Category Archives: Media

July 21, 2022 · 22:47

Stunting into stupidity

It started with an article in the Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/20/israeli-journalist-sneaks-into-mecca-triggering-online-backlash). The article gives us ‘Israeli journalist sneaks into Mecca triggering online backlash’, it gives a lot more and it gives us the man who topped the stupid bill (namely Gil Tamary) and the byline gives us “his report aired on Israel’s Channel 13 News had not intended to offend Muslim”, didn’t he? He wanted a showstopper, to be mentioned in history and he was utterly uninterested in the aftermath. He merely wanted to be first at the expense of everyone else. How did I get there? “Israel’s Channel 13 News aired a 10-minute report on Monday in which journalist Gil Tamary drove past the Grand Mosque that houses the cube-shaped Kaaba, the holiest shrine in Islam, and climbed the Mount of Mercy”, you see, the mount of mercy is a granodiorite hill about 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Mecca. This was all premeditated, and that was essential in making an article that would upset muslims, it was a stunt from beginning to end. The quote “The report was billed as a scoop and the journalist the first Jewish Israeli reporter to document the annual Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj.” Supports my point of view. You see, if the reporter was Muslim it was not that much of an issue, but Channel 13 news did not send a Muslim, did they? 

You see only Muslims are allowed to visit Mecca, while non-Muslims cannot enter. The breach of this rule can result in a fine or deportation. And that rule has been in place before I went to primary school where we learn this. Gil Tamary needed a stunt, something to brag about over dinner for all time. He is the first non-Muslim to go to Mecca, a stunt too stupid to consider the impact of insult made to Muslims. Gil Tamary is an idiot, perhaps the biggest one in Israel, so that is the other stunt he can make claim on: “I am the biggest idiot in Israel”, but he will not try that path, will he? And in all this when we reconsider “The purpose of this entire endeavour was to showcase the importance of Mecca and the beauty of the religion, and in doing so, foster more religious tolerance and inclusion”, might optionally have been true if the film team would have been Muslim, if the reporter would have been Muslim. I saw Mecca, I saw the Hajj through the camera’s of Muslims. I spoke about it in ‘The media gets it this wrong?’ days before someone decided to sneak into Mecca. I never snuck into Mecca, people had covered their trip to Mecca, the trip of their lifetime and shared it with all others. Channel 13 had that very same option, but left it to the idiot of Israel (Gil Tamary) to make a fool of Channel 13 and to upset millions of Muslims. So if we see stories of upset Muslims if will be due to Gil Tamary a.k.a. the idiot of Israel. I feel angry, I feel angry that someone would disrespect any religion to such a degree. And you know what is even worse? When I seek ‘Gil Tamary’ I get: “5 results (0.29 seconds)”, the western media was willing (read: intent) to stay clear of this, the media who in large numbers would convict the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia lacking evidence, is not willing to go near this event. The media has become this warped! And no one is asking questions. No one is demanding evidence of such levels of misrepresentation. 

So when will the media realise just how insignificant they have become? You see when other people will look at Arab News, Al Jazeera and other media and they see how misrepresented the news has become, what will they do? What excuse will they use? 

I will let you ponder that part of the equation.

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July 18, 2022 · 20:47

For those not seeing the oil field

There is a larger field, a larger oil field if you wish. And the people aren’t getting it. I get it, it isn’t an easy equation and it is not really your fault, because the media is guilty as hell in all this, but lets start at the beginning (well, some kind of beginning). One such headline is ‘Oil trumps human rights as Biden forced to compromise in Middle East’, it is one way to look at it, but it is the wrong way. My headline would have been ‘Greed is eternal at the expense of everything else’. The point here is that we get to see a few sides that the media is not giving us. It starts with the oil and that part is a lot more important than you think it is.  So lets take a look at the three nations and the barrels per day they pump.

United States11,184,870
Russia10,111,830
Saudi Arabia (OPEC)9,313,145

So America pumps out a lot of oil, now it makes perfect sense that they will not deal with Russia, but it is at present still an unequal information package.

You see the United States exported about 8.63 million barrels per day (b/d) and imported about 8.47 million b/d of petroleum. And now you think it does not make sense. So lets just say that the US is selling oil at $50 a barrel and buys it at $35 a barrel, so they get 8 million (rounded) times $15, is $120 million of profit a day and that amounts to $43.8 billion a year. Profit they basically got for free. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not willing to give away $43.8 billion after the way the US treated the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is just so much any person will take and I reckon the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken enough of the treatment handed to them. So the US instead of catering to self sells 73% of all the oil they pump, so why should the KSA after the way they were treated cater to that situation? Even an alternative that the us keeps 50% of their sales, they hand the KSA 50% it might be seen as a compromise. The US could stop selling 2,500,000 barrels a day and cater to its own needs, but the profit of some are not easily swayed. They are seemingly willing to let the US population freeze to death (or boil to death). And these numbers are out there, the media has had them for the longest time. All these BS articles on going crude oil free whilst the US is selling 73% of whatever they drill. Seems a little hypocritical, doesn’t it? 

That 73% does cater to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories, no one denies that, but the profit goes somewhere and not all of it to the US coffers owned by the US treasuries. Someone is getting rich and the media is happy for you to be in the dark about it. Ask yourself “How many media outlets have given view of the amount sold? Why is the US short on oil whilst the oil harvested goes somewhere else?” I get it, there is a need for profit, no one denies that, but we see all these articles that imply and suggest that the Saudi’s are the bad paty whilst the US is trying to get cheap oil so that they can sell it at a profit. And believe me, when we change the prices of the earlier given $50 and $35 into the real numbers the equation changes really quick and the numbers become exceedingly large. 

So why should the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hand over profit that they are entitled to? Did you honestly think that Aramco was some non profit organisation? If it is it will be non profit for Saudi Arabia and its citizens, not for the US and their citizens, or the 176 countries that they could cater to. And the media does not really give you that, do they? So when the Guardian gives us “Brent crude hit a 14-year high of $139.13 a barrel in March, fuelling global inflation and a worldwide cost of living crisis. In the US, inflation is at 9.1% and accelerating, which is likely to translate into lost seats for the Democratic party in November’s midterm elections.” What happens when they sell 2.5 million barrels a day less and let that go to the US shortage? The equation changes by a lot does it not? 29% less sales will be felt all over the US and by Brent in particular, so why exactly does the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia need to play ball with the US, especially when China is exceedingly courting Saudi Arabia for all kind of goods and when I see the revenue setting of 375 billion + 530 billion that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is spending on improving Saudi Arabia, there is every setting where the US has overplayed its hand and China is now in a premium position to get their revenue balls rolling. A setting I warned about before Covid before 2019, there were courters in the field and when that overpriced US plane wasn’t going there, China could sell the Chengdu J-20 at a nice price to Saudi Arabia (I admit I was trying to get my foot in the door and make a play for a simple 3.75% commission), and when you consider that this bill might go up to 15 billion, my 3.75% makes for a nice half a billion (we all have overly big dreams), and merely to play the courier? You have got to be kidding, I am so ready for that part! 

But this was about oil and the US played the wrong hand several times over (like shaking hands with air) and now Saudi Arabia and especially Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud might feel that the US played them for a fool and the problems start when the US could not afford problems. A stage where we see that Brent Crude is not so innocent and the media should have been on top of this, but I will let you people decide how that should be seen.

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July 17, 2022 · 22:39

The media gets it this wrong?

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

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

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

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July 16, 2022 · 19:05

The place of choice

We all have. Place of choice, in some cases we have many. For horror it is the Nostromo, for Fantasy it is Lothlorien, for action it is whereever the action is you watched in a game or in a movie. So when I saw ‘How Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Franchise Subverts the Sci-Fi Genre’ I was puzzled. This translates to ‘undermine the power and authority of fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes’ from these we see that Guerrilla did more than the right thing. They offered a side of sci-fi that was new, unique and appreciated by millions of fans. The Gamerant article also gives us “Most notably, it blends futuristic elements with primitive ones to produce a unique new aesthetic. Additionally, instead of looking to the stars and imagining a future where the problems of humanity are solved by taking to the stars, it instead plants its feet firmly on Earth and imagines a future where humans instead try to solve the planet’s ecological problems.” It is a view, one that is shining with science fiction, in addition we see “The appeal of this dream is easy to understand, as Earth, as beautiful as it is, has finite resources which would seem to be incapable of continuously supporting a growing population. Furthermore, humankind’s time on Earth has resulted in ecological disasters from deforestation, warfare, commercial farming, and mining, to name but a few harmful human activities.” It is true and it also gives us a new setting, science fiction not as a setting of the future we desire, but as a setting it show us the flaws of realism. We can look at so many other games, but the larger stage is that we are destroying the world we live in and whilst we see President Biden play the Khashoggi card (as that would guarantee cheaper oil), the reality is that squandering oil will be the death of millions, and we did it to ourselves. Instead of embracing a future where we could exist better and longer, we seem to adhere to the Twitter vibe attacking Elon Musk and the setting of Fake accounts was never and is never properly addressed and the media is every bit as guilty on that part. 

We see media subverting reality whilst politicians, trolls, fake prophets buy clicks to forward their agenda. Kwork made millions on this, and consider that a firm offers 100.000 visits visitors for $20. OK, they offer more access, so it is not more twitter alone. But this setting shows that there is more and Twenvy offers 5,000 Twitter Followers Every Month for a mere $69 a week unless you want the ‘200 Twitter Accounts Sending You Traffic’ it will be more then, and that doesn’t require fake accounts, so where do these +6487 accounts come from? Explain please. I found a simple one in under a minute and there are thousands out there. Al making a buck out of Twitter. How do these connect? It fits the bill of major social changes, pretentious social changes that affect us all. We are given “Social media bots and Russian trolls promoted discord and spread false information about vaccines on Twitter to sow division and distribute malicious content, according to new research led by the George Washington University. Using tactics similar to those at work during the 2016 United States presidential election, these Twitter accounts entered into vaccine debates months before U.S. election season was underway.” What no one is considering, which accounts wee used and how long they remained active, there are no time lines and here we get back to the Horizons series. The story is all about a time line. From Zero Dark to Forbidden West we are shown a world consumed by greed, technology driven and pushed beyond its limits. In the games (both) Ted Faro, his greed, recklessness and lack of foresight led to the extinction of all life on Earth via an advanced military platform, also known as the Faro Plague, whose design and development he personally conceived and oversaw. A stage that was part of the story and never dug in too deep (it was not needed for the story) yet it is a reality that I shown in our world today, greed overarches common sense. Self-repudiation is ignored for what some call the comfort of the people, it does not give us the the part where self-repudiation halts automated revenue and slows down greed. A similar side is seen in security and as such we are given one part that is ignored. Science fiction tend to push outward, Guerrilla took it into a new direction and pushed it within us, pushed it towards the reality of today. It is science fiction and it could be seen as a new direction of science fiction. There was a reason Soylent Green was so good. I remember creating a prequel 3-5 years ago. In that version Chris Hemsworth played William R. Simonson when he was still young. The prequel still based on Make Room! Make Room! (By Harry Harrison) but the premise also looks at where we are almost now and that is the part, not realism but near realism and that is the part that Guerrilla got right. Not the technology of the old ones, but the mindset of the old ones and there we have a much larger stage. Guerrilla never subverted the science fiction genre, they added a branch, a branch that already existed and is now becoming a major branch in that tree of representation. The realisation how our dystopian future is based on our flawed screwed up self. I would call it a version that is true and real, but has enough fiction to make it a wondrous trip, fiction that is based on science. Star Trek might have preceded the mobile phone and the iPad, but the reality was that it was the people that drive it and as such we should ask the hard questions. Why is the media avoiding the fake accounts of Twitter, why are politicians using click farms to proceed their own agenda’s? Because they can and that is the premise of any dystopian future, it comes because nothing was done to prevent it. Perhaps Guerrilla is one of the best teachers of all, showing our flaws and showing that there is a price for everything. They aren’t alone, but their following is one of the largest at present and in that world size matters, it always has.

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July 15, 2022 · 19:09

The other side we do not look at

My introduction to Jack the Ripper started as far as I remember in 1979, I was 17 and a few months at the most. It was the movie Murder by Decree with Christopher Plummer and James Mason. I thought it was good fun and I enjoyed the movie. The second introduction (as far as I remember) was Jack the Ripper, the mini series with Michael Caine as Abberline. His sidekick Lewis Collins (Bodie, the professionals) was his sidekick and the heartthrob Jane Seymour was there as well. This was the first introduction to the serial killer in a more serious way. And I took notice. I personally did not like From Hell, but it still matters. You see with all the less favourable stuff on TV, there is a side people forget. Michael Caine might have given it a spin, but the life of Frederick Abberline should have been made into a (mini) series long ago. 

His life has all the stuff a decent series needs and Abberline was nothing short of a police titan. We might overlook the last line as “Chief Inspector Abberline retired from the police on 8 February 1892, having received 84 commendations and awards.” Yet in today’s world people see a policeman as special when he gets a mere 10% of that (not dissing the police here). And the setting to make the series revolve not around chapters but awards and commendations has never been done before. The setting (still unverified) where we are given “was hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1904. Initially, he worked in casinos in Monte Carlo to find customers who were cheating. He then returned to England and continued working for the agency, until another retirement in 1904. He then bought a home, “Estcourt”, 195 Holdenhurst Road, Springbourne, Bournemouth.“ Should not be overlooked. It gives the series a final episode and a larger international interest. 

And in all these years Hulu, Netflix, and Apple+ never saw this staring in their faces? How come? 

A sideline not to be avoided could be that Abberline’s sidekick George Godley had his own successes over time. Two interesting characters of the London Metropolitan police and the only thing people look at was a mass murderer. But I give you this, find me any policeman who got 84 commendations and awards and you might just have a sequel in play.

When we see the series and the less interesting sides of Hulu, Netflix, Apple+ and every other stream provider none of them gave it a seemingly serious thought to look at London and its metropolitan police force in one of the most stirring time settings that London had in the 19th century. And in years of 35000 script submissions no one seemingly had the idea to look at the other side of the Atlantic river (at least that is what I think they didn’t do).

So what is/was stopping them?

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July 13, 2022 · 20:20

Questions, presumptions and speculations

There is pretty much no country in the world that hasn’t heard of Canadian Mobiles, Rogers Telecom and the mess that they are in. I wasn’t paying attention initially, because things do go wrong at times. There can be many to point at in some blame game, but the overall setting is that things just go tits up at times. As such I looked in different directions. That was until yesterday when I saw news that people had been without mobiles for three days, that definitely got my attention. You see things do go wrong, but for a setting of this size to be out of check for that long a time takes a lot. As such I started to look and today I found (at https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/massive-rogers-outage-caused-by-a-maintenance-update/) ‘Massive Rogers outage caused by a maintenance update’, this did not make sense to me. I checked ‘bleeping computers’ and beside the name we share, I found nothing really negative. So when I saw ““We now believe we’ve narrowed the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning,” Staffieri said in a statement published Saturday.” There was something really wrong here. It is possible to loopback a server and realign routers in a matter of hours, this was something else, but so far I could not find anything that gave a decent explanation of the matter. You see, it is a setting of mere hours, so mobiles to be out as well as emergency services, that takes a hell of a lot more. My personal experience (which is not great) is well beyond basic and my graduate degree makes me wonder what actually happened. As such, my mind started to wander through the decades of IT experience and I suddenly remembered something from the 80’s, It was less than a year after the first virus was created. It was called a jigsaw worm. But about that soon enough. 

I cannot tell how Canada runs it business, but EVERY phone I know will have the option to call emergency services and I was seeing all kinds of news that this was not possible. This was more than just a maintenance update.

Speculation
When going back to the Jigsaw worm, someone had the idea that surpassed a data virus. He created a program that was incomplete. It was like a jigsaw of 4 pieces, the key of part ‘A’ called the lock of ‘C’, the key of ‘C’ called the lock of ‘D’ and so on, when the 4 combined it became a powerful worm, causing mayhem on networks and as one part was created for networks that piece could be set to a TokenRing solution or any other network. The puzzle was interesting, it as novel, but it never got the attention it deserved, and it was forgotten over time, but I do remember it. So now, as we have the Internet of Things, that ‘solution’ becomes a lot more important. And to give you the rundown lets make a new one. In this one we have a 3×3 puzzle. 

Here the important part is piece 8, you see, the previous edition had a weakness, or one that could be detected decently easy nowadays. When we invert the solution, the key does not proclaim it is there, but the lock leaves a flag, each piece its own flags, 8 flags in total. Try finding 8 specific flags on a server system of a telecom company, good luck with that idea. The 8 pieces finding each other and linking and sitting dormant somewhere, optionally in a cloud space that is as badly managed as it is monitored. When the 8 flags are turned piece number 9 comes into play and sets one flag, and the 8 connected pieces accepts piece 9 in its midst and mayhem gets surpassed by chaos in the least acceptable way and it will take a long time to find, because a work does not need to replicate too often, it merely needs to be there. And unless you replace each piece of equipment and purge all data from each system, the damage will merely continue over time. 

This is not my invention, it is almost 40 years old. Well over a decade ago we were taught and others were clearly taught that self-repudiation was going to be a big thing. But there is a group of people where greed and stupidity are neatly and efficiently packaged, such a person tends to be a  member of a board of directors and they were really driven to get as much profit out of everything.  Speed over self-repudiation, greed over privacy and now the chaos will come, more of it and more often as well. 

Could I be wrong?
Of course I could be wrong, this could be a simple setting of stupidity, lack of resources, lack of procedures and policies, it could be that simple. Yet in that how much of these elements needed to go wrong for people to be days without mobiles, without the ability to reach emergency services. Consider that setting and wonder what really happened. I cannot fathom what happened, because I do not know these systems to the degree I would need to know them. But in my speculations, I also realise something else. Canada would never be a good target, but the US, the US could be and Canada was merely a dry run of a new developed system. Is it the one I speculated on? I have no way of telling and in the end it might be merely a speculation that leads to an interesting story, one for TV, or one for the big screen. I will let you consider what I wrote here and consider that no telecom provider when down the way Rogers Telecom went down. In Australia Vodafone had issues, but that was simple a fire in a key component as such the damage was clear and the impact as well. It seems that Rogers Telecom has no idea what the damage is and no idea what the impact will be.

Suddenly my speculation is not that far fetched, is it?

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July 12, 2022 · 21:36

The blind seeker

This is not a riddle, it is simple. I cannot tell what the rules are for getting a script. I created three of them and I get it, it needs to be a certain format, it needs appeal, but as a storyteller, I do not care, and that is not some short sighted look. Around 35000 stories are submitted and only 350 get made. I am not some person seeking wealth (well I am, but not in stories), and as I have stated in the past. I lived the FX slogan, ‘The Story is everything’, it has been true for the longest of time and it ill remain true decades from now. So as I recall an article I wrote in ‘The stage of a game’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/09/24/the-stage-of-a-game/) almost 2 years ago, someone in Hollywood or Netflix should have woken up.

The fact that a comic (1965-1982) with artists like Don Lawrence; Oliver Frey; Gerry Wood; Philip Corke; Ramon Sola; Ron Embleton; Miguel Quesada can still tempt the mind of the reader a generation later should have alerted them to the setting that they have a winner here. In the age when special effects and CGI are so close to the real thing that we can no longer tell the difference whether something is real or CGI should have triggered the idea that the Trigan Empire could be big bucks. The fact that this remains a hidden treasure is delighting in so many ways. The series I started to follow at the age of 5 (2 years after it was released) and still has this appeal on me and on thousands who were around when they first appeared is a wonderful feeling. It gives rise to the appeal that Flash Gordon had in the 50’s to the previous generation and this generation who is a lot on the Hogwarts stage. Every generation has its special stories and to consider that the next generation could enjoy on the screen what the previous generation loved in equal measure in comic books, is overwhelming. I wonder if it ever becomes real. Well, Valerian became a reality in 2017, 50 years after the comic book launched. Even as the movie flopped (according to the numbers), I was happy to see it and as part 2 is now ready to be filmed and a part three is on route to become a reality too, I merely hope that I live long enough to see all three parts. But the small voice in me silently hopes that the Trigan Empire will become a reality too. And there is a lot more in the comic books that never graced the American shelves. Don Lawrence gave us Storm, the Spanish artist Vicente Segrelles gave the world a comic named ‘the Mercenary’ in an age of knights, magic and dragons. 

So many awesome stories that one wonders how blind are these Hollywood seekers, these diggers for Netflix, Hulu and Apple+? A stage that is merely waiting to be found by a limelight, any limelight. Dozens, if not hundreds of comic books, all undiscovered as they never graced the American comic book shelves (a speculation of mine). Yet in the stage of what we see now and what we hear now, so many series flop. I honestly do not know why, some I have never seen, some I saw and it was not my favourite, yet it was not bad. The reason of what we see and what some things are rated as follows definitions that some might think ludicrous and mostly because we do not understand what drives the ratings. So under those rules will series like the Trigan Empire and the Mercenary make it? I cannot tell, but I hope they do, to see my childhood hero (Valerian) make it to the big screen was mesmerising, I hope to see the other two there as well.

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July 11, 2022 · 18:52

Meme by Elon Musk

The guardian is giving us a part, other papers are giving us a part. Yet no one is treading on the side where they have to be, the media pussies on patrol. Trying to keep safe their digital dollars. And it is about to come to blows. You see the article ‘Elon Musk may have to complete $44bn Twitter takeover, legal experts say’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/10/elon-musk-may-have-to-complete-44bn-twitter-takeover-legal-experts-say) gives merely part of the painting. Yes, legal experts state “Quinn said Musk’s information requests on spam accounts were not “reasonable” and would not be accepted by the court. “He can’t use unreasonable information requests to create a pretext to claim a violation,” he said.” But the setting is incomplete. Twitter has maintained that no more than 5% of the Twitter accounts were fake, I have data suggesting it is as high as 20%, another source (www.trollrensics.com) has data showing the number of fake accounts for trolls and misinformation to be as high as 50%, this implies that Twitter is trying to sell a bill of goods, but the bill is only 50% filled and that has been at the centre of this all along. So whilst Jack Dorsey and friends and now in a stage where the gig is up, they need to get as much out of it as possible, because the media will at some point ‘wake up’ and take a much deeper look. Consider hundred of media outlets and they have been avoiding this part all along. Politicians setting their premise, misinformation on covid, election misinformation, and the Ukraine war thousands to troll accounts working day and night to give a false premise of what is going on and in all this the media remained SILENT. 

Trollrensics has data spanning 8 years (at least) and that is merely the beginning. You see, on route to home I remembered that trolls and click-farms rely on greed. As such we see a different setting. First there is the ‘unmonitored source’ that gives us “Twitter doesn’t reveal IP addresses of its users. They use it internally and strictly restrict the public from this information. But there’s always a way. In this article, we’ll discuss how to find someone’s IP address on Twitter.” This implies that we need another path, but criminals and click-farms are lazy, they will reuse what they can. Every second they can tweet is another few cents in their wallet, as such more is better. This implies that if you create a database of the @TwitterAddress and you strip all the messages, you can look per message and see how it moves. This is not a simple solution, you need serious computing power for this. But as such, you get a message that is spread (in the near same instance) from different mobiles in the same location you optionally have a click farm point. Now if we get a multitude of misinformation from clusters of mobiles, we have found such a place. 

This is a mere setting to get to the numbers. You see, Russia and China have hundreds if not thousands of these click-farm locations. And now we have a serious number, when we move that action from nation to nation, we get well beyond my 20% and way past the 5% claim of Twitter. When that is obtained, we get what might be considered evidence towards what some would call the alleged fraudulent sale of Twitter to Elon Musk. Why Fraudulent? Well, Twitter maintained that they have no more than 5% fake accounts. These numbers would prove them wrong and with the previous part that they had IP addresses they had the information a lot longer than anyone would care to speculate on and as they speculatively lived by the rule that they look sexier with 330 million active users, than with 120 million active users. And one source gives us “Twitter has some 330 million monthly active users (MAU) based on its last reported data that leveraged this metric in the 1st quarter of 2019. As of 2020, Twitter’s monetizable daily active users (mDAU) stands at 166 million, which represents a 24% growth from 2019.” In the middle of Covid Twitter grew 24%? I am not saying it is not possible, after all Amazon pulled it off, but how many stores were active during coved? In addition to this, where did these funds come from? In all the presidents men we hear ‘Follow the money’, that equally applies to trolls and click-farms. They got paid, they paid for things, that money trail is equally important in discovering what was what. It is not fool proof, because others use similar paths for valid reasons, but that is one person, one business. Not a person or business with hundreds of phones. 

All this should have been seen and looked at by the media years ago, but it wasn’t interesting is it not? And as for the meme, see below. When you consider the elements of the meme, the silence of the media makes even less sense. Yet, I leave that to you to look into. 

Meme by @ElonMusk

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July 9, 2022 · 22:47

Today in the price is right

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

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

 

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July 8, 2022 · 23:10

Timing is not always a good thing

That is the stage we at times debate. Corporations are all about timing and getting the timing right so that they can profit the best. OK, that is to some degree to be expected as corporations are depending on their shareholders to keep them employed, so they want the best deal possible. It is the price of doing business. And what about governments? You see Al Jazeera gives us ‘UK warship seized ‘advanced Iranian missiles’ bound for Yemen’ (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/7/uk-warship-seized-advanced-iranian-missiles-bound-for-yemen), for the most we would think yowza and happiness to all who sail here. Yet that is not the larger issue. The larger issue is “A British Royal Navy vessel seized a sophisticated shipment of Iranian missiles in the Gulf of Oman earlier this year”, it seems simple, but what happens to your opinion when I give the added part that this optionally happened in April. So three months of either dragging their feet, or trying to get something out of it. Is that really “work in support of an enduring peace in Yemen”, or is it opportunism. You see, there is more to this. I had several questions BEFORE I posted ‘The questions not asked’, which I posted on December 27th 2021, months before the UK Navy vessel finally was competent enough to find weapon smugglers from alleged Iran. The article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/12/27/the-questions-not-asked/) gives us some of these issues, together with a very frustrated Colonel Turki Al Malki. 

Frustrated because the western media remained largely willing to ignore a decent amount of evidence, apart from the fact that there is no place to properly manufacture missiles and their electronic parts in Yemen. But the media was happy to ignore that fact, and now we see in Al Jazeera “Despite a United Nations Security Council arms embargo on Yemen, Iran has long been suspected of transferring rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weaponry to the Houthis since Yemen’s war began in 2014.” Yes, and in other news “Water is now proven to be allegedly wet” We can consider two parts. In the first, the west has had enough of Iran, or two the west is becoming too desperate for oil and will suddenly find the evidence that Colonel Turki Al Malki has been voicing loudly for a very long time. Of course there could the setting that common sense takes over and people are finally realising that they are at least 4 years late to the party, and in this case better late than never does not apply. Nor the stupid or the less so are allowed to hide behind this. Too much has happened and it is time for the media filters to be properly examined by open sources (not the ICIJ) and from there we might get some names that are also on some Iranian oily do gooders list, but that is merely speculation from my side. What is a given is that Iran will soon see that their games have an end date and some parties will stop whatever they can beforehand. They are realising that the time of filling their pockets are over and they will try to make a clean break, in the end there is no telling, but some will get away with it. 

In the end it took 8 years for the evidence to reach the media, are you realising that the media that speculated over a columnist that no one cared about seconds after each event with more and more wild conjecture, but the clear setting of missile transfers to a terrorist organisation doesn’t make the cut? Wake up, will you please? And this I give you before others will come with the excuse “The time was never right”, the time was always right, it was the NOW of that moment, that was the right time, especially in journalism. And they are every bit as guilty as I personally see it.

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