Category Archives: Media

Wake up or slumber more?

Wake up or slumber moreYes, we all have that at times, the smallest doubt we give ourselves “Shall I slumber just a few minutes more?” We are allowed it, we were so clever, we set the alarm clock to 30 minutes early and we ignore the first alarm because we had 30 minutes left. At times that is the best sleep time of the night, to know there is 30 minutes left. And I feel the same way, yet I feel that this is the time to realise that the alarm went off a week earlier and we kept on slumbering a little more and a little more and now we are out of time. We are awoken by two articles, not related yet linked. The first is the Guardian who gives us ‘anti-vax radio shows reach millions in US while stars die of Covid’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid) we are told that Phil Valentine was anti-vaccine, he even plagiarised the song Taxman and made it his own. We are also introduced to Marc Bernier, Dick Farrel and Jimmy DeYoung. Yet, we need not worry, they are all dead now, they all died of covid and the millions of ‘fans’ they had, a lot of them will be dead soon too. That is the natural selection we are part of. And it is then that the claim “Media watchdogs suggest that some basic level of responsibility to the public should be required to keep a broadcast license” seems to seep in, but it is already too late. Even as some of the exploiters are realising that things are going overboard, they forgot the basic rules of the game, to gain riches you need a population and that population is now becoming redundant. Local radio hosts ignored by the big players, but the people are local people, they are the foundation that the US stands on and it goes way beyond USA, believe it. The stakeholders are the first and the direct franchisers of levels of exploitation and they are now seeing the impact I warned for for well over a decade. You can live on the premise of fooling people, but the strongest reality has now and always been “You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can never fool all of the people all of the time” and that is now pushing towards a reality the exploiters never realised. They realise it first because they need a population and it is dying, with 697,000 dead in the US and an expected 100% rise between now and February 2022 the numbers will take a massive offset. 

So how did I get there?
There are three elements driving it. The first is the Delta variant, the second is the anti-vaccine movements and lets be frank ‘stupid’ people driving anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiments and the third one was given to us by Jenet Yellen giving us a mere two days ago that the US is in danger of defaulting on the US loans in October, the first time in history, all whilst investments in retirement funds are stopping. The three together giving us the waves that follow, waves in hospitals losing funds, funds in resources slowing down, so as hospitals are filling up and in June AP News gave us ‘Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated’, so as the hospitals are full, the unvaccinated die and more will die soon enough. The unvaccinated take up 98.9% of ALL the COVID cases, the vaccinated a mere 1.1%, the difference is that staggering and as the people are embracing stupid anti-vaccine hosts, they follow those people to their grave, quite literally and there is an upside, it will end unemployment in the USA, it will lower unemployment in the UK, Europe and Australia. 

So whilst people are ‘listening’ to some media watchdog, I need to warn you that they have been sitting on their hands for way too long. I alerted the people to hold media accountable in 2011, that was 10 years ago. 

So how is this connected to the second story?
The BBC is the one giving us ‘Covid vaccine stockpiles: Are 241m doses at risk of going to waste?’, so if we consider “The UK promised 100m of that pledge, so far it has donated just under nine million”, we can consider that they did nothing wrong, we can consider all kinds of things, and considering is perfectly fine. Yet there is a larger stage where they did nothing wrong and there is the rub, over a year, less than 10% was donated and the media let it slide, until people start realising that the media adheres to share holders, stakeholders, and advertisers. So who stopped it, or perhaps better stated, who silenced it to a mere whisper? 

And no one is looking into these stakeholders. So whilst we look at crowd after crowd we see more and more, but the three stages, the ‘normal’ people, the anti-vaxxers and the people in panic is now a larger unstable mix. The normalised people are a massive minority and the other two shouting are ahead of all, yet they are now dying and as anti-vaccine versus panic people are in a mix, we see that they all become panic people and they seek a solution but the hospitals are full. The nursing staff (doctors too) are tired and sick of them all so all these panic people have no one to turn to, merely their own undoing and that is the good news. 

Why is it good news?
In the first governments will have to act, so whilst the UK is dealing with Insulate Britain activists we see the tart of a new age, an age of draconian laws, a stage that follows when resources are dwindling down, and these two nations are not alone. France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA, Australia they all have to take larger steps in changing direction and this is the stage most of us did to ourselves and the media was kind enough to help, all whilst their stakeholders are running for the hills with a bag full of money. They are now trying to find a place where they can be relatively safe, that is, until the limelight hits them and their actions.

And it is escalating, as some are all about hating the rich and taxing the rich they still fail to see the larger problem. Governments are to blame, they REFUSED to properly adjust tax laws and that has been the case for well over 2 decades. Did you think it was different? Amazon was given the headlines “Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020, despite lockdown surge the firm’s Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss”. Amazon is not breaking the laws, black letter law states what they are allowed to do and they did so, they never broke the law, governments let them off the hook again and again for over 2 decades and it is happening globally. As such the phrase “Kill the rich” should to be “Kill the exploiters” and that list is a hell of a lot longer than you think. The stakeholders have now become afraid that in the 11th hour their gig is up and they are hoping to score one more time before the gig is up forever.

And in this COVID is ending their song sooner than they had hoped. Yet it is a dangerous stage. We see that typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Yet in this list we see no facilitators or lobbyists, these exploitive players aren’t on any list, they are couriers from corporations, yet never in service of them, they are only in service of themselves and now when we consider the Economist on July 17th (at https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/17/the-republican-anti-vax-delusion) we see “Populist conservatives are to blame”, yet is it that simple? Populistic people are easier to control as they need a place to voice ‘issues’, yet stakeholders see that these are groups of people easier to exploit too and there is the problem, so whilst we see the ‘Trump’ example which could be true, there are more players in that stage and those players all hate the limelight, as the populists love the limelight, they get it all and as such the stakeholder now seen as a lobbyist fades into the shadows. A game played for a long time and now that the fallout of their actions are backfiring their need to vanish becomes increasingly important. And when you think that this is out of thin air? Consider that the United Nations reported this in 2013, which was based on Constantinides et al, 2007. There is now a stage where stakeholders saw a portal to use media to set a much larger stage to fulfil corporate needs. It is given as “The rise of social networks has changed both the way we communicate and the way we consume information. Even within the relatively recent internet era, a major evolution has occurred: In the initial phase known as Web 1.0, users by-and-large consumed online information passively. Now, in the age of social media and Web 2.0, the internet is increasingly used for participation, interaction, conversation and community building”, a stage we have been seeing for over a decade. A stage driven by populists to become internet influencers and the stage of “community building” will be transformed into “sheep herding of the easily adapted” that is the stage we now face, and if you think that they can be changed, you would be wrong because it is already too late, the people saw the Yellen message, they see the overfull hospitals and the anti-Vaccine group is not becoming a panic group and those people listen to no one and it will be fuelled by ‘241m doses at risk of going to waste’ soon enough and the stage does not end there. So when the US (and other places) run out of vaccines the panic driven people will escalate and with statistics that 98.9% of all deaths are unvaccinated ones the state of panic is close to complete and in winter when isolation adds to the issues panic will reign on a global scale. So when you are in bed slumbering to get to the office and you consider taking a sickie, also consider that this is the one sickie you should not have taken. The safe zone is miles behind you and there is no hospital left in front of you and that merely fuels the panic. So when we take notice of “Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages” consider that this is not an American or a Florida issue, it has become a global issue. London gave us all (earlier this year) “London hospitals would be short of nearly 2,000 acute and intensive beds” and when we realise that millions more will die and that this issue has surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic numbers and estimates, consider that it will get worse, a lot worse. The last one is my speculation but the numbers are fuelling my point of view. So will you take a longer slumber? It is your choice, and if you are dedicated anti-vaccine person, the queue of Hades awaits. Feel free to oppose that view, it is your right, yet India a mere hour ago reported ‘India reports 26,964 new Covid cases’, which might be true, but the other numbers cannot be true, there is too much of a sliding scale in play. So how fast will the US emulate India? I honestly cannot tell, but the numbers show a grim reality and in the end the games that some people played will burn the soil in front of them, that is the realisation that history gave us. So do you really want to slumber a bit longer?

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Just like the moon

We all wonder at times, we all look and see the same image. Yet like the moon we only see one side, the dark side of the moon is always turned away from us. As is the back of a stamp, as is the other side of any coin. In some cases we think it does not matter, just like the stamp, we see the side that matters. And when we have that approach start ignoring the dark side of the moon.

This is merely the setting of one part of the stage, perhaps it is the colour of the canvas, perhaps the colours of the ropes of a boxing ring. It is regarded as trivial by our brains, we told the brain to ignore and for us it makes sense. So let’s add a new flour of dimension, a very different one.

“Yes, you corrupt piece of shit, you never learn. Not until I kill your children in front of you, at that point you like all corrupt people start considering the price of corruption. You criminals and tools are all alike. You are either too stupid to care, or even worse, you are a mere tool to a person no one cares about and this will get you and your family killed, the simplest of all solutions and you ignored it.” 

This is not a known part, I put this together from a few pieces that originate in works from John Le Carre (the real master of spy stories). You see, when we see the news of all these AI stories we tend to psh it all over the same side the brain does with all the other works. Yet AI does not exist. Apart from the powerful quantum computers you require, the adaption of Shallow circuits that (as far as I know) only IBM has and their version is still developing. There is another side. An actual AI had elements like Language understanding and Language generation, but those elements only work when there is a decent level of Relationship learning and knowledge refinement. Some of the ‘claimed’ AI systems have Text extraction, but without the earlier mentioned elements the text I ‘created’ will not come to pass, because there is no AI and what some call AI is pushed through deeper machine learning and that element is clever, it really is.

Yet without Language understanding the system is not getting anywhere. It is a thought I was contemplating as I was looking at the elements of Idle Law Tycoon yesterday. You see we all see a watch and we know how it works, yet the engineering side in me want to see the watch and see the cogs move and slowly rotate as I am trying to make sense of the machine I am watching, Just like I watched Idle Law Tycoon yesterday. I saw the glitches, the small issues and they dod not bother me, I merely looked at how the makers looked at it and how clever they were, small glitches be damned, the game was not inhibited by it. It is the difference between out of hand deletion and deletion after contemplation. It is the contemplation part that matters. It is the contemplation part that showed that there was more to Litecoin, there was more to French Submarines getting cancelled and the media has been all over the field to ignore elements but as I personally see it they did not contemplate, the shallowly overlooked what they ignored and that is seen in the Iran v Saudi Arabia setting, the Houthi ignored acts, the stage the Financial Times is only now exploring. Something I mentioned here weeks ago. We now see ‘More of China, less of America’: how the superpower fight is squeezing the Gulf’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/4f82b560-4744-4c53-bf4b-7a37d3afeb13) only 2 hours ago, whilst I showed that danger in a story on February 5th 2021 in ‘Am I the hypocrite?’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/05/am-i-the-hypocrite/), I even added the danger, all whilst I showed that initial danger two years earlier in ‘The seventh guest’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/06/21/the-seventh-guest/). Yes I was that quick and that is not on the Financial times. I was extrapolating intelligence and setting an optional timeline without the actual timeline being there. The Financial Times reports on events and of course for me the bad news is that I will loose out on 3.75% (poor poor me) of a really nice 10 figure number, but then so will the UK and the US. I looked at all the sides, even the dark side of the moon. So when the Financial Times gives us ““There’s a trust deficit with America, which is growing by the day,” says Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati professor of politics. “The trend is more of China, less of America on all fronts, not just economically, but politically, militarily and strategically in the years to come. There’s nothing America can do about it.”” And that is the truth, the US (UK too) are losing billions in revenue (just like France) and this time around it will go straight to China, they set themselves up for a large failure and it is starting to show. So whilst we see claims after claims, China moves forward and when the Huawei implementations in Saudi Arabia are starting to come through their failure will be complete. It will be the stage where we are all so engrossed in high morals whilst 10% of the population is starving. But there is good news too, as the anti-vaxxers are getting themselves and family members killed we can offset the 10% hungering with 17% dead people, so overall we win a bit. 

But is it winning? As stakeholders are telling us where not to look, who are we giving business away too? When I can predict that much of a change to military hardware, even as I have a mere partial comprehension here. What more are we losing out of?

We call real news fake news because we can at times no longer tell the difference and whilst that happens marketeers and stakeholders are trying to set the stage. Yet the marketeers are trying to create hypes on things that aren’t there. Stakeholders are trying to stop other players to get revenue that they want and in all this a third player can stand on the seesaw and with the smallest acts get the goods sent their way. The latest is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is bashing Israel and their arms package to be banned, I see a setting where Raytheon Australia could fill that bill and Australia better wake the fuck up. Even as Boeing will lose some revenue, for Australia it might end up being good news and their economy could use some good news. The alternative is that either China gets a lot more business or that Russia gets a larger stake in the Middle East. I have nothing against stupid people becoming elected, although it might be nice if it comes with a muzzle. 

Do you think that is out of bounds?
A group of 5 people are directly involved in pushing up to $17,000,000,000 in revenue towards China and it gets to be worse. So with the US, US and a few others losing THAT much revenue, what austerity measures will be required to counter that? With the UK and US having large deficits in oxygen and other healthcare parts as well as Jenet Yellen giving us in the New York Times a week ago ‘a possible October default on U.S. debt, swollen by the pandemic’, when you relise this was handing over that much money to China through shortsightedness, fake high morals and blatant stupidity a good idea? The article (at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/business/economy/united-states-debt-default.html) gives us “Once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted, the United States of America would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history,” and that is not even the worst, it is “To delay a default, Treasury has in the last month suspended investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund and the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan” in an ageing population the people who need it the most will be left with nothing. All settings that I saw (to some extent) happen over two years ago. So how do you feel about those stakeholders now? Ready to seek and expose them? Go look in your local media stage, there will be several in pretty much any nation.

It is just like the moon, we keep on staring at that same shiny side all whilst it is the dark side of the moon where the dangers are, because we deleted that side from our consideration. As for the Pink Floyd image, it is both a joke (a great album too) but it has a few hidden hints, and when you see that these hints are 47 years old, how asleep have we been for all this time we to begin with?

I will let you figure that out, enjoy today and consider that tomorrow will soon be coming.

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The same gramophone

It started over a month ago with ‘From horse to course’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/23/from-horse-to-course/) there we saw the attack and the debatability on some of the presented evidence. Today we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/15/eu-poised-to-tighten-privacy-laws-after-pegasus-spyware-scandal) ‘EU commissioner calls for urgent action against Pegasus spyware’ and it would make sense, until we get to “The investigation was based on forensic analysis of phones and analysis of a leaked database of 50,000 numbers”, so in well over a month there are no top-line statistics? The list was attacked by a few well over a month ago, but here we see the Guardian, specifically Daniel Boffey hash over the same stage with nothing to show for it, so is he what some might call ‘a fucking tool’ for stakeholders or a wannabe journalist? Consider that we pretty much get the same details we saw in my article and these parts came from the BBC and the Guardian’s own article from last July. That article gave us “NSO has said Macron was not a “target” of any of its customers, meaning the company denies he was selected for surveillance using its spyware, saying in multiple statements that it requires its government clients to use its powerful spying tools only for legitimate investigations into terrorism or crime”, so whilst we now see “analysis of a leaked database of 50,000 numbers, including that of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and European Council president, Charles Michel”. So did Daniel forget to do his homework or was he acting on the needs of a stakeholder? I actually do not know, hence I ask here. The largest failing is that the Guardian gives us some emotional charged article and no homework was done, there is no top-line on the nations involved with the 50,000 phone numbers. All whilst I also showed (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/28/retry-or-retrial/) a few days later when The Verge got involved that 50,000 numbers imply a cost of no less than $400,000,000 which is still not looked at, so why is the Guardian (BBC too) this unable to perform? In that article ‘Retry or retrial?’ We see the Verge giving us “The Washington Post says that the list is from 2016” and that journalist no one cares about was still alive. A setting that is seemingly overlooked by TWO news organisations and none of them vetted information through a top-line which is what I would have done first. So how many of these numbers are EU numbers? How many are in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany or Sweden? In over a month neither newsagent got that part done and if the Verge is to be believed the 2016 list without a top-line shows newsagents to be massively incompetent. 

Added here we see the added part “A consortium of 17 media outlets, including the Guardian, revealed in July that global clients of the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group had used hacking software to target human rights activists, journalists and lawyers”, that part negated is that the NSO group is a service branch towards governments on the tracking of criminals and terrorists. This caper costs a government “$500,000 for an extra 50 phones” (source: The Verge) all whilst the entire list represents a minimum value of $400 million. So which governments spend that much on these numbers and when you consider that it was a list of governments, we see additional info that the leaked list is a fictive list, there is no leak that hands the phone lists of all these governments and that is before we consider that one number might be on several lists. Consider that both Macron and Johnson want to know where Merkel gets her lingerie (ha ha ha). OK, that was a funny, but the setting is valid, there is a genuine need for several governments to keep track of a person and when we consider that I could have made a top-line within a week (depending on how the data looks) why did the Guardian and the BBC not succeed? Why do they not have any reference to the leaked list being a 2016 list? 

Also in the end we see the Guardian give us “NSO says it “does not operate the systems that it sells to vetted government customers, and does not have access to the data of its customers’ targets”” when we consider that we see more debatable sides to a list of 50,000, we see the lack of actions for well over a month (almost 2 months) and at no stage do we see any clear allegations against any government apart for some mention of Hungary, all whilst the top-line results could have pointed the finger at someone. Do you actually believe that the UAE or Saudi Arabia have any interest in a Dutch Human rights activist? At the prices that the NSO charges, I very much doubt it. 

So here I stand asking the Guardian (and specifically Daniel Boffey) what on earth do you think you are doing? Who are you serving, because the lack of evidence and lack of clear verifiable data implies you are not doing this for the readers, if that were true the article would have looked very different.

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The accusations begin

The BBC (and a few others) give visibility to a danger that has been around for some time. Yes, they alert us to what is happening and the BBC is not to blame. Yet when we see ‘Fake Walmart news release claimed it would accept cryptocurrency’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58545944) we need to wonder about a few things. It might be “The release, published through a legitimate press channel, claimed that Walmart would accept the currency through all its digital stores. Walmart later told US media outlets the announcement was “inauthentic”. By that time, several major news websites and press agencies had spread the supposed news. It is not clear how the announcement made it on to Global Newswire, a service widely used to distribute press material from companies.” And it is an important side. I merely wonder how soon we will get some carefully phrased denial spiced with “there was a miscommunication”, I  will have questions on how thorough the investigation will be, which stakeholders were involved and how Global Newswire got the news in the first place. 

As I expected for some time, there is a larger flaw on vetting information and who is allowed to vet it all. At some point a situation was created where a group of people made $50 per coin where no profit existed and even as we get loud claims on a few sides I expect that nothing will come from it, the exploitation stage is set and it is high time that the media gets a massive overhaul. Even now we can find the Google search on global News, but the link no longer works. Not a clear retraction, the article was merely removed, as I personally see it a stage of manipulation. Over the 17 hours, we see no news on WHO delivered that news to Global News, we see no news (from anyone) on HOW it was delivered. 

I get additional questions when I see ‘Litecoin back to the drawing board as LTC rally culminates’ (at https://www.fxstreet.com/cryptocurrencies/news/litecoin-back-to-the-drawing-board-as-ltc-rally-culminates-202108261526) we also get “On August 16 and again on August 23, Litecoin (LTC) tried to reach the 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA). Both tests failed and what followed each time was a quick reversal”, as well as “A return to the bandwidth between $135 and $156 looks like the sanest move to attract buyers again” a simple search gave me this info and in this we see a setting where SOMEONE spiced it with fake news. In all this there was no vetting of any decent kind. As I was able to find what I found within 5 minutes, yet Global News spread the news. So whilst the BBC gives us “It is not clear who was behind the fake release, or how they managed to publish it.” It seems clear that Global News needs to get ready for some serious FBI investigations, it might be a Canadian news station and it will go via the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and optionally the CSIS will get involved, but the FBI will take the US side and neither of the three will be played for as fool. The FBI has no real choice in the matter. This is merely part of the larger stage that real media lacks the same credibility that fake news has and that is important, as it will change the stage of News agencies everywhere. When the news becomes nothing more than an exploitation tool the entire Litecoin issue will not be the only one and it will not be the last one. And in all this, there will be a seperate stage for the connected stakeholders. 

And it will not end there, we can accept that Global News acted in good faith, and we can accept that. But it also means that Global News will have to dig deep into its bowels and find out how this was possible in the first place. There are also more questions that Walmart has to answer, yet I wonder if it will get us anywhere. From all parties Global News is the first station of investigation, and I wonder how much interference some parties will throw up and that might be seen in the media over the next few days and that will lead to several questions, none of them good.

 

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Yesterday was fun

Yes, yesterday was fun for several reasons, not in the least that some people (referring to themselves as a member of the Anony Mouse population) are in the misgiven idea that I could be Mr Theodore Raitor. Nothing could be further from the truth!

In the First
In the first the arms industry is a business. I did not make it that way, the American did that during the Vietnam war. They made it a business and less than a dozen boards of directors took home billions in all kinds of manners. I am not opposing that, I am not offering another view, I could but there is some wisdom in taking that route, it comes with successes and it also comes with failures. 

In the second
Following the first, I have at all times the direct believe that ANY sovereign nation is allowed its ability to defend itself, that includes Middle East and Far East Nations. The ability to arm and defend itself should be open to any nation. The Belgium Fabrique National in Herstal founded itself on that premise and for them in the 80’s (optionally 90’s as well) business was good, really good. 

These two rules are there out in the open, the media tends to not report on that side of it all. You see the media relies on ‘click bitches’ and their reporting is centred around that premise. National defence is a well trusted stage for emotional reporting and I am not objecting to that, they merely made a choice. Thats also where I drew the line to failure. Ford created the Edsel and for 3 years they tried that but after year 3 they stopped it, their losses came down to what would now be regarded as a $2 billion loss. They quietly let this failure die, which is what they were allowed to do and yes, we all (the older people) make jokes on it and Hollywood added to that in Peggy Sue got Married. It was all good. Now we see that the Lockheed Martin boys (girls also) are trying to continue their stage after making an investment well over 1000 times and they want it to continue. Losses a thousand times bigger than Ford had, is anyone seeing that marker? Now it is up to Lockheed Martin to do whatever they need to do, because it is their right (and other people’s money) and that is the larger stage, the US taxpayer is paying for that failure. 

For me there is a simple setting. There is a customer (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) that has a right to defend itself, so I would happily sell them the BAE Typhoon, but there the UK cut themselves when we see the CAAT (Campaign Against Arms Trade) with all these grannies with signs telling the UK government that Saudi Arabia is evil, it cannot have weapons, but they do not hold that candle up to Iran who is funding Houthi attacks on civilian populations. So there is an alternative, China has an alternative. And even if that makes me a really well paid courier. I am willing to ferry those papers between buyer A and seller B. Yes, I agree that getting 3.75% out of $11,000,000,000 is a bit much, but I never made those rules, did I? The US and their business enterprises did that. I merely saw the ball falling and I decided to pick it up. China is not in a war with Australia, the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group is a respectable defence ability offerer (most usual to China) and the US has a lemon, so there is nothing wrong and those trying to create click bitches need to consider that I never made any of these rules, I merely use the rules of the game to get a job and to get a decent payment. If the KSA decides that I cannot have the $412,500,000 and that I am only allowed $50,000,000 I will not be upset (optionally a little disappointed), but that is any mouse who gets the slice of cheese and not the cheese wheel in a building filled with cheese wheels. 

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a right to get defence materials and the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group has a right to sell them to anyone their government is not at war with. These are not my rules, the Americans did that and they stood by whilst the Taliban ended with over 8 billion in American hardware and they also did close to nothing when ISIS got their hands on more American Toyota 4 wheel drives then can be found in Guttenberg, New York. So there!

Do I stand a chance? Not really, but the fact that I am willing to do business where there is business also implies that there are other players and as a former NATO boy, I rather see these funds go to China then to Russia with their Sukhoi Su-57 or their new puppy the Checkmate. This is the consequence of making defence a business, its all good and overpaid fun until someone creates a lemon. A lemon one that costs the taxpayer $2,300,000,000,000. Are you awake? Can you see the cost of one article (read: lemon) currently equals the total debt of Germany? 

Do I want in? Absolutely! This one deal could make me more money than half a century of day to day slaving, it is like getting the golden lottery ticket and this really pays off! 

Is it bad for Lockheed Martin? Yes it is, like Ford with their Edsel, all failure is shared, but it could result in a big win, you merely have to watch Nintendo who turned their WiiU failure into a homerun success (Nintendo Switch), I personally see the Lockheed Failure in the same way as we see failures from Microsoft. Too many politicians who ignore the core business and try to steer towards the Fata Morgana of mountains of gold on the horizon, when you do that you merely steer from failure to failure and the defence players better catch on quick. You see the buyers are not interested in hype creating marketeers, they want results and Lockheed Martin is not delivering that and whilst we speculate that the media is taking notes from speculative stakeholders, the buyer in the end is a defence industry who is not interested in marketing, they have a clear goal, not a fictive on on the horizon and that is one ferry I am happy to board (with permission of its captain). It is the direct result of a labour force who is all in touch with feelings and not in line with expected needs and KPI sessions. So yes, yesterday was fun for more than one reason and it could end up being a whole lot more fun if I do get that job.

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Eradication

There are moments where we are all contemplating it, what if I was alone in the neighbourhood (get work done), what if I was alone in this mall (no queues), what if I am alone in this area (quiet), the list goes on and we have all had these moments. Nothing bad, we merely needed a moment. Yet some have a much larger need. Eco terrorists, extremists and so on. We also have a good degree of extinction movies and my issue is that in these cases (with a few exceptions) it is glued together on the premise of the averting hero. One such exception is Contagion by Steven Soderbergh. It is a clinical view of how bad tit could get and 10 years later we see COVID, the movie is a little more pessimistic yet all the markers seem to apply and it got me thinking. What happens when an eco terrorist sees his (or her) species become extinct, how angry could that person get? So what happens when that person decides to do something about it? Governments make the claim and they are getting us nowhere, but this person sets a new premise. As such I got to think on how that person could succeed. I took the DNA of one woman, one man and one female Bobono and I came up with a new spliced DNA (see image), this is as good as keynote would give it to me and as I have no access to Mathlab, this will have to do. It is merely a premise to a story mind you. 

This DNA virus would be 100 times more efficient than COVID, eradicating 96%-98% of the entire population, but in a stage where we pretend it could happen, what if it plays out, not unlike a story that Dutch writer Anne de Vries wrote in 1951 in her story of Journey Through the Night which is a WW2 story. I loved that book when I was a kid, it was a great book to read and the settings stayed with me. Now it is not in four parts, but three. The start of the unleashing, the ravaging of the disease and the aftermath. A story that gives us close to a decade (or two) on how it all unfolds. How the disease is left to the greed driven and left to the academics, the eco terrorist had done its homework and like the chest of Pandora, someone ends up opening it. Yet nothing happens and the people looking at it find nothing and that was exactly how it was intended to be, the five boxes are sent and four end up getting opened. The infected are unaware of what they had wrought and as they travel from place to place they become the infectors, from 5 spots we get to 25, then 125 and close thereafter close to two million infection spots, the point of no return has been reached and as people go on with their daily life people start getting sick, but at first there are no indications of what is wrong. Cases of Bloom’s and Werner’s syndromes get out of hand, they are moving from one in millions to one in 10,000 and there are other changes as well, explosions of cancer cases all over the globe and it takes a while before someone decides to look into genetic testing. The deed is done and as people are transferring it through touching things, through handshakes and other means, the population is infected before anyone has a real clue what is going on. So whilst we look at some crowd images and wonder ‘Who would be this stupid’ (well, they obviously), we start seeing that it is already too late, the eco terrorist got his or her wish.

As we see stupid people panic and others in the dark on what is going on, we see a much larger stage for part 2, how governments are in hiding, how politicians try to get to that isolated place, all whilst they cannot tell whether they or a family member is infected, as cities die off over the term of years we see the move into part three where the few surviving members are wondering how to survive, a planet with all the goods there reduced to a population of 253,000,000. Suddenly the tailor, the doctor, the farmer and the butcher are worth their weight in gold in any community. 

And that gets us to part 3 which I cannot yet tell as I have been focussing on part 1, the issues leading to part 2 are clear, the parts in part 3 less so. Yet the foundation of a story is set, the foundation of a premise exposing the useless factor of a stakeholder is naught. So whilst we look at some source giving us ‘how a narrow focus on air pollution limits can backfire’, as far as I could tell, none of them took a look at the EEA report from last year and took a hard look at the 147 locations causing 50% of ALL pollution, so can anyone consider that premise? 147 is a real number, an environmental agency gave us that and the media ignores it. They do not attack it, they do not question it, they ignore it. Why is that? And is it then any wonder that someone will think “If 98% of all the people are dead the pollution goes away as well”? It is the premise to a larger story, one the stakeholders do not want to hear about, because in the end they are merely unofficial lobbyists to those who decide where to spend their money and where to keep their profits. 

A stage we enabled and now that it is here, too many are in doubt of what to do next. Me, I merely write stories, like I come up with new games, new TV series and new movies. My mind is creative what others do with it is not my concern. 

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When one and one remains one

Two things crossed my path, as perhaps a lot of you too. They are not related, but they gave me food for thought. The first are the floods all over NY city. I looked at a lot of YouTube videos and I agree, we have never seen this before, will we see more of that? Time will tell. Yes, it could be due to global warming, but it is not a given. We have tornado’s and we have storms and this one went towards New York. Now, I am not stating that it isn’t due to global warming, but to point the finger from the start is not a good idea. I do believe that global warming is part of the storm surge and as global warming continues there will be more storms. There is no denying that. One can lead to the other, but one is not the definite cause of the other. That setting is here too. So whilst those with a sub-level apartment, they now have a swimming pool. I am not making fun of them, that would be wrong, but it is important to consider that New York has never dealt with this before and it is now August. It will take months to dry, so we are in a setting with thousands of a basement apartments and when the frost sets in, these houses will become death traps. November and December will be close to unbearable and in January if the frost sets in these apartments will be a different setting. It is also a more important setting, if snowfall comes early this December, thousands of places to live will become close to unsurvivable and New York better get ready for that stage, it could kill a lot of people. Is it a given? No, it is not, but the floods are clearly visible, if the subway is flooded, how will these houses fare? And that is only the start, the water brought all kinds of mud and other health threats, so cleaning these places will be an almost titanic task. Then we get to the damaged electrical systems, and all this is before we realise that plumbing and  water will take a while to become decently reliable again. A stage we saw in part, but how much of these dangers did the people see?

The second is not related, but it had my attention. Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-tv-usa/amazon-to-roll-out-its-own-tv-in-u-s-by-october-business-insider-idUSKBN2FZ00D) gives us ‘Amazon to roll out its own TV in U.S. by October’, this implies that there is another statin on US minds, Amazon will have more than Amazon Prime Video, they are now setting the stage to TV and there is no attack, there is no issue. Yet the stage of them offering  TV with a twist is not out of the question. It is a clever move from Amazon, they have the option to take advertising to a whole new level and it is THEIR TV channel, so the essential attacks on Amazon will not be as effective as the attacks that Apple and Google are facing. But is that what it is about? No, it is not merely the TV part, it is the shifting economy that Amazon gets to push for. This is not meant in a negative way, but consider that thousands will be dislodged, thousands will need a job, a home and Amazon who is out to hire 55,000 tech jobs and that news is a mere 22 hours old. People have relocated for a lot less and that gives Amazon more than a leg up, it gives them a furlong head start in 2-3 venues and in this setting of bad news they become a shining light and optionally a larger staged beneficial noise to a lot of people. The part that New York might not like is that there is a setting where (depending on Amazon choices) 20-30 thousand people vacate for sunnier shores and in light of what happened in the last few days, with the added workforce taking a step in an optional other direction. We will see a larger stage of the economy changing in New York, one New York never anticipated before. So we see the tech jobs, TV and a lot more and Amazon is at the heart of that. These events are not connected, yet the stage of a larger change becomes apparent, or perhaps I need to say ‘speculatively apparent’. because it is speculation from my side. A stage where Amazon gets to promote their jobs, their positions, their TV, their goods at base pries is an advantage that few ever have and thousands are looking for jobs and that advantage is likely to increase over time. I am merely looking at the pharmaceutical side, the retail side and the job side and there we see Amazon having an advantage thrice over. And as I see it, they are not doing anything wrong. They merely take a versatile set in a post covid era and they are decently ahead of the rest. 

So consider what I write, consider what you think and see where you can prosper, because someone who hires 55,000 tech jobs has a larger plan in place and that is not something you should ignore, especially when Amazon takes that setting on an international level. It gives them a larger advantage over several players who aren’t even close to doing what Amazon is claiming to start over the next 4 weeks.

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Would it still be news?

We get that at times. A question regarding the news, not what they bring, but what they are. I was left with a few questions today when I took notice of ‘Saudi news channels start moving operations out of Dubai’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/1/saudi-news-channels-start-moving-operations-out-of-dubai). Just as the BBC is in London, the NOS is in the Netherlands (Hilversum), Swedish News is predominantly in Stockholm. I always assumed that Saudi News was in Riyadh, so to see that they were in Dubai which is a nice and large town in another nation was a little bit of a surprise. So as I take notice of “Riyadh has told international firms to put their MidEast hubs there by the start of 2024 or risk losing out on business” has a certain amount of sense.

The question becomes who offers more, Dubai or Riyadh? I am not talking money, even though for the international stations that will be some part of it. Dubai has its yachts, its connected jet-setting, yet what does Riyadh offer? It is a genuine question. I must admit that I only recently saw Riyadh through the eyes of YouTuber Jason Billiam Travel, and he did an excellent job, if you have never been to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the view that (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_4wPK6oks) where I got my first glimpse of the Kingdom Tower at the beginning of the video no less. He was able to give me a clear impression that Riyadh, the capital is larger than the entire nation of Bahrein and he gives us a lot more over several movies, more on Riyadh and more on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is one element that there is no yacht club in Saudi Arabia. If I had the ability to create one in Riyadh, I would. Even if it is just to set aside my sense of humour as the nearest decent amount of water is almost 400Km away (Sea of Dammam, aka the Persian gulf), so the idea to have a restaurant in the building that represents a yacht would be a fun idea. A place where 8 million people live and most have never seen a boat with their own eyes, so to create a concrete yacht that is a restaurant and optionally an international hotel will get the eyes of a lot of people. But we were talking about the news and Al Jazeera also gives us “Saudi Arabian news channels are starting to transfer operations out of Dubai amid a push by the country’s crown prince to get multinational companies to relocate their headquarters to the kingdom” and it makes sense, although it would have made initial more sense to have Saudi news offices in Saudi Arabia, but that is merely me and it is a thought that is based on the idea that news channels should be local. So when I see “Saudi Arabia has been pressuring international companies to put their Middle East hubs in the kingdom by the start of 2024 or risk losing out on business in the region’s largest economy” I do realise that too many people will focus on ‘pressuring international companies’, yet is that fair? Consider that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should award business to its local parties, so Dubai has benefitted with its Media centre to the largest degree for well over a decade. And the reason seen in “The move is intended to limit “economic leakage” and boost job creation” makes perfect sense. 

There are actually two additional reasons to contemplate, whether it is all news is in the middle. With that shift the media will get a lot more exposure to Neom city as well as the tourist visibility places that Riyadh has to offer, the Kingdom Tower is merely one of them. The Grand Mosque of Riyadh is according to many another one.  

The entire setting made me wonder why Saudi news was not set on a local premise in the first place. I am not saying it was wrong, I am merely wondering what was the reasoning in the first place. There are many valid reasons that come to mind, yet none of these have been tested at present and with Neom City now a mere 9 years away, the local presence seem to make more and more sense. There is of course more, there is a larger stage to promote Jeddah as well, we can argue that this could be done from either place, but I have seen on how minds get distracted from other places as the distance increases and Dubai is very far away from Jeddah, it is not enough a reason, but it is one and consider that in the last 24 hours globally ‘Neom’ was mentioned 10 times. One in Chinese, three in Arabic and the rest in English, in a world where there are thousands of publication, 10 mentions? Yes the news needs adjusting and perhaps it starts with getting the international news stations local. As I see it it is a lot less about economic leakage and more about ignoring Saudi events, in this the Houthi attacks on civilian Saudi targets might finally get the exposure it deserves. 

Will it still be news after the switch? I hope not, as it had been happening for too long, but that is merely my 2 coins on the subject. 

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Thames based tears

To be honest, I needed a few moments. It happens to us all, we all get overwhelmed by anger and frustrations at times and I am no different. This all started a few hours back when the Guardian gave us ‘Revealed: Foreign Office ignored frantic pleas to help Afghans’, now this happens, and I get it, the Afghans are optionally worried about things, it is the second part “Thousands of urgent messages from MPs and charities had not been read by the end of the UK evacuation from Afghanistan” as well as “including cases flagged by government ministers”, in this my first personal response was “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Let’s be clear, the entire Taliban debacle started in 2001, 20 years ago. And instead of eradicating the Taliban, a sit on your hands tactic was deployed. 

Consider the quote “The Taliban are a revolutionary movement, deeply opposed to the Afghan tribal system and focused on the rebuilding of the Islamic Emirate. Their propaganda and intelligence are efficient, and the local autonomy of their commanders in the field allow them both flexibility and cohesion. They have made clever use of ethnic tensions, the rejection of foreign forces by the Afghan people, and the lack of local administration to gain support in the population.” We get this from the Carnegie endowment for international peace, the author is Gilles Dorronsoro and it was published well over a DECADE ago, in 2008 (at https://carnegieendowment.org/files/taliban_winning_strategy.pdf). As such the US and UK had a decade to respond and to alter their tactics. So if people get angry over “Thousands of urgent messages from MPs” it will be mostly acceptable. In addition, can we get a list of those ‘thousands’ of whiners? (Charities are permitted to whine) Afghanistan was a joke from start to finish, a joke that came with a multi billion dollar invoice. Instead of eradicating, the US and others started to pussyfoot there and it merely ended up being the foundation of their casualty list. 

And in all this, Afghanistan is almost three times the size of the United Kingdom and the Taliban took it bak in less than a week, and no one is asking questions? The Afghan army got overrun like nothing you have ever seen, whilst they were 5 times the size of the Taliban and it remains to be seen how many of those Afghan troops changed sides. So whilst we start crying “Oh, what a poor people” there is a much larger concern and it has not been dealt with, not for almost two decades. And whilst the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/28/revealed-foreign-office-ignored-pleas-help-afghans-mps-evacuation) gives us “However, amid accusations of government incompetence over elements of the evacuation effort, the Observer has seen evidence that an official email address used to collate potential Afghan cases from MPs and others regularly contained 5,000 unread emails throughout the week”, we get additional questions on who monitors that email address and can we get a tally of who mailed it, how often and whether they were MP, Charity or other? And more interesting is a fact not shown here, and that is why I want the names of those MP’s. You see this was going to happen, and it was clear that this was going to happen in 2020, early 2020. So whilst we tend to know that MP’s leave a lot until the 11th hour, starting certain steps like evacuating translators would have been prudent almost 26 weeks ago,  so how many were evacuated? And this in on the UK, the US has a much larger mess to deal with. So as we start considering a number of events, consider that the list of Monday morning quarterbacks (another name-tag for some mp’s) needs to be set next to a list of ACTUAL actions they started to get people out of harms way. That is all before we start digging into the reach of ISIS-K and how in that mess they got a person loaded with explosives into Kabul and right towards the airport. In all this when we see the mess on several fronts too many issues are outstanding and not considered, a side the Guardian and the Observer are seemingly void on. I use seemingly because it implies that I read everything these two are bringing and I never did that part. 

So whilst you consider that poor poor tactic, take time and make a list of all actual and factual actions over the last 20 years and how Afghanistan got overrun again in a week by the Taliban, the allied forces never had that option, so why not? For those who oppose me in this (an always valid side), go cry me a river and when it comes to the size of the Thames, let’s compare notes, you might not like the result but if that wakes you up, it is fine by me. 

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As credibility moves to the arctic

Yes, today is another day to look at the media BS and in this case the BBC. Now, let’s be clear, in this specific case they are optionally not deceiving you, but they are part of the problem and not part of the solution (as I personally see it). The article ‘Climate change: Consumer ‘confusion’ threatens net zero homes plan’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58306288) sounds nice but they are painting with one brush, a massively large one and they are tinkering towards what I personally expect to be the needs of stakeholders. 

You see, I gave you a few parts (again) in ‘Ignored by media’ a week ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/19/ignored-by-media/). That pesky European Environment Agency gave a report a little over 6 months ago that showed us clearly (in their way) that 50% of ALL pollution came from 147 facilities, I even added their graphics. Did any of these media courtesans give us that? Did they clearly oppose it with reasons? No, they did none of that. No, they are giving us “efforts to curb emissions from millions of homes in the UK will be at risk”, so whilst we see the BS arrangement to give us “they need the right information and tools, particularly when it comes to adapting their home. “By getting things right now, the government can give people the confidence to make changes and play their part in getting to net zero.”” Which sounds nice and I get that part, but in all this we see the spending by millions of households whilst 50% of the problem is given to us by 147 facilities, so 147 facilities against millions of households, in addition the media to the largest extent has not now, NOT EVER, dug into that lit of 147 facilities and gave us the lit of 147 players and started their name and shame game (I reckon that involved stakeholders will not allow for that). So whilst the BBC is reporting “offers financial support such as grants, low-cost loans and financing”, and I apologise so pardon my French, so where the fuck is that list of 147 facilities, the amounts of taxation paid by the people behind these 147 facilities and how much non taxable funds they are making? Now, we should understand that these facilities might not (most likely are not) be in the UK or Europe, but in the age of the media giving us ‘the people have a right to know’ I reckon that the people should be allowed that part of the equation too, or not?

So whilst the BBC gives us boldly “Government plans to decarbonise homes are too complicated and confusing, according to a coalition of consumer and industry groups”, why are they not going over that list of 147 facilities and make sure that those facilities are fined so that we all get time and funds to do our side? So when we are given “The carbon generated by home heating amounts to about 20% of all UK emissions”, all whilst we see that several media players are ignoring “50% of ALL pollution comes from 147 facilities” are you not equally wondering why environmental reporters are largely ignoring the EEA report? 

It makes me wonder who Matt McGrath is catering too, do you not agree to this? In all this Matt is not completely wrong with his article, but the setting is not that small, it has not be that small for well over a decade and when we see the links to ‘Climate change: Europe’s extreme rains made more likely by humans’ and ‘Nature crisis: Talks resume on global plan to protect biodiversity’ you might notice something, I did. You see in these two articles the word ‘pollution’ is seen once. It is seen in the second article in the quote “the nations of the world failed to fully meet any of the 20 targets which included protecting coral reefs and tackling pollution”, all this whilst the EEA report does not get mentioned, not once. In a day and age where the headlines are about ‘biodiversity’ and ‘extreme rains’, yet pollution and the 147 facilities are out of range (read out of expected bounds). 

So what alleged stakeholder is making a speculated fortune by allegedly arranging the media not to take a deep and informative look at the EEA report?
Which so called journalist dug into the data the EEA has, where the 147 facilities were and which of the remaining 14178 could get its pollution damage smothered (by a lot)? 

These are questions that are out in the open and yes, that is not up to the BBC to fix, yet the utter silence of that part is up to the BBC and they need to be starting to ask the difficult questions. Yes they cannot give all the answers, but in this stage no one is asking the questions that matter, I will let you figure out which is worse. 

So enjoy the polluted air and remember, Amazon sells gas masks ranging from $30 to $150, be weary you might need one in the near future and if you see the BS people attacking others on their freedom of choice for not wearing a face mask, I wonder how they will react to the choice between gas mask and breathing (no more). That is in the end the second option, if we let the 35% of all stupid people of the population die, pollution and carbon emissions will be reduced as well, the scales of balance will not care and if one solution will not work, the other one remains. Life can at times be that simple.

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