Category Archives: Politics

July 28, 2022 · 19:41

I asked Andy Jassy for $50M

It seems odd but it is just like ‘Biden adviser: Saudi Arabia and UAE have “more to give” on oil production’ and the answer on both settings is ‘Why?’ You see I have the answer for Andy Jassy, but the response could be ‘And?’ and in this the Biden Adviser should be prepared. For the longest time the media and others they ALL avoided the number one question.

If the US has such a shortage, why export 78% crude oil? And no one looks at that. They all go with the setting that the Middle East should export oil cheap. But why would they do this? In my case I have IP bundles, one could sell well over 50M subscriptions, one bundle has the ability to set an income of $2B-$3B (some risks are involved), and all that for $50M and 10% of the IP and sales value, a good deal, but the US is not offering anything like that to either Saudi Arabia or the UAE, are they?

So when I read “McGurk said oil prices have already gone down after Saudi Arabia, as the leader of OPEC+, took initial steps to increase production several weeks ago, the sources said. McGurk added that the Saudis and the Emiratis “have more to give” when it comes to oil production.” In this my question to White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk would be “What have you done for them?” Why would they sacrifice $324 million a day for empty gestures? You need to come across in this case, if not, they can just wait and even reduce their production by 1 million barrels a day and wait for prices to go nuts. We see all these empty articles (at https://www.axios.com/2022/07/27/saudi-uae-oil-production-biden-gas-prices) with think-tanks and Ukraine references, but Russia has its own oil production, so the setting is a little empty. And until the US really makes an impression on Saudi Arabia showing that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is regarded as a real ally, the August 3rd talks might not have any results. And in this Saudi Arabia and the UAE still have the trump card question: “What are you doing about the US export of crude oil?” It is the question no one in the White House wants to face in public and the media have been circumventing that question for a little too long. Because the US has every right to demand reduced export for local considerations, but that is not likely to happen is it? So why not import additional oil at $109 per barrel? Too expensive? Why is that? That is the Brent Crude price, so what is stopping them? I reckon you know the answer to that and both the UAE and the KSA have handed over billions in oil for a mere empty hand, with gestures and no actions, doubt that? Consider Yemen and rethink that position. The USA has had the light touch for too long and now that the gloves come off we see the cry stories and the media is every bit as guilty here.

 So whilst we think it is all the fault of the middle east, consider who gave us this stage and consider that the US has had every bit of benefit for far too long and the actual owners of the oil are now setting the stage and the White House is not ready for that game, not in the slightest.

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July 21, 2022 · 22:47

Stunting into stupidity

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

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

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

I will let you ponder that part of the equation.

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July 18, 2022 · 20:47

For those not seeing the oil field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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July 17, 2022 · 22:39

The media gets it this wrong?

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

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

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

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July 11, 2022 · 18:52

Meme by Elon Musk

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

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

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

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

Meme by @ElonMusk

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July 9, 2022 · 22:47

Today in the price is right

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

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

 

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July 8, 2022 · 23:10

Timing is not always a good thing

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

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

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

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July 8, 2022 · 18:06

A gamer darkly

That is what we are at times, a dark player in a field of poppies trying to remember where we were in the first place. It is not some riddle, at times most of us (including me) are clueless on where we go, yet we know we need to get there. It drove Ubisoft to fame, and even now as Ubisoft becomes less and less relevant to the gamers of today players like Guerrilla take over with their Horizon games. What was the world of Mass Effect and Assassins Creed became the world of Elden ring, Horizon and the heroin Eloy. Tomorrow it seems to be a stage of the last Horizon part, Hogwarts Legacy and Gotham Knights. And it is important that we address ‘seems to be’. You see, I have heralded moves to the streamers and there is every indication That they did not listen and Tencent did. You see, even as some state “Chinese tech giant Tencent is apparently planning to launch its own handheld gaming console, going by a patent spotted recently. (2021)” I do not think that people have any idea what gamers are about to get. You see this looks like a handheld Switch lookalike, but it isn’t. 

Jumping to the past
In 1989 Astral Software launched Archipelago. The game was decent enough, the graphics were not the greatest but with 1000 levels there was enough fun for everyone and in the end there was. Some called it ““one of the most original games I’ve seen, both in gameplay and in original concept”, with an “odd and eerie setting that works despite an eminently forgettable scenario”” Now consider that this was a game that was less than 1MB. Now reset that game with todays graphics, make it an offline game and when you consider that this was originally a 92% game, consider that this game (and well over a dozen others) could end up being 88%+ games. Now all the other streamers have a problem. They relied on ‘has-been’ Ubisoft to cater to their needs. A player that could not keep its eyes on the price and with what we were given this week

We now have two streamers that need to adjust image, adjust course on their streamers, or they will be surpassed by Tencent. Another field here China ends up getting the mustard (my 50 million console idea is still safe, I checked). And now that the facts are slowly seeping, I wonder what Netflix will do. Microsoft is not a player in this (merely a marketing idea), and if Tencent makes at least two steps in the direction I expect, before the end of this year Google Stadia will be a forgone lost solution to a direction gamers are not interested in, that leaves the Amazon Luna, it has options, but Tencent is seemingly directed into a field to capture the heart of gamers, something the others needed to have done long ago.

Even as Google is seemingly using the media to give us quotes like “After debuting to middling reviews, it had to suffer through a slowly growing library, a limited user base and the shuttering of its first-party studios. But Stadia is still alive and kicking, and Google intends to prove it next week.” They are in more trouble than they think, they relied on Ubisoft to solve their issue, but Ubisoft only tries to solve its own issues and now the earlier article makes more sense. Techspot gives us “In a nutshell: Ubisoft will decommission the servers of 15 games in the next two months, including some of the most popular entries in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Most of these titles are about a decade old, so there are likely not that many people still playing the multiplayer components. However, users also won’t be able to download DLCs they previously bought for these games.” Gamers hate to loose parts, including DLC’s, and for the “so there are likely not that many people still playing the multiplayer components” could be translated into a stage where the 2-3 games per server idea was cast aside. Now, in many cases I do not care about the online parts, but Ubisoft made it part of the game (to embrace people), and now when revenue is king players are pushed out. Gamers will see this as a betrayal. In a time when Tencent is looking for gamers to push its IP forward, Ubisoft plays right into their hands and if they considered what I put online, gamers will get dozens of golden oldies. They will feel catered to and that seals the fate of Ubisoft and optionally Google too. They decided not to develop games and now that decision will bite them. 

We now get a new pool and the streamers (seemingly) are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Tencent. They will vie for a slice of the entire pie that includes Sony and Nintendo. These two will see the impact, but will not lose players, if anything these players will have a streamer on the side and that is where Tencent becomes really visible, over time they could get a much bigger slice of the $200,000,000,000 that is stated to be the pie of next year. Yes, we know that a lot of it will go to mobile games and that is exactly where Tencent will see the profit, catering to gamers, catering to online players, mobile gamers and their console can store it all, they played a beautiful hand. I personally hope that Amazon gets the push it needs, I do not care either way whether Tencent gets it, as long as Microsoft does not. There should not be any award for stupidity, should there be?

A stage I emphasised over two years ago and it is coming to fruition in the next 12 months. Although to be honest, I merely saw Microsoft as the loser and I did not see Tencent coming two years ago, now they are a much larger concern to the other players. But perhaps the Tencent console will be seen as spy equipment by the CIA, they still haven’t presented any real evidence on Huawei, so why should we expect to see any on Tencent?

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July 7, 2022 · 19:44

Interestingly unknown

It was the BBC that got me here. Their article ‘Arabs believe economy is weak under democracy’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-62001426) has a few debatable sides, but these debates come from a preset mind that did not have access to all the evidence (read: raw data). Yes, that would be my mind, but the setting is interesting. And the mental race get tarted with “Michael Robbins, director of Arab Barometer, a research network based at Princeton University which worked with universities and polling organisations in the Middle East and North Africa to conduct the survey between late 2021 and Spring 2022, says there has been a regional shift in views on democracy since the last survey in 2018/19.” And when we get to ‘Rise in people who agree the economy is weak under a democracy’ we see that nearly all of them went up, only Morocco remains under 50%, the rest is higher and Iraq gets up to nearly 75%. It is interesting that a question ‘This country needs a leader who can bend the rules to get things done’ There too Morocco is in a doubt, but so are the Palestinian territories, the rest is largely in favour of that statement. In most cases, the economic challenges are on most minds and that makes sense. Only in Tunisia, Iraq and Libya is corruption a much larger fish than other nations. It is when we get to the question ‘More than one in three people ran out of money to buy more food’, the question seems trivial, but the fact that it is 68% in Egypt seems OK, it is the fact that the same question scores below 50% in Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, and Palestinian Territories when we see the News from all kinds of sources the fact that food prices and hunger is not on the forefront in at least 2 nations comes across as weird to me, yet as I stated. I never saw the raw data and these results should be scrutinised. The lack of an N is several charts give rise to debate, Also, it seems nice to see percentages, but if Jordan has an N of 3500 and Libya has an N of 12500, the setting becomes slightly warped and weighting data is dangerous, especially when you compare different groups. There is a lot more, but that is not up for discussion without seeing the raw data and the complete report. But I am speaking too soon, you see at the end we see “The project interviewed 22,765 people face-to-face in nine countries and the Palestinian territories” yet the one thing I do not see it that the cultural stage towards government changes per region. You see Tunisia, I see Kibili, Sfax and Kef. And we can do that for each of the nations. Now it is possible that the Arab Barometer took all that in account, but I cannot tell at present and lets be clear. I am not attacking the article, or the results. I like the setting, but at all times I keep a skeptical mind awake. The setting that clearly shows the desire for strong leaders is nothing against a democracy, it is that democratic nations have largely shown nothing more than indecisiveness and ‘corporate corruption’ to coin a phrase. There is a lot more going on and the fact that the media is part of the problem is also a debatable setting in all this and the Arab nations have seen too much of that too, but that too is a debatable side in all this. In the end, the article is good reading and it does refer to sources and methodology. If only the BBC had thought a few matters through and added a few more parts, but as I stated, these thoughts are debatable, so I am putting myself under similar scrutiny, because I would hate to judge anyone on items that seem incomplete. And it is one of the final parts “It is of Arab world opinion, so does not include Iran, Israel or Turkey, though it does include the Palestinian territories. Most countries in the region are included but several Gulf governments refused full and fair access to the survey. The Kuwait and Algeria results came in too late to include in the BBC Arabic coverage. Syria could not be included due to the difficulty of access.” So the question is raised with “several Gulf governments refused full and fair access to the survey” Did that include Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen? Yemen might be excluded for a few natural reasons, but the others? 

A setting that requires scrutiny, because the Arab voice with 6 missing voices? It does not make the other views invalid, merely debatable and optionally one sided as the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia are Monarchies, but that is merely my view on the matter.

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July 5, 2022 · 01:50

Everything must go

Yes, it is a term we see in fire sales and in all all kind of desperate needs. But lucky for the Ukraine there is a solution. After the war, the EU and US take possession of EVERYTHING in the hermitage. It might not be enough, but it should be enough to cover well over 50%, and the Russians could redecorate it for all the oligarchs who are not that welcome in Europe or the US. To some degree I feel for them, because there is no way that they were all aware, or all agree what is going on, and after they lost everything (thanks to Putin), they will need to stay somewhere and it better looks nice, so the Hermitage is a decent solution. It will be a bit barren after we take everything from it, but there are a few other museums, as such the Hermitage could be decently decorated as a refuge for oligarchs. If there is one oligarch I feel for, it would be Roman Abramovich. I do not know the man, but he was nuts about his Chelsea team. I personally do not care about football, so I cannot relate, but I can relate to loss of something a person worked on for that long. He became owner in 2003, and in that time the club won 18 major trophies, that is some achievement, you cannot deny that and a person that vested into a football club has his minds far away from the war machine of Putin. I reckon many will disagree with me, but that is how I see it. And his actions on keeping the club safe were highly commendable. 

It needs to be said, we cannot rule out all oligarchs, but if there would be even one, this man would be it. And this also relates to what comes next, the Russians might think that this is over, that this is going their way, but the EU and US are ready for them now, they are willing to take over Saint Petersburg as a breach for Russia. As we can see the Russians who were supposed to have the largest and most powerful army (they would be in first or second position) Now they are nowhere near that and as such Russia is about to face an army a lot stronger and better trained than the Ukrainian one. They were 21st on the military power list and they stopped and fought back an army a lot stronger than them. Now that the damage is all over the place, they have no reserves left for NATO making it also a very dangerous stage. It reminds me of the cornered cat and the weird jumps they will make. The problem is that Russia is also a nuclear state and even as they know that it will be the last move they ever make, Russia will not handover the treasures of the Hermitage, they are already in a stage of stealing grain, as such we will see that their position is sliding from bad to disastrous. And when you consider that the Hermitage has 3 million art pieces from all kinds of era’s, the idea that 2,755 billionaires would want to buy a piece of art (at discount) is not to be disregarded. And now as the BBC gives us “We need $750bn to rebuild country – Ukraine”, is see a simple sum. If all these billionaires spend $345 million, we end up with $963 billion. Solving the repair issues. I reckon that the costs will increase, so if we could get the upper echelon of these billionaires spend twice or three times that amount (with a little more discount) Ukraine would be in a better place. There is still all the confiscated oligarch materials, but I am actually not sure if that will all go the proper way. Some of this stuff is properly registered in trusts, so we might not get that much from that group. Yes, I heard all the noise, but in the end legal settings prevail and as such some of these oligarchs have their stuff securely set in paperwork. As such, I thought out of the box and I am setting the stage of confiscating 3 million pieces of art from ONE place. I do not think that anyone else had thought of that, or at least not in places I read materials. 

Russia has a few more places like that, but the Hermitage is perhaps the most famous one of them all. So let the bidding begin. I want an omelette tomorrow, So I am bidding $0.35 per faberge egg, 6 eggs make an omelette, so where would I deposit the $2.10 (plus shipping and handling)? You think that this is a joke, and it would be a bad one. I reckon that the ‘true’ friends of Putin are securing their hold on these art pieces even now as I am typing this. In the end, in 2023, what do you think the Russian state will be worth when new years day 2023 comes calling? You think it is long, but it is a mere 25 weeks away and at present the Ukrainian war has lasted now almost 4.5 months is nowhere near one, yet the Russian machine is running out of generals, colonels, fuel and a few other items. What do you think will happen when NATO knocks on the door at the border of Poland and Belarus. I reckon that they will not put Finland in a bind by going there to invade Saint-Petersburg, but the NATO navy could sail straight through to Saint Petersburg and use it as a beachhead (whilst confiscating the art in the Hermitage). These are pure speculations, I have absolutely no data supporting this, but I would take that route. Belarus will have to put up or shut up and from there it becomes a simple race to Moscow. With the Russians having so much damage, the rest of their equipment might not in a much better state. Just a thought!

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