Category Archives: Politics

August 2, 2019 · 17:28

The biggest issue

The Guardian has given us several articles, by themselves there is nothing strange there (well there is), yet it is when we look at them together that an image starts to form. It is united that the larger problem becomes visible and the fact that a larger group is not catching up to this is a worry.

The first one is ‘Greta Thunberg hits back at Andrew Bolt for ‘deeply disturbing’ column‘, which happened less than 12 hours ago (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/02/greta-thunberg-hits-back-at-andrew-bolt-for-deeply-disturbing-column), then we get ‘Revealed: Johnson ally’s firm secretly ran Facebook propaganda network‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/01/revealed-johnson-allys-firm-secretly-ran-facebook-propaganda-network), as well as ‘Brexit, cycle lanes and Saudi Arabia: CTF’s Facebook campaigns‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/01/brexit-cycle-lanes-and-saudi-arabia-ctfs-facebook-campaigns). Now let’s start up that on the whole nothing wrong was done by the Guardian. They reported and we can agree that reporting is what the Guardian does. Yet the larger issue is not what they do, it is what we are not getting that becomes the issue.

It starts with the Houthi attack on Dammam with missiles, a missile attack on a civilian target, Al Jazeera informs its audience, but the Guardian is not there. Bloomberg, the Guardian, basically the Western Media are all shunning it, yet they go to lengths to waste paper on the issues that “Women in Saudi Arabia will no longer need the permission of a male guardian to travel“, however the BBC did report on ‘Houthi missile attack on military parade kills 32‘, where we are told that “The parade in the southern port city of Aden was targeted by missiles and an armed drone, a Houthi-run TV channel says“, yet it seems that it was limited to the BBC, the near complete Western Media ignored that one too.

Now, I can accept that plenty of people are no fan of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, yet to shun attacks that cost lives is new, they all group together to give accusations without evidence (that journalist no one cares about), yet actual events are shunned. It is a new level of discrimination, it is political discrimination, where unwelcome groups are given exposure when it can be tilted to the negative side of the seesaw and the more negative it gets, the larger the exposure.

Now, let’s get back to the first article, because that is seemingly not linked. With the Quote “The widely read Herald Sun columnist and Sky News commentator used his significant platform to take aim at the 16-year-old campaigner, dismissing her followers as members of a cult and disparaging her decision to sail across the Atlantic in a high-speed racing yacht to attend UN climate summits in the US and Chile“, as well as: “The highly personal character assassination published in Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids repeatedly referred to Greta’s mental health, saying she was “deeply disturbed”, “freakishly influential” and “strange”“, yet in all this, we see no exposure on how that information was acquired.

As I personally see it The editor of the Herald Sun, Damon Johnston, as well as his fucked up sidekick Andrew Bolt did something in addition, is it the small part “the evidence does not suggest that humanity faces doom“, all that to hide the smallest snippet to oppose the environment. It actually gets more interesting, that is when we consider the case that Justice Bromberg presided over. When we consider “Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt and his employer Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp clearly violated the Racial Discrimination Act“, we could argue that he could face court again in this case. When the case was judged and we get: ‘The lack of care and diligence is demonstrated by the inclusion in the newspaper articles of the untruthful facts and the distortion of the truth which I have identified, together with the derisive tone, the provocative and inflammatory language and the inclusion of gratuitous asides‘, we see the chance that history might repeat itself. The article (at https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/andrew-bolt-continues-on-about-adam-goodes,12947) gives a lot more, what is key here that the Guardian exposes it and that is good, I have no issues with it. Yet it also shows the lengths that Murdoch media goes through to set the stage in one place, whilst other parts are seemingly intentionally ignored. Perhaps some of you remember the mental health escalation at Martin Place in 2014. Rupert Murdoch acted personally and the responses like ‘Rupert Murdoch’s Response To The Martin Place Siege Is As Tasteless As You’d Expect‘, as we were given: “AUST gets wake-call with Sydney terror. Only Daily Telegraph caught the bloody outcome at 2.00 am. Congrats“, it seems to me that bloodshed are his bread and butter, it also is seemingly implied that as long as it is not Saudi Blood, Rupert Murdoch has no issues. Some gave us: “the hostage situation as the work of an IS “Death Cult CBD Attack”, something we labelled at the time – and will continue to do so – as one of “the most vile, deliberately inflammatory, fundamentally wrong and wholly speculative front covers in the sordid history of Australian print media“, all whilst from the beginning, within a few hours it should have been clear that not only were the journalists not doing their job, the issues that in the beginning, hostages were seen holding an Islamic black flag against the window of the café, featuring the shahadah creed. It was wrongly identified by the media and the part where Monis later demanded that an ISIL flag be brought to him should have been clear that this was not a terrorist, at the most a wannabe, and more viable a person with mental health issues, but as I personally see it, Murdoch and Channel 7 were all about milking the event as much as possible.

At what point is journalism about milking?

The fact that this was buried as fast as possible is another part where we see a mingling of political discrimination, racial discrimination and religious discrimination and no one is telling Murdoch in clear language that it needs to stop.

The other two

Ok, it becomes essential to get to the deeper side of the pool here. First of all, there is a larger setting that has not settled. The accusation is twofold. The first is actually the one that does not work for the campaign players. It is also reported by CNN through ‘Facebook announces first takedown of influence campaign with ties to Saudi government‘, even as we accept “covert campaigns on Facebook and Instagram in a bid to prop up support for the kingdom and attack its enemies“, CNN et al are not reporting on the media blackout that is pushed out towards Saudi Arabia either. So anything that makes Saudi Arabia look like an attacked victim is suppressed, whilst actions by Saudi Arabia are spun to its most negative path and spattered over all media and all social media. Yet as the article gives us: “Facebook has hired staff with backgrounds in areas including intelligence, law enforcement and journalism to be part of a team finding and closing down coordinated campaigns on the platform, including some spreading disinformation and linked to nation-states“, it is equally absent in the case of “bogus mainly far-right disinformation networks were not identified by Facebook — but had been reported to it by campaign group Avaaz — which says the fake pages had more Facebook followers and interactions than all the main EU far right and anti-EU parties combined“, so we get one group with a following of 13 million in the past three months, with a following larger than all the European main party pages of the far right combined. Yet in all that, Saudi Arabia was specifically mentioned (they also illuminated the false pages of Iran). It is shown in a larger degree with: “Avaaz reported more than 500 suspicious pages and groups to Facebook related to the three-month investigation of Facebook disinformation networks in Europe. Though Facebook only took down a subset of the far right muck-spreaders — around 15% of the suspicious pages reported to it“. The fact that Facebook only took down subsets that represents 15% of the reported pages shows that there is a larger degree of political discrimination in play and even as some are overly clear, that larger extent shows that Social Media is optionally promoting to some degree the survival of Racial Discrimination, Political Discrimination, Religious Discrimination and Age Discrimination.

It is the revelation of: “vote manipulators are able to pass off manipulative propaganda and hate speech as bona fide news and views as a consequence of Facebook publishing the fake stuff alongside genuine opinions and professional journalism. It does not have algorithms that can perfectly distinguish one from the other, and has suggested it never will“, it is at this point where the realisation grows, when we add the two elements and we add the fact that the media is filtering what we are ‘allowed’ to know, it is there where the larger failing becomes clear, it is the axial and the seesaw of illumination of the view that opposes clear news, the media is now part of the problem. And it is there where we see the wisdom of TechCrunch with: “loud Facebook publicity effort around “election security” looks like a cynical attempt to distract the rest of us from how broken its rules are. Or, in other words, a platform that accelerates propaganda is also seeking to manipulate and skew our views“, it is merely part of the issue, it is not merely Facebook, it is the Media to a larger degree, their alliance is towards the Shareholders, the Stake holders and the advertisers, in that the larger issue is seen, those who advertise are optionally the controllers of what we see is possible, and that is where the truth is pushed out of view. It is seen in one final swoop when we consider the key word “Neom City“, a project like that, a project initially designed to be well over 30 times the size of New York, a project that has well over half a trillion dollars, set to construction, engineering and IT, should be on the front page of EVERY Newspapers, yet when you seek, you get Bloomberg last January (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/saudi-arabia-to-begin-building-homes-in-futuristic-city-neom) and Business Insider in October 2018 (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia-neom-megacity-2018-10?r=US&IR=T). The view that is part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan is silenced to death and that started before the journalist no one cares about vanished. In addition a new bridge that will connect Saudi Arabia to Africa is kept silent. In this day and age how does that make sense? I am looking at billions in 5G revenue in Neom City alone, as well as the underlying infrastructure required, opening a much larger need for the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, all ready to be set to a much larger stage (when the first phase region is a fact), yet the media is more about the rumours of the PS5 which is well over a year away with 6,940,000 mentions, and that makes partly sense, it is about awareness and creating hype, so when we see in the Guardian “the latest revelations reveal that the company has pursued that approach more broadly, in the service of previously unreported corporate interests and foreign governments. And they expose a major flaw in Facebook’s political transparency tools, which make it possible for Crosby’s company – which boasts on its website that it deploys “the latest tools in digital engagement” – to use the social network to run professional-looking “news” pages reaching tens of millions of people on highly contentious topics“, so if it is about ‘provoking argument‘, we should see nothing wrong as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft rely on that part 24:7. If it is about ‘involving heated argument‘, we still see no issue as this is Sony versus Nintendo versus Microsoft, as this has been the media bread and butter for close to 7 years and more. When we look at the ‘likely to cause an argument‘, almost nothing changes. It is the part I did not mention “without apparently disclosing that they are being overseen by CTF Partners on behalf of paying clients“, where we need to question the use of ‘apparently‘, is it or is it not mentioned? The Guardian did or did not do their job becomes the issue and yes, we can see ‘on behalf of paying clients‘, and how does that differ from Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Nespresso and a whole league of others? They are all in it for the money, the awareness and the creation of viral messages, over-hyped and often way too short on facts. That part is not given to us either and it is there where we see the interactions of layers of discrimination and ‘misinformation’ that is usually brought as ‘missed information’, I would personally see it as an exercise in ‘miscommunication’ and it has been happening for a much longer time. So when we get from the Guardian: “employees always operate within the law”, and if they take to the bank the task of giving positive visibility to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is there an actual issue here?

The biggest issue is that we see the information that “It does not have algorithms that can perfectly distinguish fake news from the other, and has suggested it never will“, whilst the underlying issue is that what is not fake news is not that trustworthy either, it is limited to the filtering of shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers and Facebook has no clue what to do, they to relay on those three groups. The news for the longest time never gave us that part. As I see it people like Greta Thunberg will never get a fair deal here, not as long as people like Andrew Bolt keep on being regarded as Journalists. That part is seen when we see: “the evidence does not suggest that humanity faces doom” all whilst that statement is not scrutinised to the largest degree. The opposition to that claim can be seen in the simplest sentence by World Vision, their quote: “Globally, 844 million people lack access to clean drinking water” gives the goods, close to 10% of the population of this planet lacks access to clean drinking water. When we consider that a person can only survive a few days without water. How much danger is the population exposed to, does that qualify as doom facing? How many must die before the ‘humanity faces doom‘ is satisfied? It seems trivial, but it is not, that same media that ignores attacks on Saudi Arabia, that does not report on Houthi transgressions, acts of terror and other events also ignores Yemeni plight for water, food and medication to a much larger degree. So the question becomes a simple one, give us the list of parameters that must be placed on staging or dismounting the accusation that ‘humanity faces doom‘, when we realise that there is a larger collection of evidence, we merely have to set that stage to those elements. I am not stating that Greta Thunberg is right or wrong, yet we can look and accept that Andrew Bolt and his so called opinion piece on Greta Thunberg should be seen as triviality towards journalism and that does matter, because if that is allowed to continue, Facebook will never solve anything, as such the only way to solve it is to push media deliverers like Andrew Bolt into the ‘Fake News’ category so that we might find a solution. The fact that SBS called it an opinion piece and the Guardian did not is the larger failing, any opinion piece, especially those in newspapers, digital or not should be clearly labelled as such like [opinion piece] before the text begins, identifying those pieces will also change the way that they are perceived and we might get a better quality of journalism. When writers get $100 for an opinion piece and $200 for an actual journalistic piece (researched and all), the matter might resolve itself soon enough.

 

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July 29, 2019 · 10:55

The excuse not mentioned

Have you ever considered the times you used the expression ‘not to mention‘? It is an interesting phrase and it is overwhelmingly used to give rise to excuses or reasons of a listing. Yet the act of not mentioning issues has a much larger reach. This gets us to the usage of Embargo, now in the true spirit of embargo is needed to not give rise to dangers. I have seen my shares of embargoes all over the world, I have never been personally privy to one, but I understand and accept the reason. The most accepted form is a ‘requirement by a government agency that the information or news provided is not be published until a certain date or certain conditions have been met‘, it makes sense that the news of drug deals are not broken until the undercover agent is out of harm’s way, the famous raid on Entebbe (Operation Entebbe), had to make certain that in those days spotters would not voice what they saw whilst the plane was in flight; fortunately for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) they have an above average security in place, so not much chance of that, yet with the 1977 Dutch train hijacking that issue was very much an issue, especially as on that very same day there was a touristic event (I believe it was by the AVRO), that took us to almost exactly where the train was, whilst that morning Dutch Marines were ordered to settle the matter. Good luck with an embargo at that point. If there was a smartphone in those days, the event might have gone very differently. In that same trend, the events that are on route involving the Credit Agricole would prefer some kind of embargo, but governments cannot play that card, so some players (like some banks) will have to rely on other means, and as we are only drip-fed issues on the Russia Money-Laundering Scandal, we will have to await the media friends of outlets, to see what is allowed to be released.

Yes, you heard it correctly, what some people allow to be revealed to you all. They would hide behind optionally claimed issues like: “We ran out of time“, “there were other pressing matters“, or my favourite “We did not think it was interesting“, it is in that light that media enforced embargoes take another turn.

Is it not interesting that the Boston globe gives us: ‘US can’t keep turning a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s murderous prince‘, yet based on what evidence? That UN essay is not the evidence we should regard as actual evidence. We see in addition Al Jazeera give us: ‘UN again blacklists Saudi-led forces for Yemen child killings‘, yet in that light in opposition the news is not giving us: ‘Yemen’s Houthi rebels attack food factory in Hodeidah‘, which was reported 12 hours ago.

So in a place where famine is a direct threat to hundreds of thousands, the Houthi terrorists are aiming for civilian population and destroying places that produce milk and fruit products (juices, cheese, yogurt), essential food for the people of Yemen and the Houthi forces are shelling that place as well as residential areas of Hodeidah city last Saturday. Yet the western news to the largest extent did not give us any of that, did they?

The fact that we see news avoided to the largest degree is becoming an issue, the people are not being informed on what is going on, and when we do get informed, there is a veil that depicts the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as the UAE) as: ‘the big nasty’, whilst the actions of Houthi terrorists as well as the facilitation by Iran is not mentioned at all, and this has been going on for months now. When we consider one source (Times of Israel, at https://www.timesofisrael.com/yemeni-houthi-rebels-long-range-arsenal-grows-lethal/) we see: “In June alone, the Iran-aligned Shiite Houthis launched at least 20 missile and drone attacks on the oil-rich kingdom, Iran’s regional foe, some resulting in casualties and damage“, in addition we see: “A Yemeni army retired brigadier, Jamil al-Mamari, believes the “Houthis are not capable of manufacturing missiles in Yemen… They are only capable of assembling and modification.”“, the growing evidence from several sources on the incapability of Yemen to produce Iranian hardware is ignored by the Western Media all over the place, including the bigger accusation: “Experts rule out the possibility that Houthis may have modified these arms on their own“, a simple deduction that could have been made by a 4th year engineering undergrad student, and yes, the media ignores this, we are sold a bag of goods through business driven embargo’s, just like the issues seen in Syria, the people are left for dead and illuminating merely part of the equation is making the western media guilty of a few facts, even subverting the old premise: ‘the people have a right to know‘ into: ‘We are guided by some to tell you what you optionally need to know‘.

I wonder what will happen when I decide to give out the messages, mails, events and connections that are in existence between people like Raphaël Appert and Daniel Epron, with all the media links they have, and they have a lot. So when we look at some of the Russia Money-Laundering Scandal that have been known to some extent and all the papers that decided not to give visibility to that part, what excuse will we be told? There was a revolutionary Apple message that bumped the revelation? Or perhaps the economic plan of President Macron took all the space available? I do not know, I am merely speculating, but the lack of visibility on some of these news events all over the place, are now a much larger concern. When we look at the papers that actually took space and time to look into the Iranian Qasef-1 missiles and their targets, how many papers took time to look into that? The list (the lack of papers there) will surprise you. Oh and the excuse that it was merely a copy of the Iranian Ababil-2 drone will not work, I checked for both. In that same air, when searching for the Russian Money Laundering Scandal, we see the mentions of the Deutsche Bank, but several others like for example Credit Agricole, they did not make it to the news, not in the Guardian and not in several other papers. Revelations that are filtered are not revelations; it is merely corporate forms of censoring and it is my speculation that we get more and more of that as the year progresses.

As I have state in the past, I believe that news is filtered for publication as long as it is filtered through the Shareholder filter, the stake holder filter and the advertiser filter. What is left is ranked according to emotional ability to flame and push people. When we look at Turkish Journalists (in light of the large amount of them in prison) in the google News section we get: ‘About 163,000 results‘ (for all those journalists mind you), yet when we see: ‘About 725,000 results‘, which is in the same section, it is about Jamal Khashoggi, so we see that not all journalists are equal, not by a long shot (even as dozens of Journalists have been murdered in Turkey). These are all elements that give a view to the filtering of information that we get, and when you consider the excuse that ‘there was no space’ consider that there is no space limit to online news. And for the most it is not about resources, it is about that they consider we should know.

When we search news for ‘Hodeidah‘ in the last 24 hours we get 4 hits, two on the Shelling of the Dairy factory (Xinhua and Al Ain) one Blog and one by Yemen Online on ‘The opening up of Hodeidah port to ensure a better flow of humanitarian aid‘, that’s it, nothing more according the Google Search, so any excuse that the West is giving us some level of balanced news is a joke, and at present a bad one at that.

 

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July 28, 2019 · 13:22

Waking up 2 years late

The BBC gave us Yesterday: ‘Syria war: ‘World shrugs’ as 103 civilians killed in 10 days‘ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49126523), it goes on giving us the goods with: “The rising death toll in Idlib had been met with a “collective shrug” and the conflict had fallen off the international radar, while the UN Security Council was paralysed, she said.” the remark should be regarded as pointless, useless and inadequate, all at the same time. It seems to be that Michelle Bachelet is all about laying blame, while it is her office that had failed to the largest degree and the United Nations close to totally. To make good on that accusation, I merely need to point to my article of March 19th 2017, an article called ‘The failure of a current generation‘, it is there that I end the article with: “you only need to ask any Syrian refugee to hear clear doubt, especially after 6 years of too little actions and for the most no solutions. We as a global population have failed these victims who turned to us for help in the most disgraceful of ways“, events clearly visible well over two years ago. The equation is really not complex. It is a country no one cares about, it has no economic powers, there is no glory to get, only optionally the award called the ‘Extremely late to the party Award‘. No politicians wants to touch it, there is no glory, no Nobel Prize for peace and no financial rewards to be found. It is a pile of sand, stone and cadavers that is the brunt of it. The Syrian GDP is around 41.6 billion; the EU spends more on staples and paperclips every year (roughly). No body wants to touch it. Even as we hear the accusations by Madame Bachelet, we must notice the close to complete absence to get anything done.

So when we see: “Last week, the UN said more than 350 civilians had been killed and 330,000 forced to flee their homes since fighting escalated on 29 April. But that figure has now been revised, adding 103 extra deaths in the past 10 days alone. The estimate for the number displaced stands at more than 400,000“, we see the beginning of selective executions, optionally the stage of ethnic cleansing (requires more evidence to prove). That part is optionally seen when we consider one source giving us ‘In Syria’s Idlib, Turkey aims to curb Kurdish militia and refugee flow‘ last May. What is interesting is that the BBC and Madame Bachelet have no mention of Kurds at all.

Professor Balanche (research director at the University of Lyon) gave us at that time: “Turkey had long opposed any Syrian offensive against Idlib, out of concern about refugees and to focus on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s primary goal of keeping the Kurdish-led People’s Defense Units (YPG) from taking control of Syria’s northeast frontier“, the timeline is uncanny and the fact that we also see (in August 2018) “Noting that there were Kurds in Idlib, Xelil continued, “Idlib is under occupation by terrorist groups supported by Turkey“, Xelil in this case is Aldar Xelil, a top Syrian Kurdish official. The fact that Madame Bachelet and the BBC are BOTH leaving that part not mentioned is a larger concern. It seems that Turkey is too important to lose to the west, the actions by the United States “Until Washington adopts a long-term strategic posture designed to safeguard Turkey’s core interests“, as well as ‘Turkey’s president calls for further interest rate cuts‘, with the additional “Erdogan says central bank’s decision, while welcome, does not go far enough“, as well as “Analysts say that Turkish assets have benefited from a dovish tilt by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, fuelling investor appetite for riskier emerging markets. Even after Thursday’s rate cut, Turkish assets offer a significant premium for investors” (at https://www.ft.com/content/974c1b5a-af9d-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2), it is all about giving way to economic interests and the investors. The media evolves into a Seraglio under the all seeing eye of cathouse owner Madame Bachelet, and until today I never expected the BBC to cater to that premise. They are all willing to hand over the lives of Syrians, no one cares about that, whilst we still hear he screaming over a journalist no one cares about (Jamal Khashoggi).

There is a clear path of 5 years of inactions towards Syria, all the actions of paper is literally it worth the value of the paper it was printed on. The United Nations in a seemingly long term strategy that has one massive flaw, by the time that their strategy has value, the Syrian population will be gone for 90%, with only the enabled left with all the resources and wealth. I reckon that the 6.5 million displaced within Syria will vanish, we have all seen this before, it is merely repetition and no one is willing to hold these parties to account, they have other more economically tainted interests.

For Russia it is good news, as Turkey already bought the missiles, it has more and more options in both Syria and Turkey, the inability to get anything done from EU and US shores implies that they have nothing left, just howling behind the humanitarian UN bitches, who are all speech (and essay) and for the most part of total inaction, and we have millions of Syrians who can testify to this, they have been doing so since 2017, yet those voices have been drowned out by the media to the largest extent. It was Yesterday that the Arab Weekly gives us “Syrian refugees can’t find enough arguments to convince the world of the need to end their crisis“, the answer is simple, they have no economic footprint so the west will not care, exploitation comes at a price, you are either a consumer or you do not matter. (at https://thearabweekly.com/syrian-refugee-crisis-sparking-populist-reactions-middle-east), in all this what we read written by Baha al-Awam is correct, there is nothing that is done, because those who care have other interests and Syria is not an interest for them. For a short time the Unites States was interested due to their ‘anti-communistic’ phobias pressing on the matter, but they lost that part as they are too bankrupt to intervene and for now keeping an imbalance on Iran versus Saudi Arabia is as good as it gets, because their footprint is better whilst the imbalance lasts, it is when Saudi Arabia truly grows, it is then that the US fears the impact that they lose in the Middle East, it is that simple. It was not rocket science; it never was in the first place.

Yet there is another side, one that cannot be ignored. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45403334) is linked to the article that we are talking about and it has a missing element. It is overwhelmingly Jihadist force and also has Syrian rebels, yet the implied presence of Kurds is ignored, however there are clear indications from several sources that there is a shift. With “those working in the northeast alongside Kurdish groups” indicates that Kurds are getting involved more and more in this region and this is likely what worries Turkey, because if this grabs a hold, it could spread to Turkey and that is what Turkey fears, it has too many issues and by the time acts matters Turkey will have to redeploy forces, to what degree I cannot tell, because I have not been able to find any numbers on Kurds, merely that it has been happening for several months now (if some media is to be believed).

Yet there is clear presence and the BBC ignored it, and that is what matters, because this is not how we have ever seen the BBC and that is a worry. So when we see the BBC waking up 2 year slate (in light of the article) I wonder who is taking a long hard reality driven look at what is actually happening there.

I wonder what we will be ‘informed’ about next.

 

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July 26, 2019 · 11:46

Media glasses with blinkers

Normally I am all for ABC, they are really good at reporting, they have a credibility that is exponentially higher than anything Channel 7 or Channel 9 ever had, so for the most they are up there with BBC News and a few others. Yesterday however, we see (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-25/australian-company-sending-weapons-systems-directly-to-uae/11322974) news that requires reconsideration.

Now we cannot fault the headline, which gives us ‘Fighting Yemen’s dirty war, an Arab military is buying a weapons system made in Canberra‘, yet what is linked to all this is a very different matter. Even as we are given “The weapons systems have been flying across the world, from Australia to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for months. But neither the company selling them, nor the Australian Government, has said exactly who is buying them“, we see the first inkling of consideration. Now, we should be clear that systems like that should only be available to established governments. So when I see: “More importantly, they reveal Australian company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) is selling its next generation remote weapons system directly to the UAE’s Armed Forces, which stands accused of war crimes as part of its role in the controversial Yemen war“, the news is redundant a the UAE had already pulled out (for now), the second part is that the UAE is a legitimate sovereign state and the Australian government has every right to sell these systems to a sovereign state. It seems to me that Dylan Welch, ABC Investigations has a very different agenda.

We see an initial consideration with: “The Australian Government has come under fire for granting EOS defence export licenses, given the growing criticism of the behaviour of the UAE military in Yemen“, and then we get the photos, we get more information and more directly, we see: “Now, new photos of RWS units at a Sydney warehouse have revealed the role of the UAE military and raise questions about the nature of EOS’s relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior. In total, the photos record four consignments for export in June and July — two each to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. One of the photos shows a pallet of RWS gimbals — a pivoting support structure — awaiting export earlier this month“, apart from the photo’s (which I am not disputing) there is a larger concern that this is an attempt by either Palestinian connections to Hezbollah, so a direct facilitator of terrorism, or a facilitator to Iran that is supplying these photos. Merely for the reason that they want their enemies (Saudi Arabia and the UAE to be as weak as possible) Whomever Dylan Welch is ingratiating himself to, it involves either Iran or a terrorist party. So when have you ever considered how certain media people get some scoops whilst not being in a warzone?

The article then relies on a photo by Khaled Abdullah; it is a side step to avoid any mention of Houthi forces and Hezbollah terrorists that have been operating in Sanaa. Now, this is not an attack on Khaled Abdullah, who is a Reuters photographer and is an original Yemeni, it is HIS country. Yet some of his photos (showing an amazing quality of photography and an eye for detail) is walking around in the heat of events with what is likely to be a killer camera. Yet, he seemingly gets around Sanaa without fear of reprisal, so he is either accepted by both Houthi and government forces (which would be fair enough), or there is another side here (I am not speculating here), what is clear this is a photographer with World Press Photo quality results. This part is important because the writer ignores the Houthi element as the quote “to support the internationally recognised Government against Houthi rebels” has the only one mention of Houthi forces. The article has zero mention of ‘Hezbollah‘ or ‘Iran‘, two words that cannot be no non mentions when we reiterate the headline part ‘Fighting Yemen’s dirty war‘, the two players are part of that dirty war and not mentioning them is an issue.

So when we come to the chapter called ‘UN lawyer: ‘Desist from supplying weapons’‘, I wonder how long we can stand this implied hypocrisy by Melissa Parke, whilst the elements, the proven actions by both Iran and Hezbollah are not mentioned anywhere. with my Liberal mind my speculative view would be: ‘Leave it to the stupidity of Labor not to speak out on the short-sightedness of Former Labor MP Melissa Parke‘, two elements that ignore the two damning entities, two players responsible for prolonging the war for well over an additional 2 years. And even as we see the act of arms banning, close to zero actions have been made against Iran and Palestine. Is that not weird too?

The issue will evolve further as we see “A group of Australian aid agencies including HRW, Save The Children, Amnesty International and Oxfam have formed the Australian Arms Control Coalition following the ABC’s stories and are lobbying the Government to suspend the sale of defence materiel to Saudi Arabia until the Arab nation can prove such weapons won’t be used to commit war crimes“, or a I personally see it, children trying to play a grown up game whilst 50% of the problem is ignored. If it was merely a Houthi issue, a lot of the weapons would never have been bought. Do you think that these governments are about buying weapons, whilst they could be buying super yachts made by Lürssen shipbuilders? If there is no direct threat to me, or merely a few confused peasants, do you I would go out and buy an Accuracy International L115 AWM when I could buy a Jaguar XF (2018 model) at almost the same price? You have to be kidding me, and that is not even close to the tip of stupidity, that is given by Melissa Parke when she gives us: “Let’s not forget that it is millions of innocent Yemeni civilians, women and children, who are bearing the brunt of this war. Their suffering is immense,” which is also a direct result of Houthi forces, directed through Hezbollah to keep all humanitarian aid, of food and medicine away from the Yemeni civilians, claiming it all for Hezbollah and Houthi forces. The fact that we were given earlier this month “The Yemeni government and the United Nations have expressed concern over a possible halt of the new relief programs in Houthi-dominated areas because of the group’s continued obstruction of humanitarian aid“, an important fact, especially in light of the senseless quote by Melissa Parke. The article by Dylan Welch should have added all that, as he gives opposition to what might be factual to issues silenced. It is that and the delusional labor strategy that gives light that ABC needs to dig a little deeper before they make certain claims. The fact that someone at the shipper has been supplying details is not for some humanitarian reason; this is propelled exposure to serve Iran and/or Hezbollah.

So when Dylan ends his one-sided stage through: “Australia as a good global citizen and a member of the UN Human Rights Council can play an important role in protecting Yemeni civilians. Providing weapons to a party to the conflict would not be consistent with that role” invokes the required (and utterly lacking diplomatic language): “then you fuck knuckles need to start giving us all the news, not merely make one claim and ignore what Iran and Hezbollah (the other side) are doing in the region“, OK, not my most eloquent moment, but I have had enough of one sided BS, WE get enough of that from too many stations and the fact that ABC is joining those ranks is a much larger cause for concern at present.

That part is reinforced when we consider that the same photo by Khaled Abdullah is use (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-20/australian-firm-eos-weapons-systems-bound-for-saudi-arabia/10825660) five months earlier, in addition, all the Dylan articles seem to lack any mention of Iran and Hezbollah, whilst the mention of Houthis is limited to a minimum, often only mentioned once, which is in light of the connected issues a larger concern, so not merely in the current article, but several articles, including the one with the headline ‘Australian Army veterans advising foreign army accused of war crimes‘, it seems to me that the quote: “I don’t carry a gun, don’t work in a uniform, don’t go to conflict zones. I would describe myself as a specialist consultant who deals in military training facilities — the best in the world” would result into actual questions giving us an in depth view, but Dylan was able to avoid that, he did highlight “Last month Buzzfeed America published explosive allegations about a mercenary hit squad targeting figures in the conflict in Yemen in late 2015 to early 2016“, yet absent from evidence and referring to more enlightened journalistic sources, for ABC ‘Buzzfeed America‘ was all that was needed to give delusional weight to it all.

It seems that there are larger issues in the media and that issue keeps on growing. I wonder what I would find on all the parts missed by those visiting the UAE and ultimately what the actual truth of the matter is, because at present it seems to me that the UN and the media are about keeping Iran out of view on certain matters and that is perhaps the most dangerous and equally disgusting path to find the media on.

 

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July 24, 2019 · 11:08

This stupid Neanderthal

Yes, you read it right, as the worst possible grammar allows for we see the needed expression: ‘Me is havening to be the stupid man today‘ statement. It all started in the middle of the night when the Guardian brought us: ‘Saudi state part-owns Evening Standard and Independent, court told‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jul/23/evening-standard-and-independent-unable-to-rebut-concerns-over-saudi-ownership). It gets to be worse (and the actual trigger) with: “Government lawyer tells court part-sale of news outlets has ‘national security implications’“, the naive Neanderthal in me is wondering what kind of drugs David Scannell is on and if I could get some of those (it never hurts to ask). The media (specifically the newspapers) are about the truth and about giving us actual information. The fact that the government has never ever been able to get a handle on whatever Rupert Murdoch does, in that same air the issues with Paul Dacre (specifically on a missing airplane), makes me wonder how the implied gossip that several newspapers spread are national security.

We could go with the premise that with a part owned Saudi Newspapers, the readers will actually get exposed to the acts or Iran, and the facts that many newspapers decided not to give visibility on that (like the proxy war Iran is waging via Yemen). That is beside the point that David Scannell is claiming national security issues against a Russian citizen, is that not laughable too (a Paul Hogan comedy kind of humour)?

So when we get David Scannell stating: “What is of concern to Her Majesty’s government is that a foreign state could be acquiring a substantial stake in Lebedev Holdings [owner of the Evening Standard] and the Independent simultaneously“, whilst her majesties government is seemingly forgetting that the current owner is Russian (born 8 May 1980, In Moscow Russia). Perhaps David Scannell would prefer to consider journalistic integrity and hold the UK newspapers to a much higher standard? He (his bosses more precisely) could have done that a decade ago by removing 0% VAT rights from these glossy ‘news’ bringers, a solution that would fit the UK citizen and resident to the largest degree, but just like the facilitation to the FAANG group (and their less than 2% tax), big corporations are facilitated to the largest degree and a clever Saudi investor thought that this was a good return for their investment. Then there is the other part.

When we see: “The heavily lossmaking free London newspaper is edited by the former Conservative chancellor, George Osborne“, we could consider that this is about changing the hearts of readers, yet if the government legal team is so worried about ‘poor record on press freedom‘, has that legal team not considered that in the end, when the papers becomes even more loss making that the current owners back out and the government could take over at £0.01 per share? In addition, if there is enough evidence in the statement of: “Both the Independent and Evening Standard insist concerns about editorial independence are unfounded and they are not influenced by financial backers” then what is this actually about? It seems that there is a reduced to zero chance that there are actual national security implications, the fact that national security events were always embargoed and as such these two papers must adhere to this, foreign owned or not and in the end, in addition, the fact that we saw last May the quote “There is nothing new about concern over the impact the company, which controls 70% of the country’s newspaper circulation, might have on democratic debate” (source: the Guardian), that keeping more papers out of the fingers of Murdoch might be a Humanitarian good, is that not important too? In addition, there is a second consideration, if the digital worlds that these two newspapers have, setting a stage that this evolution is passed on to places like the Dallah al Baraka Group, Al Arabiya, Al Saudiya and Al Ekhbariya could set a long term prosperity to both Saudi Arabia as well as their European affiliation. This is a long term slow plan and when we consider that Neom City is still happening, having a city well over 20 times the size of New York, also implies that overall the media will grow as well; digital marketing as well as 5G information streams will evolve, and evolve faster. Part of my IP was designed to do just that, whilst promoting commerce on several levels. We see that the evolution cannot begin in Saudi Arabia, but over time evolving those and new stations will be in the interest of Saudi Arabia who is eager not to lose it all to the UAE (Dubai Media Incorporated) or Qatar (Al Jazeera) changing the game and the way they do business is an essential must in the long term and in the short term evolution is more and more pressing.

Homo sapiens

Evolution has stepped in and as the Homo sapiens we are now, life is not that simple, the interaction of the media is larger and more complex. Yet I still find the approach through David Scannell laughable. We want to muster muzzles and bits to state who is allowed to go where, yet the unbridled freedoms pushes through by places like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google remain unhindered. Even in a stage where these groups pay less than 2% taxation in the end, the monster we know is still less acceptable than any optional new monster we do not know. The policymakers have been unable and unwilling to adjust laws ad legislation for almost two decades, the premise of iteration and Status Quo are found everywhere but were given on how the new owner (partial new owner) is setting the stage of national security. When we look at the fines we see in the direction of Facebook and Equifax are partial evidence that this ship has sailed years ago, the latest data breaches show that there is no stopping the flow of data and whilst we look towards North Korea who does not have the storage abilities, skills and bandwidth to do 10% of the issues that they are accused of, we see that the foundation of the current batch of National Security monitoring teams are seemingly in a stage that they have no clue where to look and what data to sift through (a common shortcoming).

So in all this we have larger issues and whilst we forgot about July 2015 ““source close to the family” (MH370 disaster)” with the additional “what is also important is that we saw an issue in 2014 the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) decided to investigate a case whilst using only 1 of 83 plaintiffs” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/31/that-joke-called-the-first-amendment/), it would be my personal recommendation that the government (as well as David Scannell have bigger fish to fry. We could start a new Leveson investigation and force harsher settings, but all kinds of chief editors will burst into tears in the House of Lords and as we know that those gentlemen are really unwilling to slap crying girls around, so we get nowhere ever and the option to remove the 0% VAT from some of these newspapers is not regarded as an option, so we are at a stalemate with no solution. But the call via National Security seemingly remains.

In the complete evolved view we see that there is political power into the ability to reach an entire nation through the newspapers and the media, yet in that light when we accept Gay Alcorn (the Guardian) who gave us: “There is nothing new about attacks on News Corp’s influence on policy and politics in Australia. There is nothing new about claims that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers are not just right wing, but distort and manufacture news“, does it actually matter whether news is manufactured by NewsCorp (Australia) or the Independent (partial Saudi)? Is pushing this path not a race towards discrimination lacking all diplomacy and subtlety?

I am merely asking, because even as i really do not care who the owners are becoming, and the fact that the previous owner is Russian, is it not just all water under the bridge. To be slightly more precise a bridge called Facebook transporting terabytes of data per minute?

In the end, the legal battle is seemingly set to “The legal challenge was only against the decision to refer the Saudi investment to the Competition Commission on merger grounds“, whether valid or not (that is a legislation issue), the fact that the entire article has only one mention of the word ‘merger‘ in that entire article. Informing the public on the exact nature of the issue on the merger, would that not have been an essential first? If that is the case, how does National Security actually fit would be my question, but we really don’t see a clear answer on that either, do we?

 

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July 21, 2019 · 14:48

Exploitation by the numbers

Yes, the BBC had the right idea when they gave us: ‘Bianca Devins: The teenager whose murder was exploited for clicks‘ three hours ago (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49002486). The story is about a girl named Bianca Devins. So when we get: “she wrote on a gaming platform about how excited she was to be travelling the 250 miles from upstate New York to a concert in Queens. But before she could return home on Sunday morning, Bianca was dead” we see a story dipped in sadness. We see the quote: “But in the hours after his arrest, it emerged he had shared graphic photographs of the murder online. In the days since, her story has spread across the world – as have the violent images of her death. Her murder, which played out so publicly, is the latest case to place scrutiny on how social media companies police extreme content” we have seen this before, we wonder how and we wonder if it matters. We sometimes here the term ‘lives matter’ but is that really the case? Even as we accept that this was the lone act of a lone man when we get: “the suspect shared an even more graphic photograph of Bianca’s body on Discord – a popular messaging platform for gamers. This image showed the extent of injuries to Bianca’s throat and made clear her wounds had been fatal“, exploitation for clicks is not new, we have seen it for almost 200 days whilst we got exposed to this level of exploitation through the cadaver of Jamal Khashoggi, even the UN got in on it. All whilst there is no actual evidence, speculation, postulation and exploitation. I will give exemption to the Washington Post and his family, they are the two exemptions. To see just that impact we need to look at the numbers.

Yet the numbers are no longer clear, it seems that Google is actively hiding certain events actions and numbers. When I did a thorough search on December 18th, I got a result that added up to a lot “we merely get 57,000,000 search results, most of them misinformation, repeated unsubstantiated rumours and debatable facts that are anything but confirmed facts” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/18/how-americans-lose-wars/), now that number is a mere 13,600,000. And that is seeking all. The exploiters have removed the pages, so not to impair their click manifesto, not to remain visible with all the click options out there, but they are there and as Google is extremely dependent on these clicks, they will facilitate to the largest degree possible, it merely means that we are not given the actual goods, not even close and the exploitation goes on. It’s nice that Kelly-Leigh Cooper chose a subject no one knows, yet this method of visibility has been used for a much longer time than you think.

The party-lines are all about ‘filtering’, or ‘this is what our customers want’, or my favourite ‘have you checked ALL your settings?’ The issue gets diluted; it gets smeared over issues and optional things that are being worked on. Exploitation for clicks became a reality the moment people were offered to earn money through their webpages, and everyone wanted more and everyone wanted the maximum of what was possible, yet now that need for greed is transformed into need to be illuminated, maximum visibility through minimum effort, and for too long social media pushed for this to maximise their return on investment. Now that the fence is gone, we see that the facilitators no longer have a hold on anything and even as everyone points at 4Chan, social media players like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all using it to maximise exposure of self. LinkedIn gets a partial pardon as it is limiting itself to business parts for the most and whatever exploitation we see is small and tends to be focussed from merely a few and those are often stopped by LinkedIn to the larger extent, the 2 billion on Facebook are mostly not. There it is often about extreme materials filtered and censored, or largely filtered to whatever censor has its hat primed (a personal observation).

Yet it is not the censoring, it is the focus and exploitation that is a case for worry. For Kelly-Leigh Cooper the focus is what happened to Bianca Devins and it seems an extreme case, yet it is not a new issue. Collective Hub gave rise in 2015 (at https://collectivehub.com/2015/08/21st-century-shaming/) to ‘21ST Century Shaming‘, and there we see: “Cyber-bullying and online shaming seem more commonplace than ever before and Monica highlighted some recent occurrences, like the leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence; the Sony hacking scandal; and the death of Tyler Clemente, who committed suicide after his college roommate secretly filmed him with another man“, it seems that the linked “where the online humiliation of individuals results in more clicks, which means more money for the media outlet” is casually overlooked by everyone. We see how politicians are trying to bash Facebook, yet the headline from the Daily Telegraph: ‘Brit Ayia Napa rape victim tells how she ‘fainted’ after 12 Israelis ‘attacked her one-by-one for an hour’‘ gets 41,900 results in Google, they all need clicks, they all want maximised exposure and the people involved do not care how they get it, it all impacts advertisement and circulation.

When you start to look deeper, exploitation by the numbers seem to have less acceptable methods than we see used by drug dealers on a school yard, we merely have become too complacent to care. It is not until we are hit to a much larger degree that we see actions.

In 2010 Cnet gave us the 5 dangers of Facebook:

  1. Your information is being shared with third parties
  2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign
  3. Facebook ads may contain malware
  4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable
  5. Scammers are creating fake profiles

In all this we have seen the impacts, yet we have ignored a lot of it and it gets to be worse when we see a Telegraph article (at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/05/ex-google-facebook-staff-warn-social-media-dangers/) where we see the following quotes:

“The thoughts of two billion people every day are steered by 50 people in Mountain View,” said Tristan Harris, referring to the Californian headquarters of Google.

“But these companies are also caught in a zero-sum race for our finite attention, which they need to make money.

“Constantly forced to outperform their competitors, they must use increasingly persuasive techniques to keep us glued.

The Truth about Tech campaign was about tackling the “manipulation and exploitation” of some social media companies.

These quotes are often intertwined, attention brings funds, so does manipulation and exploitation, they are linked and shown as issues that are unstoppable, yet the effort to do something about it is lacking, there is circumstantial evidence that goes back to 2010 and so far almost nothing was done, again we see evidence now in the form of the death of a journalist no one cares about (Jamal Khashoggi) and the media themselves all want to ignore it because he was a journalist, yet the speculation (not evidence) that they propagated shows that he was not their concern, propagation and clicks were. The moment you realise that part of the equation is the moment you realise that the system is flawed and broken, and whilst the media is all about showing the flaws, the defects are not tended to, making matters worse for a long time to come.

By the numbers, we are not in a good frame of mind, as I stated before, there were 57,000,000 search results (in less than 60 days) proving me right.

 

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July 20, 2019 · 11:50

Simple Complexity

Less than 24 hours after we looked at Iran getting ts fingers on a ship with too many unknown variables (like Owner, origin and so on), we see them fall into their old habits by grabbing two tankers with British links. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/19/british-tanker-iran-capture-fears-stena-impero-uk-ship-latest) gives us plenty to consider. And when we are exposed to the quote: “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed to have taken the British-flagged Stena Impero into port with its 23-strong crew, and Iranian officials claimed it had infringed maritime regulations” er see the first play in a larger game. The first question we get is likely to be ‘how did it infringe maritime regulations?‘ Yet that is not what this is about. And whilst we look at both ships, all whilst for the second one we get: “The Mesdar’s Glasgow-based operator, Norbulk Shipping UK, confirmed that the vessel had been boarded by armed guards but had then been allowed to continue its voyage. “All crew are safe and well,”” we now get a new scene, one you might not have considered.

The idea hit me in the early morning 8 minutes after the first tanker (who is still missing on Iranian grounds) message came to me. The thought:

‘If you cannot fathom the simplicity of complexity where will you remain?‘

You see, most people want you to believe that they are opposites; we see studies that are about understanding the relationship between simplicity and complexity. It is not that, no matter how complex an equation, it must adhere to the simplest of rules. When we go back to the foundation of programming, some might recall one of the oldest lessons. Any program consists at the most of sequences, selections and loops. Once you get that, the simplicity of complexion becomes a point of focus. The entire Iranian matter is not about the Gibraltar tanker (although it will be voiced as such), it is only partially about pushing the opponents. In its current state it is to prove that the US and Europe are basically pussies, they will try to do whatever they can except start the war, that what this is about. All the big words that we got from the man and his administration are starting to become null and void. Even now we see: ‘Trump Says He’ll Work with U.K. on Response to Tanker Seizure‘, we also get: ‘Trump confirms he authorized Rand Paul to negotiate with Iran‘, it is all about ‘reducing’ tensions.

So at present Game, Set and Match for Iran.

This is about sending a message to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel that they stand alone, it was a simple play and the media remains clueless, merely reporting the voices and not seeing the orchestra play. It is like watching Wagner (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZP-yXsNV2E) with the sound muted, we see the dance, we see the subtitles, yet without the music the play makes little sense. That is what the media enabled in all this. Iran is playing the game a lot better than I expected them to play. There is at present a 20% chance that Europe will find some excuse to let the tanker go to Syria, yet the tanker will not be empty, it might be reduce, or what the media will quote as ‘nearly empty’, yet an oil tanker optionally holds more than oil.

And even as the Guardian gives its readers the quote: “Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary, told Sky News: “We are absolutely clear that, if this situation is not resolved quickly, there will be serious consequences.”” there will be a debate and we will find the ‘serious consequences’ laughable in the end. A second message that the support to Saudi Arabia will be scaled back. I have no idea how King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud could ever see these two players as actual allies. So far they have folded at close to the first time of pressure. Consider the evolution of the events and place them next to a phone call made 20 hours ago: “Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani urged Europe on Thursday to speed up efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal, during a phone call with French President Emmanual Macron“, consider that the tanker was already clearly on route to be intercepted, consider the timeline of events and the complexity becomes a simple equation, Iran is playing a multifaceted game to show its enemy the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that it has no western friends, it has no western allies and so far the US the UK and the EU states have been playing their part in musical chairs exactly as Iran hoped. We can see Senator Rand Paul the Republican from Kentucky as evidence in that game. Even the Washington Post is giving part of my view a few hours ago with: “Resetting the U.S.-Saudi relationship on a more honest basis is urgent now, as the danger of regional conflict grows. The latest sharp escalation came Friday as Iran seized a British tanker in the Gulf, according to a U.S. official. This provocation makes British and probably American retaliation likely — compounding the crisis further, which seems to be Iran’s goal.” (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/saudi-arabias-leader-must-reset-his-relationship-with-the-us-as-iran-tensions-soar/2019/07/19/10cd6c0c-aa46-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html), they call it resetting, I think they are creating a distance between themselves and the KSA, a bad escalation, Iran seems to have its tactic in place and even as we see the stage given as “demonstrate accountability by prosecuting Saud al-Qahtani” on the death of a journalist no one cares about, that part is proven with the inaction on Journalists kept in Turkish prisons, its flim flam theatrics that are collapsing on itself. It is a media circus propelled through UN essay writer Agnes Callamard, a stage of issues lacking actual evidence, only assumptions, circumstantial evidence at best and all trying to influx circumstance by adding the CIA report of ‘high confidence’ again not evidence.

Iran saw it for what it was, an option to push and not get any pushes back, pushing until Europe (holding a nuclear deal carrot) and America (sending Senator Paul) fold in their contributions towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I expect that at that point the Iranian attacks will intensify via both Yemen and through Hezbollah. If I am 100% correct these attacks will start again no later than August 4th, or more likely within 1-2 days after some form of agreement with Europe and America has been reached. At that point Israel will have to get very careful on their actions because all bets will be off and Europe is unlikely to do anything operational they will merely leave Israel to their own devices, there is less certainty with the US, but Iran will not care about that part in the short term.

To be honest I fear that August will be a stressed month to be certain, to what degree is not known, because it will depend on what actual orders Senator Paul has at present. I have not forgotten about the US troops, but overall, their mission statement was not given to the media, was it? We get ‘hosting U.S. troops to enhance regional security‘, yet that does not mean that they have any operational value at present . The quote I found was: “USMTM’s mission is to advise and assist the Saudi Arabian armed forces through security cooperation efforts in developing, training and sustaining capable deterrent and self-defence forces for Saudi Arabia in order to facilitate regional security“, so basically these people are consultants and trainers, which is fine, yet when the regional security is threatened, will they act in defence, or only act in self-defence? When you remember the issues that the MFO could have faced in 1982/1983, that setting is rather important. And if Iran changes the premise with their actions, how useful will these US troops be?

These are valid and important questions and the media pushed away from these parts to the largest degree. As far as I can tell, this is an evolving game of chicken with Iran walking around wearing a white table sheet saying ‘Boo!‘

The fact that both US and Europe Jumped is cause for worry (the European ministers are actually scrambling) which is a worry to the degree that we are watching a paper tiger with its teeth and claws yanked, it looks nice but in the end its a rather pointless and powerless presentation.

 

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July 19, 2019 · 10:57

Analyzing Intelligence

What is given to us is behind a veil, we accept that and at times we accept that the media does not give us everything. It is however weird when the change is slightly larger than we expected and in a direction we did not see coming.

This all started almost three days ago when Iran ended up with a tanker, the news (several sources) gave us: “Tracking data shows an oil tanker based in the United Arab Emirates traveling through the Strait of Hormuz drifted off into Iranian waters and stopped transmitting its location over two days ago, raising concerns Tuesday about its status amid heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S.” we all have issues and we all thought about the big bad Iranian doing things that are unacceptable. In light of everything that happened, this is a fair point of view to have (you know that Iranian tanker in Gibraltar).

Yet now, CNN gives us (at https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/18/middleeast/iran-tanker-intl/index.html) “Iran has seized an oil tanker it claimed was carrying 1 million litres of “smuggled fuel,” state news agency Press TV said on Thursday, before later releasing a video purporting to show the tanker.” we all want to think the worst of Iran (still a valid point of thought), yet that premise changes when we also get the following quotes: “US intelligence have been investigating what happened to the Panamanian-flagged tanker M/T RIAH. The ship-tracking website Marine Vessel Traffic has not had a current location for the tanker since July 7“, as well as “It remains unclear who owns the ship. While the initial US intelligence suggested that the tanker was UAE-owned, the United Arab Emirates has said that the tanker in question was “neither owned nor operated by the UAE. It does not carry Emirati personnel, and did not emit a distress call,” according to state-run WAM”

And now we have an actual problem

To begin with, with all the digital options, and registries we get: ‘It remains unclear who owns the ship‘ are you flipping kidding me? In a time when both the Sea of Dammam, as well as the Strait of Hormuz are an absolute tinderbox, you have no idea what is going in and out of that place, you cannot tell who owns a million litre tanker? This is not some $27,000 Glastron poaching lobsters, too small to be seen by radar, this is a piece of metal the size of 500 40 feet containers this puppy is really visible! So not only does it imply the incompetence of the CIA, it shows that there is a larger facilitation at play.

When we consider the political and intelligence pressures in the Middle East as they are presently presented; the quote: ‘The ship-tracking website Marine Vessel Traffic has not had a current location for the tanker since July 7‘ reads like an absolute joke. When we consider intelligence pressure, the CIA, DGSE, MI-6 and optionally Mossad should have had an alert within 24 hours that any tanker vanishes. More important depending on where that happened red flags should have been raised all over the place and now that we see: “US intelligence suggested that the tanker was UAE-owned, the United Arab Emirates has said that the tanker in question was “neither owned nor operated by the UAE. It does not carry Emirati personnel, and did not emit a distress call” we see a much larger failing. There are programs in place to check ships registries, there are systems that can check the moment any blip is added or removed on the website Marine Vessel Traffic (and several places alike), in addition the fact that the UAE now gives us that an apparent UAE ship is not and neither does it have UAE staff is a failing on several fronts. I personally wonder what excuse Lloyds registry gives us soon enough. We cannot fault them for not being aware of facts, but the fact that a ship of this size cannot be identified as being owned is a failing, it is a tactical one to a much larger degree.

Overreacting much?

Is it? when we see the attacks in Yemen and other places, we see a tanker that could do massive damage to any harbour and for 9 days we had no clue that something was wrong, perhaps we did not care, but consider that a tanker like this could destroy in several ways a harbour and the environment in either Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar or the UAE, yes that is a large issue. A floating fuel bomb (a slight exaggeration) with one million litres of oil is a large issue. At the top of my head, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riffa, Manama, Dammam, Kuwait city, as well as several Iranian villages, any of them could have been a target leaving any of these places in ruins for at least a decade. So yes, the intelligence community failed, moreover, at present with the presented awareness the IRGC did nothing wrong. The fact that in opposition the stage where US intelligence has nothing credible to offer is a larger failing still (yes more to come).

You are who?

When we consider that awareness of Panamanian-flagged oil tanker MT Riah could have been found in minutes is one part, the fact that the implied owner UAE is not gives us a larger doubt on intelligence data. Now data is dependent on vetting and checks and we cannot check it all, yet when we consider the registry, the owner was someone, who is not implies it was sold, so basically 40 hours ago, that part could have been verified and none of that seems to be the case (or it is classified beyond my eyes, which is weird, right?)

So for no less than 35 hours certain escalations seem to have been the case and CNN ignored that part, which might be a valid embargo, these things happen, yet the global news is propagating facts that are not and facts that are nowhere and none of it has any validation. This now sets a larger stage, in the eyes of the world Iran did nothing wrong (which does actually happen), but this floating tinderbox should have received a lot more visibility with credible and verified data, which is not the case and a lot of missing data in the last 24 hours ago implies that there is a path and that path is about something we are not informed on (which is still valid and credible) but in light of the fact that only 5 hours ago Reuters merely mulls data that has been known for well over 36 hours implies that there is a larger play and for whatever reason we see the absence of awareness by the news and those claiming to inform us leave us with the stage of “Iranian state TV aired footage of a vessel called “RIAH” that it said was seized by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards for smuggling fuel” and was all they gave us 5 hours ago, whilst I gave a dedicated list of actions that could have been followed up on by actual journalists in the three minutes it took me to digest the data available. Is that not weird?

It gets to be worse

That is seen when we look at UK Reuters. We search of all news gives us: ‘US demands Iran free seized ship, vows to protect Gulf oil lifeline, In-Depth-Reuters UK‘ a mere three hours ago, yet the article it links to is all about ‘U.S. says Navy ship ‘destroyed’ Iranian drone in Gulf‘, something here does not belong, this is not a simple error and Reuters does not usually make these kinds of blunders, this is about something more and even as we all want to point fingers at Iran, we now have a larger stage and the US loss of credibility (that famous silver suitcase) gives us more to worry about, this is a set stage of pushing awareness and whilst the Europeans are all about saving a nuclear deal and the fact that (what I predicted) the surpassed transgressions of Iran on nuclear terms are now trivialised imply that there is a theatre going on, I merely wonder who the players are an which government ends up playing the court jester.

We might think about trivialising the entire matter, but consider that the ship optionally was smuggling merely $250K in crude oil, someone is not really getting rich, not in the larger scheme of things, so what was this actually about? Is it not interesting on how the media is not all over this, especially as it could escalate gulf pressures to a much larger degree?

 

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July 15, 2019 · 11:09

It’s fine that fine

I saw he news last week and it was one sentence that made me stop on the spot, but I needed some time to digest it all (and there was news from Iran to contemplate too). Facebook has been fined, the fine (the largest ever at $5,000,000,000) is not the sneer at, but for Facebook it will be business as usual soon thereafter. The amount is nothing more than an Apple building at the edge of the Mojave desert, so it seems little, but that would be the facade that we are offered. The article I initially saw (I forgot the source) stated: “paying fine to stop further investigations“, from my point of view that this would be worth a bundle, I believe that Facebook had been stupid to some degree and super clever in other ways. Let’s face it Mark Zuckerberg is on my level of data knowledge, so he is thinking several iterations ahead of all others and he needs the FTC of his back during the start-up of 5G, whoever is there first has a larger advantage to gain momentum. All my investigations into the dumb smart device shows that, all the data I see optionally coming requires unhindered acceleration and my device was meant to suppress data drag and emphasize on facilitation. Facebook needs this, Google needs this and Huawei has the advantage at present.

The new system when operational will give them (especially with Oak/OS) a 15%-24% advantage and in data terms when we consider that 5G is set to top out at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), that difference is a lot, it is everything to enable a larger market advantage. Add to this the new devices that offer independence to SME and franchise markets, the stage would push towards smaller independent solution providers, if Google, Apple and Facebook even hesitate for one week the difference will be seen and short thereafter felt as well.

At that point every contract in the new setting will entice 3-5 others to follow as well. It is not word of mouth, it is companies watching their competitors gain advantage and that observed difference is almost exponential against mere word of mouth. And that part will also increase choices.

Yet it is not about what comes next (only partially) it is about what is now. There are two essential parts in the fine. The first is how it was a 3-2 split, with the Republicans all in favour to continue and the Democrats all eager to block. There is a polarising difference there. I am partial on the Republican side, Democrats clearly misrepresented this with the quote: “the dissent of the two Democrats on the commission because they sought stricter limits on the company” (source: NY Times). It is not about stricter limits one the company, it is the fact that the data has grown to dimensionality far beyond what governments have and it is available for purchase (to some degree). The element that we forget with the fine is what the Guardian gives us (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook-fine-ftc-privacy-violations) when we see: “Facebook will now re-examine the ways it handles user data, but the settlement will not restrict the company’s ability to share data with third parties, reports said“, it is to some degree about the ability to share data and how granular that data is set for the upcoming war that the Democrats want to wage. It has direct implications in insurance and healthcare and the Democrats have a system in mind that cannot function when all that data is available for health care scrutiny (one of many issues), yet healthcare is the most visible one. One short thought like on what drinks (alcoholic) you like and you might be seen as a higher risk and as such see your premium rise. Alcohol, tobacco and recreational pharmacy might be the most visible ones, but as the data net grows, we see a more comprehensive flag system that pushes close to 20% out of healthcare soon enough (as premiums go up and up on the risky groups) and it is not that this point is coming soon, this point has already been passed and the moment that data gets out, the ducks come home to roost on a coffin.

As the New York Times gives us the quote: “Last year, the European Union fined Google $5.1 billion for abusing its large market share in the mobile phone industry. More recently, numerous officials and lawmakers around the world have rushed to regulate Facebook” (at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/technology/facebook-ftc-fine.html), we seemingly all put it on one pile, yet that would be a massive problem and wrong too. In one side (source: the Verge) we get: “Google also made customers sign contracts forbidding them from including rival search engines on their sites alongside Google’s own. In 2009, Google allowed the inclusion of rival search engines as long as Google’s was more prominent. In 2016, around the time the EU announced its case, the company removed these terms altogether“, we can debate the correctness, but we can also accept that Google started this and took the advantage that they engineered, as in most places software cannot be patented, so it had to find another path to gain the advantage it created whilst followers re-engineered whatever Google published as soon as humanly possible. We can call it wrong (or not) but that stage is in place and it links to now and it also links to Facebook. The 5G wave is all about getting there first and at present the FTC was in a place to stop Facebook innovation and paying the fine will give larger gains to Facebook than to let investigative wave after wave continue to slow Facebook down, and when we realise that Facebook is no longer the only player on that level Facebook needed to make a tactical decision.

Still, there is a remaining issue with the Facebook data and how it becomes available and the lack of answers should remain to be a cause for concern. It comes down to the beginning when we got: “The F.T.C.’s investigation was set off by The New York Times and The Observer of London, which uncovered that the social network allowed Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm to the Trump campaign, to harvest personal information of its users. The firm used the data to build political profiles about individuals without the consent of Facebook users“, that was merely the tip of the iceberg and those who comprehend Facebook data know this to be true. The issue is not merely how the data is collected; it is what else becomes available and what else is collected. To see this we need to consider the added image.

At present there are some stages where larger contracts give people their advertising over different locations. Yet what happens when you have a complete mobile image on where what is shown? What happens when we see interactions of an advertising and where it actually works and how users react, that is the next stage and the data is ready and to some degree in that setting Facebook is more ready than others, that is the image that pushes us all and the innovation through handed data and as we can see Facebook people either do not care, or have no comprehension of all the data linked to their actions.

I took that data and more into another innovation and pushed it to a new stage, giving the collector even more data, more advertising options and optionally even more data opportunities on a larger scale. It is that shift that is all the difference between a 5% and a 9% market share for companies and now it is no longer local, the data allows for global exposure, so consider that exposure in New Delhi (India) could also expose those in Little Bombay (New Jersey) addressing a similar group at the same time, brand exposure that becomes global changing the entire setting for smaller enterprises at close to similar prices, driving advertisement bidding wars and pushing revenues for those in that area and that is merely the first part of the IP I created. Places like Facebook could get a much larger advantage and transform advantage into momentum pushing that advantage further and faster. It is only for the bigger puppies (Google, Facebook, Huawei) but they all want the largest juiciest bone to gnaw on and that is where the group of innovations push the difference, so in the end $5 billion is chicken feed under what is pushing towards the surface at this very moment, and they all want to nibble on that pie, they merely need to be the first in the game to gain advantage through momentum. As I see it IBM and Microsoft are already out of the game trying to facilitate the systems and the data and to be fair Microsoft Azure does have a larger advantage here, but IBM is not sitting still and we know that Facebook (to a lesser degree) and  Google have systems that work. The playing field is near level and the match is far from over, now with the Huawei push and Oak/OS they have opportunity to gain advantage and they can decide who to allow access to that new system, so even as Google seemingly had the advantage, the Trump trade war took that advantage away from them, so there is a second level war going on and whomever makes the larger deal with Huawei gets the gain, the issue is that Huawei hardware is more advanced and that is their advantage, the Trump trade war stopped innovation towards the US, so as such in a global setting now pushes the advantage to Europe, India and the Middle East. In this the US loses more than it comprehended in advance and it all depends on how they react to the change. It is the error in judgement on 4G and 5G is where the American disadvantage lies. In 4G is was ‘Wherever I am‘, now with 5G it becomes ‘Whenever I want it‘ and for that step the most advanced provider wins , it is not Ericsson, not Nokia, not Telstra, and not Sprint. It is Huawei that can facilitate towards ‘Whenever I want it‘ to a much larger degree at present and that wins the race, but the others are not done yet and there the Facebook data becomes a power player, an optional sledgehammer for those who know how to bash a wall and that is happening now, so when we see: “Facebook and other large tech companies are under an increasingly harsh spotlight in Washington, D.C., including at a “social media summit” at the White House on Thursday in which President Trump repeatedly bashed Silicon Valley as being unfair to conservatives. Facebook wasn’t invited to attend, nor were other tech companies. They have previously said they police their platforms without regard to political ideology“, we see a setting that we accept to some degree, yet those who are all about that “Social Media Summit” seemingly do not comprehend the application of data to the degree they need to and as such they as shooting themselves as well as their economic options in the foot, which is good news for Huawei, not that much for the other players.

I reckon that I will be proven correct within the next 12 months. When the dust settles we will see the first clear winners, I am certain that Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics shows me to be correct and it will show the first larger winner, at present in this culture of short sighted decisions Google and Huawei will have the largest advantage, but 2 other players are not out of this race yet, so plenty can happen before we see the Olympic flame light the fires and start the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

 

 

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July 13, 2019 · 12:06

Game of labels

Yes, we all have games on the mind, mind games, video games, war games, and not to forget political games and economic games. These are not games that we see on the console or computer. Games do not usually rename waters from Persian Gulf to the Saudi Straight, or perhaps we will name it the Sea of Dammam. When we see that the US is changing the stage at which they can operate, mind games is all that they are left with. They failed to political game, they bungled the economic game, they are blocking their ability to play War Games so what is left? Yup, you got it mind games is all they have left.

So see this stage we need to visit USA Today (at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/07/12/house-passes-bill-bar-trump-from-launching-iran-strike-and-end-us-support-saudi-arabia-war-in-yemen/1708612001/) where we are told ‘House approves measure to block Trump from launching military strike against Iran‘, so not only are politicians weak weasels they have now blocked their own commander in chief to do the responsible thing against Iran, it has dwindled to this. OK, let’s face it war is not a good thing, there needs to be a really good reason to start one, as wars are expensive and the house does seemingly need approval to spend large amounts of cash that is not directed at Wall Street.

And in fairness the text: “bar the Trump administration from using any federal funds for military force “in or against” the Islamic Republic, unless the president receives explicit congressional approval for a strike. It would not bar the president from responding to an attack on the U.S.“, yet it is also interesting that this is the cowardly act (as I personally see it) to cross swords with expectation and a lack of determination. Is it not funny that I quoted in ‘Be the bitch‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/07/07/be-the-bitch/) on July 7th: “when we see: “that nuclear agreement prevented war“, it never stopped it, it merely delayed it so that Iran could get ready and that part has been shown in several ways over the last three years alone, now that the pressure is growing we need to consider that no one wants a war, but Iran made it impossible to avoid and as they make tally of all who are willing to become the bitch by not acting, that is how we might lose this upcoming war, not merely by inaction of them, but the mere fact that these politicians are willing to grab their ankles and let happen what would happen next. They will call it: “We have reached an immediate cease fire so that a diplomatic agreement can be drawn” that will be the second sign that the war was won by Iran“, we now see this very scenario unfold. It is seen with the additional text: “It would not bar the president from responding to an attack on the U.S.” We all know that a direct attack on America is most unlikely, but this also means that America will only come to the aid of the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia AFTER Congress approves it and there is absolutely no guarantee that Wall Street will give approval at that point.

It is no longer a mere expectation, less than 12 hours ago Newsweek got us: ‘Iran launches strikes in Iraq and responds to Israel;s threat as it vows to defend itself against any attack‘, and here we see: “The Revolutionary Guards announced Friday that they conducted strikes against anti-Iranian government insurgents operating along the Iraqi border in the Kurdistan region“, Iran is lashing out, in this particular case to appease their Turkish ally (they always enjoy Kurdish slaughter). When we add the pressure of the Iranian tanker, as well as the threats between Iran and Israel, we see a much larger stage evolving, and the US, just like the stage of the Syrian war was unable to accomplish anything; they merely pulled support from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a nation that they call an ally. The question is that we do not know who states it, who means it and who ignores it. That is the stage that the US Senate, the House of Representatives, the presidential administration and Wall Street are in, like it is an episode of Musical Chairs, and we cannot tell which party takes on which pose, they merely refer to it as: ‘an extremely complex situation‘.

Then we get to the Washington Post, who gives us: ‘Iran’s nuclear program seems to be accelerating. Will Saudi Arabia take a similar path?‘ (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/12/irans-nuclear-weapons-program-seems-be-accelerating-will-saudi-arabia-take-similar-path), here we see the escalation in another way. With the direct headline ‘In a multipolar world, curbing nuclear transfers becomes more difficult‘, we merely see one side. So even as we see: “Riyadh has vowed to match Iran’s nuclear capabilities, including the ability to enrich uranium and acquire nuclear weapons if Tehran gets the bomb. My research, recently published in International Security, explains how Riyadh’s ability to play nuclear suppliers off against one another can increase its chances of securing nuclear technology.” There is no denying this, and that is only when we look at that side. You merely have to look back towards 2004 and remember “Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer (A.Q.) Khan, then famous for his role in developing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, confessed on live television to having illegally proliferated nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea over the course of decades. Today Khan is enjoying a resurrection at home, where he is again touted as the “Mohsin e-Pakistan,” or the savior of Pakistan” to consider that this might already have happened. Pakistan has ties to Saudi Arabia. The fact that this is largely in a stage where we see: “Wouldn’t the United States and other countries interested in stopping proliferation block Riyadh’s access to sensitive nuclear transfers, such as enrichment technology?” We see the wrong question, the stage is that America is no longer a significant super power, it is too broke, it is too much bankrupt. That gave Russia an edge and more important, other players are no longer heeding America’s word, it becomes simple for them when the infighting in America is doing most of the work for them, so seemingly America has become really good at trivialising itself as a world power. In all this (from recent events) America failed twice, it did not act when the Syrian issues were playing, so as the world saw the Ghouta chemical attack unfold on 21st August 2013, the world saw the Obama Administration sit by and do nothing, even as there had been decades of messages that a chemical attack is a red line that was not to be passed, Someone in Syria passed it and nothing was done. Again we see failure now under the Trump administration that when the calls for Yemen were needed, the US pulled away and the media set the stage for this war to continue for at least 3 years more costing the lives of hundreds of thousands. Two direct failures in the last 7 years and when someone is asking others on why the USA is not taken seriously, did you actually expect a serious response?

So when the Washington Post gives us: “As Matthew Fuhrmann explained here in the Monkey Cage, there remains debate over whether peaceful nuclear technology transfers lead to proliferation — but the risk of proliferation is high in the Saudi case“, again the stage is miscommunicated. It is not about the Saudi case, it is about the not stopping Iran case. For over 2 years we have seen and heard spokespeople from the KSA state that they have no interest in nuclear technology as long as Iran does not move forward on where they are. So now that the nuclear pact has collapsed and as Europe and America do not do anything after 2+ violations by Iran, Saudi Arabia does not really have any options left.

In all these events Iran was clearly the powder keg and the two larger players are unwilling to act. As I personally see it, the US has benefit to a lack of stability in the Middle East (outside of Iran) and is now courting Qatar to keep in the game, we see all the threats by Iran and the media is always good to make sure that we all hear the threats made (but little else) and that is now pushing for a very different stage. With the UK sending a second warship into the Sea of Dammam, escalation risks go up, not down.

The third problem is not merely the players that are out and about, when this goes south the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain will have little options left, they will be caught in the middle, all because certain players are unwilling (or disallowed) to make the hard calls. Finally there is the last piece, there is Hezbollah. We see all kinds of statement in the last few hours and they are merely that, mere statements. Yet, when Iran does make a move how will Hezbollah act? The statement that they gave 6 hours ago with ‘Hezbollah can target all of Israel with it’s missiles‘, might be true, but is it Hezbollah or Iran doing the work? The missiles are all Iranian, the knowledge to strike more precise came from IRGC instructors, the (upgraded) hardware is also covered in Iranian fingerprints. So when Hezbollah does make a move, there will be consequences and at that point the US and Europe will have no cause, no call and no right to make some lame humanitarian statement. They left this mess unattended for too long, so whatever Israel decides should be regarded as acceptable.

I still believe that the strikes that come will be 79.5% against Israel, 19.5% against Saudi Arabia and 1% against both. The Houthis are losing more and more options, Hezbollah is nowhere near ready to face two armies and Iran needs to play the game very carefully, because even as the US and Europe are not acting, there is every chance that Israel and Saudi Arabia can make short work of Iran, the Iranian threats that we have seen over the last few hours (the usual) as well as mention of a special weapon give rise that they took a little too much on their for and striking now might be the only way to defuse a nasty situation.

It is time to push back to Iran and if the politicians can’t make it work then we must make it work, so my first action to diffuse the situation is not to strike with weapons (I only have a steak slicer and a cricket bat at home at present), is to make war through mind games. I call for a change on the map; we rename the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Dammam.

It trivialises Persia and therefor Iran, when we take away the old naming mistakes, we get to trivialise Iran to a lager degree, when they cannot counter they will need to push harder or fold the hand. I saw that they were only holding a two and a seven in this poker match and there is not a lot you can do with that, to win you need to get really lucky or bluff like a god and they are unable to do the second.

So I scored an easy victory over Iran with the greatest of ease and without firing a bullet in real life, but we can keep that option for later. So take a look at the city of Dammam, with the Sea of Dammam to the right, or consider my second option below, I did made a mention of video games in the beginning and we can all bluff, we can optionally argue that bluffing is all that Iran has left, but that is a story for another day. In my case of bluff I went up against my cold war adversary the Russians (always a decent opponent to cross, and we can’t have Alexander Bortnikov feeling too relaxed in all this, can we?)

 

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