Category Archives: Media

April 3, 2021 · 05:16

Right & wrong, 2 multi-dimensional sides

There was an article at the BBC a few hours ago and I had to sit down and ponder for a moment. I can revisit my view again and again, but the BBC gave a very specific side and it stopped me. As I see it loot boxes are not gambling, but the article ‘Loot boxes linked to problem gambling in new research’ gave an additional side, and it matters.

The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56614281) gives a lot of the same, including the view of “About 5% of gamers generate half the entire revenue from the boxes”, which is an optional valid view, my emphasis is on ‘optional’. You see, even as we are given “Loot boxes are a video game feature involving a sealed mystery “box” – sometimes earned through playing the game and sometimes paid for with real money – which can be opened for a random collection of in-game items such as weapons or cosmetic costumes”, I noticed ‘sometimes earned through playing the game’ before, I got most of all gear in NHL19 without ever paying a cent! This is important, and there is a stage where we need to recognise the games that offer loot boxes as a reward from within the game. It is “The upcoming Gambling Act review is set to look at the question, with the UK’s House of Lords already having weighed in to say that loot boxes should be firmly regulated as “games of chance”” that made me pause, loot boxes are not gambling, but when it is stated that they are ‘games of chance’ I do not disagree. We can argue in all manner that EA games took loot boxes in FIFA and went overboard, I will not disagree on that. Consider that FIFA21 “In FUT, there are more than 16,000 Day 1 cards, corresponding to as many players”, as such, if there are 1,000 it would be a low estimate, 2,500 would be more likely, but I have no official numbers. This implies that to have them all you would have to buy a minimum of 2,500 packs, if each pack has only one rare, that is just insane. 

It is not gambling! You see, to have that premise, that needs to be a setting that buying one pack gets you one cards stating ‘Thank You’, that is not the case, you always get a set configuration of common, uncommon and 1 rare card. But the House of Lords goes with ‘games of chance’, which is the seemingly the case and even more, it has an exploitative side, I never denied that, and there is a difference, I opted in the past for an alternative. It is what is called ‘A factory set’ a set with every card, the set is not tradable and has no value as you cannot trade them, but you would have all the cards and to offer that set in the last quarter of the game might be an option. 

My issue with the article was “The link between gaming loot boxes and problem gambling has been “robustly verified”, according to a new report”, I have issues with that straight of the bat and I would want to see that full report and its data before giving it any validity. You see, in the last 6-12 months I have noticed that gambling and in game advertising that is pro gambling has been popping up all over iOS and Android, Google’s own YouTube now has an increasing amount of gambling advertisements, so the setting is as I personally see it rigged.

This included advertisements on how to win at gambling, a stage that in my mind has nowhere to go and shouldn’t be allowed in any advertisement setting of Google. I wonder if that factor was considered in that report, was it even investigated? Let’s take a look!

A stage that is on a sliding slope, as we see more and more pagers on the internet all set to the stage where you can win real money playing games, so the game is already rigged and it has nothing to do (as far as I can see it) with loot boxes. And the report by the GambleAware charity is off to the wrong start with “Loot boxes are purchasable video game content with randomised rewards. Due to structural and psychological similarities with gambling, they have come under increasing media, academic and legal scrutiny. The UK government is currently reviewing evidence on loot boxes, which will be considered in the forthcoming review of the Gambling Act 2005”, you see plenty of games allows you to win these boxes by playing, Mass Effect 3, NHL 19 and several others, some give several packs a day, you only have to enter the game to get them. The report (at https://www.begambleaware.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Gaming_and_Gambling_Report_Final.pdf) has more. “relationships between loot box engagement and problem gambling have been robustly verified in around a dozen studies”, I have an issue with that statement, but lets continue for now. When we see “Participants also purchased loot boxes because of a ‘fear of missing out’” I wonder how this was proven, you see, when we see on page 6, ‘A game will offer loot boxes for free. Encouraging later real-money purchases’ it is an assumption, a speculation. I never spend money on NHL19 and I have all the jerseys, all the goalie masks and all the arena’s. In addition, Mass Effect never pushed for spending money, you can get it all by merely playing. That is a setting of two games straight of the bat. Yes, it was possible to spend money, but it was never needed. The research then give us Overwatch which is a free to play and loot boxes are their only revenue, but what is there?

The report gives Fortnite a pass on a few settings, yet the Verge gives us ‘Epic Games will settle Fortnite loot box lawsuits in V-Bucks’ with the additional “The class action settlement also provides an additional $26 million in benefits” (at https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortnite-loot-box-lawsuit-settlement-rocket-league-v-bucks), as such the report already has a few sides I find debatable and optional rejectable. When we are treated to “the game’s cooperative survival mode, “Save the World,” did — at least until 2019 when Epic changed its loot box system to allow players to see the item inside prior to purchase”, so why did that report not contain the part that gives us ‘when Epic changed its loot box system’, and all whilst another source gives us regarding Ubisoft “The Division 2 has both microtransactions and loot boxes and we said that Ubisoft didn’t go overboard with recurring revenue”, this was given to us in 2019, so why is a 2 billion dollar company excluded from this research? Is this EA games bashing?

There is more, and as gambling influences on other fields that the same group finds itself, the setting is as I personally see it rigged.

The report has some conclusions that make sense, they do have some grasp of the issue and as I personally see it, there needs to be a larger stage here, one that is beyond ‘self-regulating’, in this EA Games made several massive blunders on the stage and that Needs to be acknowledged too. I am all for the full disclosure of odds as well as a FULL LIST (including rarity) of all cards that can be obtained. I believe that a factory set, one that cannot be used for trading and optionally not for playing either, it might lower the ‘Pokemon’ impact (gotta catch them all) of those spending cards on it, some do want to have them all, merely for the having. Anyone who ever collected Football, Hockey or Basketball cards will get that part. A stage that will evolve over time and one that could reset the barriers we have now.

So yes, I feel I was right, loot boxes are not gambling, but they are a game of chance, even as every pack has the same dimensions, they tend to have 1 rare card and in case of EA’s FIFA that will not do, not in a game with 16,000 playable characters. There are several solutions, but it is up to EA to steer their ship to one of the solutions that gamers can live with, I for one think that the EA NHL solution is one that should limit damage, yet with 16,000 characters, the packs should be 500% larger, including at least 5 rare cards, but that is merely my initial view.

I have a few issues with the report, but it does give us a view that is not entirely wrong and it also gives us a few sides that matter. As for the BBC article, loot boxes might to some degree correlate to problem gambling, but that stage is a lot bigger than the report gives. And it starts in both the Android and the Apple store with their collection of free games that offer in-app purchases, the fact that these makers set the game up to mandatory show one advertisement EVERY level is a larger stage, and the oversight of that makes it an issue, if gambling is a factor, these influences should be looked at as well, as well as the deceptive conduct that we see in the advertisements with increasing amounts. 

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March 30, 2021 · 22:39

An almost funny thing

I saw an article at the BBC and I will get to that in a moment, but it reminded me of a situation that happened in 2010. I needed a new laptop and I was looking in a shop at their Collection of laptops. A man came to me and was trying to convince me just how amazing this laptop was. My inner demon was grinning, I get it, the man was enthusiastic, he was giving the numbers, but in all this, did he realise what he was saying? I am not doubting the man’s skills, he was doing a good job, I was however in IT and had been there for 30 years, so I have pretty much seen it all, and there it was, my little demon, on my right shoulder calling me ‘pussy’. So as the man stated ‘this laptop has a one terabyte hard-drive, can you even imagine ho much that is?’, I could not resist and my response was ‘Yup, that would fit roughly 10% of my porn collection’, his jaw dropped to the ground, his eyes almost popped, the demon inside me stated ‘Nice!’ Actually, it was not quite true, it would only fit a rough 0.32114%. It was the impact of the shock factor. You see, there is a hidden agenda there, when you (appropriately) use the technique, you get to see the real salesperson and that was what I needed. He was thrown, but he recomposed and continued giving me the goods on the laptop, I bought that laptop roughly 132 seconds later.

So today I saw ‘The Rise of extortionware’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56570862), here I notice “where hackers embarrass victims into paying a ransom”, it is not new, it is not even novel. I will also give you the second game after the people involved get arrested, they will demand anonymity and any bleeding heart judge will comply. I state that these people will be handed the limelight so that the people that faced ransomware attacks can take their frustration out of these people. But that remains wishful thinking. So next we get “Experts say the trend towards ransoming sensitive private information could affect companies not just operationally but through reputation damage. It comes as hackers bragged after discovering an IT Director’s secret porn collection.” I have the question was it a private or a company computer? You see, sone focus on the boobies, just what the advertisers on Twitter hope for, they want the click bitches, it makes them money. It is time that we set the larger stage, you see the entire mess would be smaller if Cisco and Microsoft had done a proper job. OK, I apologise, Cisco does a proper job, but some things slip through and in combination with Microsoft exchange servers it is not slipping through, it is a cyber hole the size an iceberg created on the Titanic and we need to set a much larger stage. So when we see “Thanks God for [named IT Director]. While he was [masturbating] we downloaded several hundred gigabytes of private information about his company’s customers. God bless his hairy palms, Amen!”, it seemingly answers that he might keep it on a corporate computer, or he uses his private computer for company stuff. Yet in that same light the hacker should not be allowed any anonymity, we all get to see who the hacker is. If there is something to be learned it is see with “Hackers are now actually searching the data for information that can be weaponised. If they find anything that is incriminating or embarrassing, they’ll use it to leverage a larger pay-out. These incidents are no longer simply cyber-attacks about data, they are full-out extortion attempts” There are two sides

  1. The station of ALWAYS ONLINE needs to change, there needs to be an evolving gateway of anti hack procedures and a stage of evolving anti hack routers and monitoring software. You think that Zoom is an option?
    Tom’s Guide gave us less than 2 weeks ago “More than a dozen security and privacy problems have been found in Zoom”, as well as “Zoom’s ease of use has made it easy for troublemakers to “bomb” open Zoom meetings. Information-security professionals say Zoom’s security has had a lot of holes, although most have been fixed over the past few year”, so whilst you contemplate ‘most have been fixed’, consider that not all are fixed and that is where the problem goes from somewhat to enormous. Well over 20% of the workforce works at home, has zoom meetings and that is how cyber criminals get the upper hand (as well as through disgruntled employees), a change in mindset is only a first station.
  2. Remember that Australian? (Julian Assange) We were told that soon there would be some leaks on issues on banks (Wall Street) then it suddenly became silent, now some will say that it is a bluff, but in light of the meltdown in 2008, I am not so certain, I reckon that some have ways to show the hackers who they are and they profit by not doing that. Can I prove this? Absolutely not. It is speculation, but when you look at the timeline, my speculation makes sense. 
  3. The third side is optionally the second side as the second side might not be a real side. When we see “Hackers are now actually searching the data for information that can be weaponised. If they find anything that is incriminating or embarrassing, they’ll use it to leverage a larger pay-out. These incidents are no longer simply cyber-attacks about data, they are full-out extortion attempts”, the underlying station is ‘information that can be weaponised’ and the IT sector is helping them.

How did I get there? The cloud is not as secure as some state, and the salespeople need to take notice. Business Insider gave us about 6 months ago “70% of Companies Storing Data With Cloud Companies Hacked or Breached”, see the link we are now slowly getting presented? 

In the OSI model, we see layers 3-7 (layer 8 is the user). So as some have seen the issues from Cisco, Microsoft and optionally Zoom, we see a link of issues from layer 3 through to layer 7 ALL setting a dangerous stage. Individually there is no real blame and their lawyers will happily confirm that, but when we see security flaw upon security flaw, there is a larger stage of dangers and we need to take notice. And here the dangers become a lot more interesting when we consider the Guardian yesterday when we saw “Intelligence value of SolarWinds hacking of then acting secretary Chad Wolf is not publicly known”, what else is not publicly known? How many media outlets ignored the Cisco matter, how come ZDNet is one of the few giving us “it’s not releasing patches for some of the affected devices that reached end of life” less than 8 weeks ago. Again I say Cisco did the right thing by informing its customers close to immediately, yet when we see “More than 247,000 Microsoft Exchange servers are yet to be patched against the CVE-2020-0688 post-auth remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacting all Exchange Server versions under support” (source: bleepingcomputers.com) as far as I can see, a lot of the media ignored it, but they will shout and repeat the dangers of Huawei, without being shown actual evidence, and I state here, that unless we make larger changes, the extortion path will evolve and become a lot larger. With 70% of cloud systems getting hacked or breached, a large chunk of the Fortune 500 will pay too much to keep quiet and who gets to pay for that? There is a rough 99.867765% chance that its board members will not, it might be speculatively, so please prove me wrong.

A stage where the needs of the consumers changes in a stage where the corporations are not ready to adjust and all whilst the IT salespeople have that golden calf that does everything and make you coffee as well. Adjustments are needed, massive adjustments are needed and we need to make them now before the cybercriminals are in control of our IT needs and that is not mere speculation, when you see flaw after flaw and too little is done as too many are the victim of its impact is a serious breach and it has been going on for some time, but now it is seemingly out in the light and too many are doing too little and as we laugh at “God bless his hairy palms, Amen!” Consider that stage, and now consider that they invade a financial institution, these are clever criminals, they do not empty your account, they merely take $1, perhaps $1 every other month, this implies that they are looking at a $16,000,000 every two months. And this is merely one bank, one in a thousand banks, some a lot bigger than the Australian Commonwealth bank and lets face it, the fact that layer 3 to layer 7 is leaky in hundreds of thousands of customers, do you really think that banks are off-limits? Do you really think that this is a simple hick-up or that the scenery is changing this quickly by people claiming that it will be fixed in no-time? 

We need massive changes and we need them a lot sooner than we think.

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March 29, 2021 · 00:05

The better news

Ships run amok, churches are under attack and a funeral in Myanmar is more dangerous than the streets of Detroit, all events that people take notice of, I am not one of them, I saw more, I notice what was actually an important step. Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1832566/saudi-arabia) gives us ‘Houthi rejection of Saudi peace plan is based on ‘flawed notion’’, it is one view to have, I am not sure if I completely agree, but their view can be seen as such. So when we see ““But the Houthis must realise that the world is completely united (in its desire to) achieve peace in Yemen, and it is united behind the Saudi initiative,” said political analyst Mubarak Al-Ati.” We need to add the quote “The Houthi militias in Yemen and their Iranian sponsors have rejected the latest Saudi peace initiative designed to end the crisis in the country because they believe the international community is divided on the issue”, you see the setting can now be seen in a few ways, the first one comes from ‘Houthi militias in Yemen and their Iranian sponsors’, this is a first side, you see Iran is in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia and when peace talks start their campaign ends and they need to add another failure to their historical books and that is what they are unable to do, they are willing to sacrifice the ENTIRE Yemeni nation before that happens, and that is only one side and one part of the equation. There is another side in this (highly speculative) and that I seen on the American side who has been cancelling arms deals and are willing to see this war go on risking more and more Yemeni lives, they made what I would call a non written agreement with the UK, Germany and France to stop weapons to Saudi Arabia for now. That act alone is the direct cause for 3 years of prolongation in the Yemeni war, so when does it end? That is a stage that is in the hands of the media as it fans the flames of emotion, you see ABC gave is two weeks ago ‘Yemen conflict escalates as country speeds toward famine’, you see it is not the headline that matters, it is the fact that we have been seeing these headlines for well over 5 months, so were they misinforming us then, or are they misinforming us now? You tell me.

As we take notice of “the world is completely united to achieve peace in Yemen, and it is united behind the Saudi initiative”, we would agree, but it would be nice if the media picks this up more loudly and a lot more front page covering on the attempt, the Sydney Morning Herald has all kinds of news on Saudi Arabia, but not the peace attempt, just like they avoided reporting on more than one Houthi missile attack on Saudi civilians. Several media players have also been downplaying the Iranian involvement in all this, so as I see it no one really cares that much about Yemeni lives, least of all Save the Children Australia, who is eager to mention “A number of Australian companies are involved in exporting goods to countries waging war in Yemen”, yet in their setting, there is not one mention of Iran or the Houthi atrocities against the children, why is that?

So for the most I tend to agree with Mubarak Al-Ati, but in all this the media, the western media has another game play in mind and the death of all the children in Yemen is not a concern for them, if it was than there would have been a lot more camera’s on that place, but there is no value, there is nothing to get for them there, their digital needs and their needs from Google takes precedence, even as it makes little difference, the need for the media is becoming obsolete, not real investigative journalism, but they too will become a casualty of war, I wonder what the media endgame is.

So even as I like the setting of “Martin Griffiths, the UN’s envoy to Yemen, and Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy to the country, will probably travel to Muscat for talks with the Houthis to emphasise that “the time has come to end the suffering of the Yemeni people” and persuade them to support the peace process”, I wonder how much impact it will have. As I personally see it the Houthi’s connected themselves to Iran and they are now Iranian tools and a tool has no voice, Iran has more need of them, Saudi Arabia is still there and that vexes Iran. In this Tariq Al-Zahrani  sees it my way, it is seen in “The Houthis are following the instructions of Iran and are working on preserving Iranian interests in the region”, and where does that leave Martin Griffith and Tim Lenderking? Yup, you got it, out in the cold, a place where Richard Burton found more than these two people will. 

Yet is that all? No it is not!

Arab News makes a jump to the left with ““The Houthis are a political card the Democrats are using to put pressure on the Republicans,” he said. “They are trying to prove that the war in Yemen and (the decision by former President) Donald Trump’s administration to withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran are both mistakes committed by the Republicans.”” It is a part I can agree with, but that would also imply that the media has a much larger role to play and misinformation is merely one side, the foundational flaw of catering to the need to Iran is a much larger flaw and it comes with disastrous consequences, a side where the democrats are willing to sacrifice Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Israel to make it happen and the best these three can hope for when it does go wrong is a mere ‘Oops!’ From the oval office, like that will be accepted at that point, and when any of it impacts the northern side of the Mediterranean, the US will have pissed off the Christian, Islamic and Jewish populations all at once, quite the achievement.

Oh, and when that happens, the media will not have to wait for some new Leveson inquiry, there is every chance that members from the media will be strung up to the nearest tree in a whole range of nations, it is a risk that comes with catering to ones stakeholders, stakeholders who will be in hiding and in denial all over the US at that point, all claiming miscommunication, what a world we live in. Yet, do not take my word on this, just watch the event unfold as Iran is catered to again and again, that is the play I personally see and perhaps I am all wrong, I will let you see the lack of covering on one side and the downplaying of events on the other. The better news is that it would solve the media issue quite nicely.

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March 27, 2021 · 03:31

UK Islamophobia OK?

Let me tel you the story of a stupid git, a man named Robert Jenrick no less. The BBC gives us (at  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-56523179) “Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said teachers should be able to “appropriately show images of the prophet” in class”, we see this showing us a level of stupidity seldom seen before. There is no excuse and as the UK is selecting Islam phobic pushers into places of power as they walk with senseless grins around with the view that he “described the protests as “deeply unsettling”” is a little too much for me. 

As the stupid person gives us “In a free society we want religions to be taught to children and for children to be able to question and query them”, I reckon that no one denies them, and the absence of an image of the prophet and/or Allah would be optionally explained as the simple fact that it is against Islamic rules. Christianity does permit it, and that is fine, Islam does not and that should be fine too. So when we see “We must see teachers protected and no-one should be feeling intimidated or threatened as they go into school” We need to make sure that the teachers realise that stupid actions come at a price. 

So as we take notice of “Labour MP for Batley and Spen, Tracey Brabin, condemned those who “seek to fan the flames of this incident””, I wonder if they hold the teacher who pushed the image is also held to account. So when we see “Parts of the Koran are taken to mean that neither Allah nor Muhammad can be captured in an image by human hand and any attempt to do so is seen as an insult”, the teacher should have known that, or he should not be allowed to be a teacher teaching what was taught. It is so nice to see everyone trying to push political correctness into political non-Islamic correctness. Is that truly what we want to teach the kids? 

It is not the first time and it will not be the last time, but consider how long until some people have had enough? And should that teacher get hunted down, does he or she have anything to blame but themselves? This is not me condoning violence, this is me wondering how much longer the Islamic people need to show restraint? As I see as we see flares on a global scale on anti-Asian, anti Semitic, and islamophobia we seem to forget that these stages do not have a good outcome and in the end the stage we create here is one that will haunt our grand children, are we ready for that level of hatred in the world? 

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March 27, 2021 · 02:57

The first step

Today I was confronted with a first step in the right direction. NPR (and others) give us ‘Dominion Voting Systems Files $1.6 Billion Defamation Lawsuit Against Fox News’, the baseless accusations and the empty facilitation by merely shouting the same messages by Fox (and a few others) all whilst there was no proper investigation or follow up now has consequences. The NPR article gives us ““Fox endorsed, repeated, and broadcast a series of verifiably false yet devastating lies about Dominion,” the complaint states, including claims that the company’s software manipulated the results of the 2020 vote.” This first step is one that seals the fate of Donald Trump. The bully tactics and the baseless accusations now come at a cost and should Dominion Voting System end up with a success, the base and foundation of Trumpism will see several additional court cases come there way, paving the way for honourable men like Mitt Romney to clean house and return the Republic party to sanity. It is also the first time that we will see the media being held to a higher level, one that had been surely lacking, which in turn will give the Washington Post a hard time too. With the additional “Dominion has also filed defamation lawsuits against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, lawyers who worked with Trump on his post-election flurry of legal actions. The company is seeking $1.3 billion in damages from each of them”, we get to see a new stage, we get to see the ‘friends’ of Donald Trump seeking the caves (like Osama Bin Laden once did) as well as the tall grass to avoid detection, they have upset too many people and too many corporations, each of them seeking their pound of flesh. So how will this end? It is too early to say, but when we see “Last month, Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against the network, and named Fox stars Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.” We might take notice of the dismissal that Fox News is seeking, but their stories are out there and at times copied by smaller players and there is no hiding from that, so as I personally see it “the network also canceled Lou Dobbs’ Tonight show” is merely a first step and Fox, should it survive they will have to clean its house in several ways, optionally introduce ethics to its field. The article (at https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/981515184/dominion-voting-systems-files-1-6-billion-defamation-lawsuit-against-fox-news) has a few more items, but it is a start, and no matter how it turns out the outcome will introduce new versions of rage all over the US, a setting that the media condoned, yet now that their chickens are hatching they fear the outcome and they seek some level of immunity, so as the US faces its own version of the Leveson report, I wonder how it will play out, because any outspoken politician will get tainted by it, any Fox source relying on freedom of speech will be held accountable to the impact they created and the US has well over 100 million really angry people at present, which means that it is not a good day for Trumpism to seek the limelight, not with Fox in the balance of their views with an optional $4,000,000,000 ticket awaiting impact. 

I do personally believe it is a good day for accountability in the mix and that has never been a bad thing.

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March 26, 2021 · 12:32

The joy of discovery

We all get it, there are moments, those ‘aha’ moments when we see something that does not add up. You see, Agnes Callamard (aka eggy calamari) has been going out and accusing the Saudi government and specifically the Crown Prince of all kinds of misdeeds and she got the CIA to help her out. I debunked that report in several articles a few times, the fact that I am a mere recent graduate add to just how stupid the UN has been in the last 2 years, then she was all up in arms because a man claimed that the Crown prince hacked his mobile, a report that was debunked and questioned by a whole range of cyber experts, yes it was the man who is really rich and saves money on shampoo (hint: it rhymes with Beff Jezos), two instances when the UN got involved, the second one is debatable whether the UN should have gotten involved in the first place.

Now we get ‘Saudi accused of threat to Khashoggi UN investigator is human rights chief’ (source: the Guardian), to be honest I was about to let it go, tempers run high and an official is slightly over protective of its Crown Prince. This happens, it is a fact of life, I am no different, I am Australian now, but if someone threatens the life of my previous King of the Netherlands and/or his family, I will kill that person myself, on the spot and if I sit a life sentence in jail I will be whistling dixie. I took an oath in 1981 and I believe that an oath is set for life. So the quote “The Saudi official who is alleged to have twice issued threats against the independent UN investigator Agnès Callamard is the head of the kingdom’s human rights commission” is something that comes by and I think, ‘Shit happens!’ As such no big deal, then I saw “We confirm that the details in the Guardian story about the threat aimed at Agnès Callamard are accurate. After the threat was made, OHCHR informed Ms Callamard herself about it, as well as UN security and the president of the Human Rights Council, who in turn informed the relevant authorities” at this point a thought crossed my mind “This Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights is dotting his ‘i’ and crossing his ‘t’”, it happens, but the stage is reported in a fashion that the media often does not go through to this degree and that is when the revelation hit, not the revelation of Saudi Arabia bashing. It is seen when you see the following image (see below)

The name Stephanie Kirchgaessner keeps on popping up, way too often and if she is as the Guardian quotes “the Guardian’s US investigations correspondent”, the focal points do not make sense, this was an article that an intern could have written and as such more and more question marks on ‘Saudi bashing’ surface and the ring of those doing this is is becoming more and more debatable. Yet in all this, no one is asking questions, no one seems to notice. I did initially in a previous video article with Stephanie Kirchgaessner, but it could have been an editing issue, now I am no longer sure. I am not questioning the stage we see here, yet such a space for a threat all whilst dying children in Yemen get less space, whilst Al Jazeera gives us ‘People in Yemen are not just dying, they are being left to die’ (2 days ago), I start to wonder what the focal point of a US investigative reporter has become, aren’t you?

Let me paint you a picture (not the girl with the pearl earring mind you): “As I was sitting in the CIA office in the US Consulate in Sydney, I was talking to a man, let’s call him Hugo. Another man walks in and scans the room with an advanced version of the TM-196 3-Axis RFFSM. I ask him to give it to me and turn around, he does both, I scan his ass and tell him “Please inform NASA that the CIA can say with high probability that there are no bugs on Ur Anus”, so what will be the news after that?” The absolute truth is one thing, the way it gets ‘altered’ by those through what some would call ‘intentional misinformation’, it is one of the tools that too many have been using and the matter is getting worse, it has been  dwindling into politics and the media for decades, but we see more and more stages where technology and business are relying on misinformation and it hurts the bottom line. Forbes stated it as ‘To Gain Money, Lose Money’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisreining/2020/03/11/to-gain-money-lose-money) there we see “volatility is the nature of the market. Whether you’re investing in indexes or stocks like Netflix you’re going to spend time losing money. Most days it’s immaterial. Some days it’s not. But it’s how you react to losing money that ultimately determines your gains”, I am not debating that part, it is well explained in more words then I am giving here, but some are transferring this to the real stage of actual life and that is where it goes ‘tits up’ as some say, a long term stage cannot be set to economic stages of equilibrium. This is why I hate the hypocrisy that is shown too often and for too long regarding the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When we hold these people to account some will hide behind ‘an unnamed source’, others will use the miscommunication line, but they all hide behind the same wall of hypocrisy. It is time to wreck-ball that wall, because it is costing us way too much and when the others realise just what the costs were, the people invoking the actions will claim to be non-accountable and it all started with a missing journalist 99.9% of the global population never cared about, that too I brought to light, and as we saw 41 minutes ago that “European Union leaders are ready to boost cooperation with Turkey if a “current de-escalation is sustained”, they said in a video summit on Thursday following a spike in tensions”, all whilst Turkey moved away from the Istanbul Convention, so when are these so called politicians holding Turkey to account? I reckon never, but that is how the cookie crumbles as some say. Stages of denial, all whilst those are all happy to bash Saudi Arabia a little longer and there we see the article on threats whilst we also get “The Guardian independently corroborated Callamard’s account of the January 2020 episode”, I personally wonder how much of that corroboration was done by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in the first or second degree. Aren’t you curious of that part too? 

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March 23, 2021 · 20:34

One view is not another

There was a scene and I took it in to some degree and I merely cast it aside the other. It was all about Meghan Markle, a lady who became Meghan, Duchess of Sussex after she married Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. I am for the most part a royalist, just like my grandfather was before me, the only part that is not equal is that he was British and participated in WW1, I did not. Yet, I remain royalist in nature. So when the interview was on, I avoided it, my reason was that for the most, I do not trust the media, they adhere to shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers and they will use whomever they can to achieve what needs to be achieved and for the most, they see royalty as cannon fodder for their cannons. Yet, I do not attack media people directly unless it is about a specific article, and for the most part that viewpoint is in my scope. So when Piers Morgan went the other way regarding the Duchess of Sussex, I merely shrugged, so many articles, so much media, there will be views on both sides of the field, it is unavoidable.

As such I went on my merry way, that partially changed after the show on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, when his remarks also set the stage for him leaving the show. So when we see ““Who did you go to?” he said. “What did they say to you? I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she said, Meghan Markle. I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report. “The fact that she’s fired up this onslaught against our Royal Family I think is contemptible“” I initially shrugged, the media will take one side or another, it is what the media does and whether this falls into their personal views is a matter of debate, there is little option for me to change my views, I have seen thousands of articles over the last 10 years and that is the stage I am stuck in. 

And then Amol Rajan (in the BBC article) gives us “There is a culture war going on, and Piers Morgan’s job on Good Morning Britain has fallen victim to it. That’s different from saying Morgan himself is a victim of it; in some ways he has been a beneficiary. But when the public position of a star presenter and a broadcaster’s CEO are in sharp contrast, about such a sensitive subject, at a time of such heightened tensions, something has to give. Tonight, it did.” In this take particular notice of ‘when the public position of a star presenter and a broadcaster’s CEO are in sharp contrast, about such a sensitive subject’ this is where we see that some stakeholders call the CEO, this is not about him versus him, this is an optional example of Piers Morgan versus THEM, them being the people who prefer that the UK becomes a republic, there is more easily made profits that way, that is how I feel. And this is not a new point of view, I have been warning about the media, their shareholders, their stakeholders and their advertisers for years and the people get to see that freedom of speech and freedom of points of view does not hold water when the CEO has an opposite view. And in reality ITV’s Good Morning Britain is not a news organisation, even if they mention that they bring the news, it is as I personally see it a ‘catering entertainment program’. And it seems that Piers Morgan in this case had enough.

It does not matter that I stayed away from the interview. We all know that Oprah Winfrey is an absolute master in playing on emotions, it made her very very rich and her dedication to her causes and how it inflamed Americans have made her even richer. Sincere dedication cannot be feigned, it can only be real, making her an even more precious commodity. 

So is Piers right or wrong? That does not matter, I actually do not care, but it was his view and there are plenty accepting his view and to those stakeholders that view is detrimental to their needs. In a stage where everyone is bitching about their right to speak, getting rid of the person not agreeing to your views is something entirely different, it is called censorship. What struck me is ‘Meghan Markle among the 41,000 people who filed a formal complaint against Piers Morgan’s comments’, you see when you look at the big picture, we see that this amounts to 0.06% of the population, we cannot get the BBC to give the British people the goods on what is actually happening in Yemen (the Iran involvement part), a setting that has caused the death of well over 100,000 people in a population of formerly set to 29 million, as such we are getting inflamed by the wrong numbers. It does not matter whether Piers Morgan is right or wrong, it was HIS point of view, as such the stage is calling for a lot more questions on the amount of stakeholders that ITV’s GMB at present has, this is how I personally see it, I will let you make up your own mind. 

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March 17, 2021 · 22:22

And then there was delusion

Yup, we all see it, we all recognise it, yet who has ever called on it? I know I do, but the list is getting smaller and fading as the news is absent in too many cases. As Reuters gave us ‘Major arms sales flat in 2016-20 for first time in more than a decade’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-arms-trade-sipri/major-arms-sales-flat-in-2016-20-for-first-time-in-more-than-a-decade-idUSKBN2B60QD), it is my believe that some might overlook “three of the world’s biggest exporters – increased deliveries, but falls in exports from Russian and China offset the rise”, which is interesting as those three nations include USA, France, Germany, all whilst Germany, UK and US have been in a spin to not deliver to Saudi Arabia, losing them billions in sales, sales that China is working hard to deliver on. In addition there are voices that give us that the US was in a WYSINWYG stage (What you see is not what you get) in the last year, and the buyers are taking notice. As the arms industry is trying to find appeal and aspiring new technologists for their arms industry, all whilst I had an Ice-coffee and a sandwich and I rolled out a new solution to sink the Iranian fleet, it’s all in a day’s contemplation. So whilst we are trying to make sense of “The United Arab Emirates, for example, recently signed an agreement with the United States to purchase 50 F-35 jets and up to 18 armed drones as part of a $23 billion package. Middle Eastern countries accounted for the biggest increase in arms imports, up 25% in 2016–20 from 2011–15. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest arms importer, increased its arms imports by 61% and Qatar by 361%”, we see the absence of the Saudi blockade of goods by the US Congress, something that China is soon to be rather happy about. And as we see the numbers ($23 billion) for the UAE alone, my reflection on the amount approaching $7 billion for Saudi Arabia does not seem that far fetched, does it?

So whilst we get to the end of the message handing us ““For many states in Asia and Oceania, a growing perception of China as a threat is the main driver for arms imports,” said Siemon Wezeman, Senior Researcher at SIPRI, said” the part avoided is that the non-sales by Germany, the UK and the US is driving their sales, and it does not stop there. Even as the filtered information bringers are giving us the golden newslines on Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, there is a larger stage to consider. It is my speculation (which means absent of factual data) that the arms driven pie slices will decrease as the slices for the US, Germany, UK and France will add up to 10%-19% less, whilst those shares will largely go to China. I believe that the increase in Russia and China will be roughly 30% and 70% of the total amount lost by other parties. There is every chance that players like Saudi Arabia will try to get a deal with both, but that remains speculation at present. This is information that is partially out in the open, as such I wonder what the drive of Reuters was, perhaps it was as simple as giving the limelight to SIPRI. The stage that the UK is mentioned to increase its nuclear platform is taken out of the equation, it is for the most a buy once, go nowhere solution that has 1-2 specific vendors, but that out in the open after the laughingly deceptive Iranian story (at https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/16/iran-reveals-underground-missile-city-as-regional-tensions-rise.html), yes they might have something, but apart from the concrete bunkers, the footage showing 100 missiles (twice), do they actually work or are they defence movie props? The dozens of launchers next to one another, are they real, or are they faulty equipment? Answers that cannot be given and the sources giving us answers might not be that trustworthy, but it happens at the same time that SIPRI is shouting that arms sales are down, it is one way to start a fire sale with increased prices. So consider the timeline and feel free to wonder whether I am the delusional one, or the other players. I know a few have seen me as the delusional party and I have no issue with that, I give you the links, and for the most I hand the information that you can decide what is real, but in all this, who gave us any indication of looking at the Iranian video handing out any expected clarity on how real it was and when does Iran give the goods on their military? Is anyone looking into that part?

Have a fun day!

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March 12, 2021 · 22:05

The broken record

That is how I feel at times, all the instances that people come and parrot like repeat the accusations left, right and center. All those times I feel like I am in a losing war, a shouting match and my voice is gone, but here I go again and this time two events took place, but the BBC set them off and it starts with the interview with Ian Murray giving us the headline ‘Meghan racism row: Society of Editors boss Ian Murray resigns’, at first I was not that interested, to be honest, in the world of journalism, or what some call journalism, the value of a journalist tends to be lower than the value of a crack pusher. Yet this interview gave me a few nice parts. It starts at 00:53 (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56355274), when questions are asked on the headlines, yet Ian Murray deflects it all, changing the conversation (or trying to), in the end he never answered the question, he tried to change the conversation. This is the larger problem with the media, the media is not here to support and to inform you the reader, the listener or the watcher. Here we see the dangers of the Society of Editors. These people have a charter, an unspoken one. They protect the share holders, the stakeholders and the advertisers, after that it becomes as emotional as possible, so that flaming will ensue more and more revenue. The actual journalism is left to a chosen few and that group is exceedingly shrinking. It is the most clear example, but it is not the only one.

The second part is the Jamal Khashoggi joke. This senseless form of humour gives us headlines in nearly all papers, with live interviews with UN essay writers, but not any evidence, or better stated quality evidence that could be regarded in a court of law. CNN gives us ‘White House won’t punish Saudi Crown Prince for Khashoggi murder’, all whilst there is no evidence at all, there is a source (the one that promised that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), but they water it down to highly probable to probable that it happened. The factual stage is that something most likely happened to Jamal Khashoggi, but there is no evidence, mere speculation. And in part it (optionally) helps me. I will happily take the $6,800,000,000 revenue and courier the papers between Riyadh and Beijing for a nice fee (the 3.75% commission I mentioned in previous articles). I already have the dream house I deeply desire lined up. You see there needs to be an actual cost to doing business and the media is due its invoice too.

The Guardian in July 2019 reported (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/09/most-uk-news-coverage-of-muslims-is-negative-major-study-finds) ‘Most UK news coverage of Muslims is negative, major study finds’, and as the arms industry is a buyers market, I am happily willing to facilitate towards China, did you think that all the BS and negativity is accepted? At some point buyers will look at the other delivering parties and what the CAAT did not screw up, the Yanks themselves did, as such 2 slices of cake (a yummy multi billion dollar one) will go towards other hungry players. A setting that the media and politicians staged. So whilst the Conversation gave us a little over a week ago ‘Jamal Khashoggi: why the US is unlikely to deliver justice for the murdered journalist’ (at https://theconversation.com/jamal-khashoggi-why-the-us-is-unlikely-to-deliver-justice-for-the-murdered-journalist-156165) with the part that is essential “the White House has tried to send signals to Saudi Arabia and may not favour Prince Mohammed, it is likely he will take over the throne from his father and rule the kingdom for decades to come. The Biden administration may dislike Prince Mohammed personally, but they will probably need to work with him if the US is to maintain a working relationship with Saudi Arabia”, in this the US has no options, they have the option of releasing actual evidence, but I would not hold my breath on that one. They need to find a way to restore billions in optional lost revenue and I hope they lose out so I can get my dream house. You see in a commercial world it is about who has the goods and who can deliver the goods and at present Saudi Arabia has the cash. So whilst we see more and more visible BS on a whodunnit level whilst the evidence is a lot less than the one Ellery Queen ever had to work with. 

And in all this the media has a much larger role to play, a lot more than you think. And if one would ask Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain today, I wonder how the stage has negatively reverted. Even as we saw then “The findings come amid growing scrutiny of Islamophobia in the Conservative party and whether its roots lie in rightwing media coverage.” It is a much larger setting, it is the media in general, for them Islam is an easy mark to have, a mark that upsets the least and that is where the shareholders and stakeholders are most likely to be, the creation of emotional flames and the Khashoggi flame was one of the brightest they had seen in a decade as such Saudi bashing continues. We see an alternative/additional version in Judith Escribano article “In The role of the media in the spread of Islamophobia Sam Woolfe argues that “the media uses bold and harsh language to promote this kind of fear because bad news sells”. This constant drip feed of bad news focussed on Muslims and Islam merely “propagates and reinforces negative stereotypes of Muslims (e.g. that Muslims are terrorists, criminals, violent or barbaric)”” (at https://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/islamophobia-in-the-media-enough-is-enough/), I disagree in part. You see the media never had their ducks in a row and to sell advertisements, they need to turn the people into ‘click bitches’, the more emotional an article is, the more enflaming an article is, the better the changes of a click and a click translates to roughly $0.01-$0.03 per person per visit, as such the media flames as much as they can every day. They never realised the setting has no long term benefit and I reckon that is why the Australian one is crying like little bitches against mean mean mean Google (and its papa Smurf Sergey Brin). 

So how do Prince Harry and Meghan relate to Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman? Emotion! Emotion is the stage that levels the playing field for the media, a stage that enraged millions, make them click on their website, the ultimate click bitch paradox that is as close to a perfect digital storm as we are likely to see in the next decade, that is until Iran does something extreme again, but I set a new stealth weapon system online for the innovator to turn into something factual and sink their navy, I roll like that.

The problem with the stage we see is that for the most, the media refuses to investigate the media and the moment they figure out that they are under investigation, we will see all kinds of barricades. Even the Guardian (one of the more reputable ones) gave us a day ago ‘What is journalism for? The short answer: truth’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/11/journalism-truth-strong-regulation-us-media-uk) there is nothing wrong with the article, but consider the stage they start up with “Who, what, where, when and why? Five questions that are at the heart of our trade. Answer those questions in relation to any news story, and we’re doing our jobs as journalists” and that stage is not wrong, but there is a setting between editor and journalist that is missing and that accounts for filtered information versus news. In this filtered information is news that has been approved by the shareholders, the stakeholders and the advertisers. That difference is at the core of Islamophobia, the false accusations against Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the continued covering of a columnist that vanished years ago and almost no one cares about. It is smitten with the essential need for digital revenue. That is at the heart of it all and whilst the royal stage might depose Saudi Arabia from a number one digital bashing position it is a mere temporary one. In 2009 James Murdoch gave us “The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit”, and how can the news be profitable? When the news is filtered and for the most (and more secure way) to the extent that meets with the approval of share holders and stake holders, yet how independent is that exactly?

I apologise for sounding like a broken record, but this stuff is important, and when the escalations start you will see why, which is why I hope you are on the ball before that happens. Have fun!

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March 9, 2021 · 00:24

Egg timer anyone?

It was a mere 12 hours ago when I gave the previous story, where the AP gave us “Attackers are finding it harder and harder to gain access via traditional methods, as vendors like Microsoft and Apple have hardened the security of the operating systems considerably over the last years”, yet less then an hour ago we see the BBC give us ‘European Banking Authority hit by Microsoft Exchange hack’, I am guessing that the AP was looking out for the needs of Microsoft, the timeline is too weird. Even as we see “The EU body said personal data may have been accessed from its servers. And it had pulled its entire email system offline while it assessed the damage. “The EBA is working to identify what, if any, data was accessed,” it said”, I wonder what and for how long was in the mix. You see, we might look at ““Everyone running these servers – government, private sector, academia – needs to act now to patch them,” White House press secretary Jan Psaki said. Microsoft believes a Chinese state-sponsored attacker called Hafnium is behind the hack.” No matter what or who Hafnium is, no one is looking towards Microsoft, no one is looking how the weakness was there in the first place. And if we accept ‘Microsoft believes a Chinese state-sponsored attacker called Hafnium is behind the hack’, the setting of time changes, it takes time to ascertain who did this, that is logical. Yet 12 hours after the AP story? This is direction, this is intent, the coincidences are too weird and I never give credence to coincidence. It is another setting of filtered information. First the Washington Post, then several others and now Associated Press, the stage is changing and some players are speculatively raking it in before it all implodes on itself. 

Yes, I admit and I agree that this is very ‘conspiracy theory’ yet consider the timeline, it is the one true linear path they cannot change, the directors can merely arrange their story according to the timeline, that is as good as they can make it. So when we look at the tweet from the NSC, we see “Patching and mitigation is not remediation if the servers have already been compromised”, yet there is a lack of investigation how for so long servers could be compromised, when one patch creates a new problem it is not a patch, but service level agreements and marketing need to report a patch and the problem remains, or optionally gets to be worse. Can we also optionally agree that if the Microsoft engineers can be circumvented Microsoft has a much larger problem and that is where you want to keep your data? When we see patch after patch, but no real solution, where can you put your faith?

The BBC article gives a nice list (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56321567) on ‘Who has been attacked?’, yet the larger question on why Microsoft are leaking as a sieve is not dealt with, and even as we would like to guess, the fact is that there are too many patches, the setting is slowly becoming that Microsoft products are too unsecured to be considered for corporate needs and a shift to Unix/Linux might be essential to consider over time. Feel free to do it after you lost all your IP, but that is up to you. And in al this, how long has this be known? I cannot counter the accusations of that person named Hafnium, but it does imply that the situation was out there for a lot longer than we can be comfortable with. I leave that thought up to you.

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