Category Archives: Politics

49 weeks later

There is an upside and a downside to the phrase ‘I told you so’, the upside is that you feel good, the downside is that these people automatically think you are arrogant and their ego goes on the defensive. Yet the first part tends to such a nice feeling that we give in, until today I largely avoid the situation. Yet after all the accusations of Arab lover, chinky chow and so forth, the idea that they are massively stupid and I am not is slightly too overwhelming, so here I go “I told you so, you moronic dumbo’s!”, phew, nice to get that off my chest. I saw the 5G station on more than one setting coming, my IP is set to that and now it can be sold to both China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it has nothing to do with the titles called onto me, it is the smallest whiff of greed. Not greed perse, but the need to get coins from those who can afford them and they will get to become massively richer (by my standards) in the process. Even as my IP started before that (it started when I saw the plans for Neom City), the stage we are now in was given with my article on the 15th of November 2019, 49 weeks ago, titled ‘There is more beneath the sand’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/11/15/there-is-more-beneath-the-sand/), you see the issue with Huawei was a larger issue, and if these idiots on the other side of the Pacific river (aka Americans) had given clear evidence there would have been a debate, the evidence never came and now we have an issue. The data released by Statista shows this. On the other had, my prediction was also wrong, the USA did not end up in 4th or 6th position, they are now in 8th position, massively behind Australia and South Korea.

What is scary is how well I saw the prediction unfold, whilst bulletpoint managers were making fun of me in the hallways, they will be largely silent now that we can see that the 5G network of the KSA (who embraced Huawei) is 12% faster then number two (South Korea), 75% faster than number three (Australia) and well over 100% faster than number 4 (Canada), it is at present 752% faster than the US, that is what I saw happening (well not that extreme, but it is a bonus). So when I wrote “Saudi Arabia already has ties to Huawei giving Saudi Arabia the option to pull ahead and make the monthly gap larger on a daily basis. The difference is that intense. There is more and more evidence to see that the EU is not going the way of the US and that will give them an advantage on the hardware range, yet they still have all the other old hardware to deal with. They could face two issues, let’s not forget that Riyadh faces that too, but if Neom City shows the benefit to a newly constructed fast internet city, what we saw in the UK 5G image, that path will be faster seen in Neom city, merely because the change is pushed from the beginning and not after the fact (as most technologies are)”, I was not kidding and the numbers now show it. The added “a presentation by Edward Burton, President and CEO, U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council from June 2017. (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/05/02/are-there-versions-of-truth) in the article ‘Are there versions of truth‘ I had not realised all the elements at that point (why should I?) yet I saw that Vision 2030 would be a bigger issue yet the larger impact would be visible beyond “90 executives from both countries to sign new trade and investment agreements worth $350 billion” the fact that in these 90 we would see “Lockheed Martin Honeywell JPMorgan Chase The Dow Chemical Company ExxonMobil Jacobs Engineering Baker Hughes McDermott International” was clear, the fact that Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (Steven J. Demetriou) was involved was a clear indicator of that. I believed that whatever think-tank Edward Burton responded to was seeing ‘roadmap for economic development‘ and ‘Identifies general directions, policies‘ and optionally ‘CEDA established new operating models‘ and realised that this went way past the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (Saudi Arabia) there was an actual global impact” shows that I was not alone in this belief and if they pushed through the landscape of the rich will change in the US. Those who spinelessly followed the US administration in following anti-Huawei sentiment are now in danger of losing it all (which I have no problem with), and when I sell my part I can retire with the knowledge that the stupidity of bullet point management will hit those people squarely in the face. And it is in this setting that I actually am getting another idea for pushing a new technology. If they had not thought of it, there is every chance that Google overlooked it too, as far they do not show to have this, so I can change from video game to 5G IP and take a gander at this. And I feel great, I see close to half a dozen that these so called heavy important business people did not look at, their sight is merely focussed through dollar shaped pupils and innovation has never focussed to that degree, thee are times that they overlap, but it is set to a larger station and I know exactly where to look. Perhaps Branson was aware? The application would be highly industrious in the application for Hyperloop, their speed would partially depend on it (well the safety features would), as such I see new shapes and options, and some of them were visible 49 weeks ago, I wonder what else they are missing.

Well, it sorts me out for the weekend, how about you? Any new plans for the weekend?

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What ya gonna do?

It started two days ago, actually it started a lot earlier, but I basically had enough of the BS stage that we are given. Just to be sure, this is for the largest station not a media thing, so even as the BBC flamed my mood, the BBC is not responsible. As such before I go into ‘Google hit by landmark competition lawsuit in US over search’, I need to set the record straight according to the view I have and you might decide that I am wrong, which is perfectly fair. 

History gives us that Larry Page (aka Clever Smurf) and Sergey Brin (aka Papa Smurf) developed PageRank at Stanford University in 1996 as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. It was not the first attempt, or perhaps ‘version’ is a better setting, there were earlier versions that go all the way back to the eigenvalue challenge by Gabriel Pinski and Francis Narin. So two bright surfs came up with the setting that big people players like Microsoft and IBM ignored for the longest time, and as such Google had the patents. The idea of link based popularity had not syphoned through because a lot of these wannabe bullet point managers basically did not understand the internet, they merely understood the options of selling concepts, yet in that age of selling concepts Google had the inside track to sell a setting that was ready and able as early as 1998. As such I have watched with my eyes desperately focussed on the heavens, asking our heavenly father to smite some of these stupid people, we now see “The charges, filed in federal court, were brought by the US Department of Justice and 11 other states. The lawsuit focuses on the billions of dollars Google pays each year to ensure its search engine is installed as the default option on browsers and devices such as mobile phones”, the same organisation that ignored Netscape and gave free reign to Microsoft is now seeing the government data lights? So when we see ‘the billions of dollars Google pays each year to ensure its search engine is installed as the default option on browsers and devices such as mobile phones’, all whilst it truthfully should say ‘Google installs its search engine on its mobile operating system Android, an alternative to the largely unaffordable iOS iPhones’, consider that the three generations of mobiles I have bought containing Android in times when the Apple alternative was close to 250% more expensive each and every time. The last time around the iPhone was $1999, whilst my Android phone (with almost the same storage) was $499, I will let you work out the setting. So when I see “Officials said those deals have helped secure Google’s place as the “gatekeeper” to the internet, allowing it to own or control the distribution channels for about 80% of search queries in the US”, I merely see (with my focal points partially towards the history of things) “Google was active and affordable in an age when Apple was not, Apple was unaffordable as they set themselves up as the larger elite provider, Android had affordable models by Motorola, Huawei, Google Nexus, Google Pixar, Oppo, HTC, Samsung, Oneplus. A setting that was open and affordable. And the officials that are raving on ‘allowing it to own or control the distribution channels for about 80% of search queries in the US’, these (as I personally see it) so called idiots, optionally way too deep in funky mushrooms are ignorant of the stage that Google catered to the user, Apple (the alternative) catered to its own bottom dollar way too often. In that same trend we need to see that “Apple’s iOS operating system has a share of 50 percent of the mobile operating system market in the United States”, so how come that Google has 80%? They thought things through, the BI management idiots with their bullet point presentations never thought things through. I have at least two examples that predate Facebook and well over half a dozen examples of 5G IP that is beyond the comprehension of mot of them (with the exception of Google and Huawei), these two UNDERSTAND systems, the others merely use and use to their nature towards limited comprehension, or at least that is how I see it. And in this ZDNet was a happy supplier in January of ‘Microsoft is about to force Bing onto Office 365 Plus users. But does even Bing think it’s better than Google?’, which is a nice setting, because I can ask bing on my Android, yet it seems that Microsoft forces Bing on its system, but it allegedly seems that they get way with that. The article has a few nice tidbits, but I particularly liked “Why Hasn’t Bing Improved To Become Better Than Google?”, an 2016 article by Forbes. With the article (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-google-better-than-bing-i-asked-google-and-bing-and-got-surprising-results/) giving us the added “and why Bing has a bit of a reputation as ‘the porn search engine’”, it seems that 18 years later bing is still sliding very much behind Google, Google had a few things better and better set. It is the final two parts that matter, the first one is “Both companies might try to offer something authoritative, but you should always use your own judgment and realise the vast limitations and algorithmic biases of all search engines. If Bing works for you, be happy. If Google does, be happy too. In both cases, though, be wary. Can you cope with the responsibility?” Yet in all this Bing never shows up in any official part does it? The second part gives the larger stage “in Bing searches, the entries under the News tab were far, far more dated than those in Google”, consider the need of us, the users, when do we accept dated information? It seems that any competitor of Google is vastly behind, even the rich bitch Microsoft. When we see that part of the equation, we need to wonder what is the play that these officials are making? What is it actually about? The BBC article also gives us “Google called the case “deeply flawed”” and that is the larger truth, the Bing setting proves that side of it, and more important, Microsoft who pushed Netscape out of the market is not being asked any questions in this regard, or is used to show the inferiority of what they have countering the vastly superior solutions by Google. As such, when we see “Politicians in Congress have also called for action against Google and fellow tech firms Amazon, Facebook and Apple in an effort that has united Democrats and Republicans”, no one seems to be wondering what Russia and China have on the market, because the advantage Google has now could become the stage of a fight against whatever Russia and China offer, in this data is the catalyst in these systems and before anyone starts trivialising that, consider that TikTok is Chinese, when we consider that over 2 billion people have downloaded it and it nw has a value between 110 and 180 billion, in a stage that only had Google before (YouTube), yet even in that setting the larger US tech giants set on their hands and they never came up with it, a Chinese entrepreneur did, so what else can they come up with? In a stage with non comprehending officials on just how cut throat this market is, they are weighting down on the tech giants all whilst Chinese innovators are going to town. And none of them have my IP yet. Another stage they ALL overlooked. What else do you think they will miss, because I do not think of everything (I just cannot be bothered thinking of everything), so what else is not seen? 

Consider that when you look at these so called ‘lets kick the tech-giants’ because at this speed the US will only have these four tech-giants left, the rest is most likely Indian or Chinese, the hungry tend to be innovative and in America these so called innovators haven’t been hungry for the longest time, so their track record wanes more and more. That is partially seen with ‘Quibli is the Anti-TikTok’ (at https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/quibi-vs-tiktok). Here we see the article from April where we are given “Rather than iterating toward product-market fit, it spent a fortune developing its slick app and buying fancy content in secret so it could launch with a bang.Yet Quibi’s bold business strategy is muted by a misguided allegiance to the golden age of television before the internet permeated every entertainment medium. It’s unsharable, prescriptive, sluggish, cumbersome and unfriendly. Quibi’s unwillingness to borrow anything from social networks makes the app feel cold and isolated, like watching reality shows in the vacuum of space”, with that consider that Quibli was founded 2 years AFTER TikTok, as such the stage for a better product was there to a much larger extent, and as Tech Crunch states “It takes either audacious self-confidence or reckless hubris to build a completely asocial video app in 2020”, and when we consider the fact that TikTok was created earlier by 2 years, the lack of innovation in Quibli is easily seen and as such after 6 months it shut down. These officials need to wake up and smell the coffee, the race is on and even as scare tactics towards anti-China might work to some degree in the US, the EU with 700 million consumers have little faith in US Hubris and that is where the stage changes, especially now with data laws in place. If Chinese and Indian innovators get the name and therefor the people and consumers, the marketshare of US companies will collapse more and more, as I see it 2022-2025 will not be a pretty picture for the US, the 5G backlog is starting to show and it will show more and more soon enough. 

As I see it, Google has two wars to fight, one with its own political administration, one with the true innovators out there. The second war they can win as they have true innovators themselves, but the one with the US political administration is a larger issue, because that war will also hinder the second war, which would be a bad situation for Google to be in.

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Intentionally creating imbalance

This happens, it happens more often than you think, but that is a separate issue. Yet too often have you seen that the media all over the world have thrown evidence to the side of the road, just to aid in imbalance? Consider that stage for a second. We all have our own windmills to fight, it is not simplifying to Don Quixote, even though it is tempting. I would be drawn to “The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water”, even as some might rely on “Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness”, a stage we all all face, all sides of it. In this Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra might have been a larger philosopher than anyone realises, even if it made little sense in those days, it does in these days, in the age of digital awareness, sides of insanity and madness finally make sense.

In this I start with ‘Jamal Khashoggi: Journalist’s fiancee sues Saudi crown prince’. It is not the first page but it is another page that in isolation makes the most sense to use. Yes, there are all kinds of people telling me how insane I am, the madness that I show in this when soo many sources telling me otherwise.  A stage that I would accept if the soup wasn’t getting cooked on a high flame. In the BBC article I start with the fiancee is the one party I would give a pass on. I believe that she was hurt and she is filing, but there is the real matter, is it not? 

Even as we are given “Hatice Cengiz and the rights group Khashoggi formed before his death are pursuing Mohammed bin Salman and more than 20 others for unspecified damages”, so a group formed before his death? It is the ‘unspecified damages’ that takes the cake, the biscuits and the pot of tea. In the matter we need to look and address ‘a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, accusing him of ordering the killing’. This part we need to see with a clinical view. What evidence exists? The term ‘ordering the killing’ requires proof beyond all reasonable doubt. The infamous UN essay by Agnes Callamard showed that there is no evidence, there is no body and the work of fiction called ‘Blood and Ice’, shows even more lack of truths. As I personal see it ‘Blood and Oil’ is a fictional work by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck, a fictional work with a collection of facts based on people who actually exist. It reads easy and is seemingly created for a longer term, a stage I have not seen in Journalistic work, but this is not that, is it? It is an important take to realise, as the case created by the ‘Hatice Cengiz and the rights group Khashoggi’ calls for it. Consider the stage of a court, the costs involved. I will concede that there are leagues of people willing to set the stage through pro-bono work because of the limelight the case will get, but in the end, there was no evidence, the bast we can hope for is that Jamal Khashoggi is missing. This is not about personal feelings or personal knowledge, it is what can be proven in court and even if any evidence EVER comes to the surface, the setting that it can be linked to the Crown prince is close to impossible to prove. A stage where a person no one cared about (except his mum and the person he shares a bed with) has received close to 80 million hits online and that is merely a conservative guess. At some point I saw the counter go well over 60 million and that was a year ago. So has something bad happened to him? Personally I believe tht to be the case, but I cannot prove it. I was not there and NO ONE presented any evidence to the fact that this has happened. It happened in  nation that is the puppet of Iran and tht nation has the most incarcerated journalists in the world and that nation has been the discussion of a whole range of murdered journalists, murders that cannot be proven, but they state that they have the evidence on this, yet they never properly presented it. As I personally see it, the acts of a puppet nation without evidence. 

As such, when we see “After listening to purported audio recordings of conversations inside the consulate made by Turkish intelligence, UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard concluded that Khashoggi was “brutally slain” that day”, the UN report does not show any evidence to positively confirm that the person allegedly being interrogated was Jamal Khashoggi, in the UN report at [398] we see “In an international forum at least, a review of the rules of evidence and jurisprudence conducted by the Special Rapporteur shows that the admissibility of the tapes and potentially other intercepts relating to Mr. Khashoggi’s death will depend on the form in which they are ultimately produced, their reliability, the fairness to the defendants of using such evidence, and the interest of the international community in providing justice to Mr. Khashoggi and his family”, here we see no mention that the tapes PROVE that the tapes are beyond the shadow of a doubt the recordings of Jamal Khashoggi. Yet at [41] of that report we are given “Recordings of only seven different conversations over a two-day period were made available to the inquiry. Combined these amounted to 45 minutes of tape, when, according to Turkish Intelligence, they had access to at least seven hours of recordings. The remaining six hours and 15 minutes may or may not be relevant to the inquiry, but without doubt there remains much more recorded information than that made available to the Special Rapporteur”, consider that allegedly only 10.7% of the available recordings were made available, so in what universe does that not constitute reasonable doubt or even an alleged form of tempered evidence? This is merely a setting of 2 elements in a much larger report. None of it proves murder, to a much larger extent it is a document that due to manipulation could set many optionally involved people free. 

My setting is seen in the report at [244] where we see “Much attention has been focused on whether the Crown Prince himself ordered the murder. However, this focus on “ordering” the crime and on finding the “smoking gun” creates expectations which legal systems, both domestic and international, may not be able to meet.  The search for justice and accountability for human rights violations should also and as importantly require identifying those that have abused their influence and power or failed to act with the diligence required of their positions” and the stage of ‘which  legal systems, both domestic and international, may not be able to meet’. It was the stage I had from the very beginning, whatever happened, it cannot be proven and now we get to the good stuff. A report that is well over a year old gives us this, so why continue, this is not about ‘justice’ this is about creating middle east imbalance, optionally this is about people catering towards Turkey and Iran for a third reason and they have no issues burning Saudi needs. The larger stage is however a much more dangerous side. As some seemingly clever people are setting their needs of ‘we need no Saudi Arabia’, we see a stage where Russia and China are willing to set a much larger stage, as such it could cost the EU and the US well over $15 billion in trade deals and goods over the foreseeable future. I will be happy (not knowing whether if I am able) to take over that business. Yet walking way for crumbs from a $15,000,000,000 piece of pastry is even larger madness; of all the windmills I face, an income well below $135,000 a year (pre taxation) is perhaps the easiest to overcome if the opportunity is offered. The moment the two larger players are set in a stage where they lose out, we will see all kinds of demands and contemplated compromises, I merely wonder if it will be too late for them at that point.

And consider the larger issue, how much effort had been made towards all the murdered journalists in Turkey, or even those currently in a Turkish prison? How much articles have you seen on that part of the equation? Some sources give 47 (one less than China) some sources say a lot more, theft that in 2016 well over 100 were in prison gives us question on some data that Forbes presents (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/12/12/the-countries-imprisoning-the-most-journalists-in-2019-infographic), even as we see one source giving us ‘85 journalists and media workers in jail in Turkey’ (complete with a name list) we see a stage of catering and hiding behind ‘media workers’, yet the stage of 47 and 85 is a little too big, so I am willing to go on a madness quest and state that the media themselves are catering to the wrong parties and they need to consider this a lot quicker then they currently are.

Could I be wrong?
Yes, absolutely! Yet consider the evidence and sources. I reflect on the produced US report (which I will happily label a mere essay), and when we see the other stage (like Jeff Bezos and FTI Consulting) and accusation after accusation, all whilst evidence open to the media is ignored, you tell me, Am I wrong?

When a book refers to “dismembering Khashoggi’s body like butchers”, all whilst the body is never found, all whilst evidence of dismembering cannot be produced and whilst there is no digital evidence of any kind, we see “a gripping work of investigative journalism” and in all this, no one is asking questions. I for one do not stand for the hypocritical stage that is exploited by the media on several fronts. Fell free to disagree, yet I feel that there is enough evidence on my side, whilst the lack of evidence on the other side is massively questionable.

I will let you decide on this, like I pretty much always do.

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Is the link real?

Apart from the continuation of the IP I promised as public domain for Sony exclusive products, I was in doubt of some information on ISIS I got my fingers on. This is besides the information that is out in Israel where we see: ‘ISIS urges attacks on westerners, oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia’, the danger of the nfrmaetion I saw is that they are merely parts of something. I need to painty a picture. In one courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits, they are orange in colour and in the other courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits but red in colour. Now, I cannot tell if the first one is selling oranges, tangerines or perhaps nectarines. The other person is selling cherries, strawberries, red currant or even tomatoes (are tomatoes fruit). Some will set the stage that fruit sellers are in these two courtyards. Yet I do not know are these sellers an outlier, is fruit all they sell, can I confirm what exactly they sell and what do they call themselves? Even the issue if the two sellers are related is in question. But some intelligence is set on too little data and too often dubious data. Then there is the stage what do they call themselves? Are they actual sellers, or merely two people in a closed setting where they have something for sale? All questions on the stage we see here, so when I see “An Islamic State spokesman called on the terrorist group’s supporters to target westerners, oil pipelines and economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia”. This set a few issues. In the first the reliability of it all, the western media has actively avoided a few settings in these places, so there is little to go on and for the most they merely copy one another. In the second Saudi Intelligence is pretty efficient in Saudi Arabia, as such ISIS is calling for activity in a place where they do not have any, so is it a hollow threat, is it a call to arms or a red herring to mess with Saudi Intelligence. The additional problem is that any attack could only happen with a much larger support from Iran and ISIS and Iran do not really mix, which gets me to a slightly inappropriate joke. Two hooligans, one Swede one Dane have an argument over Football, they both grab their knives and stab each other in the chest, instantly killing one another. What is the Score? Answer: Norway leads by two points.

OK, not the nicest joke, but the issue gets across (I hope). ISIS is leaking and making claims, yet the stage is not set and there is debate on how effective ISIS is in Saudi Arabia, and that is the larger truth here. ISIS might have followers in Saudi Arabia, but that is hear say, there is speculation, but no active data supporting this. Iran has activity (to some degree) in Saudi Arabia, but there is still debate on how much and how effective it remains. 

In a stage where we see: “Saudi Arabia has stressed the need to step up efforts to reach a lasting and sustainable peace agreement among the Palestinians and the Israelis” we see one side, we see ISIS in opposition, yet no one is looking on where Israel Hayom got its data (at https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/10/20/isis-urges-attacks-on-westerners-oil-infrastructure-in-saudi-arabia/) from. This was not some leak, this was not intelligent by Mossad, the article given to us is from Reuters and ILH Staff, OK, we can accept that, so why doesn’t Reuters have this as front page news on their Middle East section page? And as such, who at ILH had this and more important when did they have it? An article by Reuters not on their website, especially one involving ISIS is a larger set of weird, and guess what, it was about Saudi Arabia, another reason to have it, and the only other source I saw pushing this was oilprice.com. That and the stage of ‘Offshore Oil & Gas Poised For A Major Rebound’, as such, in light of all this, I have questions, don’t you?

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Anticlimactic

Yup we all have these moments, it usually comes after a ‘watch this’, or ‘you’ll never believe what I just heard’. There is no escaping these moments and anyone reading this has a few instances where this happens, or as some married women say, welcome to my life, I get this at least once a day. Such things happen and for one station one could argue that they should not have married that person (40% divorce ratings proof me right).

Oh, and before I forget, the next instalment of the free RPG IP for Sony products comes next. So that is one part that will be coming, I was actually about to work on it when ‘Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2020/oct/18/revealed-sheikh-khalifas-5bn-london-property-empire) passed my eyes. I wanted to add a comic I remembered, but I cannot find it. It was the early 80’s and in that instance you see three Arabs talking, one saying ‘Shopping was nice, today I bought Bond street and Piccadilly’, which was a reality around 1985, the shops would worship you if you came with German Marks or American Dollars, it was that bad, so the idea that a lot of prime real estate is not British owned is not really a surprise. In 2014 the Daily Mail gives us ‘How wealthy Gulf Arabs are buying up huge swathes of the capital – and now make up a tenth of all buyers in exclusive Mayfair’, as such what the Guardian had in mind to make it some exclusive ‘revealed’ story seems to be a bit of a stretch. In addition to this we can argue (and no disrespect intended) that Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan with a £5,500,000,000 real estate empire is according to some sources not really super wealthy, but he is getting up there. Yes, how sad are we when we gawp at an amount that other refer to as ‘Meh!’. The article goes on with “Now, leaked documents, court filings and analysis of public records have enabled the Guardian to map Khalifa’s property holdings in the UK, revealing how the oil-rich nation’s president became a major landlord in London. Khalifa’s London property empire appears to surpass even that of the Duke of Westminster, the 29-year-old billionaire aristocrat who owns swathes of the city”, which makes me go ‘Really?’ Consider 1 Hyde Park, how many British owners are in that building? Can we get a rundown per nationality please? In 2019 we got (source: Elite Traveller) “London’s luxury real estate market has been given a well-timed boost with the news that a super-prime penthouse has sold for a reported $72million. The sale represents one of the biggest in the United Kingdom in the last year. The property is the largest in the new Clarges Mayfair development on Piccadilly, which has proved popular with the global elite since its completion last year. The purchase was completed by Quintessentially Estates working on behalf of an international client”, there are actual Arab run investment firms in the UK who specialise in real estate projects, and they are pretty much the only ones who can afford living in London, so why is anyone surprised? Why is the Guardian (in this instance) going all ‘revealed’ over one person who might not be the biggest investor in London, and in a stage where the London city administration is pushing these events, why is there a lack of that part of the equation? Even as Forbes gave us earlier this year ‘Is It Time To Move Out Of London?’, we see stage where the Coronavirus is hitting landlords with almost no manoeuvring space, they are all panicking. Even as they focus on “Similarly, rents in the capital are also extortionately high for many, with the latest Rightmove Rental Index putting average London rents at £2,119 per month in Q4 2019, compared with £817 in the same period for properties outside of London. And although the latest ONS Index of Private Housing Rental Prices showed that London prices increased 1.3% year on year in January, compared to 1.6% for the rentals outside of the capital, it’s of little meaning in the bigger picture where capital rentals are on average more than twice of their surrounding neighbours” the stage of landlords is less clearly stated, some when on a limb because it was a sure deal, as such no-one was ready for an even outlier like Covid-19, and no-one was expected to, so nw we see that others are taking over with discount a large setting of the housing available. London will grow back to strength and those with a few millions here and there and not needing them will make a rather nice profit over the next 3-4 years. That is how it works, so when I look at “Analysis of Land Registry data suggests Khalifa’s commercial and private property portfolio includes about 170 properties, ranging from a secluded mansion near Richmond Park to multiple high-end London office blocks occupied by hedge funds and investment banks” I merely shrug and say ‘Meh!’, and the stage of “hedge funds and investment banks” has been the stage of London properties for decades, so why is this big news? Was it so you could avoid reporting on ‘Islamic State calls to attack Saudi Arabia over Israel’s deals with UAE, Bahrain’, yes it makes perfect sense to attack nation A, because nation B and C had a deal with nation D. Yes, that might actually have revolutionary details (sorry, pun intended). And as I go over the Guardian article, I cannot say that it is a bad article, it is actually a good article, yet the entire ‘revealed’ part is a little anti-climatic and the idea that a decently wealthy person from the United Arab Emirates is investing in London might not even constitute news, or newsworthy. That  has been going on for well over a decade. So when we consider “housing a secretive Liechtensteinian company, Holbein Anstalt, which manages the royal family’s private affairs”, an optional actual fact (I did not check the fact), we might consider asking the editor of the Guardian (Katharine Viner) if she has been drinking the other cool-aid. 

The issue is not the current owners, it is the setting where the City of London is doing actual work to set a stage where affordable housing becomes more readily available. I wonder if the waiting list of that part has diminished below 10 years yet. London is one f the few plays in the world where a first house is only affordable for people at the END of their career, it is quite the achievement for the City of London.

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Creation of doubt

We all have doubts and sometimes we create them. I like many others are appalled by the beheading in France, as the news gives us “The teacher killed in a suburb of Paris in an Islamist terror attack has been named as Samuel Paty” as well as “The history teacher, who is said to have discussed images of the Prophet Muhammad with his pupils, was beheaded”, as a Catholic I am appalled, yet as an academic I wonder why the matter was set into motion. In 2015 many learned “If you set aside for a moment the issue of whether satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad are insulting, there’s a separate and complicated debate about whether any depiction – even a respectful one – is forbidden within Islam. For most Muslims it’s an absolute prohibition – Muhammad, or any of the other prophets of Islam, should not be pictured in any way. Pictures – as well as statues – are thought to encourage the worship of idols”, as such we see that Islam FORBIDS any representation of the prophet Muhammad. So is the stage one where a person was beheaded, or is the stage where secular France, knowingly and intentionally disrespects a religion? This is a much harder question isn’t it? I took the events of 2015 at I was against them, yet at that point I was not aware about the Islamic rule of their prophet. As a Catholic, I have an issue of people intentionally disrespecting any religion, it is for that same reason that I refused to read the Satanic verses by Salman Rushdie. I have nothing against the man, I was in those days completely in the dark on Islam and the book was an open attack on Islam. I heard people I knew commenting on how brilliant a book it was, but I knew that they too had no knowledge, none what so ever on the rules and believes towards Islam. As a Catholic, I still laugh over the joke Sir Ken Robinson made “He shares this story of a teacher who asks a 6 year old girl, “What are you drawing?” And the girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of god.” And the teacher said, “But nobody knows what god looks like.” And the girl said, “They will in a minute””, idols and images of the Catholic faith are not a taboo, it sets the joke of anticipation and the premise towards the willingness to fail, a fear most Christians have in abundance. 

As such, why would Samuel Paty create a situation where he got ahead of himself? I do not condone what was done to him, but in defence of any Islamic person, why did he openly offend any religion in a school class? There is no way that there were no Islamic children in that school. I wonder if there is any school left where we share the classrooms with non-christians. Can we set the stage where we openly mock a religion whilst demanding respect from these very same people at the same time? As I personally see it, we create doubt, in ourselves and we create doubt in others. Why is that?

When we take a step back and we consider the Crusades (1096), we need to realise the state where we see “The crusader presence remained in the region in some form until the city of Acre fell in 1291, leading to the rapid loss of all remaining territory in the Levant. There were no further substantive attempts to recover the Holy Land after this”, consider the middle east being in a war for 196 years, this sets a stage (in those days of close to 7 generations that know a stage of war, a never ending war where hatred is taught (to at least some degree) from grandfather, to so to grandson, and that stage is made worse by intentionally disrespecting Islam, and you wonder why there are angry people? This is a stage that goes back to the Council of Clermont, where in 1095 it was decided that “capture Jerusalem for Christendom from its Muslim occupiers. The Pope’s speech to the church hierarchy and crowd of laymen at Clermont famously promised all participants a remission of their sins, a strategy which proved hugely popular amongst Europe’s nobility and knights and which was copied in all crusades thereafter”, apart from the stage where the reward was ‘promised all participants a remission of their sins’, basically on the promise of killing any saracen in sight. Can someone enlighten me where slaughter was approved in the Bible? All whilst Pope Urban II was viewed as “a reformer and active promoter of the idea of expanding Christendom by whatever means necessary. Hailing from a noble family from Burgundy, France, Urban II would establish himself as one of the most influential popes in history”, yes and a war lasting a few centuries longer 196 years achieved that? 

So as we get to “On 27 November the cream of the French clergy and a crowd of laymen gathered in a field just outside Clermont for the finale of the council. It was here that Urban II made his now famous speech in an obviously pre-prepared set piece. The message, known as the Indulgence, was addressed in particular to Christian nobles and knights across Europe. Urban II promised that all those who defended Christendom and captured Jerusalem would be embarking on a pilgrimage, all their sins would be washed away, and their souls would reap untold rewards in the next life. In case anyone was concerned, a group of church scholars later went to work and came up with the idea that a campaign of violence could be justified by references to particular passages of the Bible and the works of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE)”, The man (not the actual Hippo) got his fame with the Just War theory. A stage where we are taught “The purpose of the doctrine is to ensure war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just. The criteria are split into two groups: “right to go to war” (jus ad bellum) and “right conduct in war” (jus in bello). The first concerns the morality of going to war, and the second the moral conduct within war. Recently there have been calls for the inclusion of a third category of just war theory—jus post bellum—dealing with the morality of post-war settlement and reconstruction”, perhaps the French UN essay writer, might reflect on the Just war theory, I mean, she has such a great handle on fiction, might it not be an idea to set the record straight on historic events? I see and understand the stage of ‘Just war theory’, there is nothing wrong with it, but consider the stage we were at in 1095, the middle east was not a christian bastion. In 1000bc Jerusalem was Jewish, in 586 bc it became Babylonian, Alexander the Great made it Greek, after that is became Egyptian, then Roman, after that it became Muslim, 400 years before the first crusade. Can anyone even tell what Jerusalem was supposed to be? 

But Christians needed expansion and the famine and destitute in Europe gave them the idea to tap into the wealthy reserves of the Arab nations. This is a stage that had war upon war, all whilst none had any clue who they were up against, merely that their enemy was non-christian, can we afford a repetition? Well, I actually do not care, if it decimates 96% of the population, I’ll be happy, because this planet will end up with all kinds of live stopping it become extinct. So back to Christians, can we tell how many versions there are? There are dozens of bibles all different, there are Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, 7 day advents, Quakers and a whole range of subversions and additions. Yet there are as far as I can tell, two forms of Islam, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam and they both have the same Quran, to the letter. Sunni’s and Shia’s pray together and their pilgrimage takes them all to the same to places. I believe that we create the doubt in ourselves and I do not care on secularism, armistice or atheist values, which of them allows for the open and wanton disrespect of Islam we see?

It does not make the violence acceptable, but we created that stage ourselves, we need to see that and we need to see it quickly. In case you wonder if it is just Islamic violence. I offer you the setting of another challenge. Buy a cow, go into Mumbai with that cow and slaughter your own cow, good luck getting out alive, your changes are not that good. If that setting offends you, then why allow the entire stage towards an image of Muhammad, in a school no less.

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Follow Dick the Butcher

Yup, this is one for the record books, and one for publications. First of all, people who follow me here know that I have to the largest part no real love for most of the media, I tend to flock to those giving us the clear views, and I make fun of (read: chastise) all the others. That is how it should be. Yet, I have stayed short of actual violence (as it tends to be counter productive). One of the good media outlets is the Dutch NOS, it is government run, but to the largest degree for well over half a century it gives the Dutch the real deal, it has no issues going after government issues with the subtlety of a mallet. They have done this for pretty much for the length of my life (before that I was enjoying the view from my dad’s left testicle, so I cannot vouch for the time before I was born). 

So as I have been taking in the news of the NOS having to hide their logo, NOS journo’s getting attacked, I was a little dismayed and I wondered, especially in light of the population requiring a really large decrease in numbers to sae nature, the idea formed ‘Lets kill all the stupid people’, it is based on an idea submitted by Dick the Butcher given to Henry VI, it must be true, because Shakespeare wrote about it.

I was for a little while wondering why I am the only one coming up with this brilliant idea, but I was wrong, I was not and a book was published on this concept. The book (see image above) gives us the stage we have today. I will not go into the book (copyright issues) but if you want to catch up, it can be found (at https://www.amazon.com.au/Saying-Stupid-People-Warning-Problem/dp/167518836X), and also because I have not read it yet. The cover was all explanatory to me.

I also found a T-Shirt, but that reflects on a virtual kill, so basically a non-kill and even as there is a second of relief, there is no legal issue, yet the fact I that there is a larger stage, whether these people are scared or frustrated, the stage to attack journalists or health care officials is a separate class of stupid. Now I have seen the ass kissing journalists out there and there is an inner need to become violent, take an image of Paul Dacre, who does not have the feeling to attach his picture to a dart board and have some fun? The same can be argued on a whole range of newspapers and publications, Yet when we go after people of the Washington Post, the NY Times, The Boston Globe, Dagens Nyheter, the NOS and a few others, we seemingly lost the plot. In part the politicians are to blame here, they wanted all the papers out there, they catered to Rupert Murdoch and his ‘assistants’ and the problem becomes slightly clearer, the people cannot tell the difference anymore, although in the UK the difference between the Daily Mirror and the Guardian is rather large, in the Netherlands it is a little harder, their journalists are for the most pretty high end, and we agree every basket has its rotten apples, but those tend to not be around in the Netherlands for too long. The Guardian gives us ‘Dutch state broadcaster pulls logo from vans after attacks’ with the added text “the national counter-terrorism agency warned of a heightened risk of far-right violence in the Netherlands”, for the most I have no issues with political differences, but this far-right violence is completely unheard of in the Netherlands. The stage as the Guardian gives us “almost daily, journalists and technicians on the road to report are confronted with verbal abuse, garbage is thrown, vans are blocked [and] people bang on their sides or urinate on them”, as such we see a shift and people wondered what got into me when I proposed a movie called ‘How to Kill a politician’ with a likeness towards Geert Wilders, when people ask me why, I can now point at the NOS situation saying, “Because of this!

A stage that is ignored for the longest time and consider that Geert Wilders is not even close to the worst. That part is seen in Foreign Policy (at https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/28/the-new-face-of-the-dutch-far-right-fvd-thierry-baudet-netherlands-pvv-geert-wilders/), where we see “On election night, Thierry Baudet, the leader of FvD, addressed his audience with a speech that was broadcast live to well over 1 million households by the Dutch national broadcasting organisation, NOS. Baudet did not, as is common, address the crowd in front of him and thank staff and volunteers. Instead, he spoke directly into the cameras. Baudet repeated his core political message of the last two years, conjuring a stark image of the near-total decline of the “boreal world”—a term popularised on the French far-right as an alternative to the discredited “Aryan”—imagining a white cultural and political space “from Gibraltar to Vladivostok.” A quaint word to the uninitiated, the term “boreal” has long been recognised as a deafening dog whistle to white supremacists.

For me it means to swallow for a second, I knew that neo nazi and white supremacy organisations were around, but the idea that they have Dutch origins is a little more than I am ready for, the Dutch are in a stage where they blamed the Germans the last to decades for something the Dutch themselves created. I would never have guessed that and it seems to me that these players fear the NOS the most, the NOS has never had any scruples holding politicians to the sunlight and let everyone see what they were looking at and for those people the NOS is scary, the NOS never hesitated to set light to the things not making sense. 

In the stage where nearly all politicians voiced negatively against the violence against the NOS, we see Thierry Baudet give us (at https://www.alkhaleejtoday.co/international/5101936/Distressed-reactions-after-decision-to-remove-NOS-logo-‘Terrible’.html) “according to him it is his job as a politician to express ‘cultural criticism’. “But the idea that that could be translated into threats in the physical sphere is of course terrible, absurd and abject and must be fought with the fiercest of terms,” he told Een Vandaag”, when we read this carefully we get to “the idea that ‘cultural criticism’ could be translated into threats in the physical sphere is of course terrible and absurd”, I am not so sure, it is his side that sets the stage of violence, and he is not calling optional transgressors to stop violence, he is giving the world a political statement declaring himself not responsible, they are not the same.

The problem is larger, it is not merely the stage of inactions and the stage of ultra right, the budgets have dwindled to zero pretty much all over the EU, setting a much larger stage where inaction is all that we see and as such the situation will get larger soon hereafter, how much worse it will get? There is absolutely no way to set any kind of expectations here, but as long as the far right keeps on getting away with it, they will continue. That is how things tend to go, hence the power of one book cover.

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Without trial

It happens, and most often it is some American source that gives us the alleged goods. I state here alleged, because I am not now, not ever willing to take the media at their word, there have been too many events where the media goes free because someone whispered to them ‘as far as we can tell’, or ‘an anonymous sources close to the matter at hand told us’, the media hs had too many of these events. Yet when Reuters give us goods, it is time to take notice, mainly because Reuters does not go out on a limb that often. So when I became aware of ‘Why 4,998 died in U.S. jails without getting their day in court’ (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-jails-deaths/), I woke up pretty quickly. 

Apart from the images, the article starts with “The U.S. government collects detailed data on who’s dying in which jails around the country – but won’t let anyone see it. So, Reuters conducted its own tally of fatalities in America’s biggest jails, pinpointing where suicide, botched healthcare and bad jail-keeping are claiming lives in a system with scant oversight”, I get why the US government wants to keep a lid on it, yet 5000 deaths is not something that goes unnoticed. So what is going on? The setting only gets worse when we see “Death rates have soared in those lockups, rising 35% over the decade ending last year. Casualties like Hill are typical: held on minor charges and dying without ever getting their day in court. At least two-thirds of the dead inmates identified by Reuters, 4,998 people, were never convicted of the charges on which they were being held”, as such we see an institution that has failed on several levels, 35% over a decade is quite the increase, when we look at lives lost, any percentage change that is a mere one digit is seen as disastrous, so how does this happen? I am asking because the institution that we can laughingly call the Human Rights branch of the UN, seems to have no problems going after Saudi Arabia, and when we are told “Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Saudi Arabia. The country performed at least 158 executions in 2015, at least 154 in 2016, at least 146 in 2017, at least 149 in 2018, with possibly 184 executed in 2019”, as such can someone explain why the UN has such loud trumpets on the 791 death, all whilst the US put 4998 to death without a trial. With the Saudi allegedly ending the lives of close to 15% of what the US might categorise at ‘Business as usual’, ‘the cost of doing business’ or even ‘workplace accidents’ (with the optional oops! At the end). Yet this is not about Saudi Arabia, it is to some degree about Reuters (the good part) and to a large extent about the United Nations (the bad part) where we heard an essay writer and French Human Rights expert and the Special Rapporteur for the UN how she shouted (debatable) events, she never gave us the 4998 inhumane endings of life, did she? So as Reuters treats us to “The U.S. Constitution grants inmates core rights, but those provisions are hard to enforce. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees fair treatment to pre-trial detainees, but “fair” is open to interpretation by judges and juries. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel punishment forbids “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners,” but proving deliberate negligence is difficult. The Sixth Amendment assures speedy trials, but does not define speedy”, we see the larger picture and we understand and get that some events cannot be anticipated, but 4998 losses that continue to go on is a much larger stage. It is optionally a stage where we see that the debts of the US are now the almost given guarantee to loss of life in the US, all whilst there is a larger stage where there is a chance that the largest percentage of these 4998 losses are not criminals, they are people caught in a bad setting and awaiting a chance to explain themselves. All this, in a stage where people in the US are calling Saudi Arabia bad, all whilst they are in a setting where they have killed 631% more people, all innocent people, you are innocent until proven guilty and these 4998 people never got their day in court, all whilst the 791 executed people, were proven to be guilty in a Saudi court of law.

So who represents the larger failure (apart from the UN who never acted, perhaps because their HQ is in New York). Yet Reuters is nowhere near done. When they give us “Many jails are not subject to any enforceable standards for their operation or the healthcare they provide. They typically get little if any oversight. And bail requirements trap poorer inmates in pre-trial detention for long periods. Meanwhile, inmate populations have grown sicker, more damaged by mental illness and plagued by addictions”, it is my personal view, yet a stage where we see “not subject to any enforceable standards”, a stage that merely escalates bad situations quickly towards what could be regarded as ‘worse nightmares’. There is however a small gem there too, but you will miss it when you read the article too quickly. The quote “Reuters was not able to identify the race of 9% of inmates who died”, you see this is a stage with a much larger frame of mind. In my personal opinion, this either sets the stage of a shoddy administration, or optionally a party wanted to make the identification of 9% of the cases close to impossible. There is the case of multi-racial stage, but to admit to such a failure gives rise to an inmate registration failure that should have been fixed well over two decades ago, as such I see a much larger stage, yet with the limited information available I cannot say which is the more accurate one.

The article is much larger and it has several sides that make this dynamite on several levels and to see this in Reuters and not in the Washington Post or the New York Times is a larger stage. So the last part I will look at is “The Justice Department has grown more secretive about the fatality data under the Trump administration. While BJS never has released jail-by-jail mortality figures, it traditionally has published aggregated statistics every two years or so. The 2016 report wasn’t issued until this year”, the stage has a few items that are debatable and optionally a larger stage that has issues all over the board. The lack in mortality figures is the largest and most visible one, you see, this stage was much larger in the 70’s and Robert Redford gave us the low down in the movie Brubaker in 1980, a movie that is a gem on several levels. So 40 years ago there was a clear stage where mortality rate was a visible issue (11 years after the fact), a large one and someone swiped that issue OFF the table. The movie was based on a fictionalised version of the 1969 book, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal by Tom Murton and Joe Hyams, detailing Murton’s uncovering of the 1967 prison scandal. The unsettling stage of something that came to light when he had the wardenship of the prison farms of Arkansas. 

It is when we consider this stage we see the largest failure in the US, a stage where side entries into society (criminals) are set to a stage off the board making them marginalised. There is one little issue, the 4998 people were innocent, they were never convicted, they never had their day in court and the system failed them close to 100%. And even if we give credibility to Michelle Deitch, she might be right on her turf, the setting of “these gaps make comprehensive nationwide statistics all the more important. “You can’t have good policy without good data,” she said. “Data tells us what is going right and what’s going wrong.””, the fact that racial info was missing in 9% of the cases give rise to a faltering system that has never properly overhauled, or the system is fault due to possibilities of data manipulation, that part is given a level of clarity when we realise that out of these cases the racial data of 450 people could not be ascertained. It is not a flaw or a data gap, it should be seen as a systemic failure. When a person is arrested, from the arrest (2 people) to local arrangements, to transport, to arrival into a jail, well over a dozen people missed it, and more important, they missed it 450 times. This is a systemic issue from day one and no one has rung the bell, at least not to the degree that this bell should have been rung. 

Well done Reuters!

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When a war is called

The thought started when I saw an article by Yahoo Finance pass by, it was named ‘Why Saudi Arabia May Be Forced To Start Another Oil Price War’, two thing came to mind, it is October, and the northern hemisphere is now going into Winter, it seems trivial, but 700 million Europeans and well over 50% of Americans (and also all Canadians) will need heating and oil is more often than not the essential fuel used. The second part is seen but perhaps missed, as we are given “The threat of European lockdowns is real, hitting global demand again while taking a heavy toll on the economy. Financial easing and subsidies worldwide have kept some demand in place, but the financials of major economies are bleak, which can be seen in the rising level of unemployment” what everyone forget is that in the past most of these people were in offices and shops, places of employment. During the lockdown all these people will stay at home and their houses, places that usually tends to be 5-8 degrees colder because they are at work, these houses will now need heating for all that time. In addition there are in the US over 1,050 power plants operated by oil, all these houses need power, all whilst many shopping centre needs less power, yet the need for power and heating will seem to rise, especially when the cold days come through. Even as some question “Global oil storage levels are still high, while the world is awash with oil and gas. International traders are openly questioning the current OPEC+ move to put extra oil on the market”, I am not convinced. Yes there is less fuel needed for jets, but jetful is only 2% of crude oil production, so I have been told in school (a long time ago), yet power and heating needs oil and there will be a shift, summer is gone, autumn is squarely here and we see a few hundred million places now needing power and heating most of the day, which stands against the needs of a working environment. As such the statement seen here “Saudi Arabia, supported by its main ally UAE, and Russia are both looking at a financial crash of unknown magnitude if oil markets don’t recover soon. Oil prices are currently too low to sustain the government strategy of both nations” becomes one of debate. I cannot counter it, but when we think things through, oil needs are essential during winter, and I see it, these people will not need gas for cars, so where is the tradeoff? Well, mot of these houses still need food, so the car remains used, to a lesser state. Yet heating and power will be needed to a much larger degree, so even as we can assume to some degree that there will be a lesser need, it will at best be a ‘somewhat lesser need’, in light of all this, why is there a call for a war (well, a pricing war)? The article still gives a truth, several in fact. We cannot disagree with “Without higher crude oil prices, not only is the Kingdom’s flagship Saudi Aramco suffering but most government projects too. The world’s largest oil company has already put several major new projects on hold, while at the same time reassessing investment levels of others. High-profile offshore projects” yes there will be an impact, and the impact will optionally continue into 2021, yet the larger stage is not how Saudi Arabia will do, the question becomes when the EU collapses after another lockdown, how will those government foot the bill for essential services (power and heating) when the trough (finance coffers) run dry?

So as we get to “If the threats made by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman that the Kingdom has had enough of profit takers, short investors, or lack of support of members, are to be taken face value, the market should not be surprised if the OPEC leader decides again to go its own way. A more aggressive move by Riyadh towards market-share or oil prices is not at all unthinkable”, I start to wonder who the writer Cyril Widdershoven is and I see that he is linked to Verocy and that he oversees Mediterranean Energy Political Risk Consultancy. As such, I wonder if he hopes to create a pre-creationary wave, or that there is a stage which in the article is assigned to Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman. I do not know (I honestly do not know), yet any quick or knee-jerk action required by others, tends to set a different stage in all this and when someone gives me ‘Why Saudi Arabia May Be Forced To Start Another Oil Price War’, I tend to wonder why something like that I needed. Yes from our side a lockdown is not good news, but who considered that they would be warming the house an additional 12-15 hours each day? 

It is well over half a day more, as such heating is required, as well as additional power, because these people will need their TV, their computer, their radio, their console and in many houses they need need close to one of each and with an additional 12 hours a day that drives up the need for power too. So yet there is every indication that there is some level of downturn for Saudi Arabia, I am merely not convinced that it will be as bad as me predict, yet I am willing to admit that I might be wrong. So I will let you do the math on what you need in your house, and consider, will it be more or less than before and when you consider that part, consider the thousands, nay millions of additional homesteads in Europe, the US and Canada. That is what went through my mind, and overall there is an impact for Saudi Arabia, but I am not convinced that it will be as dire as some say. When someone calls for a pricing war, they tend to multiple motives, that I what history taught me, I am merely thinking things through, but as stated, I might be wrong.  

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In pieces

When was the last time you went out and researched something? For me it started 83.4 minutes ago (roughly), to fight insomnia (meeting it half way) I decided to do a puzzle, and as I was completing the puzzle, I became mesmerised by the picture in the puzzle. The house is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. It turns out that it is a traditional maramures monk house in Romania, the image is from Adrian Domokos (at https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/traditional-maramures-monk-house-1190795452). I soon found a few other examples, but for some reason Adrian captured something the others did not and I cannot get the right words to describe it. Yet the house is printed on my mind, and as my mind is working out other things it is also converting that very same house to a Minecraft place of living. You might not get that, which is fair enough, but my mind captures things and recreates it in different dimensions, sometimes for fun, sometimes for other reasons. 

I am (at times) hesitant to let the mind wonder freely, not merely because it tends to lead to insomnia, in other cases it got me to design something to sink the Iranian fleet with (one needs goals after all), yet when I was rethinking the weapon and its delivery system I considered that this solution would also work on that ugly American contraption called the Zumwalt class, and lets be fair, that thing is way too ugly to not make it sink, especially as Defense News gave us yesterday ‘US Navy eyes new design for next-generation destroyer’, as such we get “I don’t want to build a monstrosity. But I need deeper magazines on ships than I have right now,” the chief of naval operations said. “I’m limited with respect to DDG Flight IIIs in terms of what additional stuff we could put on those ships. … So the idea is to come up with the next destroyer, and that would be a new hull. The idea would be to put existing technologies on that hull and update and modernise those capabilities over time”, the added “To avoid another costly failure, such as the canceled next-generation cruiser or severely truncated DDG-1000 program, the service is harkening back to its successful Arleigh Burke program, the mainstay of the Navy’s surface combatant program for the past 30 years”. A program with in mind building 32 dinghy’s and 29 of them got cancelled, the there three never properly worked. A wasted $22.5 billion, well, let’s consider that it is not much if you say it fast (I dare you). And when we consider that “the Zumwalt had been sold to Congress based on unrealistic minimum-cost estimates. Eventually, program costs exceeded the budget by 50 percent, triggering an automatic cancelation”, so in light of the unrealistic minimum cost estimates, did anyone go to jail? Did these estimators get paid? So we have a stage where my 5G solutions require ‘assurances’ for the $25,000,000 initial part whilst the $22,500,000,000 sails into the deep end without any problems (or assurances for that matter)? Oh and that is all before we consider these so called smart bullet, the ones that Congress would not approve as it was well over $1,000,000 per shot, How much was sunk into that part? 

So the rebel rouser in me thought it might optionally be a nice idea to try the new weapon system called ‘Gordian One’ on the USS Zumwalt, you know, before we piss off all the Iranians, and lets be honest, there might be some congratulatory slap on the back in it for me from an American Admiral or two (isn’t that why we tend to be innovative?), ahh well, such is life I say!

And lets face it, no one asked anything about the Zumwalt class and what the need was to ignore the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. We know that the Zumwalt was designed and build for a very different kind of war, one that it was not able to do in the first place, but let’s not haggle on those details. And all this is before you realise that the Zumwalt class (compared to the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer) is almost 987% more expensive, so how exactly do we need to see the setting of ‘minimum-cost estimates’, me thinks that someone was buttering their bread on both sides other thickly, yet that is merely my personal train of thought. 

So whilst we look at one and the other, why was there so much about some traditional maramures monk house in Romania? Well, that is linked to the topic of Copyright Law and the nice setting of some silly bugger registering a few pieces of paper and forgot a setting or two with a few documents, which gave me the idea as I looked at the hull alloys and you see, the setting of a Tumblehome wave piercing hull sounds nice, but there are constraints too and that is where I started to wonder, if it sinks the Iranian fleet, the Zumwalt might not really have a chance either. In addition, even if Gordian One does not do its intended purpose, the stability of the Zumwalt will change enough for it to sink itself (which might be poetic justice in its own right). 

So whilst the USNI News reports that ‘Navy Lacks ‘Clear Theory of Victory’ Needed to Build New Fleet, Experts Tell House Panel’, I decided to gain victory by building a weapon system that achieved more than one goal (not telling the kids at present), and as that is shown to work and the delivery system works (not tested yet), we see a stage where Bryan Clark, a naval analyst and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute gives us “We don’t really have that clear theory of victory or operational concept today”, OK, here at this point I take one step back and if I misreported on his quote then I apologise (I tend to not have access to confidential US Navy events), yet if I did voice it correctly, we have a much larger problem. If it is true that the Navy is in doubt on ‘clear theory of victory’ or on ‘operational concept’, which flagrant yahoo of a milk-dud admiral approved the stage of the extremely sinkable Zumwalt Class? It seems to me that clear stages leading to victory and a natural need of irrational concepts is essential for any new boat, submarine, dinghy or pleasure cruiser (Spearhead-class). And if the staged speculated theory of victory is not visible, no Zumwalt class should ever exist. That was clear from day one, was it not? Here we go back to the beginning, traditional maramures monk house in Romania had a set stage, a stage it still fulfils almost a century after it is build, the Zumwalt has been unable to meet basic standards from day one, and people wonder why I want to test a new weapon system on it? Well, consider that I would never test it on the Blue Ridge, as that ship after 47 years is still working to near perfect levels of excellence, the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) is expected to get its retirement in 20 years, however there is every chance that it could function until deep past 2055, when we see these events, when we see these parts of success, can we at least begin to understand what an utter failure the Zumwalt class is? 

So with the stage of the Zumwalt being uglier than a really old building in Romania and less functional than pretty much anything in the US Navy, I leave you to try and tackle my other needs. Have a great day!

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