Category Archives: Media

The wide net

We all have the idea to go phishing, we want trout, we want salmon and we use the biggest net possible to get at least one. So when AP gave us ‘Casting a wide intrusion net: Dozens burned with single hack’ (at https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-politics-europe-eastern-europe-new-zealand-f318ba1ffc971eb17371456b015206a5), not only was I not surprised, I had been warning people about this for a few years, that setting is apparently upon us now (or at least some are admitting it now). There we see “Nimble, highly skilled criminal hackers believed to operate out of Eastern Europe hacked dozens of companies and government agencies on at least four continents by breaking into a single product they all used” this does not surprise me, this happened in the late 80’s as well when someone used Aston Tate’s DB3 to introduce a virus, it is simple find something they all use and hamper its function, a basic strategy that an Italian (Julius Caesar) introduced 2000 years ago, there he hampered the roads and not servers but you get the idea, the classics still work.

When we are given “The Accellion casualties have kept piling up, meanwhile, with many being extorted by the Russian-speaking Clop cybercriminal gang, which threat researchers believe may have bought pilfered data from the hackers. Their threat: Pay up or we leak your sensitive data online, be it proprietary documents from Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier or lawyer-client communications from Jones Day.” It might seem rash but the people relied on others to keep their data safe and whilst we see more and more that they cannot contain the bacon the clients are suffering, this is not a simple station and we get it, but package solutions tend to come with flaws and that has been a truth for 20 years, so why are you all crying now? It is the final part that has more bearing “Members of Congress are already dismayed by the supply-chain hack of the Texas network management software company SolarWinds that allowed suspected Russian state-backed hackers to tiptoe unnoticed — apparently intent solely on intelligence-gathering — for more than half a year through the networks of at least nine government agencies and more than 100 companies and think tanks. Only in December was the SolarWinds hacking campaign discovered by the cybersecurity firm FireEye. France suffered a similar hack, blamed by its cybersecurity agency on Russian military operatives, that also gamed the supply chain. They slipped malware into an update of network management software from a firm called Centreon, letting them quietly root around victim networks from 2017 to 2020.” This is important because of what happened in the last two years, remember how ‘stupid’ American people started to blame Huawei for all the bad whilst offering absolutely no supporting evidence? Huawei does not need to bother to aid whichever government there was, silly software developers are doing that for them, we see an abundance of intrusion problems that include SolarWinds, Accellion and Cisco. A stage where thousands of systems are at risk, but no, the ‘silly’ people kept on blaming Huawei. Even I knew better and as Sony gave me the idea for an intrusion method called ‘Plus One’ (a viable way to drive the Pentagon nuts) with an alternative direction that I call ‘Vee One’, but that one has a few hiccups I reckon. Then I got creative and saw a new parameter in play. One that is based on a little part I read in a Cisco manual, the text “When You Add A Hard Disk To A Virtual Machine(VM), you can create a new virtual disk, add an existing virtual disk, or add a mapped Storage Area Network (SAN) Logical UnitNumber (LUN). In most cases, you can accept the default device node. For a hard-disk, a non default device node is useful to control the boot order or have different Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) controller types. For example, you might want to boot from an LSI Logic controller and use a Bus-logic Controller With bus sharing turned onto share a data disk with another VM.” You see that small text indicates that there is a nice workaround in Cisco CMX and it opens up a lot more than they bargained for, that in conjunction with the share issues thy were already facing gives out a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Copy me I want to travel’, n’est pas? (for the French victims)

It is a much larger stage, most laws aren’t ready for this, prosecuting the guilty parties is close to impossible and any quick fix they make will only make things harder, the setting was and has for always been the makers of software, time constraints and lack of deep testing makes for a lousy solution and in most cases these players have a pushy marketing department (example: Ubisoft), and yes ‘You be soft!’ because the small tidbit that AP gives us with “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 it is a small stage and not a correct one. Weaknesses in Azure, issues with advertising in apps and a larger stage of programming, we see it clearest in .NET, but it goes way beyond that, for example “The problem of memory leaks is not uncommon in any technology. Simply put, the framework doesn’t release the memory that it no longer needs. .NET is frequently criticised for memory leaks and memory-related issues. Although .NET has a garbage collector for this sort of problem, engineers still have to invest additional efforts into proper resource management. And the leaks keep on growing as the application scales.” (source: Altexsoft) and it shows the smallest part, if there is a leak in one place, there will be in other places too and the leaks are not the real problem, getting it to semi-crash and taking over its right on a network are a quick way into any system, I saw the example with an accounting program (censored name), I got the program to crash (took about 20 seconds) and I ended up with the administrator rights to the entire mainframe from ANY location running that software. I get it, there will always be a bug in any place and the makers were quick to fix it, but for a few weeks there was an entrance point that took minimum efforts and that setting is only increasing with routers and cloud systems, these companies rely on marketeers that are ready to push for the investors sake and leave the client swimming in a swamp, I have seen it more than once and it will happen again, and this setting has been going on since 1989 and over the next 3-4 years it will grow to 150%, the push to billions and to quickly get to billions will be overwhelming for too many players all whilst the law will not be able to protect the victims, they will merely point at torts law, even though that you are the victim, most contracts are offered as an ‘as is’ solution and for the most software makers can avoid prosecution for the longest time, long enough for the hackers to get away with your data and sell it, what a lovely system you bought. Oh and before I forget, organised crime is way ahead of me, so for some it will already be too late.

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Where the media should never be

A case was brought to my attention, normally it goes nowhere, but this article (at https://millichronicle.com/2021/03/opinion-ghada-oueiss-lies-about-saudi-and-american-spies/) struck a nerve. In all this, there were a few unknowns. I had never dealt with the Milli Chronicle, I did not know the writer and it was against Al Jazeera, a news outlet that had shown to be often enough to be in good faith, but the article still stung. Lets take a look

There was ‘Al Jazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss sues Saudi and UAE crown princes over phone hack, harassment’ (at https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/3113604/al-jazeera-anchor-ghada-oueiss-sues-saudi-and-uae-crown), the South China Morning Post gives us this last December. It is there where we see “She sued Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed for allegedly hacking into her phone and stealing and doctoring images to silence her”, this is interesting because it is not the first time that Mohammed bin Salman is accused of this. I am wondering how much of it is actually true. You see one definite part in this is that one should always keep their hands clean, as such there is a larger debate on who did the deed, and as such how is any evidence of this tested and validated? Perhaps Ghada Oueiss is seeing a pay day? When we look back at a similar accusation we saw the failed papers and the debatable papers by FTI consulting. There was clear evidence that his phone was hacked, but there is also a decent setting that MBS was framed and that a third party hacked his phone.

All this becomes a second stage when we see ‘Al Jazeera anchor’s anti-Semitic Twitter persona’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1704376/media) a setting that was seen last July. There we see “On July 8, Al Jazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss wrote an opinion article for the Washington Post in which she detailed her alleged struggle with cyberbullying campaigns on Twitter at the hands of — as she claims — droves of Saudi and Emirati bots”, so in all this we see another Washington Post mention all towards a columnist no one gives a fuck about (pardon my French). Isn’t it interesting that they all knew one another and they are all the making the ‘alleged attempt’? As I see it Al Jazeera just entered the frame where they should not be ‘Creating the no news’ and there is every chance that this will now hit their credibility. We are also given ““Al Jazeera, though Ghada Oueiss and others, calls for chaos in its support for militias and violence against the state and calls for hatred in any form possible to defy and distort the image of those who oppose its sponsors in Qatar and its ally Turkey,” Egypt-based media expert Hani Nasira told Arab News.” This requires me to have more in depth knowledge of Hani Nasira which I do not have, but it also gives (optionally plasters) Ghada Oueiss as a tool for usage as we are treated to “Al Jazeera, though Ghada Oueiss and others”, gives rise to a different kind of journalism, I wonder who was looking that deep? So as we return to the Milli Chronicle and “Ghada needs defendants who reside in Miami, Florida in order to bring her lawsuit there. Two of the USA Defendants live in Miami, Florida—which is why Ghada made them defendants in her lawsuit. Ghada complains that these two Americans joked about eating dinner at the Olive Garden Restaurant in Miami, so now, Ghada no longer feels safe in Miami—even though she lives in Qatar.” And perhaps this reminds you of something? I wrote about it a few weeks ago and let me get a sample. It is seen in my article ‘Number of states’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/06/number-of-states/) there we see (at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.220747/gov.uscourts.dcd.220747.66.1.pdf) at [4] “Fortunately, in the United States, justice is measured not by the might of one’s arms; what is lawful is measured not by the reach of one’s sword; and the law itself is not laggard when faced with a prince who, having directed the dismemberment of a prominent U.S. journalist overseas, also dispatched a team of hunters and killers into the United States and Canada to murder again”, it is interesting that all the elements were outside the USA, more important, there is a lack of Canadian Courts in play when it comes to Dr. Saad Aljabri. And personally, it might be me, yet how much value do we give a complaint when it starts with “Richard III, William Shakespeare” a play that is seen as a tragedy, just like that court case, so why was the intending ‘victim’ not in a Canadian court? And it does not end there, the opposition (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is shown in the Guardian ‘Saudi state companies sue ex-spy chief in Canada over alleged $3bn fraud’ with the additional part “Aljabri, exiled in Canada, was a top aide to Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was deposed as heir to the throne by Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a 2017 palace coup.” I am not stating that one is true and one is false, but which journalist dug into the finances of Dr. Saad Aljabri? $3,000,000,000 is a lot more than most will ever make, and even as a top aide to Prince Mohammed bin Nayef there is a decent option that Dr. Saad Aljabri would end up being a millionaire, even a multi millionaire, but not a billionaire. 

I feel certain that I can live like a king in Monaco for €250,000,000, so why would I need more? Some do and for a top-aide to end up being a multi billionaire, that requires some doing and no one is asking those questions, they are all doing the same thing from different directions, like a bachelor getting to work in the morning every day from a different direction, someone is getting screwed. The people expecting neutral news is one, there are a few more but I will let you decide on that.

You see, we all want confirmation, one stating that fraud was not committed whilst the court case is filed in the US, not in Canada. So what investigation took place in Canada? Then when we see the Milli Chronicle with “It seemed like a crazy joke until the reporter said there was actually a lawsuit number, 1:20-cv-25022– and that I was personally named as a member of a shadowy, nefarious, evil-doing operation that Ghada calls “The Network” on pages 19 and 20 of her 93-page diatribe”, who investigated this stuff? The fact that it makes the Milli Chronicle and not the NY Times is a valid question, but there is every indication that the Washington Post system is working full throttle in their attempt to paint a target and they are using all they can and the non-friends of Saudi Arabia are the helping hands that the Washington Post is seeking. It is speculative, but it is my view and the evidence is stacking up against the Washington Post and now against Al Jazeera as well. I do hope that the chief editor is taking a hard and a very critical look at the work of Ghada Oueiss. I will let them decide and figure out what is actual truth and I do hope that they will inform the audience, they allegedly have credibility to repair.

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The assumption of knowing

It all started yesterday, the NOS notified us via ‘8 wounded by optional terror attack Sweden’. The stage was less clear through two parts. The first that this was not a big city, it was Vestlanda, which is in the South of Sweden, basically a village with less than 15,000 people. About an hour ago the BBC gives us ‘Sweden attack: Man injures seven in stabbing attack’, a very different headline. Two different headlines, but neither is wrong. The BBC also gives us (as did the NOS) “Police are treating the case as attempted murder but also investigating the possibility of terror motives” as such SAPO is on the case. The Swedish Security Services (formerly known as Säkerhetspolisen, or SAPO), it is at present under the leading and watchful eyes of Klas Friberg (aka Big Boss). We are told “Initially, detectives began treating the incident as suspected terrorism, before re-classifying it as attempted murder. According to the local police chief, the suspect is a resident of the area and previously known to police but in the past he was only suspected of “petty crimes”, AFP news agency reports” (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56272565) there is a need to side with caution, there is no harm in treating it as one and finding out you are wrong, it is always better than not acting and learning too late it was a a dry run. 

In Sydney (on 15–16 December 2014) a mental case called Man Haron Monis was a self pronounced ISIL operative, there was enough evidence in the early hours that this was not the case and that he was a head case, but there is nothing wrong with siding with caution, lives were on the line. In Sweden there is a different setting, optionally one that requires Swedish Intelligence to take a larger look, and it makes sense, terror has several definitions, yet the one that matters is the result when the things we hold for granted are no longer reliable and a terror attack in Vestlanda would do that in Sweden much more than in the three larger cities, in this setting dozens of smaller places would have a security issue and that worry would run over to Norway and optionally Denmark as well. Yet, it is early days and we do not know what is and what is not. And the problem is not over, actually the PM (whilst being openly honest) gives us “Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said the “horrific violence” was a reminder of “how frail our safe existence is”.” He is not wrong, but I believe him to be incorrect. The application of ‘how frail our safe existence is’ is the problem. There is no such thing s a safe existence, the fact is that Scandinavia is perhaps one of the least likely targets, as most terrorists will use bombs, they do not care about one person, they care about hundreds, Stockholm is perhaps the most likely of targets, yet it is still small compared to Munich in October, Amsterdam in April, or London and Paris most time of the year. They all have infrastructures that have too many weak spots, to many options and as such the largest part of Scandinavia (including Finland) tend to be less likely places to hit, that is beside the point that in these places tourists and foreigners shine like Christmas lights and these terrorists tend to dislike Christmas lights, a stage we all need to recognise. That does not make a person like Klas Friberg wrong. I am speculating, he needs to be certain and that is what he is doing, making sure. 

Still, the assumption is there and the truth is we really do not know at present. Even as I dug through the papers in a dozen nations, most of them are somewhere between the BBC and the Dutch NOS, merely one or two are playing the terror card, the others merely mention that it is investigated s an optional one. There is a small caution in many cases and at present there are too many unknowns. As we are told “Five different crime scenes, a few hundred metres apart, were identified, local police chief Jonas Lindell said.” We need to realise that this is not a person merely going nuts, he was seemingly on a ‘nutty’ rage trip over a distance and that calls a few things into question, optionally that this was ore than merely an attack by a head job and as such the authorities need to be certain, I get that. If Sweden gets to be lucky, the person was a head case, if that is not the case this might optionally be a lone wolf act and that is the problem, there is close to no attack against such a strategy. There are too many settings where lone wolves will achieve what they are told to do and the Swedish Security Services needs to be certain, that is clear and I hope that we can soon return to the happy view of 

Instead of

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There is a voice

There is always a voice, it goes into one direction, it goes another way, but there is always a voice.  In my Cale the voice belongs to Reuters and it gave us all yesterday ‘Don’t bully Riyadh, Saudi columnists tell Biden administration’, it is nice to see this, especially after stating that very thing for weeks. The article (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-khashoggi-media/dont-bully-riyadh-saudi-columnists-tell-biden-administration-idUSKCN2AS0BN) gives us “Saudi Arabia, which has relied on the United States for its defence including during the first Gulf War and after 2019 attacks on its massive oil infrastructure, could look to China and Russia for weapons”, the writer Malik states this and I think he is right, in my case the optional $75,000,000 meal ticket has almost nothing to do with it, my larger frame is the sickening hypocrisy that I see from both the US as well as the UK and the EU, so as I am trying to optionally increase that meal ticket to $225,000,000 we need to realise that these three dumbo’s are about to lose billions in revenue in a time where they cannot afford it, but I do not care, hypocrisy comes at a cost and whilst they fail another nuclear accord with Iran, whilst they fail to see the larger stage that Iran cannot be dealt with anymore than a petulant 5 year old will listen to the summarisation of responsibilities and I reckon we need to prepare Saudi Arabia for the larger problems coming their way and if the EU and the US will not prepare them China who is roaring to set the Chengdu to a larger field, they will have they option of raking in the gold and other benefits. The Biden administration and its tools had their misfortune and now they will get some more, it is a simple application of protocol NAH5 (nah, nah, nah, nah, nah).

And me ending optionally (read: hopefully) up with up to $225,000,000 is just icing on the cake. So not only did tools at the CAAT end up missing their goal, they are also the larger party responsible for the UK missing out on billions. Good luck with that!

It gets to be worse when you consider “Abdullah al-Otaibi, writing in London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper which is Saudi-owned, said the kingdom, Washington’s oldest Arab ally, was “not a banana republic to be shaken by threats”” the people need to realise that in 2021 and 2022, companies like Salini Impregilo (now: WeBuild) could miss out on hundreds of millions in contracts, contracts that China and Russia will be quarrelling over. And that is merely the tip of the iceberg, So now we have optional contracts that could aid the coffers of the US, UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, now all going towards China and Russia. It is a buyers market and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the buyer, make no mistake about that. So when we see these facts and we add ““We want to strengthen deep-rooted ties (with the U.S.) but not at the expense of our sovereignty. Our judiciary and our decisions are a red line,” Fahim al-Hamid wrote in Okaz newspaper” all whilst I have written about the issues in both the UN and the US reports, a stage that I showed a mere three days ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/27/that-was-easy/) in the article ‘That was easy!’ And then consider what the well (read; overly) paid people claim all whilst they cannot legally back it up. They are now setting the stage of you all to be in extended poverty. When exactly was that ever a good idea?

And you do not need to take my word for it, I included the documents, make up your own mind and see how the legal bitches are all relying on emotion to set the blame whilst making sure that Iran is not mentioned at all (or to the minimum extent) and Iran has been part of the problem for well over a decade, wonder why you will have to pay for that, especially as these people are relying on ‘guilty until proven innocent’ all whilst they are making sure that there is too much confusion in the entire process. If I get to pick up some nice bits because of their stupidity, it will suit me just fine, and let’s be clear, when you rely on populism and emotion to bring legal settings to a place where none apply, it is stupidity plain and simple.

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That was easy!

Yup, the report (all three pages) took seconds and the setting of the non-guilt setting of MBS is seen on page 2. Even if we want to give weight to “We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decision making in the Kingdom”, it was never going to be hard, but the setting of ‘We base this’, ‘we’ being the people who claimed that there were WMD’s in Iraq was never going to be realistic, but you know, we all get surprises at time. The three pages (optionally a much larger report that is still classified) is not enough and even as we can giggle over “We have high confidence that the following individuals participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi”, it has no legal value. It is what you can prove that matters. And in that we need to return to the UN essay that Agnes Callamard wrote. There we see (and it matters). 

This start at [29] where we see “Mr. Khashoggi’s execution is emblematic of a global pattern of targeted killing of, and threats against, journalists and media workers that is regularly denounced by States, UN agencies, Special Procedures, and by numerous international and national human rights organisations.” You see, my issue is with the word ‘execution’ which means “the carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person”, meaning that there is a body (at least one would think), then there is ‘a global pattern of targeted killing’ which is a different can of worms at present. Yet it is at [39] when we are given “Intelligence gathering is an open-ended process, and there is rarely a definitive point at which “enough” intelligence has been harvested. Think of a conveyer belt moving information from often disparate sources constantly in front of intelligence officers.  At some point, there comes a time when an intelligence service or operative simply has to make a stab at assimilating what all this means.” It is a fair assessment, and like the WMD’s in Iraq, we need to consider ‘an intelligence service or operative simply has to make a stab at assimilating what all this means’, this can be surmised into one single word ‘Speculation!’, it is fair for Intelligence operatives to do, but in law it is set to evidence and there is none, something I saw in 10 minutes into the initial report. This is about petulant children complaining that the next regent of Saudi Arabia is one that they do not like. Oh, boo hoo hoo hoo hoo! Go cry me a river somewhere else please.

The one lollipop I was keeping back was seen at [41], it is “Recordings of only seven different conversations over a two-day period were made available to the inquiry. Combined these amounted to 45 minutes of tape, when, according to Turkish Intelligence, they had access to at least seven hours of recordings. The remaining six hours and 15 minutes may or may not be relevant to the inquiry, but without doubt there remains much more recorded information than that made available to the Special Rapporteur”, as well as “The Special Rapporteur was not allowed to obtain clones of the recordings so she could not authenticate any of the recordings. Among other aspects, such authentication would have involved examination of the recordings’ metadata such as when, how the data were created, the time and date of creation and the source and the process used to create it.” As such we are given that they merely got a partial recording, the stage where recordings were not copied, implying that there is a bigger mess and one that surpasses ‘when, how the data were created’, and the bigger issue is that there is no digital forensic evidence that the person on the tape is actually Jamal Khashoggi, lets not forget that in the proxy war against Iran, Turkey supports Iran, as such they have all kinds of reasons to make the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia look bad. And that is merely assuming that the hardware is of a nature that it allows the creation of metadata in the first place. 

And the noise is completed at [44] where we are given “To evaluate the recordings, in the absence of copies or clones, she asked for the expert opinion of others who had access to the recordings, including representatives of foreign governments. Their opinions were given to her informally. She also, to the extent possible, triangulated Intelligence (information and analysis) with other facts, such as CCTV footage, interviews, contextual information, historical patterns”, as such, the word ‘experts’ is seen 13 times, but where is that list of experts exactly? And in light of ‘others who had access to the recordings’, it comes with ‘Their opinions were given to her informally’, in what court of law would that hold up? All this analyses, informal, and the setting os speculation and assumption is all over the place, all whilst in law we have a setting that is ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’, a threshold that is never ever met in anything here. There is a lot more, but I will not bore you with that, I will merely add both documents at the bottom

Even that work of fiction ‘Blood and Oil’ uses rhetoric to make a case that never was. I honestly had expected a much larger task in determining guilty or not-guilty in the entire Khashoggi mess that the media was trying to hold over our heads, and I can clearly state that in all this Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is not guilty.

All the time we were given ‘it could be’, or ‘what we were able to gather’ was a stage for all the click bitches in the world to click on article after article, the media has become this pathetic to get some revenue (and visibility). All whilst the report that gives us “the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad”, a stage that is not met with actual facts and factual evidence. When we call for that the only thing we will get is a lot of silence. 

Is anyone catching up on that yet? What are you still missing in this? I got some of the answers, but watching you find them is so much more fun, because it also proves just how unreliable some of the media has become.

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Careful what you wish for

Yes, that applies today, it also applies to me, we all and always need to be careful what we wish for. There are tales in the Arabian Nights, there are tellings in Norse Mythology and there is a decent abundance in ancient Greek writing. Why does this apply?

Well, this applies to those playing the mis-representation game, and those who played the anti-KSA cards. As we are told ‘Khashoggi killing report will test US-Saudi relations’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/b2817e43-7a47-43b9-9900-42c77ff0a5fa), I will take that report apart and sift through it. When I see mention of the alleged plight of a princess, all whilst the larger papers were able to ignore the Argentinian Femicide issues that have been playing for a week, and whilst media sources, Australian media sources have been crying like little bitches, it is time to see what I can find. A stage where the media hides behind “There was “no way” Khashoggi’s murder was carried out without either the knowledge or direction of Prince Mohammed” as well as “Riyadh could still avoid the toughest sanctions by taking more responsibility for the crime”. It is all implying that some people want to push for some form of confession because there is NO EVIDENCE. This matters, even as civil law and common law have differences, most of us have the stage of murder and beyond all reasonable doubt, and the UN Essay on the matter (by Agnes Callamard) took close to none away. But the warning also applies to me, I might find more than I bargained for and I get that, but so far the people involved lacked a minimum level of intelligence, as such I feel decently certain I will find enough to voice the reasonable doubt in this. We have seen two years of presented anger whilst there was no evidence and that same media goes on ignoring all kinds of events (like bombing of civilian targets by Houthi and as I personally feel certain about Iranian forces), yet the media tends to remain silent, focusing on the $500,000 reward on Lady Gaga’s missing dog. 

Yes, the media has its work cut out for them and I will not pull punches, not on this one. And as we take notice of “Chris Murphy, Democratic senator from Connecticut, told news channel MSNBC that he wanted “a much broader set of accountability measures” for anyone involved in the murder, identifying financial sanctions and visa withdrawals. He is among a number of members of Congress who have called for the US to take tougher action against the kingdom”, I wonder if he reconsidered the setting where Former President Trump was left with an acquittal on the second impeachment, all whilst there were close to a hundred sources, they got nothing and now they suddenly have a case without evidence? Go cry me a river, please!

So as I feel certain that I can debunk that report, I accept the notion that I might fail, anyone making any claims of success before the report is out is nuts, and I feel certain that I am not nuts (I am a Mars bar).

And I do have an advantage, the quote “The intelligence assessment, based largely on work by the CIA, is not new; NBC News was among the organisations that confirmed it in 2018” by NBC (at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/new-public-report-blame-saudi-crown-prince-2018-killing-jamal-n1258800) gives us “based largely on work by the CIA”, you know the people claiming that there were WMD’s in Iraq. So, how did that end? Remember that US Rockstar with his silver briefcase (Colin Powell)? He went on a wild tour all over the world, but how reliable was that report in the end? Now, there are at least two elements that I can rely on, but I will wait until the report, it is so much more satisfying to be ahead of the curve. Yet, in the end I could be wrong and I will learn that I was wrong and I will bring that too, I am never afraid to be wrong, I am more worried about bing indecisive. So there will be more to come, quite soon I expect.

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Filter by Gender.

Yup we have all done it, we tend to filter. The horny (especially teenagers) want to talk, chat and video whatever to the members of the other gender (well, most of them anyway). We filter by the needs we have, business needs, personal needs and artistic needs, we filter. There is for the most nothing wrong with that. Yet it also tends to keep you in a little box. I come from the previous internet era, I never got into Napster but I loved Audiogalaxy. I had it so I could listen to music when I was travelling and it opened up doors. I learned about the Corrs, Bond, the Dixie Chicks, Linkin Park, Orbital and a few others. It grew my CD collection by leaps and that made me happy, in an age where my work kept me from MTV, Audiogalaxy showed me other venues of music. I forwent the filter and I learned about and got to appreciate bands I would never have considered. Filtering is not all bad.

Yet what happens when filtering goes overboard in another direction? Today I learned a new word, I word I should have been aware of but I do not remember hearing it. The word is ‘Femicide’ and it is not a good word. It was Al Jazeera that made me aware, the article ‘Rage boils over amid Argentina’s unrelenting femicide crisis’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/24/rage-boils-over-amid-argentinas-unrelenting-femicide-crisis). It got my attention in the first as it was about Argentina and my mother was from there. In the second it was the by-line “Femicide of 18-year-old Ursula Bahillo pushed thousands into the streets of Buenos Aires this month to demand action”. In this there are two parts, the first is “About 87,400 results” (when we look for Ursula Bahillo) and the second part is that the big newspapers are missing on the news search result on the first page. A Spanish version from the BBC is at the bottom of the page, no Washington Post, no NY Times, no Times, no Guardian (the list goes on) and it sickens me for another reason. You see, one hour ago the Guardian gives us ‘Princess Latifa letter urges UK police to investigate sister’s Cambridge abduction’, some princess gets the news on optionally being abducted and whilst Al Jazeera reports “Nearly 300 femicides were reported in the country in 2020”, other newspapers keep us in the dark and these idiots demand money from Facebook and Google, whilst not informing us? I see this as one of the clearest ‘What the Fuck?’ moments of the year.

I never felt comfortable bout honour killings. I understand that it exist and in those countries there is an issue, I am massively against that setting in other nations. I cannot convict it as I am not Muslim, yet outside of Muslim nations it is an issue, yet femicide should not be ANYWHERE and the fact that we are kept in the dark by most papers is a larger issue, but I will let you worry about that. It kind of intersects with ‘Australia urged to follow allies in denouncing China’s repression of Uighurs as ‘genocide’’, the fact that genocide is happening and someone needs to ‘urge’ Australia shows that we are not as evolved as we think we are. By the way, the first 5 pages of that search shows no Australian papers at all, as such should they be allowed to exist? That is a more serious question than you think. If the ACCC are all about media laws and the need to blame tech companies, in this my message after seeing ‘ACCC chief claims victory after Facebook standoff’ to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims will be “Sir, I consider you to be a fucking joke! You are hereby responsible to make sure that the events around Ursula Bahillo are to be seen in EVERY Australian newspaper as per immediate. If you (as it seems) champion discrimination, you need to be openly told this”, my issue here is that Microsoft was left out of the media consideration, they were waiting all their resources on their Azure cloud and now that we see “Microsoft will ensure that small businesses who wish to transfer their advertising to Bing can do so simply and with no transfer costs.  We recognise the important role search advertising plays to the more than two million small businesses in Australia” (source: Microsoft) all whilst we see western media absent to the plight of Ursula Bahillo and hundreds more shows that the media was never to be considered any options (if the Leveson report was not enough evidence). As such, how much action did the UN take to the Femicide cause? I know they have done some work, yet when I see ‘United Nations asks UAE for proof that Princess Latifa is alive’ all whilst the Google Search “Ursula Bahillo United Nations” gives no real links on the western media, why is that? That is even beside the fact on how active UN essay writers became against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they even went so far to push for issues regarding  cyber crimes on an American Industrial (Jeff Bezos) all whilst the presented evidence had several shades of debatability. As I see it, we need larger changes and if the media relies on political bitches (as one might say) to do their revenue work for them, they will need to be held liable, yet I reckon that some editors will cry like little bitches and point towards ‘freedom of the press’, I wonder how long it will take for someone to consider that ‘accountability of the press’ is also a matter that needs consideration. Al Jazeera brought more to the surface than some media players are happy with. Consider your paper, or their website (whichever it is) and look for Ursula Bahillo, how many articles did you find? What we are shown matters, whether is be Femicide in Argentina, persecution of Uighurs or any other news. As I personally see it when we filter by gender and the filtering agent is the media we have lost control and the insane are at the helm of a ship called sanity. That’s merely my $0.02 on the matter.

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A desk and screen

It is not the stage I am facing, it was the idea for a short film the story itself might seem known, it was a stage that several have used before, but here I am trying to invoke a darkness from within. A stage we face when we are all alone in an office. We tend to hear things, but not always are these sounds in our minds, they are the sounds all around us. And in some cases for moments our sense of hearing increases with factor 50, as such we cannot identify the noises we hear. Then there is the application of shadows, in this I call towards Nightwatch, the 1994 version by Ole Bornedal, not the remake. The bonus is that we get to see a young and innocent Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, before winter came (ha ha ha). The two elements came to me as a setting on a simple GI at the console of a missile silo, his partner has suddenly taken ill, and that man is releasing his diner through the mouth (aka vomiting), it is at that point that the alarm goes off and the console room becomes isolated. That is the setting, I will not bore you with the details (aka the ending) but as a short movie it should be worthy of some recognition (aka my ego in action). Yet that is not the setting that matters, or the central point of discussion. 

You see, there are bigger fish to fry (optionally served with garlic sauce). Who took notice of ‘Where are Cape Town’s great white sharks?’, as well as ‘Extinction: Freshwater fish in ‘catastrophic’ decline’ (source: BBC). We have been seeing stuff like that for a while, yet to politicians are seemingly in denial. We see this again and again, yet they are ignoring a larger problem, an environmental source gave us 5 years ago “A world without fish is a scary prospect. Without them, life as we know it will not be possible. The ocean will no longer be able to perform many of its essential functions, leading to a lower quality of life. People will starve as they lose one of their main food sources”, now I have had my issue with overextending environmentalists for a long time, but I do not think that this person is wrong. And a key part here is ‘Without them, life as we know it will not be possible’, the stage is even less good when we consider that this decline has been going on for 30 years, as such, which politicians did something about that? To give you a boost with a setting of horror, consider that marine life in 30-40 years will be gone and as such, your grandchildren will at least starve to death (if they are lucky), did you consider this?

So was the environmentalist wrong, perhaps exaggerating? Well we might think that but the impact is already reported on BBC, and the great whites are merely the tip of the mountain, the inaction by politicians and government is a much larger stage, they are all in denial, or perhaps more subtle voiced, they have a Trump view of democracy. 

Sometimes we read things, we see things and we hear things, yet share holders and stakeholders are doing their best to make sure that the noise does not each too many people, it might adversely affect their need for profit. Yet as I mentioned “they are the sounds all around us” and we need to start taking notice. There is overfishing and pollution. If it was only pollution, in my case micro plastics, I would have had an optional solution. The idea came to me when I was watching a woman open her pack of cigarettes, I thought that it might be a solution in solving the micro plastics in the ocean. I am emphasising ‘might’ as it is untested and there is an optional danger to marine life, so I am a little hesitant. The solution comes in two forms a coastal and a deep water solution, one cannot do the other, but I was prepared, or perhaps better stated, my mind was and two versions came to mind. I wonder at times how we can wake the people up, we can argue that this world is better off with 7,500,000,000 less citizens, and it would preferable if the animals are still around when that happens, but I tend to be an optimist. 

I am also considering that we have had 4000 years to grow and we screwed up the planet in the last 100 years, which is quite the achievement. As such when we look at movies like the 5th wave, or play games like Mass Effect where our world is under attack from aliens, these people were optimists. They can just park on the dark side of the moon and wait for 20 years, they can claim the planet, free of life and optionally all the buildings are still there. 

We did this to ourselves, we can only blame us.

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Our Disney lives

Yes, we have a life, it is staged on the Disney mould, but we do have it. We are empowered by the marvel characters, we are defended by the Jedi, we feel entrusted by Frozen, a Disney production. It has to be, there is no other explanation. You see there was a story that I saw on BBC, and now on the Dutch NOS. We are given “The Royal Family of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, has released a statement about Princess Latifa, the Emir’s daughter. Videos appeared this week in which she says that she is being held hostage by her family and that she fears for her life” (source: NOS), I get it, it plays nice yet it is a princess, one princess. Yet in this, who remembers “Yemeni minister accuses Houthis of using displaced people as human shields in Marib” (source: Arab News), over the last two weeks, the NOS was all about reporting on how the Houthi movement is not a terrorist one, and that is it. We now see ‘UN: Houthi Attacks in Northern Yemen Risk Triggering Humanitarian Crisis’ (at https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/un-houthi-attacks-northern-yemen-risk-triggering-humanitarian-crisis), there we are given “The Marib governorate has been relatively unaffected by Yemen’s six-year long civil war. That is until Houthi rebels recently mounted a military offensive to try to seize control of the region from Yemeni government forces. Because of its relative safety, hundreds of thousands of people have fled there to escape fighting in other parts of Yemen. At least 800,000 of them are now in the region” and they are not alone we also have ‘Yemeni minister condemns Houthi bombing in Taiz’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1813001/middle-east) mere hours ago where we are given “Mubarak said the militia had drafted students to frontlines instead of schools, and was working to change school textbooks to “lay the landmines of death and extremism in the minds of young generations instead of dialogue and peace.”” All less than a day ago, most of the western media ignores it, merely the Disney approach towards a frozen stage, a stage of a princess. So at what point have you, the reader become obsessed with the Disney life? 

Consider the stage that Yemen has and stop blaming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran has been fuelling this from day one, but the news ignores it. Terrorist actions by Houthi’s against children and civilians, yet the media ignores it. Why is that? Why are these actions not on the front pages of EVERY newspaper in the west? This is what I meant with filtered information. I wonder if you investigate the news not given which share holders and stakeholders are seen with their fingers in the pie. Yes, there are several issues, there are hard times. The people in Texas are seeing that. In the UK we are given ‘More than 7,500 families across north-east given winter hardship payments’, which is fair news, it is news yet it seems that the BBC did not pick it up, yet the princess story did.

We seem to be given an emotional charged Disney life, are you not sick of that? There are huge problems out there and someone is trying to make us look somewhere else. When is that ever a good idea?

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How to miss out on $20,000,000,000

Yup, another notch, another confirmation and in all this, I smirk. The shown stupidity by several players whilst they try to be clever and show the people through ‘filtered content’ that they are on the ball was staggering. Now Reuters gives us (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-emirates-defense-saudi/saudi-arabia-to-invest-more-than-20-billion-in-its-military-industry-over-next-decade-idUSKBN2AK08K) ‘Saudi Arabia to invest more than $20 billion in its military industry over next decade’, the US and the EU have played their cards and are out of the race, implying that the bulk of all this will go to China, and optionally Russia will get a few slices of that cake. Some called me a fool, some said I was dreaming (well, I was to some degree), but with the Chinese economy getting a nice large slice of the $20,000,000,000 the stage is starting to change. The UK is missing out because they gave the stage to stupid people (CAAT). The US did a similar thing, the EU climbed on their high horse called morality blaming the KSA for all kinds of things, yet they refused to give the people the real deal which involved Iran. Now China has a larger stage and they did it to themselves.

The Governor of the General Authority for Military Industries (GAMI) Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al-Ohali will have to select a new stage, one that does not include the EU or the US. China who was basically not in the market with their QBZ-95, they now have a realistic chance because both Belgium (FN-Herstal) and Germany (Heckler and Koch) can not contribute. In addition China has a few other options, add to that a larger stage where they can offer airplanes and vehicles the stage is set, the west lost out on twenty billion, all due to stupidity, and they did not have that much to tinker to begin with and it only goes downhill from there.

If China sets the manufacturing stage to Saudi Arabia the stage changes even further as they will have a leg up in several Middle Eastern nations. So, if the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) gets a nice hamper this Christmas with a note stating ‘千恩萬謝’, you know that their goose is cooked. 

So what’s next? Well, as the KSA is making increasing purchases into their defence apparatus, the stage changes, it is a cost we all see, but in the past the EU and the US made hay out of the benefits they got, that part is seemingly going to China (optionally Russia too). 

A stage that I saw almost 2 years ago, is it not funny how the politicians in the US and EU did not see that coming? If they did, why was their no mention in the news? Yet it is clear that their economies are so good, they can afford to sneer at 1 to two dozen billions. Ohh, I forgot they are broke! And this is not about the CAAT, I get it, there is ideology in ‘to end all government political and financial support for arms exports’, this is nice but it only works if all players adhere to this and a nation has every right to defend itself, as such Saudi Arabia needs to do what is best for Saudi Arabia. If that requires them to start talks with China, then so mote it be. 

Realism is fickle, it is shaped by the people wielding it, even if their realism is tainted by ideology and delusion. As such that fickle statue is now going to other places and the nations with trillions of debt will need to find another solution, but perhaps selling stickers to the members of CAAT will make up for something. 

I myself would have preferred to offer the Typhoon to Saudi Arabia, but in this
I hope to sell them the Chengdu J-20, yes I might be asleep, but do we not all want a 3.75% commission out of a $2,000,000,000 deal? In all this the stage was clear for close to 2 years, I wonder what the people had to win by losing out on billions, I honestly have no clue, do you?

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