Category Archives: Law

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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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. 

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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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Conscription Calamity

I heard of the notion, armies have had issues with getting meat for the grinder for as long as I remember. There were the crusades and the lords of the land beckoned with the option of wealth and the avoidance of utter poverty. And that was the feeding frenzy for those grinders. Almost 5 million people were lost over these numerous squabbles. From Accra to Jerusalem, millions were lost and the loss of people in those days implied that the shortage of manpower almost ensured the end of poverty and non-stop hunger. There was the Russian Revolution as well as WW1. By 2016 Russia was down 10 million souls and that was not the end of it all. WW1 took another 10 million souls (approximate losses both sides) and that was almost the end of it. There was of course WW2, there we have around 23 million military deaths and well over 50 million civilian losses. Yes, we have all made a mess of the setting. Yet all that fades to comparison to the Russian setting we see now. First I saw one article (see article three), then the article from the BBC giving us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66304522) ‘Russia expands pool of men eligible for call-up’, which gives us “Russia is raising the maximum age at which men can be conscripted from 27 to 30, making more of them liable to serve in the armed forces”, which was not in line with the first article, as such I looked what I saw earlier, I did not see it, but I got the Express (at https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1794927/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-conscription) giving us ‘Panicked Vladimir Putin rushes through new law allowing Russia to conscript pensioners’ with the added text (the one I saw earlier) “Vladimir Putin has ushered in new legislation which will enable him to conscript men over the age of 60 in an apparent bid to shore up his armed forces 18 months after his invasion of Ukraine.” As such, even the pensioners aren’t safe anymore. How desperate do you need to be to take such precautions? Consider that Russia has a population of well over 134 million, I reckon that 25% is of an eligible nature, which is well over 30 million and they have to resort to pensioners? The math is wrong on a few levels. I showed you all how 4 settings of the Russian Army has failed them (Artillery, Logistics, Supplies and Medic) and now we are given that the army themselves is falling apart. This has got to be the biggest defeat and humiliation of Vladimir Putin. When we look at the history of war (Crusades, Russian Revolution, WW1 and WW2) we never saw a failing of this degree and it is seemingly getting worse. The strongest part of them is a group of mercenaries (the Wagner group) that must feel downright wrong to the Kremlin. A place where they were vying for supremacy with America and they cannot hold up against the 20th strongest army on the planet (aka the Ukrainian army). And that is all whilst the Ukrainian army is depending on other sources for supplies. 

A clambake fest that should have been over in a week and so far the Ukrainians are holding out for well over 510 days and I reckon they aren’t done yet. There will be payback for all the intentional bombing of civilian targets, not sure how, but Russia might face a much tougher setting than the Germans did in the treaty of Versailles. On 28 June 1919 it was said that these reparations was assessed at 132 billion gold marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US$442 billion or UK£284 billion in 2023). I reckon that this amount will by higher by 200%-300%, this implies that all the oligarchs need to hide whatever they had, because global organisations will come for them and when they do organisations like the Dutch Heineken company (who apparently are still doing business in Russia) and numerous American and European companies will be a similar state. It will be a mess that will not stop any day soon. Those who were pro-Russian will hide behind miscommunications and they have the option to run for their lives to Russia or become the centre-point of ridicule both them and their children alike. The Dutch have some experience with their NSB people in 1945. I reckon this might be worse. The French had the Vichy France collaborators. Neither ended well, the Dutch collaborator Pieter Menten got off (after 8 months) in 1945, but the setting changed in 1976. He fled to Switzerland but was arrested soon thereafter. He died with dementia, he never escaped his fate. I wonder what will happen to certain Dutch pro-Russian people like Thierry Baudet and Wierd Duk? I have absolutely no idea, but they banked on the wrong player and there will be consequences there too. That is all in addition to the Americans supporting and going soft on pro-Russian players. And in all this the Russian army is now relying on pensioners and setting them up against Ukrainian fighters who are by now all veterans. They pretty much made short work of the Wagner group. As such I do not give the Russian pensioners much of a chance. Meat for the grinders and the Russian grinders are low on meat a setting where 5 out of 5 of the land forces are failing. That has not been the case since before the Crusades. In that meantime defence forces had Sun Tzu (the Art of war) as well as Carl von Clausewitz (On War) these two books had basic information that Russia could have used to avoid the setting that they are in now. The weird part is that Amazon dot com offers both books for a total that is less than $50. So when you look at the list of losses, how stupid was the Russian setting to begin with?

I will let you decide, the middle of the week has begun, the stroll towards the weekend is now in effect.

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Say What?

Yes, at times we get that. I have had my issues with the media for the longest time, but today was the wrong day to rub me the wrong way. It all started a few hours ago when the BBC decided to make ‘Obamas’ chef Tafari Campbell dies in paddle-boarding accident’ news (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66297450). I have no idea who he was and I mean no disrespect to Tafari Campbell. I think it is cool to get a job for one of the coolest presidents in America’s history, but lets be clear, the man was a cook. The starting text “Tafari Campbell, 45, worked in the White House before staying on with the Obama family after Mr Obama left office in 2016.” Is pretty much it, the rest should not matter to anyone. To give you a rundown of some of the things that the BBC did not tell you

Saudi Arabia (Front Sport Office)
There we see the news (at https://frontofficesports.com/saudi-arabia-reportedly-offers-1-1-billion-for-kylian-mbappe/) that a football player namely Kylian Mbappe got an amazing lucrative option, a one year deal for $1.1 billion dollars. I honestly have no idea why the man is worth that much, but basically, he’ll make in one year enough to retire from life in luxury. Now, I found a few more articles on this event, just not the BBC. I would never pay that much for anyone, even if I had the money, but that is not something I would have to justify anyway. And as news goes, it is new, sports is news to a whole range of people all over the world. And there is more!

Iran (CNN)
Here we get a human interest story. The story (at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/iran-film-festival-canceled-scli-intl/index.html) gives us ‘Iran bans film festival over poster of actress without hijab’, an action that is not entirely unexpected. One could argue that the people of that festival wanted the festival cancelled by default. We get a picture (picture was nice), and the story comes with the added text ““The minister of culture and Islamic guidance has personally issued an order to ban the 13th edition of the ISFA Film Festival, after using a photo of a woman without a hijab on its poster in violation of the law,” ministry spokesperson Mohammad Mehdi Samoui said in a statement, according to IRNA.” It is hard to ‘reflect’ on laws, especially on laws as they are in existence in Islamic nations, but there was a bright light for Iran, the BBC skated around it and gave the limelight to a dead chef.

Unite Arab Emirates (Khaleej Times)
A new stage and a clear news stage. The article (at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/lifestyle/health/uae-new-case-of-mers-virus-confirmed-in-al-ain-says-who) gives us ‘UAE: New case of Mers virus confirmed in Al Ain, says WHO’, news if there ever was one. Mers (aka Middle East respiratory syndrome) is rare but serious. It is apparently spread through close contact with camels, camel products, or an infected person. It is one of those illnesses that go from animal to person and the WHO (World Health Organisation) has now confirmed a total of “All 108 identified contacts were monitored for 14 days from the last date of exposure to the patient”, in a population it does not seem much, but it is a serious issue and on a population of 9.5 million it is not much, but the disease is rare, as such the issue becomes foreground and limelight news. Interesting the BBC did not have this either, but the death of a chef, yes they did have that one.

At times I wonder who decides on the pressures of what makes the news, more important, what non-News makes that cut. Three stories that outrank a paddle boarding accident (by a lot). For something like the The Virginian-Pilot it is news. It was a person from Virginia and he did serve in the White House, no one denies that. Other local newspapers might follow suit on that. Why on earth the BBC did, I have no idea. Not in an age where events have the world stage. To underline this, the sports section gives us all kinds of news, but there is no coverage of the world championships in Japan? How does that compute? The top 25 articles over the last 24 hours and Swimming does not make that cut? Who runs that degenerative toko? (toko is slang for shop)
You see, another source gives us “28-strong British team look to make their mark just one year out from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris”, a team of 28 swimmers and the BBC cannot find the time to give its viewers and readers one story n this? What is wrong with them?

Overall there is a debatable side to more and more news agents, not merely on what the report, but also on things they let pass by. I want you to take a look for yourself and wonder why certain news events never make it to the BBC or several other news agents in the west. 

Enjoy the day! 

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Rage anonymously

Yup, we get that, although there is not really an anonymous part in this, it is me. Two things made me snap. The first one was a presentation. There was nothing wrong with the presentation, it was actually quite good and it should be regarded, but I will not mention it here (for obvious reasons). The second one is the one I am starting here. I am in favour of protesting, protesting is in the world I grew in an age old tradition. I get it, but I also regard the accountability part of any protest. Even in the army, I was in favour of the anti nuclear protests. In the Netherlands in 1981. That protest was the largest protest in Dutch history and drew in over 400,000 demonstrators, the largest in Dutch history. In addition they gathered in excess of 3.75 million signatures, close to 25% of the population in that time were against US nuclear missiles in the Netherlands. Never before did a group of people agree to that degree to anything like it.
As such I cannot oppose demonstrations. Yet it is different with ‘Just stop oil’, they went to far. They obstructed a car with a newborn trying to get to the hospital and at that point I snapped. If I was there, I would have shot at least one person in the head. I would not care about gender, both genders are equally worthless at that point. When you stop a newborn from reaching the hospital in time, optionally endangering that newborns life, you deserve to get shot in the head. I hope these people consider that, because there are a lot more angry people out there in the UK. If I had it my way, I would reroute 350K barrels of oil per day away from the UK to China (for example). I wonder what chaos that would reflect and as long as any demonstrator from ‘Just stop oil’ is still alive, that reroute would not be undone. I wonder how many of these people will suddenly realise the stupidity of their actions. I get why they are demonstrating and I get why it is done. Yet this is wrongly done and it is done in the most stupid of ways. The UK is depending on oil in many ways and when we reduce the allotment by 350K barrels a day these people will wake up fast and in not such a nice way. When they get hunted by the tradies losing their livelihood they will get a first rate education on the stupidity that they embraced. And when you consider that they endangered a new born child, the support they had will fall away quite quick. 

What?
The second part was a presentation. The presentation was good, really good, but it struck a chord with me in not such a nice way. You see, these presentations all look good, yet when they interfere  with the bonus and bottom dollar of any board of directors, the setting changes, it changes by a lot. 

So it started with:
Good Data design is purposeful
Good Data design is clear
Good Data design is balanced
Good Data design is inclusive

These were the first 4 slides of 12 excellent slides. Yet there is an issue with them and it is not on the designer, that person did his/her job. The problem is that this presentation goes somewhere, and that tends to be up the ladder. I am not giving you the other 8, because I will invade someone else’s IP too much (and I am not giving the whole slides, just the titles. But the next part will show you why it bothered me.

You see you can scream interaction and promotion of understanding all you like, but what is our understanding? The understanding of IT, its users or the understanding of the board of directors? They tend to be three different things. The promotion of inclusivity only goes to the degree that the bottom dollar is not impacted and simplicity is a whole other ball of wax. If it is (too) simple that board member is feeling the brunt of what comes next and they will oppose this and oppose what you want to achieve and that is before we get issues of legacy systems (where the current provider works with a board member wanting to stay relevant. I have been involved with fights of that nature going back to the mid 80’s. And the less said about inclusivity the better. These are all good things, but they tend to raise costs and the board members are all about the bottom dollar and that is an issue. I have had too many of these fight against wannabe’s to last me a lifetime, and the wannabe’s always get a yay-sayer making me look bad in the process. A setting many retired IT person can attest to and those who rolled over had a decent retirement, the rest had close to nothing, as such this struck a nerve with me. I hope that the presenter gets the laurel that he or she deserves, but they better be ready for a fight they never faced before. Especially when that board is filled with fakers. That was my view on the matter and these two items got to me. So my Saturday was all about controlling my anger and checking my sniperscope (I had not done that for years). So whomever wants to endanger a newborn better get ready to walk around with an added air conditioning system to the brain.

We all get angry at times, we all go overboard at times and in this case I am lucky. I am (lucky for them) 10,563.82 miles away from those stupid twats. But they will face people over there that also have had enough and they are close enough to rely on the cricket-bat to dish out the punishment. 

Well one more day until the weekend ends, I better make it count.

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Freedom to discriminate

This is how I see it. Lets be clear, I am all for freedom of speech, but I do believe that there needs to be a level of accountability. This applies to every path of expression. Some believe that there is an innate need to speak the truth that you personally believe. I personally believe that Microsoft is beyond redemption, but I will speak truthful on the matter, also when they have scored a victory that they were entitled too, I will make mention of it. I did so in the past. Xbox is now personally seen as garbage, but Game Pass remains a treasure. People do good things and we do shady things, sometimes we do bad things. This is not always with intent, but it is driven by our believes. I grew up believing in the freedom of speech.Yet that freedom needs to be held towards accountability. As such I am massively in disapproval of book burning. I also think it is a waste of time. It is like these Karen’s in America protesting Bud-light, buying ten 6 packs and after that destroying them without drinking them. A pointless exercise, but that is up to these people. Burning a bible or Quran is another matter. As a christian I do not think that burning a Bible is sacrilege, but I know doing that to a Quran is. So I will never do that. You see past the point that buying a book just to burn it is a waste of funds, there is the setting that burning a Quran upsets any Muslim. Why do this? So I saw the BBC giving me ‘Protesters set fire to Swedish embassy in Baghdad’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-66252974). There two things stood out. The person who did the act was an Iraqi refugee. Yet this is the the biggest part in all this. It as the sentence “the country’s courts ruled the protests should be allowed to go ahead, citing free speech laws.” There I have an issue. First who are the people involved in setting this court case? Who were the lawyers? Who was the judge? All matters that are not discussed. One source gave me “Following appeals from both protest organisers, the Stockholm Administrative Court overturned the decisions, saying the cited security concerns were not enough to limit the right to demonstrate.” So exactly who were these protest organisers? Rasmus Paludan is seemingly one of the protesters, but who is the other one? There is also the new setting that this is the case that allows for discrimination. Free speech warrants discrimination, it is one of the most dangerous of all settings. Not in the first for Sweden who will see more and more objections to its membership into NATO and that might have been the reason for Rasmus Paludan acting the way he is. And when that happens and there is a problem with Russia, make sure that Rasmus is kept in captivity IN Sweden, so he could experience the accidental bombing (if it ever gets to that point). 

My issues is that we have forgotten to respect the believe of others, a setting that could work out well for me, but not that much for Sweden and a few other players. Reading “Swedish politicians have criticised the Quran burnings but have also adamantly defended the right to freedom of expression” reads to me like that same politician stating that these are very naughty people, the same people beating his (or her) child to death with a stick stating the freedom of speech of the tree that was cut down resulting in the stick. Yes, it does not make sense, but free speech to endorse discrimination never ever does. I personally believe that this will get a lot worse soon enough, how? That I anyones guess, yet the population of Swedish Muslims is at present 8.1%, as such a reaction will come forth and it will not merely be Turkey objecting to Swedish entering NATO. This is the consequence of sheltering discrimination under the roof of freedom of speech. Will other nations face the same issues? In France it is a different matter “It is difficult to know exactly how many Muslims of different nationalities live in France because the state does not collect religious or ethnic census data”, some estimation hand that in France 4% is Muslim, with a 67 million population that becomes a rather large number. In the UK this is 4.4%, as such we better start reconsidering the freedom of discrimination, because when these two groups get angry (and they will) thee two nations will be in serious trouble, both economies will grind to a halt when they cannot afford even one Euro to economic downturns. Germany has even more problems, there the Islamic population is expected to be around 7%, but no clear numbers were found by me. The three largest economies in Europe and they want to play footsie with idiotic christians like Rasmus Paludan and whatever national pitchfork wielding idiot they have as an anti-Islam champion? As I see it, it represents a new form of Hook and Cod wars, a war the Netherlands had between classes. The cods (conservative nobles) won, but the one element that is too often ignored is the fact that this was active for 140 years (1350-1490). Now consider the impact of a religious class war all over Europe that lasts for that long. What do you think will be left of Europe after that? There was a reason why people were speaking out against discrimination. The principle of that matter was not the largest one, it was greed and when that greed is drowned in these kinds of outbursts the people (all of them) tend to end up with the short straw. This is why I voted in favour of expelling that refugee back to Iraq (see what happens there) and putting Rasmus Paludan in Halden Prison and forget he ever existed after that. You see everyone is ‘relieved’ that Turkey is no longer stopping Sweden from entering NATO, but that does not make it a done deal yet. I reckon that several complications could possibly erupt and that would extent the timeline by months, of not well over a year. Still this last part is not based on any evidence I have and should be regarded as speculation. Still, Sweden’s place in the Middle East and parts of Africa will not be a good one for some time to come and it better realises that it needs both these places to make economic headway of any kind. 

In this I could be wrong, I have been wrong before.

Enjoy the day.

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In souls we trust

I believe that this is the setting we should be in. Make no mistake, there is every chance that I might be wrong and I understand that many will not agree with me. This all comes to blows as I saw an article whilst researching others. I initially was reading up on Andrew Tate, I saw that his house arrest had been prolonged for yet another month. I have had my issues with the arrest. In the first for MONTHS there was no formal case made and we heard all kinds of excuses and the media just accepted it, as it seemingly does whilst being a courtesan. I saw a few other issues and I still believe on a speculative foundation that this all is a play by Romanian organised crime and some business people to steal the business enterprise of the Tate’s away. It is worth hundreds of millions and a fraction of that tends to be enough to start something like that. The media (for the most) was zero help, they are all of the mind to stretch the digital dollar as far as they can and then I stumbled upon ‘“Britain will be fully Islamic soon” – Andrew Tate shocks fans by openly calling for the Islamisation of Britain’ by sportskeeda (at https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-britain-will-fully-islamic-soon-andrew-tate-shocks-fans-openly-calling-islamisation-britain). You might think that this is preposterous, but to some extend this is a global wave that is starting to happen. This world has 8 billion people in it (aka 8,000,000,000) the larger stage is that at present a little over 2 billion (aka 2,000,000,000) is Muslim, it is over 25% at present. Even as 2.6 billion are christian and we see messages how much it is growing, for the most, the people have had enough of the christian church. The exploitation, the child sex abuse, the Vatican in denial and the support of corruption on a global scale is getting out of hand. The overly American Christian waves of BS we see on a daily basis is a first example. One source (unconfirmed) gives us “Since 1970, weekly church attendance among Catholics has dropped from 55% to 20%, the number of priests declined from 59,000 to 35,000 and the number of people who left Catholicism increased from under 2 million in 1975 to over 30 million today.” The flock is leaving the shepherd by the millions, but some remain in denial. I saw another wave evolve 2-3 years back and that led to the IP I had been trying to sell to Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom Holdings, Amazon and Tencent Technologies. You see, we are given in the article “This building is literally dead centre in the middle of London’s historic centre. Amazing news. The only alternative to Islam for the brits are pride flags as they no longer have any innate culture or patriotism. Allah is the best of planners and I look forward to seeing The Islamic republic of Great Britistan in her final form. Alhamdulillah Britain will be fully Islamic soon.” I personally did not see that part, but I saw enough from the other parts to see that changes are needed and governments were actively avoiding them, which gave me the idea of IP which would get well over 50 million subscribers from the early days and that wave would evolve over time. With the claims made by Andrew Tate, these changes would herald a massive wave (in my favour), but that is not what this is about. You see, if we trust in souls the Vatican and governments would clean up their acts, but they do not. If anything they are making it worse and soon the people are driven by choices they weren’t ready to make and might not be ready to make at that point, but it would optionally prove Andrew’s setting. The fun part I that Google numbered itself out of that equation, for whatever reason, they stand to lose a lot. Microsoft will wherever the revenue is, optionally making matters worse and the others, I honestly cannot tell. American firms will get a tap on the shoulder ‘to make a choice’, but like the Huawei case there is now almost enough for them to switch, or set a double stage to provide both.

This might have been a setting in 2019, but there was enough evidence for years to change an Apple keyboard where EVERY key is a display and it can show the alphabet the user requires. IBM engineers came up with the projection keyboard in 1992. So why was it held back? The setting resurfaced with the Apple iPad, but overall it never took off and I can see a case where Apple had the option to become the number one player in the Middle East, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and a few other places. So what kept them? It cannot be revenue, they lack it and the technology has been out there for 30 years. So what is stopping them? I will let you figure that out.

Andrew further gives us “A secular UK as it is intended to be. All races and religions and cultures etc living in harmony. That seems like a better and more long term plan” I believe he is not wrong, but the media sucks up to the Vatican, the church of England, the Swedish church and a few other players and they are all in denial. So what comes next? It is anyones guess I reckon, but the growth of Islam is clear and has been clear for several years. It allowed me to create IP no one considered and there is more to come. When I unite the IP for 5G+ there will be a much larger stage and I saw that in Dubai it is already evolving. Arab News gave us 22 hours ago ‘Dubai’s real estate transactions increase 37% in Q2: report’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2339316/business-economy), this means that another IP piece I have will soon evolve, this is not wishful thinking, the quote “with the total value of properties sold touching 69.8 billion dirhams ($19 billion)” makes it so. I saw the real estate people doing the same thing over and over again. This needs a shakeup and that is where I saw the diverging of one IP into another. I didn’t initially see that in Dubai, I saw it evolve in Toronto and the step to Dubai is as I personally see it exceedingly simple. In souls we trust, all others rely on becoming a tool. It is not sweet, it is nasty, but this christian exploitative stage we are on now is running out of runway and I have no idea how it crashes next, but I reckon it will. If you doubt that, consider that I have put half a dozen IP pieces on the internet. Google and Amazon should have had it, but they did not. Why not? Are they blind, or are they hindered by blinders that are set to the coming and next quarter? And that is before you realise that I also came up with Augmented reality solutions long before Gucci was there, that is three times over. So what are they doing wrong? I will let you figure that our over a cup of coffee (which gives rest to the soul and activates the brain. I have lived on that stuff almost a lifetime. 

Enjoy the week.

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Enemy of the stated

That is sometimes the case and I got that alert yesterday. It took me a while to get on board with some of the items, yet on the other side there is more and there is something else at that. So lets start with that part as it matters. Last year, almost 1 year ago I wrote an article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/07/18/for-those-not-seeing-the-oil-field/) with the title ‘For those not seeing the oil field’. In that Article I wrote “China could sell the Chengdu J-20 at a nice price to Saudi Arabia (I admit I was trying to get my foot in the door and make a play for a simple 3.75% commission), and when you consider that this bill might go up to 15 billion, my 3.75% makes for a nice half a billion (we all have overly big dreams), and merely to play the courier? You have got to be kidding, I am so ready for that part!” And that stage as already underway at that time (alas, not for me). In an age where in Australia we see nearly the entire nation ripe with age discrimination, I was aiming for a nice job getting 3.75% (an internal joke from 1996) of whatever comes up and recently I learned that this might be as high as $23.8 billion over 2 years. This would have gotten me a $892,500,000 pay-check (over 2 years). Would I accept that? Hell yes! For being a simple courier for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? I would have been so there. Australia has no enemy relationships with either country. Is it my best case scenario? Not exactly, I am a commonwealthian after all, as such I preferred to be courier to documents for the British Typhoon. Yet British Parliament gave it up for British tea grannies and their CAAT. The Americans made a mess of everything pushing their own solutions away from a decent revenue taxable future. So I was looking out for me and I would have taken that job, no hesitation about it. 

So now you have the background, lets dig into the article that sets this off. It was the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66160979) who gives us ‘US think tank founder charged with acting as Chinese agent’. In that article we are given a few parts. First there is “Gal Luft “agreed to covertly recruit and pay” an unnamed ex-US official to publicly support certain Chinese policies, federal prosecutors say. The 57-year-old allegedly attempted to broker arms sales involving customers in China, Libya, the UAE and Kenya.” Here we have two issues. Was he a broker? Did he connect to people, who via him conducted business? Broker is a bit of a lose term. And we aren’t talking two parties, we are looking at at least 3 channels, optionally more, but what is relevant and what matters? For Americans it is a setting for courts and good luck with that evidence. The second allegation is “In 2016, officials say he failed to register as a foreign agent while acting to advance Chinese interests in the US. He is alleged to have lobbied an ex-US official who was an adviser to then President-elect Donald Trump to convince him to “publicly support certain policies with respect to China”.” Here, in the first, was he a foreign agent, or was he a (technical) consultant? They are very different and evidence is bringing that up (I never saw any for that matter). And as the ‘activity’ happened in 2016, why did it take 7 years for anyone to take actions? Which policies was he catering to? Is that not the job of any stake holder in the political field? Was the policy a legal one or a illegal one? Three questions that blow away the setting if the court doesn’t have a proper deck of Trump cards (pun intended). Then we get a very specific one “Prosecutors also accuse him of attempting to broker arms sales without a US permit. He allegedly worked to help Chinese companies sell anti-tank launchers, grenade launchers and mortar rounds to Libya.” The short and sweet is, can it be proven that he was a broker, or was he an un-sided courier? Person A and Person B do not know each other (good enough), but they both know Person C and that person couriers the papers between the two. Isn’t that what DHL does? Is DHL a courier of an arms broker? Then we get “Federal officials say he attempted to bypass US sanctions on Iranian oil by directing an associate to say that the oil was Brazilian. According to prosecutors, Mr Luft was arrested in Cyprus on US charges on 17 February this year and fled after being released on bail pending extradition.” This is a specific allegation and a big ‘no no’ Iran is on the naughty list of many nations and there they might have a case. I reckon it is stupid to do what he did as the sulphur content of Brazilian and Iran are very different, did he not think this through? Well that is a case that might stick on him and the fact that he allegedly fled to Cyprus does not help him much. So what is the difference between George Luft and me? I am not American and I will not do business with Iran. But as we are both optional couriers I am still in a much better place that he is (alas a very poor one for now). As such in the end we get “He is charged with eight counts, including failing to register as a foreign agent, evading oil sanctions, two counts of making false statements to investigators and three counts of illicit arms trafficking.” What is true? What is legal? What is unacceptable? That is for the courts to decide, but I reckon that George Luft as the head of a think tank was already making a fair amount of coins, so why endanger it all? I never get invited to US Energy Security Council conferences, so I am a little clueless at present. But it seems that America is seemingly still out to declaw whatever China does and at present I cannot say that they did anything do wrong, the courts will decide on George Luft. I look forward to seeing that evidence. In the meantime, my delusional side will dream of getting his 3.75%, as all delusional people do.

Enjoy the middle of the week. 

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Tweeter and Sylvester Musk

There is a stage out there, I cannot say whether I am seeing it right, or wrong. I could be massively wrong, but this is how I see it. It started yesterday with one article and the articles started to pile up and an image was created. Now do no take my interpretation as gospel. I could be wrong, this I say upfront. The story you are about to read had been shaping for some time, yet yesterday the BBC struck a chord within me. As such this all escalated with ‘Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine War misinformation’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66113460). It was not new, I have other sources making similar claims and they were supporting this with data evidence. I had seen at least one of the claims and I rejected it outright. Twitter is not a valid source, but they do carry valid sources (BBC, the Guardian, Washington Post, NY Times). I might not agree with them, but for the most they tend to properly inform their audience. As such when I saw ““French police are fired upon with American rifles that may have come from Ukraine,” reads the headline.” I knew this was a lie, propagated by someone really stupid (usually) or trolls (often enough) and here we get “BBC Verify has traced it back to pro-Kremlin channels on the Telegram messaging app” and now we have the beginning of a larger setting. Too many people are realising that when you take the blue mark (at $8 per month) you get to spout all kinds of lies gaining followers and reducing Twitter to a populist cloud of misinformation. So as we are told (n the end) “Twitter’s press office acknowledged receipt of our enquiry, but declined to comment” we need to realise that even as Jack Dorsey is not a reliable person, this was NEVER on his watch. He was able to stop many of these issues giving a larger station to laces like Threads to grow and grow they most likely will at present. To see this we need to take the second article. This time it is the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/10/twitter-faces-legal-challenge-after-failing-to-remove-reported-hate-tweets) who gives us ‘Twitter faces legal challenge after failing to remove reported hate tweets’ in this article we see “Twitter faces a landmark legal challenge after the social media giant failed to remove a series of hate-filled tweets reported by users in what could be a turning point in establishing new standards of scrutiny regarding online antisemitism” it is merely one side of a multitude of sides that are haunting Twitter and optionally pushing people to the less agreeable data capturing driven Threads. It is about to become a fight between two parties and the stag is lighting up by the notion, which of the two are the lesser of two evils. And the interesting quote here is “Twitter has received notice of the legal action and has since acted to block some of the offending tweets.” Where they only act when legally being pushed to. It is a dangerous station as it is the setting that populist sources rely on. You see Twitter has had an average of 350,000 tweet per minute and that makes sifting through the fake imagery and discriminating seas of dumbo’s a real challenge. I cannot say how it is as the limits make the old setting incorrect and I have no idea how Manny tweets we get now, yet 10,000 tweets a day for verified users implies that it pays for misinformation to get the blue checkmark at $8 a month. As such for $800 a month a troll farm can instil massive amounts of damage and there is no one to stop them and as it implies, until Twitter gets a legal summons they aren’t likely to do anything either. 

Yet this is not the whole picture, to see a little bit more of this situation we need to add one more article which aired a few hours ago by both the BBC and the Guardian. Here we see ‘Top US senator calls for probe into KSI and Logan Paul energy drink’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66150857) the texts we need to consider are “US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called on regulators to investigate an energy drink promoted by high-profile YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul” as well as “In 2022, Logan Paul and KSI – who have around 48 million YouTube followers between them – launched the caffeine-free Prime Hydration drink” and the coup de grace comes from “The caffeinated Prime Energy drink was launched in January this year. It is promoted by the company as being sugar-free and vegan.” This now gets me to my speculated view. “A company relies on two stupid people to set the stage for a population (Logan Paul and KSI), these people get their coin and as we are given “a caffeine-free Prime Hydration drink” as such these two never did anything wrong, this is seemingly clear. What happens next is that the company released their caffeinated Prime Energy drink on the coat tails of the previous and as the company owns BOTH drinks they will not sue themselves for ‘Is one more alike than the other’ and they get to ride the wave on a high and now we see Chuck Schumer starting an investigation. The company is racking in the dollars, two YouTubers are used to maximum effect and no one did anything wrong? And this is not even the start, this is also about to get a lot worse. When the people behind this new Twitter are setting a much larger stage of ‘Not our problem’ we will have one. The media lost most credibility they had, social media is racking in before it collapses on the draconian overreach of most governments and I am watching on the sidelines when I can get my slice of a multi billion dollar pie, because as that gets worse my position merely improves. I need to consider who I prefer to sell to Google (least likely), Amazon, Apple, Kingdom Holdings (preferred) or Tencent Technologies. 

In the end with the examples that we are seeing today and as we saw them over the last few months as these populations clusters scatter wherever they feel the safest. I lean back and realise that I had the right combination from the start and as the setting decreases in stability (Twitter) we see governments trying some knee jerk reaction towards a solution that was too late to be implemented in the first place. I reckon that after the second child death all will run for the hills and I will watch it happen. What did you think would happen when a child gets 4 times the caffeine meant for an adult? The company might try to hide behind “it is not recommended for children under the age of 18, people who are sensitive to caffeine, pregnant women or women who are breastfeeding”, yet the larger station will be that it was promoted as “as being sugar-free and vegan” and more alike then the ‘less healthy’ version. If it is the one word ‘Energy’ and ‘hydration’ that company has a problem and I reckon that Logan Paul and KSI better start moving, because when the children start dying their 48,000,000 followers will go somewhere else, and fast. 

There is now a station where we have fake information, false information and deceptive information and the people at large can no longer tell the difference between them. As such what will happen next you think? In the meantime other companies will look at the setting that Prime had and they will try to reflect on how they could cash in, the bottom line for them is the dollar (or soon enough the Yuen). I reckon that ChatGPT with their deeper machine learning will add to the confusion. So when you consider that Spark is another word for energy and Sparkling for hydration, what happens when these two drinks are identified as ‘spark’ drink and ‘sparkling’ drink? What is the result when people like Chuck Schumer and whomever brought it to THEIR attention miss it too? How many people will have to dies for people to take notice? I don’t Carew, I have no children, but consider what was done in Yemen, there 11,000 children have died so far. What did you do? I did nothing either, I will admit that. But at least I tried to bring it to the front page of plenty of places, more than many other did.

Enjoy your first day after the weekend.

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