Category Archives: Politics

September 10, 2020 · 17:18

the Logistical problem

The BBC alerted the people to an upcoming problem. The title ‘Covid vaccine: 8,000 jumbo jets needed to deliver doses globally, says IATA’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54067499) was used to alert us and it makes sense. Getting the stage of shipping vaccines is a real issue, it is not a small issue getting well over 6,000,000,000 people a dose, even if it is not easy yet. So when I read ““Safely delivering Covid-19 vaccines will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry. But it won’t happen without careful advance planning. And the time for that is now,” said IATA’s chief executive Alexandre de Juniac” I get the issue that they are confronted with. It was “Not all planes are suitable for delivering vaccines as they need a typical temperature range of between 2 and 8C for transporting drugs. Some vaccines may require frozen temperatures which would exclude more aircraft” that gave me the idea. I looked up an idea and there it was “To date, more than 2,500 C-130s have been ordered and/or delivered to 63 nations around the world. Seventy countries operate C-130s, which have been produced in more than 70 different variants”, so the Hercules is a military cargo plane and there are 2,500 out there, the benefit is that the Hercules supports the transportation of 10 feet military boxes which also exist in Cooled versions. Aside from that there are a  few other means, so with that, the 8,000 planes required slim down a little. When we consider that 70 countries have an option ready and we know that the larger airlines have transport versions of Boeing planes, we are almost halfway there, the larger issue is the option to have the proper boxes and refrigerated boxes fit, so even if the plane does not refrigerate, the boxes might. So in that setting we see that part of the equation is there. The larger issue is actually not the planes, it is the setting of the amount of vaccines that are required on a global scale. Which gets us to AstraZeneca, who gives us ‘AstraZeneca to supply Europe with up to 400 million doses of Oxford University’s vaccine at no profit’ (at https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/astrazeneca-to-supply-europe-with-up-to-400-million-doses-of-oxford-universitys-vaccine-at-no-profit.html), so how much will they charge the 350 remaining Europeans? This is not an attack on them, it is the required question, when the setting is there, when the vaccine is finally done, how many vaccine shots a day will Astra Zeneca be able to manufacture? So as the planes are lining up, consider that it will take roughly 2-3 days for all the vaccines that can be set in one C-130 Hercules, the question becomes are there enough small refrigerated shipping containers? It is a question that the BBC did not ask Alexandre de Juniac and I am not attacking them on it, it looks great to say that 8,000 jumbo’s are needed, but who considered the alternative? The time required to manufacture the vaccines to fill these Jumbo’s? 

And when you consider that 6-8 billion doses are needed, apart from the massive profit (which I am not against), the time required for all this is an actual issue, because anyone thinking that the existence of an vaccine is the end of the matter is wrong, it will merely be the end of the beginning and not realising that is a massive flaw in thinking. No matter how we see it, there is a chance that the vaccine will help most people, just not all of them. “Primary vaccine failure occurs when an organism’s immune system does not produce antibodies when first vaccinated. Vaccines can fail when several series are given and fail to produce an immune response”, we want a vaccine to be a force of good for all, this is not always realistic and the moment we realise that part we get the introduction to the issue at hand: ‘What about the rest?’ Yet that is not an issue we need to worry about for now, the Guardian gives us “Investigators will be examining the details of the illness and the person who contracted it to find out if there is a link. They will also look at the dose of vaccine they received, their state of general health and so on. They will hope this event can be explained and is not a risk to others. If so, the trial will soon resume. Researchers in other vaccine trials – there are nine now in phase 3, which is the last stage – will be looking to ensure they are not seeing a similar issue”, makes perfect sense, and the delay is (as I stated before) optionally short, but we see the media giving us a non-show on the matter of time required to make the vaccines. Again, this is not an attack, yet vaccines are not easily made, one source gave me “Manufacturing vaccines is a complex journey. It takes between 6 to 36 months to produce, package and deliver high quality vaccines to those who need them. It includes testing each batch of vaccine at every step of its journey, and repeat quality control of batches by different authorities around the world”, so even when the formula is ready and approved, there is every chance that the required amount of shipping will not be ready for some time, a stage that will not care how many boeings are required, there is every chance that the Hercules fleet is all that is required to ship whatever is ready, but that realisation will take you a little while and when you are all on par, we realise that soon enough it will be about governments and their needs for their ego and their economy, the setting merely require that stage for people to realise that wars have started over less. A British-Swedish organisation and their largest client (America) demanding 300,000,000 shots on day one, I will let you consider what happens next, it will not be a nice stage.

 

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September 8, 2020 · 18:01

What are we fighting for?

It is a question we get to ask ourselves a lot, especially when we are serving. I served but was not confronted with that question, yet the line came to me in the Paul Newman movie ‘The Secret War of Harry Frigg’ which was a hilarious comedy and it introduced us to Sylva Koscina. The movie is not the issue here at present, but the line is. When the papers give us ‘US veterans and soldiers divided over Trump calling war dead ‘suckers’’, a setting that gives us “Donald Trump was struggling to retain support of active US service members, according to polls, even before last week’s bombshell report that the commander-in-chief referred to fallen and captured US service members as “losers” and “suckers””, I wonder how delusional he was when he gave us what he gave us. This is not some typo in the stream cast, it was a massive blunder, one that should never have happened. No matter how we see the wars that the US got themselves into, I a setting where almost 1.4 million people lost their lives going back to the Civil War, and in this, I estimate that roughly somewhere between 30-70 million people have a family member who lost their life in one of the wars that the US was a part of. So we have up to 70 million people that are in a rather large stage where the Commander in Chief of the US calls the people who died for their country ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’, so from my point of view that is a setting where the bulk of those people will not vote in whatever is in the White House at this time, and he only has himself to thank for that. Or as some will say, he got himself properly fired on that one.

And the news is not over, we see dozens of news media giving us denials, and fallout of the setting and there is more and more coming and all this 7 weeks before the election. As some see it, for Joe Biden Christmas came early, anyone who was on the fence on how to vote, with relatives who served in any US war, they are now going (more likely than not) Democrat, those who were deeply Republican are more likely than not on the fence, especially is they have relatives who served. If we go by the previous election with 128,000,000 voters, there is now a chance that from those, between 20%-40% is optionally not voting Republican, implying that the vote is more likely than not going to Joe Biden. 

It is not a given, I need to tell you that from the start, but his actions against the coloured (see any Black Lives Matter stage), the women (the ‘I grabbed her by the pussy’ statement), his attacks on Kamala Harris, now we get the Military statement, it adds up, it is slightly speculative, but except for the Klan and the ultra right, he basically upset every demographic possible. This relates to votes and all the votes voting ‘the other guy’ instead of him. I myself am for the most Republican in nature, but his setting is just too unacceptable to me and it has been so for well over 3 years. To be honest, I did not chose Hilary Clinton for the simple reason that she made a mess of Benghazi, it is the only reason why I did not select her (OK, she is not a republican, which was my my second reason). We have a setting that we have a liking for a side and I am not against Democrats, I am against the way they push certain matters. Let’s not forget that both sides did way too little in the tax laws setting, which is a first that needs fixing and after 4 terms, we need to fix it. I am not sure which sides picks it up, but big tech is much deeper in the Democratic pockets, as such less will be done in that setting. 

And this is not the end, this administration has made a massive mess of high tech and 5G, it gets to be a lot worse when we consider (2 weeks ago) ‘Europe’s 5G plans in limbo after latest salvo against Huawei’, and I believe that this is merely the start. We want to look at the headlines, but there is too much out there to support the stage that the media is being talked to by other parties. 

In all we speculate left, right and centre, yet the stage is not a given. Nokia is shouting on 5G New Radio, yet the stage that ZDNet gives us is “Standards for the first and second phases of 5G are moving towards completion, and early deployments can piggy-back on 4G LTE infrastructure. But there’s plenty of work to do before the technical advances in 5G’s radio spec can support new use cases”, as I personally see it, this is merely 4GLTE++, not 5G, and that is the larger stage, tomorrow Nokia is not even on par with today Huawei and the media is seemingly avoiding that issue. So as we get “If mobile technology were a long-running TV series, 5G is a mid-season reboot, with new characters introduced alongside the old, new plot arcs complementing existing storylines, and a publicity drive that rather overstates the case. However, the possibilities for future development are much enhanced”, I am remembering Adler (the typewriter) once decided to go into the PC world, it was early days and the 80286 became affordable, so Adler decided to enter the market with a 80186 processor, it was not a win. Having 4G LTE++ is a temporary solution, but in the end to get ahead the people will need true 5G, just like some telecom companies making a marketing claim of 4G, whilst in 2010 they could offer no more than 3.5G, and we are now seeing it again, but on a much larger stage. So when the people finally figure out that what is now Nokia, they will be on the slippery slope of what they cannot ski, but others can and that has been the issue from day one. I have nothing against Nokia, I have nothing against the others, yet the issue was that Huawei has a massive advantage and the stage is being set by a bankrupt America, an America who is afraid of what they are about to lose and they are using whatever they can to stem the tide and as the stages are washing away we will be given less and less facts.  So what are we fighting for? I honestly do not know what they are fighting for all whilst their IP is debatable. So as I am weighing the options available to me, I wonder where my IP will end, to be honest, if the money is there, I do not care (Deep Rising). In my case it is not greed driven, it is a drive towards those relying on bullet point presentations and making sure they miss out, even if I miss out on a million or two. If it allows me my house in a nice warm place, I am fine, it is optionally a stage where I say no to 5 billion when 500 million will ample suffice, the bullet point people will never get it, when is enough enough? 

It comes with the answer to ‘What are we fighting for?’, merely a corner of my choice in a place of my choice. It is a simple setting and one that those who embrace ‘Greed is good’ can never understand, because that is their weakness, just like loss is the achilles heel of the greed driven and the corrupt. Until they face the ultimate loss (the loss of what they truly love) they will remain delusional on what they can make happen. Only when they face it will they finally wake up, but if all goes to plan, I will be long gone by then. 

We all fight for something, and we are entering the stage where the truth is what the powerful say it is, it is no longer set to scientific measures, it is set to subjective terms, and that slippery slope is sliding, so answer yourself, what are you fighting for?

 

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September 6, 2020 · 20:01

The worst is yet to come

Have you ever watched those old ‘thats Entertainment’ shows? The ones where we see the start with old blue eyes singing ‘The best is yet to come’? Well, in these days we get the new version where the worst is yet to come. In the Coronavirus numbers we see yesterday that a new number is reached, 300,474 new cases, a new height. We are only one day away from the US with 3% of its population with the Coronavirus, 50% of all cases are in the USA, Brazil and India (based on the numbers), yet there are several indicators that we aren’t even close to knowing how many cases India actually has. Even as ABC gave us last month ‘India’s biggest slum has so far nailed coronavirus. Here’s how they did it’, I am not convinced and the data is siding with me. That is seen 4 hours ago in the Indian Express where we see ‘State crosses 20,000-mark in highest single-day spike of cases’, in this we see part, but the article (at https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/maharashtra-mumbai-pune-thane-coronavirus-live-news-updates-covid-19-cases-deaths-unlock-guidelines-6582475/) also gives us “The state on Friday reported 19,218 new cases, taking the tally to 8,63,062 while the death toll rose to 25,964. The spike in cases broke Thursday’s record of 18,105 cases” (there is in the article a typo at the 8 million mark. Yet other numbers give us “4,114,773”, the number is 50% off and that is merely the beginning. India might be the most visible one, but there is no way that they are the only one. There is yet more, it cannot be given full credibility (apart from the fact that it comes from Nine News, the headline ‘Coronavirus is the number 3 killer of all Americans’, I find it debatable, but OK, such as it is they did give me a part that was interesting the article (at https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-u-s-map-where-virus-has-been-confirmed-across-n1124546) gives us the part that matters. The first is the death rate; for California it is 1.8%, for Arizona it is 2.5%, for Texas it is 2%, for Florida it is 1.8%, for New York it is 7.6% and for Pennsylvania it is 5.4%. I only looked at the states with well over 100,000 cases, below that I ignored it, but the setting that the percentage is fluctuating between 1.8% and 7.6% does not add up, One of the more usual fluctuation setting (amount of cases) was circumvented by only looking at the states with well over 100,000 cases. I believe that the setting is off, I believe that these states, optionally in New York as well, is short of numbers, I believe there is a whole range of those with the Coronavirus and those who died of it are not counted for whatever reason. There is no blame here, the US and other nations had not been confronted with this situation for 100 years. The stage was never ready for this and with the bulk of all nations in a budget crunch it will not be resolved. 

Consider (speculatively) that nations are all going towards the 7.6% stage, it is not impossible, as Melbourne Australia is going forward in a new lockdown, the opposite is achieved with the anti-lockdown protests in several countries, they will get more people killed, it is a good way to drop the unemployment numbers and optionally making housing cheaper. The stage is propagated at the highest level, we see this with “They ranged in size from a few hundred people to several thousand, and spread on social media with encouragement from U.S. president Donald Trump” (Source: the Washington Post), and in all this we see the stage go forward with more and more Coronavirus cases popping up. Even as some lines are in decline, I reckon that the entire Labour day celebrations will chance it to a much larger degree. And it does not end there, the CDC is giving us that there are no numbers for the state of New York, merely a total, with no confirmed number, which w2e can understand, but if there is a larger hole in confirmations, there will be every chance that the number is incorrect and definitely incomplete. (at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases)

There are too many markers out there and they all give us the same message: ‘The worst is yet to come’, when you see what is reported on, what is seen as missing and what is not reported on gives that larger stage and the people are so ready to have ‘anti-lockdown’ protests, how stupid is that?

 

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September 5, 2020 · 15:21

It was never about you

We get it, some players work on a multitude of levels. That is fine, but when a company makes hay through marketing that they are all about the consumers and we get ‘Apple delays new anti-tracking privacy measures’, we see how (what I regard to be) deceptive conduct is the alleged foundation between a company and a $2 trillion company. There is no upside for the consumer, there consumer was entitled to protection and we get “Apple said the changes were being delayed until the start of 2021 to give app developers and websites more time to adapt their services”, which makes us wonder why Apple designed the anti-tracking part in the first instance, a solution made and delayed to give trackers another way to do so, does that make sense?

So if it is a setting and we get “once the change is implemented in 2021, it will be off by default and advertisers will have to ask permission to access it”, at what stage is it in our interest to delay the change? I get it Apple needs a stream of incomes and my personal view there is one in betraying your customer base, that is the simple setting.

The other quote that matters is “Facebook has warned that Apple’s privacy plan could make one of its advertising tools “so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14””, which is fair enough, but I reckon that this will optionally cost Apple a few coins. The question becomes: what is the cut-off point and what is the trade off point for Apple and what ‘enhanced security’ will remain for the consumers? 

I reckon that there will be a massive decrease in free apps, it is mere speculation but yes, as mobile data becomes less available the pool for free apps and games will decrease. And let’s be fair, these companies did nothing illegal, but in the end, remember it is not about you, it is about the money you bring in and when was the last time you got that advertisement properly handed to you?

And in this it is Apple who states ‘Think different’, which is what we are doing, we want to see what deals Apple is making with the advertisers, which is NOT illegal lets be upfront about it. As such when we see “It is a world of consumers only”, “The market stands on the shoulders of consumers”, “A life of consumerism revolves around all that you want” and “Markets are built as per the taste of consumers”. We are getting misinformed, the world today is monetary based, so it becomes about the enablers and actively those who push it. That realisation is key in today’s world, the temporary setting of consumers is yesterday’s news and we only move forward when we learn that lesson, until then we are marketing tools and spending fools (an exaggeration I agree). To get ahead of the game we need to accept that marketing will happen, data captures will happen, but we also need to agree that our data is not a third party tool to be handed around the campfire. We might have woken up in the age of Cambridge Analytica, but this stage was not new. A Dutch entrepreneur and politician named Luc Sala already gave visibility to this setting 25 years ago, I was not the first (and I never made that claim). So as the haves and have not people are being segregated, we see a new form of discrimination, not on sex, religion or colour, but on the setting and longevity of your bank card (and the Credit Rating connected to this). Not your credit card, debt is not the equaliser, it is a timeline of how long you can service the organisation that wants you to service them. It is the power of the bank card that makes you a ‘Have’ in their eyes and that is where all the data is priming towards, because the firm who has the data most complete to distinguish the ‘Have’ people, that will be the winner and the US has been in the running the longest and now that China is surpassing them, now they cry in every direction, but as the remarked the ‘status’ of their reason for crying, we merely see the BS that they hide behind, just like Colin Powell and his silver briefcase (Iraq anyone?).

And the US has another problem, the stage was partially going smooth that is until the 45th President made a mess of the entire setting and the entire playing field, not only did he set the stage to a visible perspective, in his utter lack of intelligence he set the stage on ‘national security’ and ‘China’ whilst the evidence would not support it and as this is getting more and more visibility, Huawei is gaining momentum outside of the US and considering that there are less than 350 million Americans, and a growing customer base outside the US surpassing billions of ‘have targets’, that is the stage where the US is losing grip, that is where a lot of the Have’s are. And the stage to find them will soon change, the stage will be about uniting those who have and in this the US is behind, and the lag is increasing. 

There is no stage to make any kind of a reliable prediction who will win, but as far as I can tell, it will not be the US. The stage in the EU is still fluid, several banks were in the running. I first took notice of Credit Agricole in 2018 in that regard. The quote “Acting within the framework of a regulated activity, we offer you and provide products and services requiring the collection and use, as data controller, of the personal data of individuals related to you (for example: employees, shareholders, agents, legal representatives, beneficial owners, family members, third-party representatives, etc.) (the “Data Subjects”)” is set to a larger stage and it is important to realise that Credit Agricole never did anything illegal or against the European GDPR. Yet I took notice of ‘the personal data of individuals related to you’ and I found a little more than bargained for. So when we realise that there is more to life than being identified as a consumer and that the truth, but did you consider that you are optionally set to a different spectrum?

 

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September 4, 2020 · 14:04

The face carrying the egg

Yup, I woke up giddy (a good meal will do that) and I have been thinking about new IP when the BBC made me giggle with ‘One of Europe’s biggest brothels goes bust’, now this is bound to happen, yet the situation reminded me of an old slogan: ‘Due to a death, the cemetery will be closed for 3 days’. Now I have nothing against the ladies of the night and the business people counting on the mattresses being used day and night, yes they will have a larger issues with a pandemic lockdown. It is nice to see “Some 120 prostitutes usually work at Pascha. It employs around 60 staff including cooks and hairdressers. Mr Lobscheid criticised the German authorities’ handling of the pandemic – particularly their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume. He said officials would tell them every two weeks that they would not be able to reopen”, I am not judging mind you, but the effects of a lockdown implies that you cannot work, not even on your back and when your clients are in lockdown, so will you be. That is the low down on the issue and to see “We can’t plan like that. We might have been able to avert bankruptcy with the help of the banks if we had been promised that things could start again at the beginning of next year”, OK, that is fair, when a brothel is run like any business, that includes paying tax, it is fair to say that it should be allowed governmental protection, and lets face it, if the governments protects its politicians, why not its hookers, there are plenty of situations when most people cannot distinguish one from the other, as such the humour is increasing. Yet the other side is also in discussion, we see this with “Mr Lobscheid criticised the German authorities’ handling of the pandemic – particularly their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume”, I wonder if Mr Lobscheid has all his ducks in a row, you see this pandemic is unique, we haven’t faced anything like this in 100 years and the last time we did it there was a little picnic called World War 1 which had just ended, as such nations were largely in disarray. We have been lucky so far and if governments had taken a longer look at their infrastructure the mess might (i emphasise might) we smaller, but optionally not by a lot. So in all this, as businesses are in lockdown, are in a stage where larger businesses cannot run, we see a brothel, but we also see Airlines, hotels and a whole range of companies losing out of revenue, so in part a business that is properly set up and is paying tax, should be entitled to some form of protection, yet the statement ‘their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume’ is a bit of a stretch. It is almost like the hooker who goes to the doctor because of a symptom and the doctor tells her to stay out of bed for three weeks. yes, it is unfair that businesses like airlines and the one mile high club needs to stop functioning, but I wonder if people have any clue what the impact of a pandemic is. The Spanish flu set the need for 20 million to 50 million tombstones, at present that need is a little below 874,000, so we are only at 5% of the previous caper, now we can toss and turn, or we can adjust. I am in favour of the second, but that too comes with a risk. You see as long as we lockdown the disease remains a risk and the steps make sense, because the more time we have, the more time will be set towards finding a vaccine, and optionally a cure. We are given all these options, but the short, sweet truth is ‘There is no cure or treatment to prevent COVID-19’, as such until there is a treatment, lockdown is what there is and that is it. In this, I accept that the BBC gave us the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54016791) that there is more to life then awaiting death and the setting of Pascha is what it is (as a priest once told others), but the setting that we see with ‘criticised the German authorities’, is to be honest a little insane with the larger stage of unknown variables and minimum distance of 2 meters. I know that some call it a long john, but it’s not that long, not by a long shot. Yet I am still pondering “We might have been able to avert bankruptcy with the help of the banks if we had been promised that things could start again at the beginning of next year”, I know that over religious types go into a banter, but at least it is a business that pays taxation, and if rumours are correct a lot more than a speculated member of FAANG does, so there! 

So when we consider the face carrying the egg, we can point at Lobscheid, or we can look at ‘‘The venues are packed’: Labor Day parties cause concern for another COVID-19 spike’ (at https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/labor-day-weekend-covid-19-worries/85-e320d391-da34-49e7-b8c0-1ebb35061367), with the added quote “Georgia health experts are concerned Labor Day weekend could usher in a new wave of COVID-19 infections just as the state’s cases have started to slow down. Despite the warning, large parties are scheduled over the next few days in metro-Atlanta, as state and local officials are doing little to stop it”, so whilst we see one person in denial of clarity, we see a whole group of people in denial of the actual situation. For the unemployed it is good news, as 874,000 move towards 2,000,000, we see that jobs become available, houses become cheaper and it will be all over the US, the EU and a few other places as well. For governments there is another upside, as people get jobs, the cost of governing goes down and as such it starts the end of a recession, positive news all around.

I do agree that the lack of clarity breaths confusion and aggravation, but there is no real solution; until the people realise and clearly realise that the last pandemic took well over 20 million lives, only then will they realise that there is a larger setting and they are taking risks with their lives, the clever people will not. The situation is that at present, new cases are set around 290K a day and that has been the case since July 24th, so well over a month, and since July 17th the number of non living increases by 5,000 a day. These two numbers are not a given, and things will get better, but do you think it gets better when hundreds are together in a bar celebrating labour day? It gets to be a lot worse when we see ‘CDC’s autumn vaccine hint fuels fears of pressure from Trump’ (source: the Guardian), there we see “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had instructed states to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to healthcare workers and vulnerable populations – just in time for the 3 November election”, but at present there is no reliable news that there is an actual vaccine, several sources give us that there is one coming, but when we look at the Sydney Morning Herald (at https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-is-the-new-covid-vaccine-designed-to-work-20200819-p55n33.html) we see “That letter of intent is contingent on the vaccine working – and, scientists have emphasised, we don’t yet know if it will” and that is not all, that was on August 19th, so far we do not see a daily update that there is an actual confirmed vaccine and when we consider “among the more than 165 COVID-19 vaccines under development around the world”, so everyone is racing to fill their pockets with a working vaccine, but so far none is in existence. I do accept the setting “ChAdOx1, the vaccine Australia’s government has signed up to buy, is one of the leaders”, and I know it will take time to confirm, but in all, the stage we are about to see is one that is a dangerous one and too many people have decided not to sit still and ponder the impact of ignoring what is in front of them, time will tell, but the setting is a lot more dangerous than before, the Guardian gives us that with “critics of the Trump administration have worried that the White House would pressure the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the CDC and other agencies to rush a hasty coronavirus vaccine to market before the election” and that is merely the larger stage, the idea that a place like the CDC could be pressured implies that the lives of the people that they are supposed to protect are not protected at all. This is seen with “a key agency in the process, the FDA, which would have to grant emergency use approval for any vaccine candidate to be distributed before the full completion of trials, has shown itself vulnerable to political pressure”, and it is ‘distributed before the full completion of trials’, is the part that should hit you. If that happened, people could be confronted with a vaccine that is optionally worse than Covid-19. I need to be careful, because I will not speak out against vaccines, but we need to realise that proper testing is needed and that requires time. And in this time is the one element that the people are not willing to give, and those on that train will be wearing egg, and a lot of it.

Time will tell us what was the proper course of action, time will tell us what the effects are of lockdown, because that can only be seen afterwards. I am merely nervous that in the end a lot more people will die of the Coronavirus than was needed, merely because governments were too lazy (or too late) to act. And it is not all their fault, that is seen in the Australian Financial Review with ‘Masks are pointless, says Sweden’s maverick chief medic’ (at https://www.afr.com/world/europe/masks-are-pointless-says-sweden-s-maverick-chief-medic-20200730-p55gre). Here we see “With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport”, and we are surprised that people follow this, he is an MD, he should know and all whilst we see hundreds of medics all over the world give us all kinds of images, but a lot give us something like the image seen here. So when we see that and we see the statement by Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. So when was ‘better be safe than sorry’ not a golden rule in an age of Pandemics? 

We still have ways to go, but in all this, I predict that a lot more people will be the careers of egg on face than we think there are and when we learn that lesson it will already be too late.

 

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September 3, 2020 · 12:21

Overkill anyone?

There is no going around the news that Alexey Navalny did not slip on a bar of soap in the bathroom. Yet the news ‘Nerve agent Novichok found in Russia’s Alexey Navalny: Germany’ given to us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/germany-nerve-agent-novichok-russia-navalny-200902135330447.html) and other sources needs to be evaluated on a few levels. The media is of course eager to give us “Novichok – a military grade nerve agent – was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom”, that event had a few issues and this one has even more. First of all, I do not really know the man, so my information on him has a few dubious sides. Consider his life in Moscow, on his walks in Moscow there are well over a dozen vantage points where his life could be snuffed out with a cyanide tipped bullet (or Ricin), two much more stable compounds than Novichok ever was. From each of these vantage points, I would be able to get to 1-2 streets over and after that simply vanish, the M24, or DVP Druganov equivalent I would leave behind, as a present for the eager beaver. As such Navalny would be dead. There are alternatives with Lithium, and several more opportunities that end life permanently, so we do have options. In this we now get another stage. This is the third known Novichok attack where the person does not immediately die, or does not die at all ‘Comatose Russian dissident Alexey Navalny arrives at Berlin hospital’ (source: CNN). And even as the media hides behind ““Only the state [FSB, GRU] can use Novichok. This is beyond any reasonable doubt,” Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said on Twitter, referring to the FSB internal security and GRU military intelligence services”, I had shown in ‘Something for the Silver Screen?’ In March 2018 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/17/something-for-the-silver-screen/) we see that the statement ‘Only the state [FSB, GRU] can use Novichok’ is not true, there are at least two instances where reach of Novichoks are outside of state actors, that is separate from the issues shown in the OPCW papers and in this, there are more questionable acts by Vil Mirzayanov in this. And let’s be clear, if the FSB or the GRU wanted Alexey Navalny dead there are over a dozen of ways to do that. If you need to get rid of the neighbour, you don’t resort to nuclear weapons, it is a level of overkill that is apparently accepted by all the media whilst no one is looking at the larger picture. Novichok is massively unstable and way too dangerous. These are known properties and no one is looking into the matter or asking questions. 

Is that not really really weird?

And it does not end there, Al Jazeera also gives us “Sergei Nechayev, who was summoned to the foreign ministry on Wednesday, asked for evidence and received “no answer, no facts, no data, no formulae”” as such, we see the accusation, we see no facts and no real evidence, and even as I am willing to accept that there was something real here, there is still a larger car where this is not a state operation, but another setting where Russian organised crime is involved. This does not absolve the Russian government but it does show a much larger setting and optionally a case where the Russian government is not guilty. The act of one corrupt official does not make a government guilty, and is that not a nice surprise “In December 2010, Navalny announced the launch of the RosPil project, which seeks to bring to light corrupt practices in the government procurement process”, it seems that Navalny has been dipping his feet in the pool of corruption hoping to see what is swimming there and who the sharks are (a West Side Story reference). Yet the media is not looking too deep there, because someone mentioned the word Novichok. In this the very first setting in this situation is that the use of Novichok is a massive overkill, and no one is catching on, why is that?

And if the west is so about freedom and about being nations of laws, why are they all negated in several cases? 

 

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September 1, 2020 · 17:56

Just the facts?

Isn’t that what it needs to be in media? Just the facts? The issue is that media in general and in this case the BBC specifically is setting a different stage and I am not sure why. Now, I will give up front that it is my opinion and perception against that of the BBC and the stage is up in the air. For the most, or basically nearly always, the BBC is on point and is highly reliable. In this case, some facts are debatable and one factor is that I do not have all the inn’s and out’s (pun intended). That is also a factor and I am trying to keep that in mind. So the article ‘Saudi king sacks defence officials’ would initially be something I would have glanced over. Merely because even if I would be applying for the position of Defence official for the Saudi Arabian government, I do not speak the language and I reckon that there are plenty of Saudi nationals eager to get that position. In the second, the role was until recently in the hands of Prince Fahad bin Turki, and I am no prince (no matter what the ladies say). In addition we are given “The men, along with four other officials, face an investigation into “suspicious financial dealings” at the Ministry of Defence, the decree said”, implying that this is all about the politics, and I never cared for politics. It all starts with “critics say the high-profile arrests have been aimed at removing obstacles to the prince’s hold on power”, my first question becomes, who are those critics? In the second, in light of how things are in Yemen, I see no real setting that Prince Fahad bin Turki is any kind of obstacle in the current power setting in Saudi Arabia, now I will admit immediately that I have no real idea on who is in that power cycle, yet I wonder if those ‘critics’ are aware of what is and who are, or are they merely setting the stage for others to set a presentation stage? You see the accusation is given speculated strength via ‘critics say’ yet we do not get any mention of who those critics are, do we? Yet the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53980115) goes off the deep end when we see “However he has been embroiled in a series of scandals, including the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018 and an alleged murder plot against a former Saudi intelligence agent in Canada”, this is achieved in a few ways. In the first, the entire Khashoggi debacle is set to flawed intelligence, especially the ‘added’ intelligence by UN essay writer Agnes Calamard, I dealt with that in several articles, especially in ‘Demanding Dismissal’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/07/04/demanding-dismissal/), so not only can we prove that Jamal Khashoggi is murdered, we can merely speculate on that, and that is before we need to realise that there is absolutely no evidence that there was any directive from Saudi Arabia to allegedly kill Jamal Khashoggi, if there was it would have ‘leaked’ to every newspaper in the world, all we got was a level of emotional outbursts devoid of evidence. And there is the alleged plot against Dr. Saad Aljabri, the allegations went so far that they try to convict Saudi Officials in another country, how is that for failing evidence? Yet that same court has no real intentions to seriously look into “Saudi officials accuse Aljabri of leading a group that misspent $11 billion of government funds and skimmed $1 billion for themselves, the Wall Street Journal reported, an allegation he denies” interesting is it not? 

So it seems that the critics are all about spinning yarn, if not they would have been out there supported by actual and factual evidence, they are not. And the implied situation in Istanbul, which comes up in every Saudi story is this time linked to the sacking of defence officials, all whilst the evidence attached is drowning additional events is disbelief and more credibility is removed from the situation. That was not hard, was it?

 

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August 30, 2020 · 19:24

Sweden has it too

We know that the far right is not blessed with a lot of intelligence, and as such I did not expect Sweden to get overly right winged, but the Quran burning in Sweden is proving me wrong. So when the BBC gave me ‘Protest against Koran-burning turns violent in Sweden’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53959492) I was a little surprised. And there was more, with “Earlier on Friday, police barred far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan from attending the Koran-burning rally” we see that the hatred prolongation against Muslims is a lot worse then we thought, it is a European problem and they are not dealing with it. It started with the images of Mohammed, which in turn made me come up with the script ‘How to assassinate a politician’, which could optionally be eligible for an International Oscar if it was made. I just don’t get it, I thought the Nazi’s were stupid with their book burning, which they optionally got the idea from Girolamo Savonarola, who burned my copy of the Decamerone (bloody bastard), and he became the original designer of the Bonfire of the Vanities. So the Nazi’s got a hold of that idea and now we see a repetition of stupidity by the Swedish far right. As I see it christianity is waning, after 2000 years we are finally seeing that reflections don’t help, it merely assists the greed driven in setting up shop and trying to prove me wrong merely assists the far right and the atheists. I don’t comprehend this level of stupidity, why burn books, why burn any book? In doing so it just pisses of the Muslims, which is apparently their goal and it is less intelligent than any other option and that is saying something. I have no issues with Muslims and I have no issues with people who are not pro-Muslim, but keep it to themselves. There is a level of acceptance that christian people seemingly have. Perhaps there is a sizeable group that are not cheering for Muslims, but as we are in a station where we accept other religions, I accept that we have Muslims in our midst, we have a welcoming nature, so it is fine with me. I see no problem, and I get that some people get nervous, but is it nervous out of knowledge? I doubt it.

So whilst far right politician Geert Wilders sets in motion “Geert Wilders revived a controversial Prophet Mohammad cartoon competition. The Dutch politician declared the winner to be a dark drawing of a bearded man wearing a black turban”, we see the repetitive acts of intentional insulting Muslims, and anyone doubting the idea I had on the movie project ‘How to assassinate a politician’ would be an allowed stage where a person not unlike far right politician Geert Wilders ends up being dead (in the movie that is). So as we are getting over the shock that Sweden is just as discriminating as any other EU nation, we see a larger issue making it to the surface. In a stage where people hide behind ‘freedom of speech’ whilst knowingly and intentionally whacking others is just a slime move. So as we turn back the clock to April 2019 and we see ‘presentation on Gendered Islamophobia in Europe’ (at https://efomw.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/EFOMW-Strasbourg.pdf), I wonder about that setting, I am not saying that the setting does not exist, I merely state that there is a much larger stage of ‘presentation on Islamophobia in Europe’, gender is not an issue, the discriminants see man and women of muslim faith both equally unacceptable in their region. Yet all this should not be given to you without ‘Danish man who videoed himself burning the Quran charged with blasphemy’, a situation from February 2017 with the by-line “Case is first time Danish prosecutors have charged anyone with blasphemy in 46 years”, as such I accept that there is forward momentum, yet that was three years ago and there is not much evidence that forward momentum is a given. And if we accept Danish law “Under clause 140 of Denmark’s penal code, anyone can be imprisoned or fined for publicly insulting or degrading religious doctrines or worship”, I wonder why Rasmus Paludan is still an elected official or even a free man, don’t you? 

 

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August 28, 2020 · 04:25

The tech is out there

Even now, as the larger players (Microsoft and Wall-mart) are starting a bidding fight for TikTok, we see the flaw on several levels in the digital age. I illuminated it yesterday, in my previous article.  We are in a stage where everyone is shouting that they have Digital Media Managers , Digital Marketers, Account Managers, Social Media Managers and so on, and so on. Yet, where it counts, we see (at https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/WIGOV/bulletins/29bf2b8) the statement on Kenosha and the shooting, but when I looked at the site in ‘Self destruct initiated’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/08/27/self-destruct-initiated/) there was no mention at all and that was at 02:57 on August 27th, whilst the shooting was on August 23, it took 4 days for the digital media manager to wake up. Yet the police section in the news of the City of Kenosha website is still empty, so why do they have a website and who manages it? It is nice to have politicians and captains of industry hide behind the Internet of Things, digital media and digital needs, but where it counts, are they even aware that they flunked the pooch? 

A second set is given by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53930775), here we see ‘Facebook says Apple ad-blocking settings could halve revenue’ where we get introduced to “Apple’s plan to require all users to actively opt in before they can be tracked “may render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it”, Facebook said”, whilst we also get “In the upcoming iOS 14, apps have to explicitly ask users’ permission to collect and share data, meaning ads will no longer be able to just “follow” users to apps outside of Facebook”, all whilst everyone is ignoring “way for advertisers to extend their campaigns beyond Facebook and into other mobile apps”, lets be clear, FaceBook has every right to advertise on its site, it is the price of getting a free service, yet where does it state that the people have to agree to be followed “into other mobile apps”? In that article, where does it state the need and rights of the consumer? (I am not attacking the BBC or the writer of the article), we overlook technology to the mere shallow assumption related to it. We see the attack on Apple from Epic games (Fortnite) and we see Microsoft supporting Epic games, yet thee fact that the rule that Apple relied on is pretty much the same rule Microsoft has in place, so how did that make sense? It only looks clear when we see the path Microsoft has in play and they mobile XCloud is relying on the millions of iPhone users. I mentioned that in ‘The stage pushed by Microsoft’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/08/24/the-stage-pushed-by-microsoft/), so again we see a tech setting that is getting a shallow treatment and in this case I do not attack the media (even though I think they fell short), for the media it is all the emotion, as such we see the BBC giving us ‘Apple Fortnite players left behind in new update’, yet the stage where Epic games would be allowed back if they remove the external link in the game, which is against the developers agreement that Epic games agreed to when they got on the Apple store, a rule that Microsoft has in play as well and the media pretty much smoothed over with what I would personally see as ‘applied ignorance in action’.  

We see two versions of limited tech insight. This entire setting also applies to Huawei, the accusations and the lack of evidence is centre to all this. We get ‘Huawei’s networking equipment has not been detected spying’, in a Sky article last July, and it is the driving part in all this, we want evidence and we keep on getting bitching American politicians, one after another all emotions and no evidence. All whilst last week in the Australian Financial Review (at https://www.afr.com/technology/is-huawei-too-big-to-fail-20200824-p55ont) where we get the repeated “shot down by an announcement from the US government that it would use the global dominance of American technology to cut off all supplies of semiconductors to Huawei”, which is stupidity on a new level. It seems that it is not and that would be fair, the short term solution is met as semiconductors are not available. Yet in this for over a year Huawei was ready to that stage making (read: designing) their own semiconductors. When that happens, the US will have a Chinese competitor in another field and the US will lose even more ground. So whilst the US is in denial that Huawei grew because it had a good product, slightly cheaper but a lot better, in all this they rely on “Driven by the belief that Huawei could enable the ruling Chinese Communist party and its military to spy on other countries and their companies, undermine their national security and steal their commercial secrets, the US government used every option open to it”, where ‘could’ is the operative word and the additional ‘undermine their national security and steal their commercial secrets’, and guess what, there is no evidence on any level and the situation merely becomes worse when you consider ‘Critical flaw in IOS routers allows ‘complete system compromise’’, a part that ZDNet gave us in June (and before that, at https://www.zdnet.com/article/ciscos-warning-critical-flaw-in-ios-routers-allows-complete-system-compromise/), it is a simple situation, the Chinese government does not need to use Huawei to spy, they can use Cisco equipment (an American company based in San Jose) and download server by server on a global scale. When did the media give you that part? That weakness and a few more have been out in the open, and we hear nothing. This is not on Cisco, as it warned the users and is working on fixes, but the media is blind to the flaw, why is that?

Both the tech and the flawed tech is out there and there is a growing issue for a lot of people that we get limited and one sided revelations, who is served better to that? I am going with the personal view that the setting of the media catering to Shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers remains firmly in place.

The tech is out there, but who is taking a good look at it and who is using it to the maximum that would be required in the digital age? I’ll let you brew on that for a little while.

 

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August 27, 2020 · 02:59

Self destruct initiated

We all have within ourselves the ability to self destruct, to destroy and to inflict harm. In games we can eat people (Man Eater), we can destroy people (Destroy all humans) and we can lay waste to them (Plague Inc), yes they are merely gams, but what happens when it is no longer a game? Many have seen the man in Wisconsin (Jacob Blake), getting shot in the back of the head as he walks towards his car. I try not to judge, because a 60 second video is not a story, some say that it is and that is fine, but I wonder what set this off. I am not discussing the 7 bullets, it is overkill. I wonder why the policeman did not shoot once in the leg, it would have been directly incapacitated Jacob Blake. Why was that not done? The news on several levels are pushing emotion, but normally there is at least one newspaper giving us a minute by minute stage of what happened. This time, I did not see any of that. Yet USA Today gives us ‘Jacob Blake was shot less than 3 minutes after Wisconsin police arrived at the scene, according to dispatch audio’ with that additional quote “The shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday by Wisconsin police happened quickly, with less than three minutes elapsing between the time the first officer arrived and shots being fired, according to dispatch audio”, three minutes was that was needed. I understand that the police really doesn’t want any kind of time line in this, but what set it all off? I need to try to stay neutral, for the simple reason that emotions will not get us anything. This is not about trivialising the events on Jacob Blake, this is not about minimising events, but to find out what happened EXACTLY. USA Today helps out (at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/25/jacob-blake-kenosha-police-shot-black-man-minutes-after-arriving/3438802001/), yet they are one of the few that took this trouble. 

So we see that at 5:13:47 p.m. one of the officers asks for a description of Jacob Blake, and at 5:15:37 p.m. the shooting starts, 110 seconds between asking for a description and shooting Jacob Blake. Important is the fact that there was no indications that he was armed, or that there was a direct threat from him. It seems that there were more factors involved, but none of them give any level of rise that shooting him was ESSENTIAL. There might have been a cause to shoot, yet in light of him not being armed it is my personal opinion that at the most one single shot in the leg would have sufficed (if shooting could not have been prevented). 

This is not about whether shooting should or should not have happened, this is about the way it unfolded and the level of violence that the Wisconsin police had opted for. So now we see ‘Two dead as gunfire erupts at Wisconsin protests’ and all this is happening in a third night of unrest in Kenosha. It is not the first, not the only one and there is every chance that all this will escalate. We see all kinds of news and all kinds of actions, but the inaction of the Governor of Wisconsin is staggering. Apart from the fact that he declared an emergency, we are given “Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called for protesters to be peaceful, while also saying the National Guard presence would be doubled from 125 to 250 in Kenosha after crowds destroyed dozens of buildings and set more than 30 fires on Monday night”, politico (at https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/25/wisconsin-governor-jacob-blake-emergency-401695) also gives us ““We cannot allow the cycle of systemic racism and injustice to continue,” said Evers, who is facing mounting pressure from Republicans over his handling of the unrest that has followed the shooting. “We also cannot continue going down this path of damage and destruction.”” Yet we are not given anything regarding the actions of Governor Tony Evers regarding Jacob Blake, not even the acknowledgement, or the setting that this is an investigation that will be pursued, there is a lack of acknowledgement (or at least if we are to take the media at their word). Looking at the Wisconsin site (at https://evers.wi.gov/Pages/Newsroom/Press-Releases.aspx) we see nothing in regards of what is going on, even now, more than a day later, the governor of Wisconsin has done too little too little. Even the website of the City of Kenosha (at https://www.kenosha.org/visitors/news/police) lacks a lot of information, the police section had the option to give information, to try and diffuse the situation, yet this is not done, so for almost 24 hours people on several levels were inactive, unable to set a stage of diffusing the situation, and in all this, no one is asking questions. They are merely letting the social media flame a situation from bad to worse.

A situation that leads to self-destruction, no Shark, alien or virus was required, merely the inaction of all kinds of governmental officials. Its another nice mess they got themselves into.

 

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