault. Reporting on a case tends to have its own limitations and I get that. What does surprise me that it took so long to see a setting after I reported it in 2015, and it is surprising because I do not go to these places that often. In addition there is no way that I am the only one who had this issue, so have we numbed from certain exposure? 

I will let you consider that part. Enjoy the day, we are almost past the 50% point of the week, so make today count as it is the final uphill battle for the next weekend.

Ciao!

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August 17, 2023 · 17:15

Strike Two

This started earlier. It started weeks ago and I was aware, I took notice. Yet, that was about it. I mean no disrespect. I do not live in the US, I am not California and as such I am merely partially aware. I see what most outside of the US see. We see the strike, but yesterday I saw an opinion piece in the LA Times and that woke me up a little more and would you believe it, this morning I got more awake. There was an advertisement on YouTube, it was the Pilot of Lioness and it was one hell of an ad. It was 50 minutes, it was the pilot. Yup Paramount Plus took their balls and hung them up the wall. OK, this is a first that I watch a 50 minute advertisement. Yet, it was not about the ad, not about Lioness but it gave me focus, so lets begin.

The LA Times Story (at https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-08-15/netflix-antitrust-anticompetitive-labor) gives us ‘Hollywood strikes prove Netflix and other streamers have grown too powerful. Time to break them up’ here we are given “Many have called the stalemate an existential crisis because it concerns new issues such as residuals from streaming services and rules for the use of artificial intelligence. These go beyond the usual labor issues such as wages and benefits and cut to the heart of an industry in which streamers such as Netflix can dominate all aspects of the business.” It is one side that I had not seen before. ‘Entertainment’ has become an end-to-end business over ALL verticals. I had not considered that merely because I am not part of this industry, I never was. Yet here we are given “Antitrust laws need to be invoked — as they were in the 1940s in U.S. vs. Paramount — to break up streaming services that both produce content and distribute it. This vertical integration has deeply changed the longstanding entertainment industry ecosystem, which allowed employees to survive and studios to prosper.” Which gets us to “In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled against the studios, requiring them to divest themselves of their movie theatres if they wanted to continue in the production business. Shortly thereafter, theatrical films began to be aired on television with no additional compensation for creative talent. This led to the strike by both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild in 1960, the last time the two struck simultaneously.”

With finally “If Netflix and its streaming peers like Apple+, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Max can maintain their vertical control, it will be next to impossible to settle the Hollywood strikes in ways that could preserve the ability of creators and technicians to earn a decent living and protect creative diversity. The old vertical studio system was broken up by the Justice Department. It may be time to do the same with these 21st century behemoths.” And that was the wake up call I needed. The Paramount ‘advertisement’ was apt and consider that Lioness is new stellar series. Kidman, Saldana and several others are making a bundle. They earned it, their work is first rate, as is the director and the director of photography. They all did a stellar job, but it would not have been possible without the writer, without the writer there would be no script, nothing for the director to work from. So how much is he making? 

We see the accusations that the top person, which in the case of Disney is Bob Iger, in 2022 he made well over $14,000,000. This amounts to well over a million a month. Now lets take a look at the image below.

So a series that streamed over 3,000,000,000 minutes, making it one of the most profitable and most successful series even, the writers were collectively paid $3,000. Please explain to me in what universe 3 billion streamed minutes gives us a combined pay check of $3,000? You see those three billion minutes amount to 138,121.5 years. Does it make sense now? The writers are beyond underpaid. They are the legal slaves of America and they deserve their right coin. But American history is seeded with injustice and exploitation and to be honest until the LA Times piece I did not see it, so who else was unaware? We are given snapshots, yet until you see the entire vertical of exploitation it makes little sense and now with that streaming vertical exposed you can see just how unfair it is and one series, the series suits, showed us just how much the writers are fed up with being ignored what should be rightfully theirs.

Enjoy the day.

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August 13, 2023 · 20:56

Discrimination Legislation of America

This is not new and I have talked about it before (some time ago). This all started with a Tweet, not the most academic source, but it gave me somewhere to start.

Then I went out and looked for something more reliable and Forbes handed me (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) a story from April. 

The setting given is ‘Biden’s War On Billionaires’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) it is there we see “All American earners are subject to federal income taxes, but not everyone is subject to the same tax rate. While middle-class Americans pay, on average, roughly 14% in federal taxes annually, the wealthiest American families frequently use loopholes to avoid paying these tax rates.” This is one point of you and it is not an invalid one. Yet, in black letter law the US has tax laws. The law is what nations rely on and I agree it is not a fair one, but guess what. This is the fault of the US Congress and the US Senate. I have been talking about fair taxation for over 10 years. But the law is the law and there is an additional setting, the reason why people focus on Jeff Bezos, this is merely a first step. You see, that 20% will do nothing, America is in too deep, it is a sinking ship and the only thing these political people want to do is step out, so they can say not was not on their watch. It is too late for that. You see when that first law is passed, they might get a chunk of Bezos, but they will also get a chunk of Marc Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison and that list goes on. My issue is that this is discrimination, Ageism (age discrimination), economic discrimination is also discrimination. So they are going after the real innovators, real inventors and what America wants is not their money, it is their IP, or at least part of it and co-controlling it. You really want all these systems to be co-owned by the USA? Whatever freedom you thought you had would be gone. The US has been playing stupid since the Clinton Administration, it was the last time that the US had green numbers, since then the allotted a debt surpassing $31,000,000,000,000 dollars. The US is broke and they are now in it to delay for whatever time they can. The USA has become a sinking ship, they are patching holes by cutting pieces out of the same leaking hull, it never ends well. I have pleaded for tax law overhauls for well over a decade. I noticed the slippery slope close to 25 years ago and it impacts the EU and Japan as well. China is growing, China is becoming the next power player in its lonesome position. BRICS is becoming an inner circle with China in the lead position, the moment it sheds Russia, their geese will be count as well. BRICS went from the elite of 5, to a group with 40 nations interested, the lead of the US is gone. No one follows the broke person who can no longer feed itself and with the the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates added to the BRICS group the US has very little left, so now they are setting the stage to go after the billionaires and whatever more they can get. Yet in all this the numbers of what Apple (Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft too) paid in taxation. That would have ben the fair setting, but no one is really digging into this, are they? Fair taxation starts with the corporations that was the first step and that has been overdue for decades, the loopholes had to be dealt with and that never was, that is the real story. Jeff Bezos et al used the legal options like tax lawyers to avoid paying more taxation than was required. Tax avoidance means “the use of legal methods to minimise the amount of income tax owed by an individual or a business”, which is perfectly legal, tax evasion is not legally stated and a crime. This is the stage that brings in the players like PwC, they are one of the leading experts in tax avoidance, this is why a tax overhaul had been essential for about 25 years and now it is too late. The us has its opponents knocking on their gates (BRICS and their members). So we get another populist call for taxing the rich, but it is the tax system and IRS who needed to clean their houses, they never did. I am no friend of Jeff Bezos, I do not think I ever was but that man took an online bookshop and turned it into something huge, then he went against the biggest tech company of all and created an equal if not a better version with his Amazon Luna (against the Google Stadia) which made Google leave the field (leaving billions on the floor), it almost destroyed Microsoft with its Azure through Amazon AWS. Two clear wins by (an online) bookshop. That is what Jeff Bezos did. You have to respect that and the others made their own innovative futures. Now the US wants to go after these innovator? So what happens to the US when these places resettle in BRICS territory? Good luck with that idea. So consider the Discrimination Legislation of America, the DLA, which by pure coincidence (LOL) also means Disability Living Allowance. The pay setting that most Americans are about to get towards to. Consider that the DLA ranges from around $1,000 – $5,000 depending on the member’s pay grade and dependency status. You can normally only receive DLA once each fiscal year. So a maximum of $5000 a year to make ends meet. Where in America can you live of that? I am not certain there is any place that will make America liveable and when the larger corporations leave that will be close to all that is left, until the money is gone. That is the future and I tried to warn you all, not to bite the hand that was feeding the US (Saudi Arabia) and when the tech players leave billions on the floor, why is that? I will let you decide.

Weekend is entering the last hours of the day, it is at the end of Sunday in the East (New Zealand) and at its start in Western Canada, enjoy.

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August 12, 2023 · 05:36

Tapping an economy

This happens, some other (or new) player sets the stage where they can become a major player. This is a rare case but it can happen and now I seem to be witness to one that could end up being a much larger stage than I ever expected. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66310714) gives us ‘Why it matters where your data is stored’. The article is all about the cloud, yet this article gave me parts that brought out questions that allowed the consideration that the new player could in a short time frame become a major player. Yet to see this, we need to look at the parts.

Part 1
The first question is coming from ““The American authorities have the right to go in and see any data that is stored in an American cloud, even if the data centre is in Europe,” Mr Åström says.” That was a selling point for American firms and with the IP in data centres the Europeans will become concerned. The American credit score is dwindling down as such they will become more and more concerned with THEIR value, a view Europeans will not share, or will be willing to chance sacrificing asI see it.

Part 2
Then we get to “it’s big enough to rival the major US cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google. They have a 65% share of the world cloud market between them, according to Synergy Research Group”, here I miss the IBM and Apple clouds. Apple is a different issue, they have a niche market and they are optionally decently safe from what is coming. IBM is different, they have been on the corporate data shoe forever, so why is IBM avoided? The numbers give me “IBM Hybrid Cloud has market share of 1.88% in infrastructure-as-a-service market. IBM Hybrid Cloud competes with 71 competitor tools in infrastructure-as-a-service category.” Perhaps they are ‘too small’, time will tell but that doesn’t matter. With this setting Evroc has the momentum to become a major player, perhaps slightly below AWS, but to go from a wannabe to a player next to AWS, possibly surpassing Microsoft is not done lightly and as far as I could tell has never been done before. But that is not the worst of it (for Amazon and Microsoft). You see the EU is larger in population, as such more services are needed there, but this could flow over into Canada (as it is a Commonwealth nation) then the larger concern (for Amazon et al) will be the Middle East. I reckon that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE might want to be separated more strongly from American firms. If I were China, I would be pushing that button too. As such Evroc as localisation bubbles could grow even further. 

Part 3
“Evroc has secured €15m in seed funding and plans to build eight data centres in Europe in the next five years. The first will be a large pilot data centre in Sweden next year.” As I see it, should they decide to add two more clouds (KSA and UAE) they could tap into a few massive organisations and that should make the US a lot more bothered than they ever considered. I had issues with ‘data sharing’ in the late 90’s but I was laughed at, I was overly BS howled at. Well, it seems that I was right all along and now that the US needs its corporations to do well, Evroc comes in and takes away even more. I never saw this coming, yet as I see it Mattias Åström played his cards well and at the right moment. There is no telling how far this goes, yet the idea that (based on the numbers) “Microsoft increased its share from 23%, up from 21% the prior quarter, while Amazon fell from 34% to 33% and Google remained steady at 11%.” Evroc could grow by taking 20% of the others, we get 18% Microsoft, 26% Amazon and 8% Google, Evroc could grow by 12% (optionally towards 20%+) almost overnight (if a night lasts 7 years) That puts them ahead of Google and Microsoft making them a new major player. That is beside the damage they could do in the Middle East. With Aramco, SAMA, Al Rajhi banking, SABIC, STC, MA’ADEN, International Holding Company (IHC), ADNOC, Emaar Properties and a few more more. You might think this is all fun and games, but it is about to get worse.

Part 4
This part was not in the article and that is not on the BBC. You see I have looked in this direction before. In 2020 I wrote ‘Institutionalised Positioning’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/02/institutionalised-positioning/) where we see ‘Microsoft Security Shocker As 250 Million Customer Records Exposed Online’ (source: Forbes), and add to that the recent forged key issue, an issue that the NSA warned them for 3 years ago, we see a much larger stage. A stage where Microsoft is bleeding faith, the faith the customers had in them is dwindling down, as such Evroc could take away a much larger part of that blue joke. As such Microsoft could face a much larger loss. It would be nice to state that Amazon loses less, but certain other parts might not make that realistic. The only player optionally not losing any is Apple. Their largest base are iPhone users with subscriptions. 

These 4 parts show that Evroc is the new player to watch. If that is the case they will need staff all over the world. Even I would like to work for a new player and that is the second danger that they (mostly Microsoft) faces. If Amazon and Microsoft only lose 5% of their cloud workforce they both face shortages all over, and this is in a place where you need all hands on deck. This last part is hugely speculative, but with 8 new centres coming and optionally 2-5 more in the middle east Evroc is set to grow beyond the assessments of analysts. As such Mattias Åström and its new Evroc could be a force to be reckoned with and as such bring massive cash coffers into the EU and towards the Middle East as well and all that revenue goes out of the US and that is a loss the US was not ready for.

Enjoy the weekend 

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August 11, 2023 · 08:43

Dee Jay Eye

Yup that is the saying. It is written DJI and would you believe it, it means Dopey Justice Investigations. Of course in this case we have to go to that place that Europeans regard as the land west of the Atlantic River, the Asians and Australians see it as land east of the Pacific river and we all agree that it is south of Canada. It is known as the USA. The BBC gave me 22 hours ago ‘Boy, 6, boasted about shooting Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66451768), it is there we see “The boy’s mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child. In June, she was also charged with unlawfully using a controlled substance while in possession of a firearm and making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm.” This all sounds nice, but when you consider that in January I wrote in ‘Little Shits’ (at https://wp.me/p1RftY-2mn) “So far NO report shows that the parents were arrested, or interrogated over the case. If that is the stage, the US has earned the right to see many more shootings in schools until they fix this mess”, as well as “So what part do the parents play? Well, as I see it the mindset tends to come from parents, not peer pressure, not at that age. But no one is looking at the parents, why not?”, as such I got to this setting MONTHS before the American authorities got there and the evidence is clear, the media had nothing. And you wonder why nothing gets to be resolved during mass shootings? Well here you have the evidence. As such as we are given “His teacher, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner – who survived – filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.” I personally believe that Abigail should have (at least) doubled her claim, with incompetence seen to this degree there is a fair case that her life was trivialised to a much larger extent. I get that the boy was not charged, the rule of Doli Incapax is pretty much all over the common law nations and this means that you cannot be seen as responsible as a 6 year old. I mentioned that in the first article on this event, but how the kid got the firearm as well as the parents (I did not know the household setting there) were not. And now 7 months and three days later we see this play out as being the correct path. Yes, we saw the reference to June, but the media was not all over that, were they? So when we now see “While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted “I did it”, adding “I got my mom’s gun last night”.” Consider looking back to the media covering in those days, none of them mentions that small part, did they? Why not? Especially the small part of “the boy is said to have admitted”, why was that omitted from the media coverage? The fact that he got his mom’s gun last night is a pretty clear indication to arrest the mother at that moment. The unsafe handling of a firearm leaving it open for a child to get is pretty indicative of the blunders made in this case. To Abigail Zwerner, the 25 year old teacher I say “I hope you get well over 300% of what you ask for”, the media, the authorities and the school all trivialised your life for what? Political points? Business points? There should be a price for that and after that, use that money to retire to a nice happy safe place and enjoy your early retirement, you definitely earned it.

I think that it is time for the dopey justice system of America to wake up and see the mess you are at present making, I have said well over a year ago that upgrading the ATF and giving it actual teeth would be essential in cleaning this mess up and again I am proven correct. 

As I see it, there is no fault at present to its director Steven Michael Dettelbach, but I do believe that he has his work cut out for him and I reckon that keeping scores of whoever block essential needs for the ATF will be required soon enough. You see, 1.5 billion does not go far, not when you have 5,285 people trying to sort the gun mess out. Some might see the mention of “The ATF has received criticism over the Ruby Ridge controversy, the Waco siege controversy and others.” Yet no one is mentioning a story from 2022 “Missing weapons, false records: Franklin Gun Shop owners plead guilty to federal charges”, the Tennessean gave us that one (at https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2022/11/23/franklin-gun-shop-owners-plead-guilty-over-missing-weapons-false-records/69671186007/) there is a larger stage that gun shops are falling short, and it could have been prevented years ago by giving the ATF teeth and a real budget. There is also a larger stage of automated systems to see where the history of guns are at and I am referring to the NBC article (at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2-weeks-perform-routine-gun-trace-rcna39606) where we see ‘‘It’s just insanity’: ATF now needs 2 weeks to perform a routine gun trace’ with the by-line “Boxes of paper records fill nearly every corridor of the ATF’s National Tracing Center, where agents are struggling to keep up with surging requests from local police.” Red tape might be stated to be the source, but I see this as the failing of a justice system. We might take notice of “A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4011 mass shootings in the US”, with over 4000 mass shootings in almost 10 years we come to the generic 400 mass shootings a year and you don’t think that the ATF needs an upgrade in IT systems and other materials? Don’t make me laugh, this is beyond dopey and you better realise it. For the American parents it is easy. 400 mass shootings a year comes down to almost 8 a week. So how long will you roll the dice until it is YOUR child you get to bury? It is simple (yet somewhat deceptive) statistics, but feel free to blame the people who are almost certain no part in that play and ignore those who could make a difference because that would be the US Senate and US congress. Did you think that ‘Red tape’ or the ATF was to blame. Someone pushed for that ‘Red tape’ and it is time to wake up and see what causes your children to die. I can assure you it is not the maker of the gun, it is the lawmakers that enable to hobble the ATF. And that gives us the Senate and Congress. And when exactly did either call out to enforce the ATF with the equipment and budget to give the Americans a safer place to live? I am willing to wager you cannot really find that part of the equation. Why not?

Weekend is soon upon us, so enjoy the day and go shopping for a bulletproof vest for your child, you might need one soon.

 

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August 9, 2023 · 21:14

Late to the party

Yes, that was me. In this case I got late to the party. This is about an article by Stephanie Kirchgaessner where (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/18/snapchat-saudi-arabia-ties) which is almost a month old where we see ‘Saudis accused of using Snapchat to promote crown prince and silence critics’. I have had my issues with her. This is massively anti Saudi, she is what I regard to be a tool for any anti-Saudi activity. Yet, I need to keep a clear mind and let me take you through what I found.

Metrics
1. the Saudi culture ministry, has more than 20 million users in the kingdom – including an estimated 90% of 13-to-34-year-olds.
2. One senior Snap Inc executive recently called it an “extension of the [kingdom’s] social fabric”. One of the company’s largest single investors is Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who in 2018 invested $250m in the company.
These are the metrics, there are more numbers in the article to ‘spice up’ the article. 

Accusations
The accusations include the following.
1. Saudi Arabia appears to be exploiting the US messaging app Snapchat to promote the image of its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, while also imposing draconian sentences on influencers who use the platform to post even mild criticism of the future king.

So, it is ‘appears’? What evidence is supporting the ‘appears’? 

Then we get to ‘imposing draconian sentences’ on what people, what are the metrics, what are the numbers and names of those who received these draconian sentences? 

Then we get more emotions with “Close watchers of Saudi-based verified accounts say the platform is used by many influencers to promote Bin Salman’s image, with influencers widely and uniformly sharing any new photographs of the prince or other video content that promotes him.” We see more things like ‘many’, we are not given something like “Well over a hundred influencers”, we merely get many. 

Then we are given “People who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity to protect contacts in the kingdom say that posts (or “Snaps”) are closely monitored by Saudi security services. In one case, influencers who are not political were questioned by security services for not posting enough fawning Snaps about the crown prince, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.” So not only is the Guardian ‘hiding’ behind anonymity, we get ‘people’ again, no numbers, not ‘a group of witnesses’, merely people. Then we get the question on what evidence there is that Saudi security was monitoring? None was given as far as I can tell. Is evidence not essential here? It is followed by ‘in one case’ so is this the only case? And is that one case the same person as ‘according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter’? All questions and an utter lack of clarity. Is this what the Guardian adds up to? 

My setting is not that I am stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, but if they are guilty, it better comes with ACTUAL evidence. Then we also get to see “One Saudi Snapchat influencer, Mansour Al-Raqiba, who has more than 2 million followers, was arrested in May 2022 in connection to social media posts in which he acknowledged having been blackmailed by an individual who claimed they had heard him criticising Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic plan. A person familiar with the case said Raqiba had been sentenced to 27 years in jail.” So, if he has been sentenced, there is a court case? Where was this case set? This quote links to another article by the same writer from June 2023, all emotions and a total lack of what I regard to be evidence. Can someone muzzle this chihuahua? You see, there is nothing, not even in Arab News or Al-Jazeera on Mansour Al-Raqiba. I am not debating his existence, or his activities. I found one other article in the Telegraph giving us ‘Saudi star escapes jail time in London following accusations of animal cruelty’, the article is behind a paywall, so that is all I have. You would think that if a person had that many follower, the papers would be filled with his exploits and his snapchat activities. There is a total lack of this. 

There is a lot more, but I will let you discover them. I believe that the Guardian is losing its grip on reality. I have had my issues with Stephanie Kirchgaessner in the past. It seems to me that if she has nothing, she merely bashes Saudi Arabia. You see, if this is not the case the evidence would be a lot better. You can make a case towards any security (in this case Saudi), but with places like snapchat there should be a mountain of evidence. In that regard the flimsy approach to the University of Toronto Citizen Lab would have a lot more. We are merely given “Petroleum-enriched Gulf oligarchs have a disturbing track record of punishing social media users, and employing multidimensional digital influence operations to silence critics and undertake transnational repression”, so what EXACTLY is ‘multidimensional digital influence operations’? The lack of specifics and precise explanations make me wonder if any of it is real. And that is not on me, that is on the flimsy and shady writing by Stephanie Kirchgaessner. 

Then we get to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and royal. He is also the founder and CEO of the Kingdom Holding Company. I have been looking into that for other reasons. In the article he is mentioned once, regarding the investment. So what is he here? Window dressing? 

Then we get to Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri. We get “Snapchat’s popularity makes it an ideal tool for a repressive regime that exploits Snapchat in the dissemination of state propaganda, character assassination of detractors, and surveillance of activists and influencers”. What we do not get is that he is living in exile in Canada. We are also not given that he walked out toward exile with more millions than the sum of all US generals have (Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri is a former general from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), we are also not given what the Middle East Eye gives us (at https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-saudi-arabia-former-spy-chief-crown-prince-case-thrown) where we are given ‘US judge throws out former spy chief’s case against crown prince’ which was given to us in October 2022. Where we see “Jabri’s lawyers argued that, given the close ties Jabri had developed with the US intelligence community, the crown prince “purposefully targeted” the United States because his alleged attempt to kill the former spy chief was meant to disrupt US-Saudi intelligence sharing.” So why is this case, a case of someone living in exile in Canada being heard in the US courts? Why was this not given to the Canadian courts? Too many questions on an article that has too many flimsy sides and if I can see that in minutes, why did the chief editor of the Guardian (Katharine Viner) not see this? And the questions just keep on coming. Was there ever a serious case against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? I am not stating this is not the case, I am stating that the article gives us serious doubts that there is a serious case against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

In case you doubt me (which is always fair enough), read up and make your own mind up. It is there for a reason, not to follow, but to grow and learn.

On the upside, I came up with another game , another piece of IP that could be freeware for developers for the Amazon Luna and Tencent handheld only. It is a streaming game (the only way this would work I reckon) and as such I am planning to post this tomorrow. Yup, after the mid-week running up to weekend.

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August 7, 2023 · 23:42

Is it new, or merely more?

This all started a day ago when a tweet passed me by. 

This seems nothing new, I have heard issues like this and I have listened to them. Yet something about this nagged me and I had another look. The link gave me some of the bits (at https://www.law.com/2023/08/02/real-time-litigation-salesforce-hit-with-whistleblower-retaliation-suit-as-former-vp-accuses-it-of-lying-about-genies-capabilities) yet I started to look further. I found a few articles regarding sex trafficking, and I might look into that part, but when I started to dig into “Salesforce Genie court” only two links appeared. This one and a French one and now I have a few questions. The first few are how is the media ignoring this? How come there is only one story? The rest I will leave for later. 

So I went into the article and the start is a good beginning, which is “Salesforce was hit with a lawsuit by its former vice president of product management over whistleblower retaliation allegations after he raised concerns regarding the company’s alleged plan to falsely inform the public that its customer data platform “Genie” operates in real time.” Now first there is an issue (there always is). Salespeople tend to emboss issues (possibly to hide certain short comings). And that text is reinforced with “Publicly claiming that the CDP operated in “real time” could be violations of several federal laws relating to fraud against shareholders, as well as some rules and regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the plaintiff believed.” Now the issue I have is that the claims do not show to have a recording of these events. This is important because if the salesperson (or presenter) stated “almost like real-time” it becomes subjective and a personal interpretation. Just like some salespeople make claims with “my personal view” because in other cases they tend to show things. I know very little about genie, but certain parts of missing evidence leaves me with questions. In addition to that the end of the article states “NOT FOR REPRINT” which I regard to be another media mess. These two elements give me pause to just accept some story and made me look deeper. Yet over the past month we have 2 articles? The fact that Salesforce gets a court mention at all is pretty rare, so I would have expected the media to be all over this. With its HQ in San Francisco and the primary owner being Marc Benioff. I would have expected the LA Times, the SF Chronicle and a few others (USA Today, Wall Street Journal) to pick something like this up, they did not. It leaves me puzzled. I found a lot more on Karl Wirth, but not regarding this case. So what is up?

It is a genuine question because I need to accept that some cases are optionally flimsy, even though the article gives me “A July 28 complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by Hartley Michon Robb Hannon on behalf of Karl Wirth” and this links to a complaint which I will add at the end. The complain has a lot more, but this is merely a legal brief, as such it is tainted towards one side and I wonder what the other side will do. 

Still, it is cool in a way, because players like Salesforce tend to have a clean look, as such another view tends to be nice and of course there was the option to dig into a player I know little of, so I had a bit of a blank slate. No matter how you slice it, the fact that a company is worth over $205,000,000,000 and no one is looking at a court case is reason for consideration, which is pretty much the number one reason why I decided to take a look.

Enjoy the week. 

salesforce_complaintDownload

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August 5, 2023 · 06:49

When is a ball not dropped?

That was the first question that came to mind, the answer is simple ‘when it is not a ball’. This might confuse you, but read me out. It will make sense soon enough. I took notice of the next episode of the Tate event (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66405285), you see in the story with the headline ‘Andrew Tate’s Romania house arrest lifted’ one thing stood out, it was “The indictment says they and two female Romanian associates formed an organised criminal group in 2021 to commit human trafficking in Romania, but also in other countries including the US and the UK.” Can you see what stands out? It is “including the US and the UK”, so in over 6 months, the BBC gives us nothing on the UK side? Even if it is a ‘no comment’ setting, the BBC kept us all in the dark, all whilst accusing the Tate’s between the lines. So where are these American accusations, where are the lines of the FBI giving us ‘no comment’? This all does not add up and gives me more in regards to the speculation I had in an earlier article speculating that this was a move by organised crime and certain so called captains of industry to take away the business that the Tate’s have and claim it for their own. It must bite these wannabe’s for a kickboxer to add up to hundreds of millions, all whilst these wannabe’s are worth severely less than 1% of what the Tate’s achieved. And the media is largely helping these wannabe’s out. Feel free to disagree, yet consider that on January 10th 2023 in ‘Andrew Tate, the man, the exploited’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/01/10/andrew-tate-the-man-the-exploited/) I wrote “In this day and age when we can see cyber transgressions in every direction. Does it make sense for someone like Andrew Tate to go ‘after’ the daughter of some mogul? And this is not America, this is Romania, as such a man like that has all kinds of connections. The math just does not work out. Any loser or non-wealthy might make a move like that. It does not make the Tate’s guilty, not innocent either. EVIDENCE is required and I have so far seen close to ZERO evidence on anything that could prosecute Andrew Tate.” With the additional “The media exploiting whatever they can to get the digital dollars. And Andrew Tate makes a fine target for the media. For 2 weeks the media did not dig into the accusation, merely focussing on misogeny.” Then we get to this story, we get “Andrew and his brother Tristan were arrested in March and charged in June. They deny the charges.” No, this is not true. They were placed under house arrest on December 29th 2022, so why is the BBC suddenly so inaccurate? Then we get to the US and UK side of things. Were are the arrest and extradition requests? So where was the US in all this and why is the journalistic investigated more leaky than a sif? I cannot tell whether the Tate’s are guilty or innocent, I do not have access to any evidence, yet the bad reporting and the balls dropped on nearly every side of the equation makes me wonder if the Tate’s were ever guilty and when they are acquitted, or the trial finds them not guilty, how much trouble is the media in? Because they never had that much credibility to begin with and with the additional sides not properly investigated, the Tate’s have a case to show that the media is no longer to be trusted, and what happens when these 6 million fans tell people not to buy certain papers in the UK because of fake press credibility? I wonder which paper is left standing at that point. You can turn any man into a boogeyman, but when you get that wrong there is no going back and certain media could be getting the short end of that equation soon enough, but with the fumbled settings in the UK and US they might already be realising that.

And feel free to read up on this, but I had my doubts on this going back to January 2023, and it was the piss poor quality of the press that got me there. 

Enjoy the weekend.

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