Category Archives: Media

August 22, 2021 · 22:44

Is a coroner required?

Yup, that is at times the question. Not in all, but in some. You see, I am rewatching Contagion, Steven Soderbergh did an awesome job and now with Covid, it is almost a documentary (nyuk, yuk, nyuk). Yet this is not about covid, it is about mortality rate. It is in the beginning of the movie when Jude Law gives us “Print media is dead, I’ll save you a seat on the bus”. It is that part that woke up something in me. Yes, print media is dead, or to some extent it should be. So as we look into that direction we see a few items. The first is that the quote comes from a 2011 movie, so there is one side. We see all kind of magazines being removed from the magazine stands and that reinforces the view, yet in opposition we see Forbes giving us less than a year ago ‘Stop Saying Print Journalism Is Dead. 60 Magazines Launched During This Crazy Year’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2021/12/30/stop-saying-print-journalism-is-dead-60-magazines-launched-during-this-crazy-year/ ), yes that is one view to have and it is a relevant one. We get “the saga of print journalism over the last several years has been one of decay and rot; layoffs; budget cuts; shrinkage. And it’s easy to see where the pandemic has made all that worse. A moribund economy means fewer advertisers are spending money, which dries up print revenue, which means cutbacks, circulation declines, fewer employees, a greater reliance on wire copy — you get the idea. Proclaim your love of newspapers all you want” and we get in addition to that “NBA star Stephen Curry’s wife Ayesha Curry launched a quarterly food, home and lifestyle magazine called Sweet July with help from the publishing giant Meredith”.

We need to consider two things, the first is that new magazines are started all over the world, they al think that they have the formula that advertisers will want and people will want to buy. That is not a bad thing, it merely is a something that happens. A year ago some might have seen ‘News Corp announces end of more than 100 Australian print newspapers in huge shift to digital’, this is as I see it a policy shift, it does not end the publication, it merely shifts it to the digital side. And that is what Forbes and others are afraid of, to be disregarded, so the 60 magazines sounds nice, but how many of them lasts beyond year 1? How many are left after years 2? In this it is not merely the buyer, it will be the advertisers, if they stay away, the publication ends and 60 minus 112 is still a negative number. In this I merely looked at one nation, when we add the New York Times we get ‘More Than 1 in 5 U.S. Papers Has Closed’ and that is almost two years ago. So in all this, the response from Forbes seems a little feeble and desperate. 

So is the print media dead? I agree with people stating that it is dying, but dead? No, I do not believe that this is the case, yet I do believe that print media needs to change, how? Not sure, but the catering to everyone will not work, in this it is like gaming. If you make a game that is supposed to please everyone, you end up with a game that satisfies no one. I believe that print media is on that same setting. I also believe that it is the reason why niche magazines will outlast most others. It is also why the dip on local newspapers are missing to a much larger extent. The people like their local news, the national newspapers will often not cover it, and as such we see more and more newspapers disappear.

And when we take the pulse of something like this we also need to consider what the fallout will be on a much larger scale. You see if they do not, those who advertised in print will only have the digital wave, all whilst examining the population per magazine might reveal a few alternatives and here the local newspapers can pick up the slack to a much larger degree, they are in a good place, the niche in some cases is beneficial to a much larger community and I reckon that we will see a lot more of that in 2022-2023. To those who ignore the setting of “Print media is dead”, that is your right and I have nothing against that, but I do recommend you get a data coroner to see where you can get a benefit or two, because the early bird that hesitates, gets worms.

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August 19, 2021 · 20:19

Ignored by media

Yes, that happens, we all see it, we all (to some extend) understand it. Yet what needs to happen for an article like ‘Will I ever be able to fly without feeling guilty again?’ (At https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57917193) to even have value? You see, this has happened before and this time its Lucy Hooker who does the damage. You see, I have no intention of taking the filtered information given to us for granted. You see, the slightly edited quote “Previously a regular flyer, visiting friends in Scotland and holidaying abroad, she says the penny dropped during that trip. And in the end, the decision was easy. She is one of a small band of people who have found flying just too uncomfortable to contemplate any more.” So, how can she afford it? I haven’t flown in 17 years, but that is because I am on a budget. So when we see “One flight from London to New York emits around 1.3 tonnes of carbon according to the offsetting organisation Atmosfair. Other organisations offer lower estimates, but even if you eat vegan and cycle everywhere, you’d struggle to make up for the emissions from a return trip”, I see this as a stupid BS article, a story by Miss Hooker to please others and none of them are particularly interested in the real deal, just like the Guardian and their Jetset BS. 

The largest extend was ignored again and again, as we take notice of the actual issue. The report which I discussed in ‘Uniform Nameless Entitlement Perforation’ on December 10th 2020 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/10/uniform-nameless-entitlement-perforation/), which has the ACTUAL report given to us by the UN Environment program, is merely a part of it, when we combine the European Environment Agency report, we see that 1% of plants do 50% of the pollution damage, but are they looking there? And there is more, 147 plants cause over 165 billion euro’s damage, so why are they not looking there? Why do we get BS article after BS article on some oversensitive person who saw a flood once? And to emphasise, the 147 plants do an equal amount of damage as the remaining 14178 facilities under scrutiny. So how often did the BBC (the Guardian too) do their homework and look into those accusation by the EEA? I bet that will be more crunchy than some sob-story over a person who will not be flying to Scotland to see relatives (or friends). 

Yes, we can all agree that we need to be carbon aware, but this is done whilst the media ignores the larger problem creators. 

And personally I do not care about Maggie Robertson, if she feels she sleeps better by signing up to Flight Free UK, that is fine by me, I avoided travel for 17 years by getting a budget shoved down my throat. And I am NOT ignoring the EEA report, even as the media is. You see, they avoided it, they did not oppose the report, they did not nitpick the report, they merely ignored it, and why was that? 

So if you want the real lowdown on pollution, find the EEA report and learn, also consider that everyone seems to ignore the 147 facilities and they have done so for well over a year, because the report might have been out for 8 months, but these 147 facilities have been around a hell of a lot longer, so why are we kept in the dark whilst attacking rich people with fuel efficient jets and people going on a holiday perhaps once a year, all whilst 50% of ALL pollution is caused according to the EEA by 147 facilities, so which facilities are they?

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August 18, 2021 · 02:05

Sliding media values

I got a little angry as I took notice of ‘Lily Cole: Model apologises for posing in a burka on Instagram’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58245304). Here we see the BBC in an alleged new attempt to create click bitches. You see, why would the legally allowed acts of a writer (Lilly Cole) require her to publicly apologise for something that is in the first not illegal and not even immoral. In the second, I hereby request a list of ALL the critics that we see in “Critics said posing in the garment, worn by some Muslim women, did not help diversity and was ill-advised given the current unrest in Afghanistan”, so I want that list of critics (and stakeholders too). Diversity is not seen through fashion, to be clear it is my view and when I see “Cole said she understood why the image upset people and wanted to “sincerely apologise for any offence caused”. She agreed it was “ill-timed” and said she “hadn’t read the news at the time”.” I personally wonder who is pushing this anti islamic bullshit. Now, I am not muslim, I do not are whether a person (disregarding religion) decides to wear a Burka, a Niqab, a Hijab, or a Chador. Is that not the freedom we signed up for? 

That same BBC is very motivated to push any link to Martin Bashir out of the news (or as far to the back as possible). So I am understandably angry. I do not know what the motivation, or the choice was of Lily Cole to give rise to diversity. And when I see the utterly slim connection of “Cole, 33, posted the pictures as Afghanistan was being taken over by the Taliban, who forced women to wear the burka when they were last in control there in the 1990s” is beyond belief. First these idiots (oops, sorry critics) will optionally be found to have been super silent in cases of Syria and Yemen as well as the inactions by America in Afghanistan, the latter part is getting all kinds of exposure. In the second, the global Islamic population is almost 2 billion, making it 25% of the world population, the Taliban is an estimated mere 230,000 making it a 0.015% of the Islamic population and a 0.00294% of the global population, so why the overreaction? I am speculating and willing to bet that this is due to anti-islamic sentiments and the BBC is reporting this, whilst allegedly ignoring all kinds of issues for their stakeholders? 

Does anyone get the drift that the BBC needs to overhaul their editorial staff? I need to be honest, the BBC has done its share in exposing anti-Islamophobia, that should not be ignored, but this piece could have been done a hell of a lot better. So when we look at some of the quotes and we see “The Times columnist Janice Turner accused Cole of “putting Instagram posturing before universal human rights”.” In this I am willing to call Janice Turner a bit of a raving loon. Why? This is about a book, Lily Cole’s book and if she thinks that she is doing the best to produce and promote her product then it is her choice. I have nothing against JT messaging Lily Cole stating that she is not taking the right route, no, the BBC made it all public and no matter how you slice it, she did it on HER instagram account. When I search for Instagram+Scandal I get 85,000,000 hits on Google. In this day and age when ACTUAL journalism is sliding, was there any value in giving Lily Cole visibility in this way? Then we see “Anjum Peerbacos, co-founder of the Hijabi Half-Hour podcast, said the pictures were “disrespectful””, which is a separate and different issue. I cannot comment on that (not Islam and lacking knowledge) and what the BBC did not give us is that she is also a member of AVOW- Advancing Voices of Women against Islamaphobia. OK, this view has merit, but the BBC did not take that path, the path was all accusing on Lily Cole and with the exception of Anjum Peerbacos it was the wrong route to take. 

We all make mistakes, there is no denying that. Yet to hammer an activist who just wrote a book it is unacceptable to take such an approach. I believe that islamic people have a decent stance to talk about dress-up, yet her answer “If you are serious about it and you’re passionate about it and you want to see diversity normalised, you bring women forward that are from that diverse background and you platform them”, is a decent intelligent one. A view that almost falls into the background, too far into the background. 

So why is it making me angry?
The BBC was ignoring several cases of houthi missile attacks on Saudi civilian targets, the BBC has been adamant on giving the highlights on many causes and that should not be forgotten. Yet in this case it could have taken a very different route, whether this is good or bad for Lily Cole is something that I cannot predict, but I wish her the best. Advocating diversity is a good cause and perhaps Anjum Peerbaco could set up a special in the Middle East Eye (a paper she writes for), or perhaps via AVOW. Let’s not forget that we all make mistakes and teaching us the why can almost never be a bad thing. It might help Lily Cole, I do not know, I am merely fishing here.

Yet I believe that the BBC with that article made a larger mistake and they should repair the damage they do, I truly believe that. And in the end, is fighting against islamophobia and for diversity to some extent not an overlapping interest area?

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August 17, 2021 · 02:31

The stupidity of catering

Catering is a double sided coin, there is a plus side and there is a negative side. In this there are to problems with that equation, in the first these are not sides of the same coin, they are two coins, one is larger than the other and as such we see the reflective setting change. Consider two coins, like a dime and a dollar, or a pence and a pound. Now consider that they both have heads and tails, you can choice one or the other and you think that the biggest one is your gain, but that would be wrong, it is the smaller one and the other side of the larger coin is the headway and losses you make and they tend to be larger. It is the price of catering. Like the stupid manager with dollar shaped pupils, they see revenue, but they do not recognise cost, it is part of another branch of their company, so they sell and dump all the support to the services side, in some cases (what I personally witnessed) selling things that will not work. It was their revenue and their bonus. After which they will suddenly become helpful and let their services department solve it all, making sure that delays are set in motion so that the 90 day threshold is passed and then whatever is paid back will not affect their bonus. The stupidity of catering is always one sided. Even me, I cater to me, I admit that and I have no issues with catering to me, but I will remain fair. I will not sell what will not work, I will not cater to the impossible. And that is the setting we see today, catering to the impossible.

The news (at https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/16/the-us-the-taliban-and-the-stunning-defeat-in) gives us “The Taliban victory is a major humiliation for the US”, it is not a weird consideration and there have been like mind voices in the past. I myself voiced issues with inactivity as early as 2013 and 2014, yet the Americans made noise that they knew better and now we see another stage. A stage that the media is ignoring. Yes they give their ‘click bitch’ emotional setting, but the larger stage that Al Jazeera hints at with “It was expected, yes, but not so rapidly, so victoriously, so humiliatingly”. The issues is troops and material, as I voiced the Comanche approach (an American approach no less) well over half a decade ago, the Americans catered to stakeholders and set on a perch. They should have taken a page out of the book of Quanah Parker who gave them hell in the late 1800’s (around 1870), that would have been a way to deal with the Taliban, but they decided to sit on a perch and halt any action and now we see the other side of that coin, the Taliban overran nearly all of Afghanistan in less than a week, they had the troops, they had the hardware and no one had a clue.

Now as we see Kabul being overrun, we suddenly get ‘Afghan President Ashraf Ghani flees Kabul to ‘prevent bloodshed’’ (I personally think he ran for his life caring only for self, but that might be merely my thought). There is also ‘Afghans Need a Humanitarian Intervention Right Now’, yet if you believe that this will happen you are quite crazy. I find the call by Micheál Martin calling ‘calls on Taliban to respect humanitarian law’ and this is politics? The loser in a war does not get to make demands, that has been a set result long before the Americans held that clambake from 19 Apr 1775 to 3 Sept 1783. The Dutch had a picnic opposing the Spanish in the years from 1566 to 1609, as such, I have no idea what will happen in Afghanistan, but it will not be pretty, that much I feel certain about. You see ABC news gave the people 8 hours ago ‘Who are the Taliban and what do they want?’, the did not go into any part of the folly that allowed Afghanistan to be overrun so fast. And the people in the media are not asking that question, not the Democrats, not the Republicans, and as I personally see it both sides catered to stakeholders and the maximisation of war revenue which to the largest degree gave the victory to the Taliban. When you consider the projects that USAID finished in Afghanistan, when you consider the costs and who got paid? How were they paid? A group that can overthrow a nation in a week and we need to consider “USAID completed the construction of three generation plants in 2009, 2016, and 2019 and is constructing three solar power plants and a wind farm that will add 110 megawatts of power to the national power grid” and those are merely the highlights. 

So what will happen next?
That is actually the question that is harder to answer, because it depends on the Taliban and not on the politicians that make claims that there are options and that they are working on this. Because that will be something that is so far from the truth it will become laughable. And it gets to be worse than this, you see the ‘allied’ forces abandoned their translators, the world is seeing that so any encounter where translators are needed it will be on the US forces to find them and secure them beforehand, a much larger tactical advantage then they are considering. 

A stage that might seem to be evolving, but that would be wrong, the larger stage is not that they merely lost, it is that the intelligence services in that region had seemingly no clear insight into their opponents and their resolve, their size and the materials available to them. Afghanistan is 270% of the UK and it got overrun in a week, is anyone waking up to these numbers? The afghan military was useless and their weapons pointless, the same might be said for the departing allies the Afghan army had, as such we see defeat in three ways and the media is not picking up on that, how weird?

The Guardian gives us “The Taliban have 80,000 troops in comparison with a nominal 300,699 serving the Afghan government”, this now implies that the Taliban went up against an army almost 400% their size and still overtook Afghanistan in a week, a cause for alarm and a cause for concern, so when we see ‘The world must not look away as the Taliban sexually enslaves women and girls’ we see that they too forget that to the victor go the spoils, all the spoils. England learned that lesson the hard way, The Dutch taught the Spanish and the Indonesians taught the Dutch, it was an easy lesson and history is filled with examples and the biggest lesson? These winners did not sit on a perch, it never ever works. 

As such the largest station of lessons is about to unleash and it will be worse, because now the Taliban will cry for their right to vaccines, so which nation will ingratiate themselves by providing vaccines? I reckon we will know a lot more when we get to the next weekend when we can sit on our own perches again, preparing for that Monday morning game as a quarterback.

And the Afghan people? It seems to me that the stakeholders will not care, it is not part of their spreadsheet.

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August 13, 2021 · 00:19

Who you gonna trust?

That is the issue I have and you should too. The news is no longer reliable, catering to people who they have no business of catering too. The numbers are questionable, many articles are all on a template that I personally call ‘How to create a click bitch’, but in this too I wonder who is right. This is given to us by the Daily Mail (at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9885013/Pfizers-Covid-vaccine-42-effective-against-Indian-Delta-variant-Modernas-76.html). Here we see “Pfizer’s Covid vaccine is only 42% effective against Indian ‘Delta’ variant while Moderna’s jab is 76% effective, Mayo Clinic study suggests”, the problem is that I am not a health official and the Daily Mail is throwing plenty of graphs at us. There is a clear admission, we see this with “For the study, published on pre-printer server medRxiv.org – meaning it has not yet been peer review – the team gathered data on more than 25,000 Minnesotans from January to July”, yet I will also admit that Minnesota, a state with 5.75 million people, a group of 25,000 is decent.
It is the claim “The Delta variant being able to bypass the existing vaccines also confirms what many feared, that the virus could potentially mutate to a point where it can bypass vaccines.” That is the scary one. There is no clear setting to prove it yet, but the numbers give rise to this and in the past Dr. Fauci gave a similar worry. I am not sure who to trust, but the setting is starting to get louder, at least if 10% of the population dies, nature might in part restore itself, and the 10% might be low, you will have the anti-vaxxers to thank for that part. 

The issue is actually worse, from my point of view, when we see the numbers from India, I believe that they are low, beyond acceptable. Now, here I will not blame the Indian government. With a population of 1.3 billion, no system will hold up, not in this case, but the numbers are way low and all these people screaming to open airports and travel, they might be pointed at when we see a larger escalation in Delta and Echo variations (I am assuming that there will soon be an Echo variation).
Yet this is not about speculation, so when we look at the CDC, we get “In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalised than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains”, as well as “CDC is continuing to assess data on whether fully vaccinated people with asymptomatic breakthrough infections can transmit. However, the greatest risk of transmission is among unvaccinated people who are much more likely to contract, and therefore transmit the virus.” These are merely two quotes, yet they counter certain people and even worse people almost openly opposing the vaccine. In this several newspapers now give us ‘Anti-vax Red Cross nurse ‘injected 8600 people with saline solution instead of vaccine’’, here I get the urge to ask ‘How can a red cross nurse be ‘Anti-vax’ and work at the red cross?’, There is a reason for vaccines. I grew up in the 60’s whilst Polio thanks to the humanitarian push by Jonas Salk who invented it, and unlike many, he no wealth, he made it an open solution, he did not patent it and as such 34 years later Polio became eradicated in the US in 1994. So when we see “In the late 1940s, polio outbreaks in the U.S. increased in frequency and size, disabling an average of more than 35,000 people each year”, now the number in the US is ZERO, it has been since before the 80’s, there are cases but these are all cases that come into the US. It took a decades to eradicate polio and there is every chance that COVID will take time too. The bigger issue is that polio did not mutate to the degree COVID does and yes at all times getting the vaccine is better than not getting it. So when we see the Guardian giving us last Sunday ‘Rightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of Covid’, we need to consider that even as this is in the US, they are not alone, the anti-vaxxers are everywhere and when we see “Dick Farrel was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and urged people not to get vaccinated”, some might be happy that he is dead, but the problem is not that he is dead, thousands are voicing similar non scientific thoughts and it is becoming a problem.

And as Sydney had its lockdown protests two weeks ago, we now see 345 new cases of Covid in NSW, so with the protests, what are the chances that this number goes down over the next week?  Two months ago, we had a mere 3 cases added, over 8 weeks this escalated to 343 cases with a 7 day average of 312. When you consider this and you also consider that Australia has 25 million people, consider what the damage is expected to be in India with 1300 million and a population pressure that is a lot higher than Australia has, you still think I am talking out of my ass? India peak of May 9th has now decreased from 414,000 new cases to 42,000. I personally believe that there is no way that this is correct, implying that a lot more problems will emerge in
India quite soon. You see there are 200M cases and India has a mere 15% of the cases, you might think that this adds up, because the numbers match, but India with its population pressure and its lack of medical supplies as well as a lack in vaccine should be in a much larger setting, I would personally speculate that the numbers should be 30%-40% higher at the very least, and the media for the largest extent is not looking into it. In addition a few sources, give us that by end July half a billion doses will be done in India, yet what everyone ignores is that the population of India is 1.3B, implying that 2.6B doses are requires, so a mere 20% will have one shot, and whilst we now see that there is dealings over 50M more shots, it also shows that with that many not being inoculated the Delta variant can reap a lot of losses in India, but we do not get that stage illuminated, do we, or the larger impact of how these vaccines will not stop Delta, yet there is also the acknowledgement that for those who had the vaccine, they are most likely to recover from the delta versions. There are no real numbers out there, but several sources gave us that most recover. I am voicing news sources, but when we look at the greater setting there is a larger stage of who and what is to be trusted, I honestly do not know, but I do believe that places like the CDC are the most reliable ones. 

Am I right or am I wrong? I could be either, but I truly believe that the real scientific places (like www.CDC.gov) will be the most reliable source for covid information. I also believe that the people trying to silence Dr. Fauci are not opting for freedom of speech, they are betraying their constituency, leaving them to die of their own devices, but that part is something that the almighty USA and their first amendment are not willing to call out for, in history this is the first time where the first amendment is one of the handles in the USA that will get people killed and a lot of them too. I am certain that the American forefathers would never have dreamed that freedom of speech would throttle science and common sense, but here you have it, that is the setting and I have no idea how large the casualty list will be in a few months. With global protests on common sense solutions, the casualties will merely go up, but in London that also means that housing prices will drop, so there is that to look forward to. 

So who you gonna trust? You better think that through, because now you do it whilst gambling with your life. Will you trust some anti-vaxxer? Will you trust science and doctors? It is your right to chose, but remember, you life has no sequel, and this time it is your life you are taking a gamble with (as well as the people around you). So chose wisely and good luck!

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August 10, 2021 · 02:08

The part we seem to forget

I was reading an article on the Guardian when something hit me. You see, we have been told parts of this again and again since the 90’s, for 30 years, more likely than not even longer, were we warned for the issues we now see unfold in Greece and all over the world. 

When we consider that and we consider ‘Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/09/humans-have-caused-unprecedented-and-irreversible-change-to-climate-scientists-warn) we see “Human activity is changing the Earth’s climate in ways “unprecedented” in thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, with some of the changes now inevitable and “irreversible”, climate scientists have warned. Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather.” Yet what we do not see, not by any media, is the job the media is supposed to do, the part we expect and the part we should DEMAND they will do, but they will not. The media is the bitch of shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers and their stakeholders will not hear of it, their friends will not like this. We should demand a list, a list of EVERY scientist who opposed the papers showing these dangers for decades. We should demand a list of these scientists and the corporate links they had, the corporate donations they received. The people are entitled to them, but the stakeholders who are behind the screens will not like this and I wonder why not. Actually, I am not that surprised that stakeholders tend to be bitches too, they will have friends they cater too and they do not like it that they are not the powers they pretend to be, but the game is now in a stage where we should look at that part, even as the media is willing to let that part go, just like they play footsie with people like Martin Bashir. So as the Daily Mail gives the people ‘Diana whistleblower who sounded the alarm over ‘dirty tricks’ used by Martin Bashir to secure interview ‘will be paid £750,000 by BBC after losing career’’ we see that the BBC catered to other needs for 25 years and they do not like the limelight of catering, just like others catered to Jimmy Saville and a few others, all (as I personally see it) due to connections to stakeholders, that needs to end. I believe that any media shown to cater to non-media needs, need to get its 0% VAT status revoked for no less than 10 years, see if that motivates them. 

The Guardian gave us (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment) “Instead of heeding the evidence of the research they were funding, major oil firms worked together to bury the findings and manufacture a counter narrative to undermine the growing scientific consensus around climate science. The fossil fuel industry’s campaign to create uncertainty paid off for decades by muddying public understanding of the growing dangers from global heating and stalling political action.” This is fine, but this was not enough, the scientists who put their name under some of these marketing plays need to be out in the open, they made their choices, the now need to be banned for life. Catering to stakeholders need to come at a price. It is nice to blame the fossil fuel group, it might not be wrong, but it is shallow, there was an entire support engine of academics and politicians, they need to be pushed into the limelight. Politicians that set the agenda of inaction, supported by academic statements, we need those to be out in the open in all nations, so that we can flush out. The stakeholders, a side the media is for the most unable (read: unwilling) to do. So as the Guardian also gives us “Last month, a Dutch court ordered Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of the decade. The same day, in Houston, an activist hedge fund forced three new directors on to the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil, to address climate issues. Investors at Chevron also voted to cut emissions from the petroleum products it sells.” So, where were they in the last 2-3 decades? As I personally see it, these people could react well over a decade ago when the water was up to our necks, they decided to fill their pockets a little longer until the water was up to our eyeballs, optionally making reference that clever people had a snorkel. Yet, snorkels have weaknesses, and the eyeballs might see the waves from one direction, not from all directions in that state, for that the water needed to be at no more than neck level, less would have ben better. 

So as we are in this setting, we are all driven to blame fossil fuel and as most oil comes from the middle east it will be appealing to most, yet the truth, the ugly truth is that they could only preserve their income with political and academic support form the west and we want those names, preferable with the names of the stakeholders. 

I wonder if any media will dig into that part, they might say that they do and they might make efforts, but after 2-3 weeks there will be another crises and some stakeholder will drown the effort, that is how the world runs, greed driven against the needs of everyone and at the cost of everything that is not theirs. It is merely my point of view, but I believe it to be a correct one.

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August 9, 2021 · 00:26

Propagated negativity

OK, this is not a nice article. I admit that it makes me look despicable and a few other not so nice words. I can live with that, especially when it does what it needs to do, wake up whomever reads this.

You see 2022 will be my year, even though I should be preparing for retirement in some form. There is ever chance that job offers will come through soon. Jobs in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France (even though I do not speak French), Sweden, Norway, Canada (I love hockey) and a few other places. You see, this is all due to anti vaxxers. Even when we see the image below, we seem to ignore the larger stage.

Michael Smith is right in every way, and this case is not unique, but still the anti-vaxxers continue, and they take others with them into death. From June when the fatality list was at 6,345 to a stage less than a week ago when we see a number of 10,237 daily deaths. This is a global number, but when we look locally, we see several nations with fatalities, but that number is increasing because of anti-vaxxers. It is sad, but my skills are clear and when someone with my skill list is lost, finding a replacement is hard, really hard. So thanks to all the anti-vaxxers in these places, you are opening up jobs for me and as three places need me, and there is only one of me, my value goes up.

If someone says I am sick, I disagree, so far still healthy, but the total list of 4,304,126 deceased does not lie. What was given to us as an annoyance in 2020, the media making clear that ‘it might become a pandemic’ when it was already a pandemic. The media never did what it was supposed to do. Over the months we saw more and more issues and even Sky News Australia saw suspensions on YouTube because of misinformation recently. The disease continues and in Australia, a place that had a decent grip on things we now see 242 new cases in New South Wales. It seems small, but when you compare it to less than a dozen in the two months before, it shows just how effective this delta variant is and if I avoid it before my second shot I should be fine for a whole range of job options, all over the world, perhaps even Denmark, Israel or Saudi Arabia. Yes, they have all had their lockdowns, but they forgot about the service minded people. The lack of support technicians and trainers works in my favour and as the people are fighting to get their revenue back up, I get to chose where to go. All thanks to anti-vaxxers who are helping my career by getting dozens and dozens of people killed on a nearly daily basis all over the world. That is the reality that the media and governments face. Those who give rise and support to unfounded and non-scientific methods that result in fatalities will face a larger audience soon enough. Because for now, it is all about themselves and their way of life, but soon thereafter it will be about pointing fingers, so the anti-vaxxers and places like Sky News Australia will get another wave of accusations to deal with, optionally a few will go to court and then these stories will get a whole new life. 2022 might end up being a very interesting year.

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August 8, 2021 · 19:50

Late to the party

It happens, we all are late to a party at times, I am no exception. I was busy looking at the stupidity of law, the stupidity of plaintiffs, waiting the courts, all whilst the approach to common sense was kept at bay. As such I did not read the BBC article ‘MP Maria Miller wants AI ‘nudifying’ tool banned’ until today. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57996910) shows the stage of what is called ‘a nudifying tool’. We can argue that the tool does not exist, because AI does not exist. You see, what some call AI is nothing but deeper learning. Someone took a deeper learning approach and accepted and acknowledged the setting that ‘sex sells’ and used that to create a stage. It is a lot worse than it sounds. You see when we consider ‘Nudifier APK for Android Free Download’ and we consider the hundred of millions horny guys (of all ages) and we see a market, a market for organised crime to exploit as an injector of backdoors (no pun intended) and in this Maria Miller loses from stage one. You see the app gives us “allows you to pixelate parts of your photo so that the illusion that your body is naked is also there”, they know how it will be used, but this statement washes their hands. Nothing is ever for free and this free download comes at a price I reckon. And with “By the way, packed with decorative elements for the picture, for example, the magazine cover is also paid separately. And that’s $ 0.99, which is the same price as the app.” We see the setting where the maker is looking at the setting to become a multimillionaire by September 30th. 

So when we get to see some Getty image of a despairing woman with the text “Currently nudification tools only work for creating naked women”, we wonder what on earth is going on, even as we also get ‘one developer acknowledged was sexist’, just one? How many developers were asked? It becomes a larger stage with “similar services remain on the market, many using the DeepNude source code, which was made publicly available by the original developers.While many often produce clumsy, sometimes laughable results, the new website uses a proprietary algorithm which one analyst described as “putting it years ahead of the competition”.” Is no one standing still at the one small part ‘a proprietary algorithm’? Proprietary algorithms are never handed over, this has a larger stage coming and even as we see the actions of Maria Miller, I wonder how far it will go, the moment someone attaches the word ‘art’ whilst not taking responsibility of the images used (the user does that), where will it end? 

And I am right, the end of the article gives us “The goal is to find what kind of uses we can give to this technology within the legal and ethical [framework].” But in the meantime we will see hundreds or even thousands of senior high school girls see their images with a nudified version, all whilst the stage was known for the better part of 2 years. I reckon that within 5 years the glossy magazines will all have nudified versions of every celebrity, thats how the money flows and that is how the station will go. Is it right? Of course it is not, but the larger stage of ‘sex sells’ has been out there for decades and the law never did anything to stop it, yet some MP’s listened to silly old clerics and they merely attacked porn, now we see that the larger station is evolving and the involved parties are all wondering what to do next. And in this no one takes notice of ‘one developer acknowledged was sexist’, just the one? The UK has approximately 408.000 software development professionals. The US has almost 4 million developers. And we see that one developer who acknowledged it was sexist? I have not even included the EU and Asian developers. So in all this, I reckon we have a much larger problem, optionally the writer Jane Wakefield needs to take another look at the article. So whilst millions of 14-23 year old boys are looking to find DeepSukebe’s website, hoping to reveal a slightly more interesting view of Olivia Wilde, Laura Vandervoort, Leslie Bibb, Emma Watson, Paris Hilton and the cast of Baywatch? We need to consider  that this was always going to happen, there are shady sides to deeper learning and whilst the enterprising and greed driven people are pushing for others to take a look, so are the members of organised crime, so are the enterprising people who considered an IT solution to push millions of paparazzi’s out of work. You really thing that some glossy magazine will ignore images when the people cannot tell whether it is real or fake? Consider the image below, as the technology becomes so good that we can no longer tell the difference in a face we have seen in dozens of movies, do you think we would be able to tell whether the boobies and shrubberies we never saw were real or deepfake? And when the images achieve 2400dpi, do you think the glossy magazines  and gossip providers will ignore them when circulation and clicks grow? 

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August 7, 2021 · 22:08

The simple view denied

It happens, and sometimes it is for a very decent reason, but in this case I have questions. It started months ago on March 7th, when I became aware of Ghada Oueiss via the Milli Chronicle, the article had issues, bu for now lets use another source, the source (at https://cpj.org/2021/02/ghada-oueiss-hacking-harassment-jamal-khashoggi/) gives us ‘Al-Jazeera’s Ghada Oueiss on hacking, harassment, and Jamal Khashoggi’, the first thing I notice is “Lebanese Al-Jazeera broadcast journalist Ghada Oueiss described hackers stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online”, the word ‘described’ in red, linking to a Washington Post article. The article laden with emotion and set on emotional markers, yet forensic evidence is missing. So when we consider “stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online”, so was the phone the only source with these pictures? From her phone means that they are selfies, the descriptions give me more than that, so was it the only place they were? I am not stating that this is a must, but it raises questions. You see, the original article (at https://millichronicle.com/2021/03/opinion-ghada-oueiss-lies-about-saudi-and-american-spies/) gives a lot more. There we see a ling to https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/1-20cv25022-002.pdf. It gives us a complaint of the Al Jazeera journalist versus Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, DarkMatter, Faisal al Bannai, Saudi 24 TV, a broadcast television station owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Al Arabiya, a broadcast television station owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Abdulaziz Foundation d/b/a MiSK Foundation, Saud Al Qahtani, Bader Al-Asaker, Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, Tarek Abou Zeinab, Turki Al-Owerde, Faisal Al Menaia, Awwad Al Otaibi, Sharon Collins, Christanne Schey, Hussam Al-Jundi, Annette Smith, John Does 1-20. Yes a whole mouthful. And it continues as we see the start “This is a civil action arising out of the targeted unlawful hacking of Plaintiff, Ghada Oueiss, an international journalist who has a significant presence in the U.S. and abroad, both as a journalist for Al Jazeera Media Network (“Al Jazeera”) and as a frequent contributor to U.S. news agencies, such as The Washington Post. This unlawful hack and leak operation against Ms. Oueiss (the “Conspiracy”) was spearheaded by the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) and their co-conspirators in the U.S. and elsewhere”

This leads me to:
1. How was it proven who did the hack, or how it was done.
For me it is more than funny, you see the plaintiff uses an article by the Verge on footnote 9 is something I debated before, and a few other mentions. There is no debate that Jeff Bezos was hacked, but the evidence on who was laughable, there is too much settings that were never answered, but for the lawyers of Ghada Oueiss it was enough, a plaintiff weight to coin a phrase. There are all kinds of mentions, but there is no real evidence.

2. At [97] we see “Upon information and belief, Defendant Zeinab began his employment with Defendant Saudi 24 TV in 2018. He has since used his Twitter accounts to personally attack and defame Ms. Oueiss in response to Ms. Oueiss’ criticism of the Saudi regime:” We see a personal opposition via Twitter, not hidden, not threatening, merely a tweet, well over a year before what they consider being the ‘event’.

3. At [100] we get “This brazen admission is significant evidence”, a response to a google translated Tweet, I cannot tell it is correct, I cannot tell there is misinterpretation and I cannot tell whether this has anything to do with Ghada Oueiss.

The list goes on and on and at no point, do we see clear evidence of hacking and any evidence that this is linked in any way to any Saudi or UAE party. 

Then we see “At the beginning of 2020, I started reading private stories about me on Twitter – saying I had an apartment in Beirut, my brother’s name. I don’t post anything about my family.” I am not dismissing the fact that she was hacked, I am merely questioning the setting who did it. There is no evidence proving any of that. In the case of Bezos, his consultant did a piss poor job in documenting evidence, even worse than the CIA did (if that was even possible). 

The issue is not whether people are hacked, the issue is the evidence and the way places like the Washington Post go about it, does not help, they make matter worse whilst decreasing their own credibility. I got news yesterday that the USA Defendants allegedly have just filed a rousing motion to dismiss, it seems that this might have been a ploy to keep pressure on alleged matters (the journalists no one cares about that is missing). 

I remain in the fence. On one side the press should never become the story, yet I accept that Ghada Oueiss is entitled to defence, but I also see the need for evidence against the claim. I accept that she was optionally hacked, but like Jeff Bezos, there is no evidence linking either the Saudi Government, or the government of the UAE and its governing members to this. I accept that finding evidence is hard, really hard, but evidence still matters, not unfounded accusations lacking evidence. That is the actual ballgame and in all this we see a large lacking. 

The Washington Post is also the view of clarity, as we see “In this case, the trolls were attacking Ola and I not only as journalists but as women who dared to be critical”, you see trolls imply people with high level IT skills, I personally speculate that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is lacking these skills. It means someone else did this, and if that is so, there needs to be evidence that he ordered it, not some flimsy CIA report with ‘we think it is very likely’, thinking and very likely do not make the evidence grade. Consider this and well over a dozen other articles negatively speaking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its members and wonder who would attack on a lack of evidence, governments or the greed driven stakeholders they cater to?

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August 4, 2021 · 02:43

The flavour of a dictionary

Let’s take a look at the stage. The Intercept (at https://theintercept.com/2021/08/01/saudi-arabia-twitter-harassment-jamal-khashoggi/) gives us “Before he was murdered by Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi faced online harassment from influencers and bots”. I have an issue with this. In the first, Jamal Khashoggi is merely missing. If someone states that it is likely that something bad and terminal happened to him I will not disagree. The problem is that there is no evidence, none at all that there is ANY evidence proving that Saudi Arabia did this. That UN essay writer gave a report that is riddles with ‘it is highly likely’, but in common law it does not hold water. In addition, the UN and the Washington Post did everything to flame as many newspapers as possible to repeat whatever they were giving. As I se it ad as the law sees it, a person is innocent until proven guilty. We can argue in equal quantities that the guilt of Saudi Arabia cannot be proven, yet in opposition, the innocence of Saudi Arabia cannot be proven either. I accept that, yes a person is innocent until proven guilty and if guilt cannot be proven then that person is innocent. I agree, and I disagree. I have been around long enough that the absence of guilt does not mean that this person is innocent. The law does that, I have a few more grey levels, so I do not. Yet I am still moved by evidence and the lack of it as well as the sources are not properly investigated, not by the United Nations, not by the Washington Post and optionally ignored by the CIA. 

The intercept also gives us “A short video clip posted to YouTube and Twitter this March characterised him as a mortal enemy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The narrator, Hussain al-Ghawi, alleged Golberg’s “entire work aims at smearing Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE” — the United Arab Emirates — “by publishing fake analytics banning patriotic accounts and foreign sympathisers.”” The article gives us the view of Geoff Goldberg, he makes note of al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist. I accept that, the YouTube video could be seen as evidence, that is after a forensic data specialist digs into this. Yet there is another side here, it is given to us by Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World. She gives us “The Biden administration should ask itself what it is going to do to protect Americans from these attacks, as long as the Saudis feel that they have this uncritical U.S. backing, they’re going to continue to believe that they have a license to attack their critics in whichever way that they like. These coordinated attacks against people they dislike that begin online have already proven that they can be deadly in the real world.” She is not wrong, yet in opposition, the issues is also, When will the media be held accountable for innuendo and vague references that have for the most no direct imprint on actual and factual reality. 

You see, that same media will not give us “In response to the coup d’état and reckless endangerment of live by citizen Donald Trump, we are now made aware that two more casualties with a deadly end were added to the list of numbers. Two more Washington, D.C., police officers died after defending the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters, bringing the grim tally of such deaths to four. This is merely one of the larger numbers, numbers that are given to us with the added GOP lawmaker who downplayed the Capitol riot as ‘a normal tourist visit’ doubled-down on the remark after police testified about the violence they faced”, is it true, is it false or is it a nuance of events? It seems that the western press is all about the innuendo on outside USA events, but not on internal ones. Why is that? I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is guilty, the evidence is not there either way. The fact that this happened in a country with one of the most incarcerated journalists in the world, with sources that are massively unreliable, all whilst the full tapes of events were never handed to the people who forensically established evidence on the validity of the tapes as well as the establishment of WHO was on the tapes. Sources relied on mere minutes that are debatable in a few ways, all whilst these same sources avoided mentioning Martin Bashir as the man seen to be guilty of reckless endangerment of the life of Lady Diana Spencer, optionally complicit in the manslaughter of Lady Diana Spencer. Yet they were happy to assist in mentioning of ‘faked documents’ and as they avoided the mention of ‘forged bank statements’ they optionally kept out of the reach of the Crown Prosecution Services, how good is that? But they will continue slapping others on innuendo, optionally absent of evidence.

It is the flavour of a dictionary. Don’t say he has a nightmare, mention that he is now the owner of a female night horse. The dictionary is one, the flavour is given by adding triviality to the facts, or by hiding the absence of it. It seems to me that the media is forgetting that part, which also gives us ‘Sky News Australia banned from YouTube for seven days over Covid misinformation’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/01/sky-news-australia-banned-from-youtube-for-seven-days-over-covid-misinformation) and the message here is that if we can no longer tell the difference between the spreaders of fake news, misleading news and news information, how can anyone expect the media to be held higher regard than a drug pusher on a schoolyard? 

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