Category Archives: Law

The other currency

This is one of these articles that had to be written. Some will take offence, I get that, but it is essential to speak truthful, to speak my mind. Some will agree, some will not. The bigger the issue, the larger the polarisation, that has always been the case. Yet in this case I need to say upfront that this is not an attack on the media, this is not an attack on the writers of the articles that I will oppose. This needs to be said upfront, not after the event. In addition, some will agree with the article, that is fine. Be not afraid to have a point of view, be not afraid to oppose me (or others), your point of view is not invalid, it is merely differs from some. 

The setting started with the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/01/shamima-begum-justin-trudeau-to-follow-up-canadian-spy-claim). There we see ‘Shamima Begum: Justin Trudeau to ‘follow up’ Canadian spy claim’ and in addition we see “Canada’s PM defends need for ‘flexible and creative’ intelligence work by CSIS after claim operative delivered 15-year-old to Islamic State” with the added “were met at Istanbul bus station for their onward journey to Syria by a man called Mohammed al-Rashed. Rashed was also an informant for Canadian intelligence, who told the Met police of their connection with him in March 2015” Here we see the first problem. We are ‘informed’ to focus on ‘were met at Istanbul bus station’, but there was a lot before that. The recruiter/lover-boy who initiated contact, The fact that the girls thought they were grown up by keeping silent to their family, the people around them. They ignored it all and they became TERRORISTS. Canada did the right thing, they kept quiet and documented as much as they could for as long as they could. The fact that these girls arrived in Istanbul unopposed, unquestioned and no red flags were raised until then. That opens a lot of questions on this issue right from the start and I see nothing of that. 

And now we get to the important bit “Her family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, argues that Begum was trafficked out of the country. The suggestion that a western intelligence asset may have been involved, including organising bus tickets for her, will reignite the debate over the removal of her British citizenship.” You see, as I personally see it, ‘trafficked’ implied ‘against their wishes, or optionally under false pretences. This was not the case. These girls KNEW that they would be going to Islamic State, more important. The stage of ‘a western intelligence asset’ was not the case until Istanbul, a little over 3000 Km. We do not get to see that either. There needs to be a price for assisting terrorists and now she is paying. 

You see you people need to learn that there is no option for terrorists. If you give them one you get to learn a very hard lesson, one with hundreds if not thousands of cadavers. There is a much larger issue. You see the bigger enemies of Islamic State are not the people you expect. It is Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Islamic nations all. This is not some islamic debate, Islamic State is a collection of wannabe tyrants, all wanting their own nation where they rule with iron hand. So where is that land? It is in every nation and it was for some time a large chunk of Iraq. I reckon I will be around when I get to put the ‘protectors’ of Shamima Begum in the limelight as co-conspirators towards the dead that we will undoubtedly see. At that point they will all hide, they will all demand silence and they will all shun and the media will let them. It was unfortunate, but it happens. That is where we are heading and as far as I can tell, Canada and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) did whatever they needed to to keep Canada safe. These are not thieves, not bank-robbers and they were certainly not innocent. They are terrorists and that takes a whole different approach to keeping a nation and its citizens safe. And lets be clear, there are close to zero nations that condone Islamic State and we need to realise that if Islamic governments will not deal with them, how far have we strayed from the path by giving them leeway and listening to some crocodile tear approach? That path will lead to a lot of innocent deaths.

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Is it intentional ignorance?

I saw an article yesterday. It was ‘Doubts cast over Elon Musk’s Twitter bot claims’. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62571733) was seemingly eager to attack Elon Musk’s side, but the same media has not now or ever asked serious and critical questions on the Twitter side. But lets start here, those who read my articles know I have had a larger issue with Twitter for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter. I like it a lot more than Facebook. As such I have issues. If it isn’t with their new bully tactics of suggestion topics, without switching that nuisance off in the profile setting, then it would be with the attitude they take on fake accounts, as well as the delusional stage that it does not go beyond 5%. People I have been in contact with and THEY have data shows it to be well over 40%. I personally found 40% high, but they have data and they have data on Russian trolls and fake accounts pushing Russian ‘needs’ regarding the Ukrainian war to be in the thousands of trolls each of them using a massive amounts of click farm numbers. And it does not matter whether Twitter deactivates these accounts. The trolls have more and new methods of creating thousands more each minute. It shows in the first that the 5% Twitter claimed is bogus, more important it shows my initial thoughts that if it can be proven that it is well over double, we have a situation that Twitter has been overvaluing itself for a very long time. The data that places like Trollrensics has, shows this to have been the case for over 5 years, long before the Elon Musk events started. 

But back to the article. There we see “Botometer – an online tool that tracks spam and fake accounts – was used by Mr Musk in a countersuit against Twitter. Using the tool, Mr Musk’s team estimated that 33% of “visible accounts” on the social media platform were “false or spam accounts”.” OK, that is one side to go. I would personally advice Elon to take a step out of his circle and talk to Trollrensics. You see, they have been monitoring and recording events on the Ukrainian war (as well as Russian trolls) for a long time. Now consider that there should be some overlap. But take two circles (like below) we see the two solutions, the overlap is speculative on how much they overlap. 

They are different solutions for different options. As such the overlap cannot be 100%, in theory the second image could exist, but we can prove that, or better stated Elon Musk could prove this. You see, when the two lists of accounts are set together, Twitter has a problem, if image one is true, Twitter’s problem increases by well over 100%, it also blasts the 5% claim out of the water. 

If image 2 is true, Twitter has optionally a smaller issue, but Trollrensics has numbers stating over 40% of all accounts are fake, if so it will be a list supporting the case of Elon Musk, and well over 5%, Twitter will have a hard time opposing that much data.

And now we see in the article a strange event. With “However, Botometer creator and maintainer, Kaicheng Yang, said the figure “doesn’t mean anything”. Mr Yang questioned the methodology used by Mr Musk’s team, and told the BBC they had not approached him before using the tool. 

Mr Musk is currently in dispute with Twitter, after trying to pull out of a deal to purchase the company for $44bn (£36.6bn).” The readers will wonder what is going on, but no fear the BBC did its homework and we see that a little further below with “Botometer is a tool that uses several indicators, like when and how often an account tweets and the content of the posts, to create a bot “score” out of five. A score of zero indicates a Twitter account is unlikely to be a bot, and a five suggests that it is unlikely to be a human. However, researchers say the tool does not give a definitive answer as to whether or not an account is a bot. “In order to estimate the prevalence [of bots] you need to choose a threshold to cut the score,” says Mr Yang.” Now to me this makes sense, but there is a hidden trap. The numbers tend to be less reliable when a hybrid model exists. Let me try to make an image as below.

The hybrid system has three parts. The core (the foundation of that troll system) but it connects to real accounts. The accounts are real, tools like Qanon or whatever tool out there exists to gain coin and perhaps hoping that they are the false prophets that they once hope to become. Trolls and hackers give them a nice little tag and now the troll core has one real account that links to a whole range of people and click farms to like by the thousands and as this hybrid model can go more than one level deep and  consists of an unnamed amount of groups, Botometer and Twitter tools are (speculatively) in a mess, they now can no longer really decide on how real these groups are, and if the troll is intelligent and makes a slightly different message for each group, it can continue almost unabated. Still the Botometer is methodically sound to get the stupid accounts found and there are a whole range of them. Hundreds of thousands of limited click farm accounts, they should be found decently easily. And there I think is Elon Musk, he found the simple ones and he comes to 30%. The stage is real and the fact that is open to debate and moreover starts question the Twitter side of thinks is important. The article has more “Clayton Davis, a data scientist who worked on the project, says the system uses machine learning, and factors like tweet regularity and linguistic variability, as well as other telltale signs of robotic behaviour.” I agree with Clayton and there is also a larger issue. ‘Tweet regularity’ is real but debatable. You see it depends on interaction and time stations. A person has a shifting set. The person who looks at a tweet at 03:00 and retweets it because it is a friend, is different from the same person who is in the office at 11:00 and sees the same or a different tweet. There are more sides to that person, dynamic qualities and I wonder if a learning machine can learn (read: be taught) this. Not telling it cannot, I merely wonder and that makes it harder, than the time zones shift for the travelling person. All elements that can play a role. So when we get “In 2017, the group of academics behind the tool published a paper that estimated that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts were bots.” Which is interesting for me as I considered the number to be around 20%, still that makes it 400% larger than Twitter’s claim, so Twitter does have a problem. And then the gem of the BBC article comes into play. With “Some bot experts claim Twitter has a vested interest in undercounting fake accounts. “Twitter has slightly conflicting priorities,” says Mr Davis. “On the one hand, they care about credibility. They want people to think that the engagements are real on Twitter. But they also care about having high user numbers.”

The vast majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising, and the more daily active users it has, the more it can charge advertisers.” Or as I would state it, there is your Dorsey factor and that part shows both that Twitter is in deep trouble and also that Elon Musk was right all along. There is still a larger debate on how large that stage is, but if proof can be shown that the fake accounts exceed 9%-11% Elon Musk wins and Twitter gets to have a large problem. What I said all along, Twitter is bound to lose this and the media supporting Twitter for their own needs are likely to lose credibility by the day at that point.

A stage that was out in the open and has been for a few years. It was my view and the view of several I knew and now that we are proven correctly, I wonder under which rock the media will hide. The law sees intentional ignorance as a right, a legal station where we are allowed to keep ourselves ignorant, but should the media be allowed that very same thing? I will let you ponder that side of the equation, because it will come out in the open. In the mean time I will consider a few idea’s on Neom and the line bubble to the surface. Perhaps I should have a conversation with Saudi Arabia’s consul general in Sydney, Mashare Ben Naheet. If I am correct it might be worth a few million to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I could use the money (I need to pay my bar bill sooner then I would like). 

The problems of old age, they come into play at the least comfortable times.

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Slappers only?

It is a term from games, it means empty hands only. In gaming it tends to be a pugilist arena. I heard it first with Golden Eye, which is remarkably interesting as the HK model 23 with a silencer is more effective, we add the silencer in case the target is in a library 

We would not want to disturb the readers.

And this all related to? Yes, it started with Al Jazeera who gave us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/9/doj-preparing-to-sue-google-over-ad-market-as-soon-as-next-month) where we see ‘DOJ preparing to sue Google over ad market as soon as next month’. There we are given “The US Justice Department is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter, capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet Inc. unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market” I have issues with this, especially the ‘illegally dominates the digital advertising market’, you see Google INVENTED fair advertisement. The others all made sure that the people, the business and others paid TOP DOLLAR. Take the consideration we see next (I mentioned it before in previous blogs).

Placement, bid and Google price
1 $25 $0.54
2 $20 $0.53
3 $10 $0.52
4 $5 $0.51
5 $0.50 $0.50

So as they would charge the number one bidder $25, that same bidder merely pays $0.54 cents with Google Ads. Before Google Ads this was not an option and there we see the larger stages of Yellow pages, advertisements in newspapers and magazines. These places were racking up massive profits and Google undermined it, giving the people a better deal, as such 99% ran to Google and it caught on, Bing (Microsoft) tried to make it work, they could not, the metrics of Google were vastly superior. So there is no illegal domination, it is domination through superior systems, Amazon had its own system that was on Amazon, yet With Google Ads and Google YouTube, the advertisement world had dug its OWN grave. They slapped the people with bills that were beyond obscene and Hollywood gives us a (highly exaggerated) taste of that in Mad Men and the people are becoming increasingly angry, they are paying for the ego of a few men and when Google Ads becomes the adult player the people switch and the switch en mass. A group of people are now in massive trouble and they cry to every politician they ever gave a nice deal to. The DOJ is involved and we are in this mess now. And we see not one clear explanation of ‘illegally dominates the digital advertising market’, we are merely given a story.

This gets me to the article (at https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/09/the-doj-is-reportedly-prepping-an-antitrust-suit-against-google-over-its-ad-business/) there we see Ted Crunch giving us ‘The DOJ is reportedly prepping an antitrust suit against Google over its ad business’, here we are given “the new lawsuit would focus on the company’s command of the digital ad market. Bloomberg reports that DOJ antitrust lawyers are in the process of wrapping up interviews with publishers after “years of work” that will ultimately culminate in the coming lawsuit” as well as “In 2020, the DOJ sued the tech titan over its dominance in the online search market, accusing the company of “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.”” This is a lot more to the point and I still have issues. You see we see “its dominance in the online search market” we are not given “Google set out a new look on searching information, they had it made, they patented it and as such they had the new solution for the next generation of computer users”, we are also not given the simple setting that when Google realised a shift, they acted, all whilst IBM and Microsoft ere playing with their dinkey winkey’s pretending to be master of the universe. OK, IBM was going in different directions, but they were still there as well. So these so called captains of industry were asleep at the wheel, but we are not given that, are we? I remember that I voiced the setting of sound-cards in PC’s in 1992. I voiced it to an executive on the IBM trade show stand he merely stated ‘Sir, we are IBM’ and had security escort me off the IBM stand, so where is that wanker now? I reckon making statements that IBM always viewed the multi media market as important. Him and a few others never had a bloody clue. It was merely pretentious ego and it was ‘fake it till you make it’ and now I am here with a dozen of IP solutions, and they? They have little more than their supply of Viagra and stories about their great achievements. I know and should still have emails on the solution now known as Facebook, and I had it 4 years before Facebook. I have seen the folly of these executives and I trust none of them. In the mean time there is Amazon, Google and Elon Musk taking larger strides in the unknown and seeking the new frontiers and those wannabe’s are setting sights on that what is not theirs. And my evidence?

It is seen in “wrapping up interviews with publishers after “years of work”” it took the DOJ years of work, this is not a court-case, I personally believe it to be orchestration for the benefit of losers not unlike Microsoft. To give them a slice of a cake they do not deserve. And that is the problem with America, it only works when a machine driven by the corruptible get their cake too. Even though they are not entitled to it. I saw the daily changes in Google Ads, I saw what was achieved whilst the ones who should be working, were merely leeching. So how is that progress? I run circles around those wannabe’s and I have three systems ready to go (one too depending on Meta, so there are risks) in a world where I should not matter, I am the one with the IP, and that is the station where Google has to go to court. I wonder if it ever amounts to anything. The media wants their slice of beef and as they are hurting to become irrelevant, they are happy to see Google bite the dust, but why are they biting the dust? Because they never understood what was coming and when they woke up the train was already a station further. That is the actual setting, but I reckon that we never get to see that part of the equation. I wonder what happens when 4Chen shows my IP and these wannabe’s they are now seeing billions in IP become public domain, I would really like to see the faces of those wannabe’s who realise that it is becoming public domain and most of it in China. How many years of interviews will that take? They set the stage of slappers only, but the orchestration implies that it is anything but slappers only, that view is reserved for the people they are trying to fool. I am not buying it.

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Valuation

We all face it and we all fear it, adore it or hate it. We are being valued almost every day of our lives and it does not sit well with a hole range of people. They hate being under valued, they hate being overvalued and some merely hate being valued at all. It is the cost of doing business in todays world. The larger station became fearful when Cambridge analytics showed us how we were valued in business, in marketing and in the stride of our daily lives. That and the stage of Neom drove me 2-3 year ago to create the 5G solutions I have now, to give power back to the individual. Yet until last week via the BBC I had no idea that lies and misinformation is valued too and it is valued a lot higher than the average Joe in any nation. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62444302) gave us ‘Alex Jones must pay $49.3m for Sandy Hook hoax claim’, I initially ignored it, the case is a waste of my time. The man is a clown and clowns merely bring entertainment to any place, or so I thought. This article has one line that makes reading this article worth it. It is “an economist hired by the parents testified that Jones, his media brand Infowars and parent company Free Speech Systems are worth up to $270m.” Lies and misinformation valued at over a quarter of a billion dollars. It hit me straight on the jaw. You see it does no matter WHO values it, we live in a world where misinformation is valued that much it might be for flames and mere digital clicks, and it stings. I created 3 bundles of IP, I feel that one I have sold it, or at least the first part I will value higher, but the fact that misinformation is valued that high should hurt most people. Now we can go all high morale against or for this case, but the truth is that US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones found a niche market and he created (according to some economists) a net worth of $270,000,000 through opposing honesty and railing the needs off certain groups. And no one is looking deeper into this, or so it seems. And as we are given “Jones’ business had earned about $800,000 in a single day selling diet supplements, gun paraphernalia and survivalist equipment” something just hit me. You see, no matter how you see this, and $800K sounds nice, but that is not enough to create a $270M business, there is more at play here, so what is it and who are the players of Infowars? To create this net worth in 23 years is pretty impressive and that is done by conspiracy theorists even more so. This is not about the stupid and gullible, these people always exist and they are not so rich, to create this kind of wealth requires an engine, more than Alex Jones, more than what we see and the media is not all over this? Interesting is it not? Something is fuelling this business and the valuation sets the need of deeper investigation. But where to start? You see when they are this rich there are wealthy and well motivated accountants in place to make sure it does not see the light, like the UK and their ELP’s. The question is where to start. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein found out parts of this due to the ability to follow the money, but when the money is Bitcoin, global and hidden in offshore accounts, that path is pretty much a no-no. So what paths would work? It is a serious question, I have absolutely no idea (at present).

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Monopoly

My introduction, like many of my generation came at an early age. I was 8 or 9 when the first setting of law was introduced. It was the game of monopoly. I still have a few versions. I still have the first version (a replica). It was a wooden box with coins, the rest was pretty much the same. The coins were a nice touch. A game has rules and we have to adhere to these rules. It was then that we learned to play by the spirit of the law. The letter of the law was something I learned much later and it was even later when I was introduced to black letter law. My generation went through similar steps, some more, some less, but the generic stage was in play. 

And today I got my introduction to ‘Banned Russian oligarchs exploited UK secrecy loophole’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62410715), so the title gives us the first setting, not a loophole but a legally allowed setting, and with that we get to “Ministers have acknowledged concerns that these companies, known as English Limited Partnerships (ELPs), have also been abused by criminals” as well as “In 2016 and 2017, the government introduced measures that forced almost all UK companies to identify their real owners. ELPs were not covered by these new transparency laws” yet no one (including the press) seems to ask why the ELP’s were left uncovered by identity stages? This is not merely a loophole, this is what I would call a backdoor. The UK (optionally government) needed a stage where owners could remain hidden for whatever reason was in play and others have the same rights as anyone else and these others (criminals and tycoons) used the law to avoid detection. And as we get “more than 4,500 of them have been set up” we see the larger station, you see this has been going on since 2017, did you think that whomever requires avoidance of detection will not use them? There is a reason why some accountancy firms charge so much, they know the law, they know all laws and that is in play. And I will go one step further when we see “According to Graham Barrow, an expert in financial crime, they are also “vulnerable to misuse” because of how little information about their activity they are required to make public” that is exactly why the backdoor exists. For some to avoid certain matters. I feel decently certain that they were not meant for criminals, but the law is funny, it will parade on the just and unjust alike. So when we are given “Our data shows the number of new ELPs being set up has gone up by 53% since 2017” I am actually not surprised. The rules of the game are clear and anonymity is coveted by the lawful and unlawful alike and now we have a situation. So whilst the BBC is trying to stage the wow factor with “Just five companies, known as formation agencies, have been responsible for 1,500 ELPs, with hundreds listed at registered addresses including one above a burrito bar in central London” I would like to remind them that MI-5 was build on a sewer. So instead of the burrito bar, they could have stated above a burrito bar in Soho, a different setting, not? And the empty statement “FBI agents investigating the Boston marathon bombing probed an ELP registered at an address currently home to a barber shop in Bristol”, so what was the result? Why was that ELP probed? What was the stage of that barbershop? And in that setting when we see “We have established that among those to take advantage of the secrecy of ELPs are members of President Putin’s inner circle.” So? It is a legally allowed setting, that is what the BBC is trying to make muddy. A legal setting is staged and no one sees anything of the politicians that ‘overlooked’ that part of the stage, why is that? And when we are given “there is no requirement to disclose who was behind Sinara, which was dissolved in 2019” we see no listing of illegal activities, merely “facilitated purchases for the Rotenbergs”, so was anything illegal purchased? We do not get any of that, it is a mere sample of BS journalism that we normally get from a Murdoch publication. And it sounds nice that we get Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, who chairs a parliamentary group on tax and corruption making statements regarding ‘scandalous’, but what politicians allowed for that, who raised their voices when the ELP’s were left outside the identity stations? Transparency requires ALL to be revealed, not all minus ONE. But that part of the equation is quickly brushed over by the BBC, why is that? So when we are given “In an emailed update to clients dated 18 May 2017, under the heading “Alternative Solutions”, LAS proposed ELPs as, “a way out and as a substitute for Scottish Partnerships”.” We see a simple setting, a firm updating their clients on what is legally allowed, but that part is not really given, is it. It is a setting of emotions, flaming stages but the people behind the overlook are ignored, left in the dark, why is that? And the one gem in the article is seen with “The government says it does not have any evidence of significant misuse of ELPs. A government spokesperson said: “The UK already has some of the strongest controls in the world to combat money laundering, and it’s vital that we continue to upgrade our governance to crack down on criminals abusing UK corporate entities” it is the stage of ‘significant misuse’, what makes it significant? The fact that the bulk of these ELP’s were created by 5 firms was a much larger station and could have been dealt with years ago, now it becomes a millstone around someones neck there is ‘sudden’ visibility. Yet in the time 2017-2020, who gave light to this? Who acted to stop it? These are questions that I do not see answered, why not?

In this there was a lovely simplicity to monopoly in my youth, perhaps for this day and age it is too simple. Perhaps we need a new version of Hotels, but in Hotels 2 we get to choose options like accountants, corrupt local government and a few other items, or will that make the game a little too realistic for the young? I will let you consider that, I am going back to brooding on new IP towards non repudiation, I reckon that new building in the KSA (the Line) might have need of some IP soon enough. 

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You thought it stung the first time?

Yes there is an interesting development. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-62372964) gives us ‘Judge rules Visa can be sued in abuse claim’, and interesting setting to be sure. But why is it interesting? 

The setting that is given is “Serena Fleites was 13 in 2014 when, it is alleged, a boyfriend pressured her into making an explicit video which he posted to Pornhub. Ms Fleites alleges that Visa, by processing revenue from ads, conspired with Pornhub’s parent firm MindGeek to make money from videos of her abuse. Visa had sought to be removed from the case.” And it is no surprise that VISA tried to be removed from the case. They failed and now we have an interesting situation. This case gives a much larger stage. And even as we see “posted to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent, had 400,000 views by the time she discovered it”, we also get “the video was downloaded by users and re-uploaded several times, with one of the re-uploads viewed 2.7 million times” and with “While MindGeek profited from the child porn featuring Plaintiff, Plaintiff was intermittently homeless or living in her car, addicted to heroin, depressed and suicidal, and without the support of her family” even as we see the legal talk start, we see several parties hide behind “When the court can actually consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will be dismissed for lack of merit”. In this, I personally see that tools of exploitation have a very nasty way of biting back and that seems to be the case now. So when we are given “the Court can infer a strong possibility that Visa’s network was involved in at least some advertisement transactions relating directly to Plaintiff’s videos” and with “Visa argued that the “allegation that Visa recognised MindGeek as an authorised merchant and processed payment to its websites does not suggest that Visa agreed to participate in sex trafficking of any kind”.” Yes, they can argue all the way to that highway that goes to the city with the 666 designation. But here we see the direct application of ease versus due diligence and now it becomes a new ball of wax. Even as we see “Visa is not alleged to have simply created an incentive to commit a crime, it is alleged to have knowingly provided the tool used to complete a crime” it is a new stage, if this holds up, the amount of cases against credit organisations and fintech companies will explode in very serious ways. There is consideration that if some school shooter used his credit card to buy the gun used, there will be serious repercussions for the credit card firm used. Even as we are given “The company also said that any insinuation that it does not take the elimination of illegal material seriously is “categorically false”” I have an issue here and it is seen with “the video was downloaded by users and re-uploaded several times, with one of the re-uploads viewed 2.7 million times” as well as “A few weeks later it was removed” gives doubt to their statement. A file 2.7 million times is noticed, when it surpasses a million it is noticed, still it took a few weeks for it to be removed. Too many parties might (allegedly) have had the thought that this would blow over, it didn’t. Basically it exploded in everyones faces and now the credit card companies will have to do their due diligence on hundreds of thousands of customers who will now need checking. A stage decades overdue. Now that there is a court case, the fintech firms need to get worried and scared, because Serena Fleites has now opened a door and it is not merely VISA who will be in the hot seat and when this crosses borders into the EU there will be a whole new mess going the way of fintech. Places like Mindgeek might have moved to Luxembourg for tax brakes (speculation), but with this case Mindgeek could end up opening itself for a whole range of other issues. VISA will not take this lying down and a $460 million firm will be gotten at (whether successful or not). So this is not over, not by a long shot. I wonder what will happen next, time for a nice cuppa Joe. I might have a vanilla twist on the side. My reasoning will make sense down the road, I guarantee you that part.

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Have a coffee

Yes, I love my coffee and at times I pay $4 for a cup of coffee. So when the article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-app-1.6536175) hit my eyes, I was a little stunned. You see, we all have a price, but when I see ‘Tim Hortons proposes settlement in class-action suits over data-tracking app’ with the text “Proposed settlement would offer free coffee and doughnut to affected users” I pretty much pissed myself laughing. Are people buying that? You see, the issue is not merely “Tim Hortons says in court documents it would also permanently delete any geolocation information it may have collected between April 1, 2019 and Sept. 30, 2020, and direct third-party service providers to do the same.” I very much believe that this would happen. My issue is with the back ups and where they were stored. There is absolutely no guarantee that these have not been duplicated for certain other people, that means the data is out there. And I do believe that enough people realise this at present. You see the premise of “In a report released last month, privacy commissioners said people who downloaded the Tim Hortons app had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes — even when the app was not open on their phones” requires intent. To assure the makers of “had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes” events and captures had to be in place, redirecting the numbers they get and even more so when we see “even when the app was not open on their phones” As I personally see it, someone went out of their way to get data, the reason could be anything, but that essential step required certain additional steps and I reckon that the backup was set in motion seconds after it was made with the ‘illustrious’ statement “copy me, I want to travel!” As such there is no doubt in my mind that this is a realistic setting. The fact that I see no mention of backups anywhere, and that the commission might not have looked into that is also a little troubling. There is a larger stage in play and the avoidance of certain corners is not a good thing, but then I might merely be imagining things. That happens too.

But I have seen issues in Europe in the late 90’s and the avoidance of back-ups by some people makes me wonder if that same trick could be in play. It might merely be me. But all that data for a coffee and a Danish? 

That might be the best deal any data collector ever has been offered. So do enjoy your coffee whilst Mister X investigates where exactly you might have been and if you were there alone. Because it is not merely you, it is all around you that matters as well, and even if one app did not capture that, another app could capture who was around you at the time one app registered you. That is the larger problem, it is not one, it is what else and that together with the Tim Horton app is the issue, but I am certain that as looked into as well. 

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Let’s dance

That is the setting. Several papers gave it, but I am going to stick to the Guardian for a specific reason. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/08/elon-musk-twitter-deal-legal-consequences) gives us ‘Musk’s withdrawal from Twitter deal sets stage for long court battle’ to be honest, I am not convinced. In my mind Elon Musk needs to win and he SHOULD win. The premise is seen with ““For nearly two months, Mr Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform’,” Musk’s team stated in the letter. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.” The data in question centers on the number of spam accounts on the app, which Twitter has claimed make up about 5% of more than 200m users but Musk believes is higher.” There is the setting. You see, I personally believed it was close to 20%, a friend of mine has data showing it to be well over 40%, he stated close to 50%. This is not speculation. HE HAS DATA! That should be seen as evidence. The trolls in the EU, Russia and China, the click farms progressing the needs of wannabe’s, politicians and fake information spreaders from the Trump elections, the Covid misinformation settings, the Ukraine war. These are not done by one or two farms, this is done by thousands of players all wanting to grab a piece of the revenue pie. Twitter states that it is a mere 10 million people. I disagree, the elements I mentioned makes it well over triple of what Twitter claims. As such they are intentionally setting a fraudulent price to a product that is overpriced and the media knew this, they have had the largest part of that evidence under their own fingers. FoxNews gives us “NBC News Senior Reporter Brian Collins discovered Vladimir Bondarenko and posted about him that, “He’s a blogger from Kiev who really hates the Ukrainian government. He also doesn’t exist, according to Facebook. He’s an invention of a Russian troll farm targeting Ukraine. His face was made by AI.”” Do you really think that such a ploy is used for one account? Russian troll farms have been all over this and they have been over a few other things too. That friend of mine has data going back years. 

And it gets to be worse. You see there are trolls and click farms and the media has done very little to dig into the amount of either version, they have gone out of their way to avoid clear investigation. Even as some research it and some of it remains debatable. One source gives us ‘19.42% of active Twitter accounts are fake or spam: Analysis’ My issue here is that I do not know the source, hence I do not trust the source (whether valid or not). Consider the Twitter claim. 5% at the most, that implies that a mere 10 million are fake. Now consider the elements I mentioned earlier, there is no way that this matches up. Now consider that Twitter deletes a million fake accounts a day and this has been going on for a while. Now consider that we can not find any clear information on how many NEW Twitter accounts were created in 2021 and 2020 (or 2019 and 2018). That is important information, especially if well over 60,000,000 accounts were deleted in 2022. I believe that this shift is large enough for Elon Musk to start the case, when he gets the data from places like Trollrensics he might have enough to bust the Twitter deal. The setting is and always was that Twitter claims that at most 5% of the accounts are fake, I believe it too be a lot higher. I never speculated the numbers that Trollrensics have, but it is my speculation versus THEIR data, as such they win.

I believe that it will prove the case for Elon Musk.

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The media gets it this wrong?

That is more than a question, it is a statement and the ABC is joining the tool section of media. This all started today when I saw a piece by Stan Grant. The article (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-17/joe-biden-upholding-rules-based-order-shaking-hands-with-killers/101242386) gives us ‘For Joe Biden, the price of upholding a global rules-based order seems to be shaking hands with killers and tyrants’ and the article is lousy from the start. We get “So this is what the global rules-based order looks like: US President Joe Biden sitting down with a Saudi leader with blood on his hands. US intelligence says Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. His body is believed to have been cut into pieces and incinerated.” A little recap. The UN report (at [381]) gives speculation what had to be done, but there is no evidence of any kind that the CIA or other intelligence agencies had ANY realistic level of evidence that Khashoggi’s life was in danger, more important none of the evidence shows that there was a definite evidence. I saw one report that gives us that it was highly likely that a member of the royal family was involved. Lets repeat that ‘Highly likely’ and that is not evidence, as such the statement ‘sitting down with a Saudi leader with blood on his hands’ is a farce and pure speculation. In addition the statement “His body is believed to have been cut into pieces and incinerated” is equally speculative. Then we get to the statement “Osama bin Laden, who plotted the attacks, was a Saudi. Of the 19 terrorists who carried out the attacks, 15 were Saudi citizens. An FBI report has linked a Saudi diplomat to the attackers.” Lets look at that. The more correct version is “Osama bin Laden, who plotted the attacks, was a Saudi, trained by the CIA” as such the attack on America was done by a rogue CIA agent, but that is bad PR, is it not? Then we get “When it comes human rights, China ranks higher than Saudi, according to Freedom House.” Based on what data? How many nations were tested? These seem like harsh questions to ask, yet the writer added the line in the middle, so these questions are valid. Especially as Freedom House is added once in the entire text, the context is gone. In all this the Uyghurs might not agree with that statement, but behind every silver lining a new dark cloud is hiding. 

Is Saudi Arabia a perfect state? Not according to many in the west, not according to non-islamic people. I do not know, I have never been to Saudi Arabia, what I saw was from YouTube. I saw the Hajj today, I saw Mecca, a place that a christian will never visit because it is off limits to non islamic people. Am I upset? No, I am not. I reckon that there are places in Saudi Arabia I would want to see before Mecca ever graces my list. It is nothing negative, it is that Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam have a lot to offer. I saw the video’s and they look awesome. I saw the Hajj, thousands of people united in one faith and these people are a mix of Sunni and Shias, praying next to one another in peace, more important they all have the same Quran. Try that in the western world. The Protestants and Catholics have been at each others throats for centuries and they still are. There are over a dozen version of the bible and they all claim theirs is the real one. There is ONE Quran! In the Mecca walk that someone posted I saw Mecca. I saw the streets, I saw a surprising amount of high rises. I saw Haagen-Dazs and I saw two KFC’s. I saw a shopping mall that is every bit as luxurious as the ones I saw in Sydney, Bangkok, Chicago or New York. I saw a vegetable store handing out bananas to passing people. Try that in London. I saw people happy and walking in joy. I think that we are more alike than unlike and it made me happy. The streets were clean, the people were walking all over and as they were closer to the Mosque, the pilgrims stood out in their white cloaks, all unified in faith. I can honestly say that I never saw such a sight in Lourdes. I saw no discord, It was an awesome sight. 

This all reflects back to the article. Is MBS guilty? No! He is not, is he innocent? I cannot tell because there is no evidence, and that what is there is warped. I stated that several times and there is something to say for the rogue agents. We have our own Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) to thank for that. Wasn’t it he who said “Oh, who will relieve us of these blasphemers?” No order was ever given, but the blasphemer was gone. Was this the same? I cannot tell, there is no evidence, but it seems clear that rogue agents were hoping for some reward. I like the response of one of the spokespeople best “Khashoggi doesn’t make the top 1000 of worries of the Crown Prince”, it is paraphrased. I tried to find the article again, but I was unable. Consider the facts, when Khashoggi was alive he was a mere columnist for the Washington Post. I reckon that less than a thousand non WP readers had a clue who he was. And now his name is stated in nearly every article that mentions Saudi Arabia or the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, have you not noticed that? So in this age, the US needs cheap oil and Saudi Arabia is the only source left for America. And in that race no one is asking why the US needs Saudi oil. You see America is the largest oil producer, followed by Saudi Arabia, Russia and China. In this day and age of everyone screaming to reduce oil, why does the US need Saudi oil? Perhaps the US needs to reconsider the stupidity they preach and come out clean why they need more oil. They are by several sources the largest producer of oil, so why would they need more? Perhaps I was right all along, to reduce oil usage one must redefine what is essential, it seems that the US is not doing that. But that side of the equation does not make it into the media, does it?

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Today in the price is right

Yes, that is at times the question. What is something valued at and what are the reasons and facts of this valuation. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/08/elon-musk-buy-twitter-withdraw) gives us ‘Elon Musk withdraws $44bn bid to buy Twitter after weeks of high drama’ Yes, it was high end drama, and it was high end drama because the media doesn’t like Elon Musk and because they should have known better, but in their race for digital dollars, they really do not want all the facts to come out. Even as we are given “Mr Musk is terminating the merger agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr Musk relied when entering into the merger agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect” yes legalised porridge this is, but it is a setting of a truth, one that the media was clearly aware of. And we see the dice roll high when we are given “Musk and his lawyers accused Twitter of withholding information about the number of “spam” accounts on the platform. This week, the company revealed that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day.” As such we need to take a much stronger look at “This week, the company revealed that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day”, and this has been going on for a while. I saw some data that indicated that not 5%, but well over 20% was fake, a reliable source (which I discussed) earlier gives us (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/06/08/what-the-media-silences/) ‘What the media silences’, a setting that is closer to 50%, that is a really high number, but with the Ukrainian war, Covid and Chinese trolls the number of fake Twitter accounts is going through the roof. And this source has ACTUAL data, data that they collected over years. And when that is proven, even if the evidence shows that it is only 30% (speculative) it implies that either Twitter was incompetent as they see only 5% fake accounts, or they were intentionally fraudulent. I cannot tell which of the two it is but the media had a much larger sight on this FOR YEARS and they did nothing. Now they try to use it to flame for a little longer, but consider that the media was lying to you for years, knowingly keeping us in the dark, I reckon that Twitter might be safer in the hands of Elon Musk. And in this Jack Dorsey has a lot to explain, no matter how the cake knife falls. As I personally see it, he was either incapable of keeping Twitter safe, or he was intentionally grossly overpricing Twitter.  I am willing to let him explain what it is, I feel certain that Elon Musk is dying to hear that part of the equation as well. Either way, he wins, a setting that was never in question.

So when we see “Musk stood to take control of a social media network with more than 200 million users. An avid, but critical user of the platform, he had vowed to push through various reforms, including relaxing its content restrictions, ridding the platform of fake and automated accounts and shifting away from its advertising-based revenue model.” Is anyone wonder if this is including the fake accounts? You see, this would amount to a maximum of 100 million users and if we are to believe some facts, Nicky Minaj has 25,449,548 follower at present, this amounts to 25%, so I reckon that Elon Musk could buy that account for less then 10% of what Twitter is asking. That is one way of doing it, and consider that of all the users one in four is following Nicky Minaj, what is the actual value of Twitter? You merely have to look at it from another side. But that is merely my view on the matter.

 

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