January 15, 2020 · 12:08

Devil in the details

We all make mistakes at time, the issue is not that we make mistakes, the issue is on how to clear the error in question, that is always how I saw work, we (without question) try to work without error, the people that tell you that they never made a mistake are usually lying to you. Some hide it, some clean it up before it is noticed, these are merely two types, but in honesty, who would you prefer to be working for your company (or the company you work in)? So when I got wind of ‘UK concealed failure to alert EU over 75,000 criminal convictions‘, I had to take a step back, you see, this is not some failure, this is not some sall bungle, the quote we are give is “The police national computer error, revealed in the minutes of a meeting at the criminal records office, went undetected for five years, during which one in three alerts on offenders – potentially including murderers and rapists – were not sent to EU member states” and as I see it it is not some small mistake, a stem like this does not work sometimes, it does not work or it works always. This leaves me to think that issues were filtered, optionally on purpose giving out a larger concern when we see “It’s an ongoing glitch that we need to fix. We are working towards getting that done“, I personally refuse to believe that this was a glitch, this was orchestration set to pass as a glitch, the question is why and when we see “There is still uncertainty whether historical DAFs [daily activity file], received from the Home Office, are going to be sent out to counties (sic) as there is a reputational risk to the UK.“

In this the Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott gives us “It is bad enough to have made serious errors in relation to sharing information on criminals, but it seems that there was also an attempt at a cover-up. Ministers need to come clean. When did they know about these failures, why did they not make them public, and how are they going to prevent any repetition? A full, urgent investigation is needed.” In this situations she is almost right, I believe that there was a ‘cover-up‘, I merely think it ended up on a ministers plate and that person reacted poorly to the situation. And with ‘how are they going to prevent any repetition‘ we see a much larger failing. From my point of view the system was designed or was set up to optionally hide certain elements, yet the reason behind this is unclear. For some reason I believe that at least part of the reason is ‘fear of damaging Britain’s reputation‘, yet not in the way that this is shown in the article. When you look at the statistical numbers all over the field, consider that the crime numbers were supposed to be 30% (the one in three) higher (if every conviction based on merely one crime), what then? 

The Labour party would blame it all on austerity, yet the truth is (as I personally see it) much more refined. We have been in denial of what any government needs to do and we in turn do not try the criminal path, and let’s face it, we saw other news that allows to take care of the shortage of police officers. 

As issues like we see with Netflix are not resolved, and as another article gives us “This research shows that Netflix is ripping off our public services by channelling profits through tax havens even though it appears to have employees, property, and a substantial customer base in the UK,” yet linked to this is “the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts will make just £30m each from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Netflix“, so basically 5 companies see the light of optional international passing their revenue, avoiding well over £1,000,000,000 in tax payments, do you not think that this would have lowered austerity (and improved police visibility)? So when we see a group of losers wrongfully blame a tennis player for the environment, what if we ask the people in the UK all to renounce their Netflix subscription? Let’s not forget we have Disney Plus now (as well as Stan and a few others), I wonder how that massive hit will go over with Netflix. After that we start taking care of Amazon, Facebook and Google, the other four will actually be much harder to deal with, but Netflix is not, there are alternatives and the people protecting Netflix (and others) better realise that we are all about redistributing that one billions and taking their £ 350,000,000 profit away from them without any hesitation. 

Yet I digress, it is the crime statistics that might go out of whack, optionally impacting tourism if they had been released. Now we need to consider that not all crimes are alike, yet the article gives us: “including murderers and rapists – were not sent to EU member states” and that statement surprised me, not because of those two, but because the number of armed robbery convictions would more than likely be much higher. We also do not know what happened to these people after their sentence, so there is the immigration and deportation part to consider as well. 

Yes, the article gives a certain lack (not judging), mainly because the start gives us ‘the Guardian can reveal‘, implying that this article had a pushed deadline to be first, as such the follow up in this matter would be interesting to read, I reckon that in the near future the Guardian would have a full page (or two) on this matter. So even if we had last may “There is a nervousness from Home Office around sending the historical notifications out dating back to 2012 due to the reputational impact this could have“, I personally believe that the Office for National Statistics (GOV.UK) has a much bigger problem in their near future, when the numbers going back to 2012, the interpretation of these numbers will suddenly get a very different story to content with. You might remember the sort of researchers that make a nice story when they get statistics and top line results. Their “when we look at these numbers, we can clearly see” and likeminded responses. When the results are a part of the 30% of convictions off, ‘we can clearly see‘ becomes an entirely different matter in this situation. 

It is the setting of “historical backlog of 75,000 notifications” and we see that, but not before we consider the National Crime Statistics site, which gave us a few parts we need to consider “4% decrease in police recorded homicide offences (from 728 to 701 offences)” for Homicide, “11% increase in police recorded robbery offences (to 85,736 offences)” for Robbery, and “According to the CSEW, there was no change in the proportion of adults who experienced sexual assaults in the year ending March 2019 (2.9%)” for sexual assaults which is up to March 2019. Now consider the fact that (optionally) there was no decrease in homicide, optionally a small increase, that the robbery numbers are higher than now and that sexual assaults did not stay the same, they went up. This would change the story for the Police department to some degree (not their fault) and the stage we see now that the investments required would change a whole lot because of the non registered foreigner effort. You see, I believe that the situation is less positive. I believe that “UK has failed to pass on the details of 75,000 convictions of foreign criminals to their home EU countries” has a much larger impact. In my mind there is no way that people will avoid looking at the statistics when 75,000 conviction cases are missing. I believe that there is a larger (speculated) play and it is not merely my point of view. When we look (at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/focusonpropertycrime/yearendingmarch2016), we see again and again “theft from the person offences along with cash or foreign currency and mobile phones“, when we consider ‘foreign currency‘, yet why are these merely crimes by Brits? and why is it ‘cash or foreign currency‘? I believe that there has been a trend and even as 75,000 convictions do not add up against some of the numbers, but when we see “Crimes recorded by the police show a 7% rise (539,767 offences) in criminal damage and arson offences“, we see that 75,000 convicted criminals are more likely than not to be a much larger impact on the numbers and now we see correlation and optional co-variant impacts on some of the crime, yet even as a co-variant is not always a good thing, we optionally now see a larger impact and in this instance can the government give clear answers on whether these 75,000 criminal convictions are part of these numbers? I have reason to believe (I have no evidence) that this might not be the case. It is a larger setting and I personally believe that it was not merely a play to make the foreign governments not aware, it was merely a side effect. 

You see, if that was not the case, the issue of ‘foreigners and crime‘ would have had a much larger hit and a lot sooner, a total of 75,000 might force the Home office to take a different stance, one that costs money. It is my personal believe that there are elements missing. Not due to the Guardian of course, because that would take a lot longer to investigate and it is more likely that not that the Guardian and the Independent will be all over this when the impact of damage is seen to a larger degree (the size of larger remains debatable). 

Consider these statements:

  • In contrast a much lower number of adults had been a victim of theft from the person (only 7 in 1,000 adults) or robbery (3 in 1,000 adults)
  • Around 3 in 50 children aged 10 to 15 had been a victim of personal theft and around 1 in 50 had been a victim of criminal damage to personal property

Now consider the (optional and speculated) impact of the statements after the 75,000 convictions are considered

  • In contrast a lower number of adults had been a victim of theft from the person (only 9 in 1,000 adults) or robbery (5 in 1,000 adults)
  • Around 4 in 50 children aged 10 to 15 had been a victim of personal theft and around 3 in 50 had been a victim of criminal damage to personal property

The shift seems small, yet still visible, the fact that the damage to children is now (mind you speculated) approaching 10% is an actual much larger setting then before, its impact would constitute the need for the government to change its position on crime and support a different stance on crime related issues from police to prison it would impact the government budget to a much larger degree. Now, we need to remember that this is speculated and the impact of data is not clear at present, yet I remain that ‘one in three alerts on offenders – potentially including murderers and rapists – were not sent to EU member states‘ feels wrong, a system fails or works, it does not filter, this all feels like orchestration, yet the stage is not clearly set. The Daily Mail was off course a little more colourful with “More than 2,000 foreign killers, paedophiles and rapists are waved into the UK without criminal records checks as police arrest TWO every day” yet there is still no (clear) information on how the numbers impact, as I am personally not convinced that this was merely one system, as the shift in the department of corrections would unbalance the system with numbers that did not match the Home office and as such the issue would have been seen well within the 5 years it took now.

Could I be wrong?

Of course, the issue of data is largely unseen which give optional strength to my speculation, and we need to be clear, I am speculating on the matter, yet the issue is based on a larger issue, a clear IT issue, until there is a clear open presentation on WHY one in three did not make it into the register, I feel that I am correct. However, when we consider the sources that the UK has, I truly believe that this could not be contained to merely one segment, and that is my personal view on the matter. As such I believe the 75,000 will have impacted numbers all over the stage, the foreign policy part being the one that (finally) exposed it finally after 5 years.

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January 14, 2020 · 12:27

The cornered bully

We all have these moments, when we have to speak out against dopey (the bully in the corner) but the boss we report to is a spineless sack of shit and he will not do anything, more importantly he seems to be heralding the voice of the bully like he has credibility. So there we are, the bully (America), the spineless boss (pretty much most nations in the EU and the Commonwealth) and the people ready to speak out, the IT experts who are muzzled by bosses, because they are afraid to start a fight.

That is the setting that the Guardian introduces us to with ‘Using Huawei in UK 5G networks would be ‘madness’, US says‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/13/using-huawei-in-uk-5g-networks-would-be-madness-us-says). We have seen it before, the US is now getting more and more afraid of the billions being missed out on and they are going full throttle with the fear mongering. Even as we see “Matt Pottinger, presented an incendiary dossier which they said featured new evidence of the security risks of relying on Huawei technology in future phone networks“, we get introduced to the Gerbil-in-the-groceries Matt Pottinger the new flagship for presenting ‘news’ just like Colin Powell with his Silver briefcase. You see, I am not afraid to face that music, neither are the hundreds of intrusion experts who have been unable to validate the wild fantasies of America, America took the VHS example and is trying to steer the ships of nations and now they are boasting an unwillingness to share intelligence. This is nice, but in the end, the Intelligence from the US is backdated and there is every chance that it is as false as any news they spread. The entire bully network comes to blows when we see “The intense and public lobbying presents an immediate headache for Boris Johnson“, I also do not disregard “having been repeatedly advised by the UK’s security establishment that any security risks can be contained“, this is equally important, because Alex Younger who is the official Big Boss at MI-6 stated that infrastructure this important should not leave British hands, this is not a case of Huawei being a danger, it is a national policy and that is fine, I would even state that this gives the UK and option to buy the Huawei technology, rip it apart, set it under a loop and optionally give BT a chance to become a contender, US firms will jump at that opportunity, to have Huawei technology without the Huawei fear. Let’s face it, Huawei offered that solution to the US last year, but there is a larger concern and for the US it is not really spying, it is the fear where data will end and there are several new players all non-American whilst the American data gatherers are tapped out (financially), so the US is bullying all others to wait hoping that Silicon Valley will come with an American solution that is actually real 5G, all whilst it is not coming and at present all those who delay are losing momentum and twice the amount of time on the 5G path, so any delay up to a year means a 2 year delay and they all know that you are either better (the US is not), you are first (the US can not) or you cheat (the only path the US has at present). 

This all gives us two distinct realities, the first is that for the first time the US is not the first at the top in technology, a shock they have a hard time surpassing and they are not the only 5G company, they are really not ready for real 5G, you see in my past blogs I showed that whatever they call 5G is really not 5G, nowhere near, not at those speeds. The Guardian also gives us “Ahead of the UK decision the head of MI5, Andrew Parker, said over the weekend that he saw “no reason to think” that using Huawei technology should threaten intelligence sharing with the US“, Mr Parker is right, but mainly because the quality of US intelligence is seemingly fading, they are losing sources all over the Middle East and they have too little in the Far East, as such we lose out on a source that is mostly redundant. Mr Parker’s assertion is in opposition to “a senior US official who was part of the delegation, who said: “Congress has made it clear they will want an evaluation of our intelligence sharing.”“, two parts are shown here, the fact that the bullying continue and the fact that this ‘senior US official‘ is left nameless, just like the fact that this matter is on the desk of a deputy national security advisor. In the age where America goes to vote next year, no one wants to burn their fingers and their career on this, and when the truth comes out (and it will) their careers are gone in the international field and the national field no longer has the juicy options it once had. 

When we get to “The officials, who had flown in specially from the US, would not spell out what the “relatively recent information” that they had shared with their UK counterparts was“, it is all a load of HogWash (American expression), you see, If there was any actual danger the US would spread it like a wildfire to EVERY security IT Consultant, but they did not and the news is flat on that. What we do get is ‘Facebook and Google are as much of a threat as Huawei‘ (source: Marketwatch) where we see “Facebook is already undermining the democratic process, including in the U.S. itself, where the platform has facilitated foreign interference in elections.

 

In addition, Facebook has fueled division and fear, and refused to remove hate speech, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic posts. The platform has been described as a “megaphone for hate” against Muslims, and it is accused of facilitating a genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar. For these reasons, the British actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen recently called Facebook “the greatest propaganda machine in history.”” This is true but it is only he side effect of the matter, the real issue is not there it is seen in “these threats already exist, because Facebook (which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp) and Google (which owns YouTube) have an astonishingly comprehensive range of data about their users — their location, contacts, messages, photos, downloads, searches, preferences, purchases, and much else” It is not the porridge, it is the spoon, the data is everything and as the data no longer merely flow to America, but it will flow to China as well (via aps and so on) in a larger growing slice it will no longer flow to the US, that is the real fear, it will impact all firms relying on data and that is the real ticket and it will have an impact sizing up to billions of dollars every year, it is a larger impact as data becomes the new currency. I will go as far as setting the stage that the IP I had designed will impact it even further for the globally based 400 million small business firms. Even as America sneers at the little guy, they are the foundation of data, not Google and not Facebook, they are merely the facilitators not the creators. That reality is now up for grabs in more than one way. If it was really all about security, the news would have picked up to a much larger degree to ‘Cisco critical bugs: Nexus data center switch software needs patching now‘ with the added text “Cisco has disclosed a dozen bugs affecting its Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) software, including three critical authentication-bypass bugs that expose enterprise customers to remote attacks” (source: ZDNet), this is not the first time, I gave more info months ago when at least one such an issue woke up and whilst all are screaming about 5G security and feigned Chinese values, they all ignore the Elephant in the room (Cisco), I do believe that it was an honest mistake, there was no ill practice at work (from the side of Cisco), but there is a larger concern and those security advisors connected to the Oval office do not seem to care (or optionally merely not comprehend), it is a larger issue that is impacting the Fortune 500, but the press is blind to it. In support there is also ‘A Cisco Router Bug Has Massive Global Implications‘ (source: Wired) with the added information “The devices play a pivotal role at institutions, in other words, including some that deal with hypersensitive information. Now, researchers are disclosing a remote attack that would potentially allow a hacker to take over any 1001-X router and compromise all the data and commands that flow through it. And it only gets worse from there“, which was given to us last May, with the almost complete rundown by researchers from the security firm Red Balloon. And the added information “Once the researchers gain root access, they can bypass the router’s most fundamental security protection. Known as the Trust Anchor, this Cisco security feature has been implemented in almost all of the company’s enterprise devices since 2013“, this is the setting, an impact that is global and the US is keeping it quiet, yet the unproven stage without any real evidence is heralded to the max, which gives the larger implication that this is about data and about the financial security of the US, and why should we pay for that? They were flaccid for years, they refused to innovate and China started to innovate, even as we see in the Guardian article that the kit from Huawei “cheaper and more advanced than rivals“, we see one part, the fact that the US has nothing to counter what Huawei offers is the larger concern (for America), they are 2-3 years behind and that implies that they have nothing to enter the field with until 2025 and become a real contender, at which point Huawei is the new standard and as such data will flow via Huawei and not via American solutions, the data loss for America will be to some degree crippling. their revenue from advertisement, their revenue from data sale and other revenues liked to that are all impacted, it could cost the US 50-150 billion in the foreseeable future and that is where the US fear kicks in, their debt is out of control and that amount would have a much larger impact on the infrastructure that can no longer be paid for, one system after another will fail, a cascade of systems all collapsing because the US has no reserves left, the EU is also out of reserves and they see the 5G part as essential to surpass American firms and most need to contend with spineless politicians and long winded ‘talks’ by the EU gravy train, the are all in it for the money and commercial EU is seeing it all come apart, they can hold on if they get the 5G edge, an option that the US dreads. 

As such the cornered bully is getting more brazen, relying on past tactics that exploded in everyone’s face and they are still doing it, hoping that they can get away with it the second time around, optionally they will rely on other technologies, as long as they are not Chinese, it is not the hardware, it is the data. Ericsson gives us “5G is designed for industrial applications. This means that falling behind on 5G as a platform for innovation will jeopardize the European industrial base. With two global vendors based in Europe, the continent has the prerequisite to lead” (they merely fail to inform us (for valid reasons) that the two players are Ericsson and Nokia, but their solutions are almost two full generations behind Huawei, they would need two years to upgrade and that is what they face, they were all asleep at the wheel and now that the ferryman wants to get paid for all the time they were asleep, they are no longer willing to foot the bill, 4G is almost at a break even point and that is stopping most to go forward, even as they see that 5G is going to take over, they are all afraid that the next iteration of hardware is just beyond the horizon. And they are still setting larger foundations for themselves, because the real cash is the data, not the hardware and that is the stage where they all need to select an optional new provider, the devil you know beats the devil you know not and they want their coins. 

In all this the bully in the corner is getting more and more aggravated and we see that, but they did this to themselves, when I can surpass the US in IP (something I never thought possible) that is the point you need to realise where the US failed, their IP is just not there and they have no real counters other than the Silver Briefcase scenario hoping it will buy them enough time.  You see, when we accept the foundation of one quote: ‘5G Antenna Market was estimated to be US$ 9,835.0 Mn in 2018 and is expected to reach US$ 34,720.1 Mn by 2027 growing at a CAGR of 15.5% over the Forecast Period Owing to the Evolution of Smart Antennas‘, we see what the US is missing out of, the antennas alone are setting the stage of 9-15 billion each year surpassing my estimation of 50 billion value by 2022, yet that is merely the antenna’s, Huawei launched their 5G routers last week and that is where the money becomes a serious setting. When we combine the stage offered “The power of the chipset enables the router to be the first to support commercial application of 4G and 5G dual-modes. It is the first to have the capacity to perform to industry benchmarks of peak 1.65Gbps@100MHz download speeds” with “LTE Advanced has been available for several years now and some carriers (notably AT&T in the US) are calling it 5Ge, or 5G Evolution, even though it is most definitely not an official 5G standard, but rather the latest iteration of 4G” (source: Forbes) you get to see how dire the US situation is for the US, they claim to be 5G and they are not, they claim that Huawei is a danger and they cannot prove that it is, the data is everything and they are at an ever growing risk to lose large chunks of it. Now that Huawei is forced towards their Harmony OS, we will see a growing non US population switching, meaning that the data is no longer going to the US in a readable format. That is the larger loss for the US and they are getting close to desperate. 

In my view, that is the consideration of dumping the brains that they needed and that is the consequence of a flaccid business path, down the track it tends to cost and the US is scared of that moment, hoping to scare all others, we see that the EU is considering their options and as the US loses nation after nation we see  larger stage, when the data surpasses into national hands again, they will not care about US substandard intelligence, most will have their own and a new generation of apps will be adopted by its users on a global scale.

 

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January 13, 2020 · 16:02

Let’s kill all the idiots

The headline was the first thought I had when I saw ‘Roger Federer responds to climate crisis criticism from Greta Thunberg‘, my conviction became even stronger when I saw the bylines ‘Credit Suisse closely linked with fossil fuel industry‘ and ‘#RogerWakeUpNow has been trending on Twitter‘, you see, the simplest of all views is that the dumbheads calling themselves ‘climate activists’ were already low on my IQ agenda, but now they have hit rock bottom (below fascists and extreme right knuckleheads). 

I have no issue with those being stupid because they are ignorant, that happens. I know nothing of agrarian farming, I know nothing about managing herds of cows and I am fine with that, I will not offer you any advice in those directions. I am also not a firefighter, so I am at a loss as to how to best treat the shrubberies in Australia, but I know we have experts on all these matters around and when I get to it, I will ask them. 

So lets get some reality in the game, Credit Suisse Group AG is an investment bank, it has shareholders and it needs to get accounts that offer the best return on investment. There will always be firms that offer a 95% or better certainty that their investment will pay off and that is the reason a firm like Credit Suisse Group AG will entertain an appointment. Now Credit Suisse Group AG is not alone, there are hundreds of these firms and even as there are plenty of them not with the capital that runs into the trillions, it also means that they can make larger investment, investments a lot cannot make. So how is it that Credit Suisse Group AG has an optional portfolio of petrochemical industries (fossil fuel industry), well that is simple, 100% of America relies on fuel, from the 50’s onwards they set the stage where every person had a house and a car. I do not have a car, I do not need one, yet anyone living outside of a large city in America directly sees how important a car is to get around, in some cases if you do not have a car, you cannot see the neighbours, you cannot get groceries and so forth. That lifestyle was never attacked, that lifestyle was never opposed outright to the degree that it was needed. In other directions, let’s take a look at Arlanda Airport (because Greta Thunberg is Swedish), can anyone explain why 27 million passengers travel to Stockholm by plane every year? Well, that is easy, most are on vacation, and this includes 325 thousand people from the US, which was interesting as this is pretty much the population of the US, and I know for a fact that they do not all go to Sweden, so there is a lot of business travel, as well as 1 million people travelling from Luleå Airport (far north of Sweden), so we see a mingle of business people of tourists and those with all kinds of reasons and this is merely one of a thousand airports in Europe, all those planes need fuel. Even when we consider that planes and cars are only two of well over a dozen facets that require crude oil, we see a much larger setting of petrochemical needs, especially when we consider that on one route (Amsterdam – Stockholm) we see that 8 airlines setting the stage for 64 flights per week and consider that these flights should not continue when the passenger well dries up. 

We all set the stage for fossil fuel, we do it all ourselves, so when I look at the picture (at https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/12/roger-federer-responds-to-climate-change-criticism-from-greta-thunberg) where I see the text of “People demonstrate in support outside the trial of 12 activists who stormed and played tennis inside a Credit Suisse office“, how many (of those) own a car? How many will give the answer: “But I need my car!“, so in that setting how many of you all are part of this? I am all for changing the climate, but the first setting is not some BS approach that involves some tennis player, as such when we come to the BS tweet by 350.org Europe, giving us “Since 2016 @CreditSuisse has provided $57 BILLION to companies looking for new fossil fuel deposits – something that is utterly incompatible with #ClimateAction @RogerFederer do you endorse this? #RogerWakeUpNow pic.twitter.com/ED1fIvb4Cr“, why ask him? more importantly when we consider “Since 2016 @CreditSuisse has provided $57 BILLION to companies looking for new fossil fuel deposits“, consider that the local governments allowed for this and when we consider ‘fossil fuel deposits‘, consider that these people cannot be in business if no one needs deposits, which means that when we get car usage down by 50% in one nation alone they go off the map, and at that point the  Credit Suisse Group AG will give their loans to other interested and needy parties. 

That is the central point that these BS people do not get, it is the fulfilling of need and there is a large need for fossil fuels (whether valid or not). More importantly you go after the one group of people where a healthy lifestyle is important (the swiss), as such the twitter hashtag #RogerWakeUpNow is mostly bullshit, that person seems more awake than the stupid masses carrying the hashtag in their tweets. From my point of view, if 50% of the US Twitter users drop their car for at least a month (so from today until the end of February 2020) that means that there will be from today until the end of February 2020 34 million cars less on the Road in the US, anyone using their car in this timeframe should not now, not ever use the #RogerWakeUpNow hashtag, shall we agree on that? I do not want to hear any BS on ‘I needed it’, ‘my mum was sick’ or ‘the dog ate my car keys and I had to drive it to the doctor’ idiocy, if you needed your car, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution, it is a simple as that.

If we do that country by country we can get a handle of fossil fuel consumption and the need for that expansion goes away. And as we take notice of “Credit Suisse recently stated it is “seeking to align its loan portfolios with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and has recently announced in the context of its global climate strategy that it will no longer invest in new coal-fired power plants”“, we also need to consider that the Paris agreement is a watered down goal and that the US withdrew from the Paris agreements in 2017, when you realise the old lyrics ‘Money makes the world go round‘ we soon see that there are markets where that is certainly so and that there is a larger need, a need most people (especially some self revered eco warriors), they all need their car to get to places. In that move I reckon that others might not leave, but there is every indication that more than a handful of the 188 nations in that agreement are unable to keep that promise, they will not be in the group that makes it, they will merely be the signatories of an empty agreement, because an agreement that is not kept is merely an empty one. I know I will win that part because last year the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/353d0cac-ca52-11e8-9fe5-24ad351828ab) gave us “The world is on track to overshoot the targets of the Paris climate agreement and warm by 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, a level that would disrupt life around the planet“. On the 5th of November, the National Geographic (at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/nations-miss-paris-targets-climate-driven-weather-events-cost-billions/) reported that MOST countries will not be able to make the 2030 climate goals, MOST, not some, not merely the US, but MOST, and it is not merely because of fossil fuels (but it is the larger contributing factor), so those nagging dweeps all out for Roger Federer and Credit Suisse Group AG I say ‘Go home and play with yourself, if you cannot get your government to keep a promise that they went out again and again, a target that they watered down, whilst ignoring the question on “specifying what “well below” meant”, you have no right to harass a firm and a tennis player who are not part of the problem‘, Yes that is my personal view, you see if there was no need for fossil fuels, do you think an investment firm will be putting their heads on the chopping block for 58 billion? No they offered it because there was a need, you all created that need!

So let’s kill all the idiots, and as I see it; from my speculated numbers, it takes away 10%-35% of this planet’s population and that too will help stop the need of fossil fuel consumption, will it not?

So we strike two tweeters with one stone. Life can be so simple at times, why did these ‘whistleblowers’ (another hilarious title) not see that? In that regard to their lawyers I give ‘Credit Suisse never hid these numbers, so a whistleblower would not be needed, more importantly, as many nations are in denial that there is an actual climate emergency you need to prove that they are wrong in court, do you not? So good luck on the hundreds of hours you need to settle this case and good luck on getting that fee paid!‘ I feel frisky! I settled two matters with one article whilst initially ignoring that there was a second issue in play. 

Yes, I agree that there is a climate issue, I agree that much more needs to be done, but one investment bank and one tennis player are not the actual (and factual) targets that will make an actual impact that matters. From all this, we could come to the conclusion that they are all ‘grasping for visibility’ through these two parties, but is that the way to go when there is every indication that the government players are all about remaining in denial? We now see ‘Government to commit $50m for wildlife affected by bushfires as green groups call for action‘, as such you want to be positive about the actions of the Australian government, yet when you put this next to Celeste Barber (a comedian I had never heard of), we see that her appeal to Facebook raised the same amount as a donation to those hurt in the fires, one person (West Australian iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest) is committing $70 million to this cause, two people made the Australian government dwarf on the needs of a nation, now I am a realist, I get it, the national accounting books show that Australia still has a huge debt and $50 million is not nothing, yet when two persons dwarf you by well over 2:1, you have a problem and that is also the case for the larger group of 180 nations pledging to something that they cannot achieve. This was not an issue hiden, this was out in the open, as such we see my response to such people as the carriers of BS.
Yes I believe that the Australian fire was fueled by climate change, the high temperature allowed for fires to spread fast, the temperature and drought turned wood into immediate fuel and Australia lost 15,000,000 acres to fire, a lot of it with trees. One fire was the size of Manhattan, can you imagine it, one piece of land that holds 1.6 million people, all in flames. The amount of firefighters needed, whilst there are 135 other fires as well, some of them are actually large. firefighters and army reservists are totalling towards 6,000 and still no resolution is achieved, fire is a dangerous adversary and it goes where the wind takes it. In the end, the Australian bushfires will spark more conversation on climate change, yet when we consider that a truckload of the 180 nations are not making the goals of the Paris accords and a fair amount of them are seemingly in denial of the matter, what business do we have blaming an investment firm and a tennis player for issues that we all ourselves started?

Consider that when you consider yourself tweeting #RogerWakeUpNow whilst driving your car to the next meeting you could have walked to in 15 minutes. If you claim to be too busy, then you should not have had any time to tweet, should you?

 

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January 13, 2020 · 15:41

By royal choice

I do not get it, I get that some people are not in the forethought of the press. I also get that sometimes things get exaggerated by others and the press steps in to take a bite of that (by their account) delicious profit pie. Yet the animosity against the members of the British house of royalty eludes me. From my point of view, I have seen (movies, documentaries and papers) that Jewish people were treated with more respect and more consideration by members of German death squads than the British royal family has been from 1975 onwards by members of the press and paparazzi. Even now, I see tweets by the dozen (to my line alone) on the negativity against Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan. I just do not get it!

It does not matter whether anyone can come up with any justification, I personally believe that their private affairs are their private affairs. And let me be clear, I do not see any valid justification. Even now, we see options like ‘from various sources’, ‘according to sources close to the matter at hand’ and so on. 

Let’s face it, the press have no valid setting at present or ever, lets not forget that basically and in my personal opinion, the mother of prince Harry was murdered by paparazzi and the press is eager to get any print they can lay their fingers on, so they them self set this deadly foundation.

For his royal highness to get out of all this makes perfect sense to me, that is until someone muzzles the press and makes any mishap with paparazzi a direct stage with that person doing double digits in a prison. You see this has nothing to do with ‘the people have a right to know’, there are various royal websites that keep the people informed and aware of events taking place. The glossy press makes its money from advertisers and circulation and any member of the royal family contributes massively to the margins of the glossy press, too much I think and as such I personally believe that their model has changed, changed for the better of the owners, not the famous people they stalk and optionally harass to get the goods, the misquoted juicy stories that give their circulation needs the boost they feel that they are entitled to.

I avoid those magazines and you all should too,you all (the buyers of those magazines) contributed to the death of Princess Diana and it is time to stop before her son or her grandson becomes the next victim. Piers Morgan referred to them as ‘treacherous royal upstarts’, whilst people like him are part of the problem, not part of the solution. This is a newly wed family, now with child and they get badgered 24:7, it is my personal opinion to wonder why are we even debating their choice? 

I believe that a year or two of rest would do them, their marriage and their family bond some good. Give them time to figure it all out, is that so hard? 

Oh, and I still believe that the press needs to be set to rules that are a lot more debilitating when it comes to their push against the royal family. If they can avoid ‘news’ casting on events that Iran instigated for over three years they can refrain on this too. They have no right to do this, and I give no two hoots about their statements on what their priorities are. I also believe that it is time to punish the harassment strife of glossy magazines, so those magazines should be on high GST (or VAT, BTW), if gossip is their beef, let the reader pay for it, for the most ‘the advertisers’ are bringing in the money for their magazines, so I believe a balance should be found and that is me in a good mood. For all I care those magazines should be scrapped all together. 

And it does not end, the messages,often with #HarryAndMeghan are still pouring in on Twitter, it is all people think about, yet on twitter we also see a lot of positive, a lot of people addressing the British Media. One stated: “British Media: We pay your bills! We have a right to bully you into Oblivion!”, it was a person who added a #MegXit tag, but the word is out there, people are seeing the overwhelming harassment stage that this is taking and several are voicing their disgust with it all. 

I believe that it is time to bring the hammer down on the heads of the glossy media, there is only so much abuse we accept and this level of bullying is beyond acceptable. If there is a Royal Choice, I hope that his royal highness selects his heart and gets out of that mess, I believe that it will force an actual view shift on glossy magazines. Oh, they’ll shrug it off and move to the next Kardassian or Swift story, and after a few editions they’ll move over to the next member of the family living (or lived) in Buckingham Palace, that too is the way the press thinks.

 

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January 10, 2020 · 11:43

It took one funeral

In the left corner

Iran is in all kinds of problems, there are a few issues all playing at the same time, yet the one that is satisfying me the most is the news on Al-Jazeera where we see ‘UN monitors say Houthis not behind Saudi Aramco attacks: Report‘ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/monitors-houthis-saudi-aramco-attacks-report-200109062732396.html) It is here that we see “The investigators, who monitor sanctions on Yemen, also said they do not believe that “those comparatively sophisticated weapons were developed and manufactured in Yemen.” They were not tasked with identifying who was responsible for the Saudi attack” in this it is interesting that it was merely about identifying that houthis were not responsible and the added ‘They were not tasked with identifying who was responsible‘ merely shows a larger failing for the UN. Of course they might use the same approach in falsely accusing the murderers of Jamal Khashoggi, but the UN cannot get what it wants, it is now a political engine trying to be the vice for the EU to get Nuclear accords. What took them a month to figure out was within my grasp within hours when I wrote ‘Government? Censorship?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/08/18/government-censorship/), the data was available and even as the UN might set ‘standards’ for their information (the UN-essay by Agnes Callamard debates that), the setting of a destroyed Yemen making advanced weaponry like the drones, all whilst they never had the people to make them before the war was not a part that they took for granted? The fact that years of war show a rather large lack of accuracy whilst the pinpoint accuraccy of the attack on Aramco was almost surgical. No, none of that mattered to the UN, even as they had months to look into the matter ‘They were not tasked with identifying who was responsible‘ rears its ugly head. Al Jazeera then gives us “Adel al-Jubeir, signalled in September that Riyadh was waiting for results of UN investigations before announcing how his country would respond. UN experts monitoring UN sanctions on Iran and Yemen travelled to Saudi Arabia days after the September attack. Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, told the Security Council in a separate report on December 10  that the UN was “unable to independently corroborate” that missiles and drones used in the attacks “are of Iranian origin”“, the UN did its job and prevented a war at the expense of credibility and trustworthiness. I had by that date in December established via several sources that only Iran could have done what was done and I even looked at other Saudi Allies as optional aggressors, only NATO and Iran remained as optional aggressors, I wonder if we get a NATO brief next week with an apology? The matter is actually larger than merely hardware, Houthi forces also do not have the ability (read: people) to properly control drones, I would argue that my ability (I’ve never managed a drone) with mere Flight Simulator experience would make me a better drone operator than any Houthi. 

In the right corner

Now we get to the fun part (for me that is), the news of ‘Catastrophic failure of Ukraine jet in Iran suggests missile strike‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/09/catastrophic-failure-ukraine-jet-iran-suggests-missile) with added photo of a Tor-M1 part gives a rather nasty setting, it is the news that comes with “Fail-safe systems that would have allowed the aircraft to get back safely in the event of engine failure appeared to have been compromised in an instant. Others pointed to what looked like penetrating holes in the airframe, leading some to compare them to the damage suffered by the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 shot down over Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile five years ago“, yet I was not convinced, if I slam Iranians (which is always fun) I want to keep a rather high level of evidence in play. I am also unwilling (after three CIA bungles) to go with “the US had picked up the signature of an anti-aircraft missile battery locking on to the Ukrainian plane, and then the infrared heat signal of two missile launches followed by that of an explosion on the plane“. I even debate the intelligence implied by prime minister Justin Trudeau (most likely relying on US-CIA intelligence) that it was an Iranian surface-to-air missile. I am however taken with the independent part of “the aircraft landed safety with only one death, thanks to the significant “redundancy”, or fail-safe designs, built into modern planes to allow them to land safely after an engine failure“, you see, no matter what happened after that, the plane would be in a largely controlled crash drive and there would be communication, there would be updates by the pilot, no matter what his or her nationality was. In addition there is: “Here we had some kind of event that knocked the transponder off the plane. Some kind of event that disabled the electronics to that system. It takes a lot to disable the electronics on a sophisticated aircraft like the 737-800“, I get that and that is very acceptable and from that we get back to the quote ‘Experts say debris fragments and sudden loss of fail-safe systems point to missile‘ and “while some apparent evidence of fragment damage to the aircraft turned out to be debris from the ground, other images showed ragged holes in one of the engines and scorching to one side of the cockpit, and other parts of the aircraft“, this all point towards the use of a missile and I agree with the statement of implied convenience “the unverified picture of the seeker head of the Tor-M1 missile seemed to some to be too good to be true, lying on the ground and largely intact“, I would like to know the source of that image, it is not Iranian, that much is certain, and any person ‘on the ground’ there finding that part is just too much of a happy go lucky lottery winner for me to have faith in (yes, I tend to not trust anyone). The issue remains, Iran is screwing up, in massive ways, the overreaction towards a civilian passenger carrier implies that the people there cannot distinguish between optional targets and that implies a lack of push on the iranian side, if they go to war whilst their people cannot tell differences implies that they are open to much larger flaws when tactical issues cannot play out because they cannot tell the difference.

Even as we (to some degree) accept “US officials would not disclose the intelligence they claim to have that indicates an Iranian missile was to blame, they acknowledged the existence of satellites and other sensors in the region, as well as the likelihood of communications intercepts and other similar intelligence“, there is a play in motion, now that Iran has torn up the nuclear accords, we see new actions on the table, yet these actions seem hollow. Actions like ‘Germany urges Europe to respond to Iran’s nuclear violations‘ (source: Reuters), where we see the quote “stopped short of calling for renewed U.N. sanctions“, an almost cowardly level of response whilst the transgressions have been going on since October 2019, I spoke about it in ‘The tradesman and the deal‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/11/05/the-tradesman-and-the-deal/), yet the EU still cannot find any solution that works months later and is refraining from ‘calling for renewed U.N. sanctions‘, it’s like watching a large neon sign ‘I saw a big pussy and it called itself EU‘, no wonder nothing gets resolved.

Yet no matter how it turns, Iran is getting more and more issues on its plate and there is a growing amount of international intelligence and evidence to really turn up the heat on Iran, the problem is that there are also an increased amount of players who want ‘their’ project to continue and that is the larger problem for now, when we look at the timeline and resolve the Aramco attacks at Abqaiq and Khurais first, we will see a much larger level of pressure against Iran, nuclear accords be damned, anyone thinking that Iran would abide by them is completely looney tunes, the news that Iran gave last year of transgressing its 300Kg limit by one thousand percent was (as I personally see it) a timed one, there was just not enough space to hide their transgression and the materials and hardware required for it and that part is just ignored by too many (mostly the 27 players in the EU), now one funeral later it all comes to blow, but not because of the funeral, the matter that people forget is that when you have an orchestra and you replace the conductor, we see that the orchestra is going through changes, it always does and as we see it now, the fact that Qassam Soleimani was juggling half a dozen issues at the same time, it is expected that his replacement will drop a few items as he does not know these issues 100%, as well as the fact that the people in that army are all vying for a better position, that is the benefit we now have and that is why we have to push. When Iran is exposed to the largest degree they will falter again and again until they have no credibility anywhere, that is the setting we need to go for, not because of people on a flight, not because of attacks of refineries or transgressions on accords, those are in the past, we need to do it because of the things that are still to reach the surface and there are issues that will still reach the surface, that is what will show Iran as the weak middle eastern bully it has been for the longest time, there is the victory of what is yet to come and that will set change, the problem is will the opponents of Iran be strong enough? Saudi Arabia and Israel are, the rest is open to interpretation, it is linked to the ego of the speakers and the win they still hope for, the EU is showing that all too clearly.

I personally wonder just how far certain players are willing to go to get their ego’s fixed, I feel certain we will see a lot more before the month is over.

 

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January 9, 2020 · 11:34

Travel by Ransomware

On Tuesday an interesting article was given by the guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/07/travelex-being-held-ransom-hackers-said-demanding-3m#maincontent), the title ‘Travelex ‘being held to ransom’ by hackers said to be demanding $3m‘ almost said it all and then I noticed something. First we get “Criminals are thought to be demanding about $3m (£2.3m) – to give the firm access to its computer systems after they attacked using the Sodinokibi ransomware on 31 December“, the price is not set without quarter, this we get from “They are reportedly threatening to release 5GB of customers’ personal data – including social security numbers, dates of birth and payment card information – into the public domain unless the company pays up” as well as “banks who use Travelex’s foreign exchange services to stop taking online orders for currency, affecting Sainsbury’s Bank, Tesco Bank, Virgin Money and First Direct.” You see Travelex, based in London, has a presence in more than 70 countries with more than 1,200 branches and 1,000 ATMs worldwide. It processes more than 5,000 currency transactions every hour yet, even as we see that it is on the London Stock Exchange, however the group is based in the United Arab Emirates. As for the actions we see “On Thursday 2 January, the Met’s cyber crime team were contacted with regards to a reported ransomware attack involving a foreign currency exchange. Inquiries into the circumstances are ongoing” here is the snag, what are the chances that US actions are impeded as it impacts 70 countries? Is there a reason why the FBI is not equally involved? You see, Sodinokibi is a spin off from Gandcrab and as we see (at https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fbi-releases-master-decryption-keys-for-gandcrab-ransomware/) the FBI got those keys. Now the keys will not be compatible, but if they get one solution, they might get another solution. The fact that corporations are hit and we see “the developers behind the wildly successful GandCrab Ransomware announced that they were closing shop after allegedly amassing $2 billion in ransom payments and personally earning $150 million“, we would want to think that the FBI is on top of this and get some pay-back (I had to use that pun).

We also learn from Acronis “Sodinokibi ransomware exploits an Oracle WebLogic vulnerability (CVE-2019-2725) to gain access to the victim’s machine“, and when we go to the Oracle page we see that there had been a solution from last May onwards. there is also the part “Product releases that are not under Premier Support or Extended Support are not tested for the presence of vulnerabilities addressed by this Security Alert. However, it is likely that earlier versions of affected releases are also affected by these vulnerabilities. As a result, Oracle recommends that customers upgrade to supported versions” the question becomes did Travelex forget to do a few things? the article does not pan out on that.

Yet in all this IT News (at https://www.itnews.com.au/news/ransomware-shuts-down-travelex-systems-536191) gives us ‘Unpatched systems could be attack vector, say researchers‘, and they also give us “No evidence has surfaced so far that structured personal customer data has been encrypted, or exfiltrated. This is in contrast with a report in Computer Weekly that alleged the criminals deploying the Revil/Sodinokibi ransomware had attacked servers storing sensitive, confidential information that included customer names and their bank account and transaction details” and it does not stop there. They also give us “Troy Mursch, chief research officer at security vendor Bad Packets said it notified the forex multinational in September of a serious vulnerability in its Pulse Virtual Private Networking servers. The vulnerability went unpatched until November” which sets a much larger question mark on the entire issue as the news give us that the attack came almost a month after that. They curtiously also give us “Prior to that, security researcher Kevin Beaumont noted that Travelex was operating cloud instances of Windows Server on Amazon Web Services that had Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) enabled and exposed to the internet, but with Network Level Access (NLA) control disabled. An RDP flaw, known as BlueKeep, allows for full remote compromise of Windows without user interaction” and these issues are not asked about? At least the Guardian article does not stop on them. 

The most hilarious response is seen at the very end of the IT News article with “Despite the attack closing down online systems, Travelex said it does not currently anticipate any material financial impact for its parent Finablr” Travelex might have numerous issues to consider, but the customer does not make the high point of that, or as I would mildly put it, who cares about Finablr? Well I reckon that the London Stock Exchange cares as the value of Finablr made a crashing 17% loss, that is almost one in five pounds that is lost too those bright young lads (ladies also). They advertise (on their website) ‘Finablr is a global platform for Payments and Foreign Exchange solutions underpinned by modern and proprietary technology‘ instead of ‘Finablr is a global platform for Payments and Foreign Exchange solutions underpinned by modern and proprietary hackable technology‘. It is a small difference, but a distinct one, especially as Oracle had placed a solution for months and the second message by Kevion Beaumont does not help any I reckon. In support a source gave the BBC that they feel let down, complaining that their travel money is “in limbo”, which is interesting, as the Guardian article gives us “Travelex first revealed the New Year’s Eve attack on 2 January, when it sought to assure that no customer data had yet been compromised” and as the article came 5 days after, the absence of victim mentioning is an interesting one, it seems that Travelex is not handling this situation well on a few levels, optionally also in arrear of making mantion towards the customers, all in opposition to the text on Travelex.com, which gives (among more data) “Tony D’Souza, Chief Executive of Travelex, said “Our focus is on communicating directly with our partners and customers to protect them and their information from any further compromise. We take very seriously our responsibility to protect the privacy and security of our partner and customer’s data as well as provide an excellent service to our customers and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused. Travelex continues to offer services to its customers on a manual basis and is continuing to provide alternative customer solutions in the interim. We are working tirelessly to bring our systems back online.”” 

As such we get Travelex giving us one part and the BBC giving quite the opposite, and at this point my question becomes, exactly how much money is ‘in limbo‘?

That and a few more parts all rise to the surface when I look into this matter, the entire time gap on the side of Travelex being the most prevalent one. The one part that Acronis made me wonder about was the exemption list, the fact that It will try not to infect computers from countries based on the locale setting of the computer, which gives us “Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian, Tajikistan, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tatarstan“, the reason is unknown to me, perhaps they fear those countries and their ‘justice system’?

By the way, the entire Finablr website mention was essential, they are so for the ‘future’ yet security is seemingly not among it. That part is seen when we consider “In April 2019, the Cybereason Nocturnus team analyzed a new type of evasive ransomware dubbed Sodinokibi“, as such it took the Oracle team months to get a solution made (which makes perfect sense) yet the lack of implementation by Travelex is less normal. From all information it seems to me that Travelex should have made larger steps to be secure no later than Halloween, so the issue is a little larger than we consider, and the fact that Sodinokibi is a much larger field that goes back a few billion dollars. This is a contemplated speculation when we look at CSO Online where we get “While Sodinokibi is not necessarily a direct continuation of GandCrab, researchers have found code and other similarities between the two, indicating a likely connection” implying that for at least one person $150 million was not enough. 

As such, the entire Travelex issue will be around much longer than the ransomware will be, there will need to be a larger amount of questions to its mother organisation Finablr as well. From my speculative side it seems that some players are lacking certain IT skills, or/and a larger shortage of it, that is the initial feeling I got when I saw the information that Troy Mursch and Kevin Beaumont handed over to the press, and so far the information as seen supports a larger failing in Travelex and optionally Finablr as well. There is support for my way of thinking, no matter who is on the board of directors, none of them are IT experts and that is fine, yet by not having a visionary IT expert leading the charge we see a larger failing coming their way. It is not merely having an IT department and a security department, someone needs to spearhead and protect IT issues in the Board of Directors and there is no evidence that this is happening, actually the Travelex issue gives rise that it is not happening at all. More important, the issue with the website is that it is highly sales oriented, and when I had a look there (I reckon the Sodinokibi members as well), I wondered how secure are Unimoni, Xpress Money, Remit2India, Ditto and Swych? When one of these points get attacked, will the board of directors act appropriately? It is optionally a little ironic that they are hit whilst they advertised a paper on their site on November 20th (a month before the attack) ‘Why data protection is your new strategic priority‘, my initial thought? ‘Sarcasm, when it backfires it becomes irony!‘ Yes it seems like a cheap ride from my side, but we forget that Common Cyber Sense is a real thing and corporations need a much larger vested interest in being safe than ever before, GandCrab showed that part months before this event took place and I reckon that Financial corporations need to take a much larger vested interest in that matter, or so I am led to believe, I could (of course) be wrong.

What do you think?

 

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January 8, 2020 · 13:56

Needs of the public

This started last Friday for me, I had taken notice before and I even wrote about it earlier, yet the shift of the view also implied and made it a shift of priorities. In this age and the age of needing to matter, we see a shift in priorities of all the players. Keri Paul the writer has a clear view and that view matters and is on point, yet the dangers are not his view, it is the other side of the coin. Weirdly enough it is a card game that is similar to this, it is Androids: Netrunner that gives us the view that we can explore and dig into the depths we need to. It is Hacker (user) versus Corporations and Government.

When we consider “Servers are created, net security is hooked into place and agendas are advanced, with the runner having to take a blind guess at what these cards might be. Does that server contain the game-winning agenda, or is it a “cerebral overwriter”, which will leave them damaged if they touch it?” (source: the Guardian) And that is the setting in real life too, we cannot rely on an actual whistleblower at the Google Board of directors (I also oppose such actions) we need to consider what the priorities of Google are. In my view its priorities are set around data and China has endangered their market to the largest degree, it does not matter why it happened, because the value of data has always been without question, the entire Trump-China matter merely advanced the time-line, this was however always going to happen and it is Apple (Microsoft too) and Google that are rich enough to counter it to some degree. I myself would have thrown myself onto the growth sector in the Middle East as it is will be the new powerhouse for China (and particularly Huawei), a fact too many are ignoring. This gets us to the first quote in the Guardian article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/03/google-executive-human-rights-activism) “Ross LaJeunesse, the former head of international relations at Google and now a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, said he was forced to leave the company after reporting discriminatory practices, and that his work to combat censorship was at odds with Google’s desires to expand into a growing market in China“, it is not the wildcard ‘reporting discriminatory practices‘ that matters here, it is ‘desires to expand into a growing market in China‘, Huawei is merely the most visible path, and their new Operating System Harmony is merely the start of a much larger concern for the US. China has 1.3 billion people, let’s say that only 700 million users, that is still well over twice the amount of US people, as Harmony gets traction in China for certain, it will be able to grow in other regions too, the Middle East is a first where the threshold is the lowest with close to 160 million optional users, Egypt really makes a hit there, and as China applies its customer service to the Middle East we will see that within 5 years parts of Europe will consider switching, this is the 90’s in reverse. As the 90’s saw marketing of Microsoft push people to another level (Windows 95 did help), we see the roles reverse, now we see the exploitative tactics of Microsoft and Apple backfire as those tactics come under fire, there will be too much documentation showing these actions. 

Now that data comes into view, we see another economy, this economy that is set around data and IP, more important WHAT ELSE can be done and this is where quote two comes into play ““In reality, I don’t think we can trust Google,” he told the Guardian. “It has been shown time and time again, whether in how it handles personal data to when it’s asked to address violent content online, that we cannot take Google at its word any more.”“, in China it leaves data concern to the Chinese governments, as long as they can come in. Democrats and Human rights are all about the rights of the people and their personal data, yet governments do not care about those rights, they never did (if you think they did, you are nuts). Yes that hurts, but it is the truth. If America embraced Human Rights so profoundly, insurance and other players would not have the data they do and Cambridge Analytica would merely be a nightmare of the paranoid brain, but it is not, is it? within the law the setting of data is too large a sif and both China and the Middle East have their own settings for what data is and what rights are and like in the 80’s companies tried to accommodate whatever they need to to turn a dollar, that path is more profound now than it ever was. We see this path in “LaJeunesse spearheaded a 2010 decision to stop censoring Google search results in China and worked to establish a company-wide human rights program – efforts that were challenged when Google returned to the Chinese market with a censored search product code-named Dragonfly in 2017” it is a reality that many face and now that there is a larger concern for wat is affordable, players like Apple will see their profits shortened. 

It is the last quote ““When I started at Google, there was a sense that we really believed in the power of technology to make the world a better place,” LaJeunesse said. “It’s not like that any more”” that hits home, you see, the world changed, the needs for margins increased and the need to get more sold at the Google margins than ever before, that is the game we all see played when stockholders and shareholders are involved. I remember a conversation with a commercial manager in the 90’s who stated that this is not true, I was proven correct within 14 months after that, and that is the other path, even as margins are low the profits need to come from someplace and data is the next hurdle, a large economic hurdle, you can own it all, but that path is not economically viable, yet accommodating government needs is and they will pay through the nose to get a good handle on it and stream that data to their analytics. The Chinese know this and the people in the Middle East are figuring it out, in that setting Google has two options, be a player in that field or leave it to others. What do you think they will choose? Did you really think that Page and Brin departing was such a big deal? I reckon that it sped things up, they needed other people to voice needs and I personally think that they got that done by changing their board of Directors (merely my personal view). 

The entire setting changes a little when we look at places like CES2020, when you think of it it is a lot about data and that makes sense, but the handling of data is now a larger issue than ever before, even as we consider the impact, we overlook it. The quote “interpreter mode allows an Assistant-powered smart display to translate a conversation between two people, each speaking a different language. Google says more businesses have committed to using it this year, including American Airlines, HSBC banks and a handful of hotels around Vegas, San Francisco, LA, Japan and Qatar“, we see the technology on the spoken word and that has a much larger impact than you thought it would. Even though we get “Google Assistant isn’t supposed to record anything you say unless you start the sentence with “Hey Google”“, we also get “that doesn’t always work. Sometimes things on TV will cause Assistant to perk up its ears; other times you might be mid-conversation and only realize you somehow caught Assistant’s attention when it responds “Sorry, I can’t help with that.” With that in mind, you’ll now be able to say “Hey Google, that wasn’t for you” to have it wipe its history of the last thing you said“, yet how many considered the leap from when it started until you stated the correction and it “wipes its history of the last thing you said“, here we see it, what is ‘the last thing you said‘, there is your margin and it will affect its use nation by nation, they all have to file for corrections and of course, some nations like the margins they have and optionally want to widen it. An automated secret police, right in your very own home.

This is not some paranoid consideration, it is reality and it is coming this year, all whilst Harmony is on the heels of Google being in the same setting of life and data. It is the setting where it changes, the IP and who owns it makes the larger strides in two areas where it matters and at present Huawei has more IP, they merely have an advantage and that is the area where it matters, because whoever has the IP has the battle turned to their favour. Did you think there was no hindsight from me when I offered my IP to China? The entire setting of the US changing its mind like bad second hand car dealers is the controlling stage, a stage where the people in the American Administration cannot make up their minds leaving the inventor in the air whilst the corporation make headway. There is a larger issue especially when we look at the US, UK and China in jointly owning IP, it is becoming a lot more murky in recent years and that stage is almost literally fraught with dangers for the maker of the IP, in that stage trusting your company to be fair to you is now open to discussion. 

This is not nearly the end, especially when we consider the IP side, this part was given to all by Sophos when we are treated to “Google has temporarily disconnected Xiaomi’s IP cameras from its Home Hub service after a user reported that he was seeing images from other people’s devices” a mere 10 hours ago. Did you think that this was only happening 10 hours ago? This has clearly been going on for a longer time and we are merely informed on it now, as we see that part and consider that other phones have optional weaknesses on this side and we add the consideration of user rights from one to another and the ‘excuse’ “The Chinese manufacturer admitted the mistake and explained that it was down to a caching issue on its server“, did you think it was that easy? Why was it even cached on a server? What other data is cached? A lot more questions become open to interpretation when one mistake merely opens the can of worms that was there and the issues are only increasing, global marketing is making sure of that path. Oh and this is not just Google, there are a number of questions that rise when you consider the weird choices that Microsoft made with their Azure cloud, that part becomes visible when you switch on any Xbox made after 2014, yet it is buried by them by stating that this is the responsibility of your telecom provider, even when you are trying to explain to them that it is about the upload, not download. it is a global problem and that is a bad thing, but that is quite literally the game we are signing up for.

Google is only one of many and they are not evil, they are trying to stay afloat in a world of providers and data capture solutions. When (not if) data becomes a viable currency those who are in charge of the data will decide what comes next and that is a game that is now being played between governments and corporations, and where are we? If we are the Android: Netrunner players we are the hackers and we need to set the hardware up for what leaves our hands and we get to say less and less in that regard. The problem becomes, there are 4 billion people (read users) and a lot of them do not have the skills to install any backdrop and the information on the internet is not to be trusted in many cases (they always want you to install THEIR solution) which negates the entire issue as data is siphoned. And as you realise that someone owns your data, the question becomes: ‘Who will you trust?‘ all whilst they merely want the same thing, my personal idea is not to trust anyone and for the most I do not care where the information ends up being, it merely ends up somewhere and it is for that reason that I NEVER link any social media. It is merely a good idea to hand over as little as possible.

In the end this is coming, Harmony will be available to smartphones this year, so the battle will soon intensify and we will start to get weird fear mongering stories from the US on how Harmony will crash your mobile and other things, yet in the end JHarmony will merely start at the Huawei users and as they get no issues (other than US blocks) we will see a technology polarisation in mobiles, it is the stage that Google is desperate to avoid at all cost. And as Harmony gets rolled out beyond China Google will get more and more willing to be flexible, no matter what the US government states, that is the part the US administrations are intentionally blind to, the US has 325 million people, in a world with 8,700 million people, the US does not add up to much on population numbers, corporations see that.

All whilst Google needs to content against numbers like “the company’s inability to work with companies like Google, Huawei’s business has been thriving. The company’s fiscal third-quarter revenue increased by 24.4% year-over-year, and smartphone sales jumped 26% year-over-year in the first three quarters of 2019” (source: Business Insider), all whilst Apple phone sales went down and by a scary amount, and at present it seems that the 5G market is decided out of US hands, making Google even less happy, as mobile markets are their eggs and bacon, they need to do whatever they can to be part of that and for Google this is decently easy, for players like Microsoft less so. The issue is harder for the US, we see all the news and information on heralding 5G in New York giving the user 36Mbps (in one 5G movie), yet when we look at the 5G specs we see: “5G speeds will range from ~50 Mbit/s to over 2 gigabit at the start“, so we see 5G marketing and 5G pricing at below 5G speeds and the people are not catching on, you might see this as a separate issue, but the net runs on speed (quote literally) and the US hiding behind marketing is not catching on, that is the stage where Google wants to get ahead of the curve and therefore it needs to be in a Huawei environment, it needs to be in China for several reasons, the US and its administration is all about misdirecting the people whilst corporations know better and the ardware people want to get ahead of that curve so that they do not fall behind, Google has too much to lose. We might see it as the need of the public, but that need is fuelled by corporations and Huawei is at the top of that chain (at present) so other players like Google need to set a larger stage where they are players and no longer mere service facilitators. 

In all this China and the Middle East are surpassing the US and that is a stage we have never seen before. Wired Magazine gave us “AT&T launches its new next-generation wireless network, but breadth of 5G coverage in the US still lags South Korea and China“, which is the issue, at present the US is in third position in a market they used to rule, and they are in danger of reverting to fifth place by the end of 2020, for the first time in history the US will be trailing others, Google wants to get out of that cursed position as fast as it can. The US (via Wired) gives us “so far, the fastest 5G download speeds in the US top out at around 1.8 Gbps, according to tests conducted by data analysis firm OpenSignal. Those are the fastest speeds in the world, but they’re rare“, I myself did not see any video or evidence showing anything over 200Mbps, making the statement more debatable (like testing setup versus actual connection), yet that is my personal view whilst I am not in the US. The Verizon options are in 24 cities (the US apparently has a lot more places), so that is lacking, it also gives for New York that ‘5G Ultra Wideband near these city landmarks‘ in Midtown, Hell’s Kitchen, Harlem and Downtown Brooklyn, so there is a lot missing and you need to check this for all the regions you plan to be in in 2020, even as you ‘scale back’ to 4G LTE, did you pay for that? Well apparently you did at Verizon, and they are one of a small amount of providers and none of them are national, that is the back push that you see in the US. I am not stating that China is better, they are not, but they have the advantage of Huawei and so will other regions in the world soon enough. 

This setting is important, because Google needs itself to be heading that wave, not following it and in that regard it needs to be in China (and the Middle East), as such the second statement I gave (from the Guardian) is the most important one and Google is all over it, plenty are not (read: most cannot afford the cost) and in this stage where Data is currency, we see that this war may leave the US crippled because of the limitations it pushes onto itself, even whilst the claims were never supported by any evidence and that is not merely my view, it is also the view by a large amount of cyber specialists that are a lot more knowledgeable in that field.

All these issues are linked to the movement of Google and from there the needs of the public are addressed, from an American perspective it will be Google or nothing, yet the non US part is looking at another setting where it is Google versus Harmony and at present I cannot tell whether Harmony will be a bad choice. That is the scary part for Google, as the public tries Harmony and nothing sets them back in the use of their mobiles, we will see a larger and a quicker curve towards other solutions (or away from Google). 

That is the fight that will be in the up and coming this year, as Harmony gets released we will get governments making huffs and puffs away from Harmony, yet let there be no mistake, it will not be towards your data privacy, it will be the currency that pushes them and data is the current they need. We will be ‘lied to’ whilst they will stop at giving out evidence as much as possible. That is what we get to look forward to in 2020, the needs of the public, our needs are what governments and corporations make it to be, not what we decide and that is for a lot of people the largest issue at present, even as it is about data, is it not interesting how they all circumvent that part of the equation?

 

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January 7, 2020 · 11:11

Inheritance for the weak

Things happened and things needed to be done, this has been a long standing issue and America took that stance. Yes, we agree that we do not want a war, but Iran made it almost unattainable and something had to be done. So when I see (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/06/nato-chief-holds-back-from-endorsing-us-killing-of-suleimani) the words “Jens Stoltenberg condemns Iran but stresses drone attack decision was not made by Nato” we see a truth, yet the words given are that of a weakling. It gets support from “His intervention came as the EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, also warned Iran that “it is imperative that it return to the nuclear deal”, remarks that could presage a European decision to abandon the deal if Iran does not recommit itself to its terms“, another weakling on the European front. They are all about ego and not about realism, for months Iran has ignored the deal, it has traversed transgression point after transgression point and the EU is about ‘Let’s talk a little more’, it is like we are watching the police agree with drug dealers who have brought in 8 containers filled with drugs that they should come in so that an arrangement can be made for container number 9. They are drug dealers, deal with it!

America did the one thing that had to be done and now we see media article after media article on why we should not do it, that same media that has decided not to report on Iranian actions in Yemen, we now see more on ‘Iranian backed Houthis’ and that is as much as we can get from the media. So as we get ‘US allies distance themselves from Trump decision to assassinate Suleimani‘, we see more. I get it, Israel is too close to Iran and they cannot get dragged into it, they are dealing with Hezbollah and that is good. We also see ‘Saudi minister urges restraint in Washington‘, which is slightly less good, but the reasoning is clear, they are close to Iran and in close striking distance, they need to take a cautious stance here, yet Iran had to be dealt with and the killing of Qassam Soleimani is the point of no return, it has been done and now we need to make sure that Tehran realises that the gig is up, we will act and we will come for them, so having weaklings like Stoltenberg and van der Leyen in the EU, who have no issue making strong language when it suits them and their ego’s is a bit of a waste.

So as I read “Mike Pompeo, has already expressed disappointment in the lukewarm reaction of Washington’s European allies” I can only agree with Mike Pompeo. I see the issue that Saudi deputy defence minister, Khalid bin Salman faces and he needs to do what is best for Saudi Arabia, yet most experts are in agreement that the attack on Aramco could only have come through the acts of Iran and via the acts of Iran. The Guardian article also mentioned “There is mounting concern that the more cautious stance by the US-led coalition would make it much less effective and allow Isis to regenerate“, this is the larger issue and Iran has been playing a seesaw card for the longest of times, they have played that card well and that is the pivoting point, now with Soleimani away they will make mistakes, and that is what we needed for the longest of times, there is also the concern that the media is now in another bind. The Washington Post gave us 4 days ago “Soleimani took control of the Quds Force, the external wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in the late 1990s and went on to expand its regional presence. He was widely known for his high-profile links to paramilitary groups from Syria to Yemen that are now in the spotlight“, yet the larger newspapers have been shunning reports on Iran action in Yemen for well over a year, so I think that there is a larger play to consider. The spotlights are now illuminating the Iranian acts in Yemen and that is good, there is a larger setting where the media was so on the ‘Nuclear Pact’ deal that they ignored a larger setting, even as Iran ignored certain limits several times over. 

Yet the act of killing also opens up a larger can of worms on the allied side, Luke Hartig (former senior director for counter-terrorism on the national security council) wrote about it he gives us “Trump’s counter-terrorism legacy in Iraq and Syria may be a series of dead bodies but nothing that addresses the core of the problem and no partners willing to help us root it out“, ever since the US has its spats in Iraq we have seen a shifting of CIA staff all over the place, too many were looking for one old man in a cave and they found him (in the end) in Abbottabad, Pakistan but not until a serious amount of time had passed, in the mean time a lot of CIA operatives are useless (known to too many players) and the options for counter intelligence was further impeded by the acts of Julian Assange and ‎Bradley Edward Manning the latter one thought that 3 years of active service was enough to put well over 700,000 classified pieces on Wikileaks. These actions had a lasting effect and will have an effect for close to a decade. Quality Intelligence from the Middle East is only coming from allies (or so it seems). The US has limited action available to them and even whilst we sneer at espionage, we need to realise that it is the importance of it that sets the stage, Sun Tsu was very clear about it in chapter 13 (the Art of War) ‘the importance of developing good information sources‘ is essential and that part is currently missing for the US in the Middle East.

Luke Hartig (at https://www.justsecurity.org/67927/trumps-fatal-mistake-killing-suleimani-vs-countering-isis/) voices it as ‘Trump’s Fatal Mistake: Killing Suleimani vs. Countering ISIS‘, he is not wrong, yet the issue is depending on point of view. I feel that QS was too effective in the Middle East, his meetings tend to voice that part and the fact that two high value targets were taken out with QS was icing on the cake. For the most we ignore the effectiveness of Qassam, yet the truth is that his effectiveness made the Iranian proxy war in Yemen work, I believe that removing him is an essential win for the US, not immediately, but as the Iranian army faces the challenges that they need to find someone as good as QS, they will see that they are merely failing at whatever they try. The Washington Post gives us 5 hours ago “I have more than 4 million followers on various social media networks, and I have received thousands of messages, voice mails and videos from Iranians in cities such as Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran and even Ahvaz, who are happy about Soleimani’s death. Some complain of the pressure to attend services for him” the Iranian presentation goes on, yet without QS in the mix, it will go a lot less smooth and issues will be overlooked giving s a much larger view on what is happening, optionally the others will get a lot more out of Iran for their trouble and that too aids the effort against Iran. Soleimani was that effective in life. Hartig gives more and it is there that we see his point of view, with “Effective counterterrorism policy is about much more than conducting drone strikes and deploying commandos; it’s about setting the diplomatic and geopolitical conditions for counterterrorism to succeed” he is correct, with the killing of Qassam Soleimani diplomatic and geopolitical options are out of the window, yet in the long run I believe it was the better position to play, the Iranian chess player lost its queen and as such, its chess play will be limited until an equal can be found, or the opposition loses its queen as well. I also agree with Hartig view “President Trump and the true believers in his inner circle have no sense of the strategy it will take to defeat ISIS (or Iran-linked terrorist groups, for that matter). Counterterrorism requires careful, methodical work, undertaken with our closest allies, that builds up local partners, patiently targets key vulnerabilities in the terrorist network over time, and ultimately addresses the long-term drivers of violent extremism“, there is no real tactic to deal with ISIS, it was less clear in the Obama administration, yet they too should have added weights to dealing with ISIS, but the costs were spiralling out of control, and as we consider his words on Africa through “The gains made against al-Shabaab are a result of diplomatic efforts and military assistance designed to stiffen the spine of African Union partners shouldering most of the fight in Somalia. Terrorists in the Sahel have been contained because of rigorous collaboration and modest assistance to the French combined with patient work to bolster regional partners“, we see the larger play, yet in all this QS had the phone number of all those leaders at hand, any of them with a beef against America got a nice weapons deal, now we see another play, without QS these deals will stop and optional larger wins could be made, yet it is not a given. What is a given is the fact that Iran has been out of control for a much longer time and it is high time that some of the egotistical and self wealth concerned players that that under consideration. so when we see ‘Blowback: Iran abandons nuclear limits after US killing‘, we see the wrong message, Iran had already abandoned those limits for a long time, they are merely outspoken about it now and if those in EU charge cannot see them, they should not be in these positions of power. The game and the message changed, but also the lies we see from Iran, it was never ‘Iran drives another stake into the heart of the nuclear deal‘ (source: CNN), it was that there was never going to be a nuclear deal, they ended it when they started the proxy war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, they needed a large bat to threaten with and they are continuing building that bat, they are however no longer willing to hide their actions to some degree and that works for us (as well).

So even as the Washington Post is all about ‘Iran announces it is suspending its commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal‘ (18 hours ago), let there be no mistake, they had done this in the beginning of 2019 they were merely pussyfooting in diplomatic steps, and now that the failure is out, others will blame this on the US, yet the direct information that I gave months ago was a direct sign that Iran had no intentions to ge back to the table unless they could get 200% out of a deal for them, and that was just not realistic. Qassam Soleimani was very adept in this and now we’ll see a different game, first out of anger, then denial, soon we will get them in a stage of bargaining and some fainted national depression, then the push buttons towards reconstruction and acceptance, yet they will move the table with those two buttons again and again, yet now it will be less expertly managed, which again works for everyone else. 

Iran played the game for too long and for the longest time, no one was willing to hold them to account for their actions. We never wanted to control Iran, we merely needed them to play the game like all the other nations, East and West, North and South, they merely thought they were better than everyone else and now that there is a realistic sense towards war they will have to push through and face several nations in combat, or they will actually sit at a table and negotiate some kind of solution. It is what most wanted all along, it merely never went that way, too much ego and that was always the problem on both sides of the isle.

 

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January 6, 2020 · 11:10

The public and facts ignored

Yup, this is all about the public, and a little bit about the media. The centre of attention of all this is Qasam Soleimani, as the weekend hit us, the US decided to hit Iraq and specifically Soleimani, They got lucky and got another two hit value targets in the process, yet let it be clear that Soleimani was the direct target. Over the weekend I have seen loads of rubbish in particular a tweet from Rose McGowan apologising to Iran on behalf of the American people and that got me furious (not just me). The media has been so successful in hiding the actions of Iran, especially during the Yemeni events that it is time that the public gets a little history lesson on just what Qasem Soleimani got done. In the last 20 years he has made more unwritten deals (especially with Hezbollah) than any other Iranian general in history. Over the last few years Iran has been in two proxy wars, one with Israel via Hezbollah and one with Saudi Arabia (in Yemen) with Hezbollah and Houthi forces.

“There are two important issues in the Saudi efforts [against the model of Iran’s Islamic Republic]: First, they spend a lot of money; second, they sow the seeds of problems throughout the Islamic world using the Salafiyya. They do all this because they are afraid that the model of the Islamic Republic will have an influence on them – and this is actually happening… The most important principle of the Rule of the Jurisprudent, where a wise and God-fearing man rules, should be the red line for us all [that we must never relinquish]” (source: MEMRI, 2014)

“The once reclusive head of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force has emerged from a lifetime in the shadows directing covert operations abroad, to achieve almost celebrity status in Iran. The man who, until a couple of years ago most Iranians would not have recognised on the street, is now the subject of documentaries, news reports and even pop songs” (source: BBC, 2015).

“In neighbouring Syria he is widely credited with delivering the strategy that has helped President Bashar al-Assad turn the tide against rebel forces and recapture key cities and towns. Iran has always denied deploying boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, but every now and then holds public funerals for security forces and “military advisers” who were killed in these two countries” (source: BBC, 2015)

“The main purpose of his visit was to discuss new delivery routes for shipments of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, sources said. Several sources also said Soleimani wanted to talk about how Russia and Iran could help the Syrian government take back full control of the city of Aleppo” (source: Reuters, 2016)

“Photos have emerged claiming that Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite foreign operations unit, the Qods Force, is in Aleppo, Syria. Soleimani leads Iranian strategy in Syria in coordination with both Russia and Bashar al-Assad’s government. He commands the IRGC-led Shiite expeditionary force there, which includes the Afghan Fatemiyoun, Pakistani Zeynabiyoun, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Iraqi Harakat al Nujaba” (source: Classified, 2016)

“Soleimani pointed to how this was already happening as the Revolutionary Guards “had been working around the clock to arm the Popular Mobilization militias” after its establishment. On the sidelines of his participation in the memorial service of one of the guards killed in Syria on Monday, Soleimani said that the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist group has already provided support to the PMU militias, according to a statement published on Tasnim news agency” (source: Al-Arabiya, 2017)

“Major-General Qassem Soleimani, the hugely popular commander of the IRGC’s Qods Force, appeared to attack the spirit, if not the substance, of the government’s foreign policy by highlighting the role of the Qods Force – and the wider IRGC – in advancing Iranian strategic and foreign policy goals. Speaking on the 40th day of the “martyrdom” of Brigadier General Shaaban Nassiri – who was killed in late May during the operation to retake Mosul – Soleimani glorified the role of commanders like Nassiri who make the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of national prestige through the projection of complex forms of hard power. This is, of course, a swipe at the Rouhani administration which is perceived to favour softer forms of diplomacy to advance the Iranian position” (source: Middle East Eye, 2017)

“Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds (Qods)Force, has called for the “eradication” of Israel in retaliation for the killing of a Hezbollah commander ten years ago. Speaking in Tehran at a ceremony commemorating the 39th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution February 14, Soleimani said “The eradication of Israel would be the best revenge for the killing of Imad Mughniyeh.”” (source: Radio Farda, 2018) 

“Soleimani’s message was in essence a warning to the US to stop threatening Iran with war or risk exposing itself to an Iranian response. “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine … Come. We are ready. If you begin the war, we will end the war,” Tasnim news agency quoted Soleimani as saying” (source: SCMP, 2018)

“The day after anti-government protests erupted in Iraq, Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani flew into Baghdad late at night and took a helicopter to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where he surprised a group of top security officials by chairing a meeting in place of the prime minister. The arrival of Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional security apparatus, signaled Tehran’s concern over the protests, which had erupted across the capital and in Iraq’s Shi’ite heartland, and included calls for Iran to stop meddling in the country” (source: Haaretz, 2019)

““Saudi Arabia is building its regional influence with money only. This is a false influence and a failure…We will take revenge for our martyrs…(and) it might be anywhere around the world,” Qasem Soleimani said, according to Tasnim. The Islamic Republic has accused arch regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of backing militants who carry out attacks on security forces in Iran. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have denied any connection with the attacks” (source: Radio Farda, 2019)

This is just a small grasp of a much larger problem, Qasam Soleimani has had a finger in the regional porridge for a much larger extent of time, and the absence of his acts in the Yemeni events is a much larger failing of the media, even as scores of experts clearly state that the drones that Houthi forces in Yemen could in no way be Yemeni, the media remained silent. There is no way that any of this happened without the approval and blessing of Qasam Soleimani. Even as the media had no issues stating numerous articles on Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia and hiding behind ‘alleged’, ‘seemingly’ and ‘from unnamed sources’, they stopped short on any reporting regarding Iran, the entire nuclear accords had too many eyes stopping the media doing their job. As such the people are largely unaware of just how involved Iran was in Yemen. As targeted killing goes, Qasam Soleimani was an essential target for the US and largely this man was a thorn in the side of optional Middle East stability, even now we see: ‘Hezbollah vows retaliation against US for Soleimani killing‘, yes the death of Qasam will be a problem for Hezbollah, under the table agreements tend to be absent of actual agreements and Hezbollah will need to ingratiate itself again to Iran. Consider the support that Qassam gave for a terrorist organisation to give out: “Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to target US forces in the region in retaliation for the killing of top Iranian and Iraqi commanders in a US drone strike earlier this week“. 

Most importantly, QS has been the centre of attacks on Israel for the longest of times, Hezbollah had (according to some) a stockpile of 130,000 missiles. I find that number largely exaggerated, yet even at 10% we see 13,000 missiles at $100K each, so where did Hezbollah get that money? My personal take is that there is a large financial debt on KLebanon in the forms of send missiles, Iran has nothing to lose in that way, they have someone else attack Israel and if that is concluded they will had over the invoice which must have gone into the billions at present, the orchestrator has been and was as always Qasam Soleimani.

Hezbollah will do whatever it can to let that invoice stand and continue, without it they run out and they will have to admit defeat to Israel (something they would never do). There is no denial that the impact of Qassam Soleimani has been seen and felt all over the Middle East, his links to Hezbollah, his actions in Syria and Yemen as well as his death leading to a rift in Qatar pushing some towards Iran is a larger issue that has not been dealt with. Only an hour ago did we learn “Qatar’s contradictory policy moves – at once hosting the aircraft that attacked the Iranian commander and then apologizing for it – demonstrate the Qatari leadership’s “extremely dangerous” drift towards Iran, according to expert Varsha Koduvayur, a senior research analyst at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “On the one hand, Qatar hosts US forces at al-Udeid air base. But on the other hand, they prop up and fund scores of terror groups throughout the Middle East diametrically opposed to US interests, and work hand in hand with countries that seek to damage the US’s interests in the region,” said Koduvayur in an interview“, a push that plenty did not see coming, implying that QS had larger links to Qatar, the place where in 2 years all football will be, happy now?

As Al-Arabiya gives us ““We consider ourselves on Iran’s side. We did not, at all, expect such a thing to happen, or that such a decision would ever be taken. Such actions are unprecedented, and we are very sad and concerned about this,” al-Thani, who also met with his Iranian counterpart Mohammed Javad Zarif, was quoted as saying“, we see a larger play and it seems that there are links that we did not expect to be, QS had a much larger role to play in Iran’s foreign policy than most analyst expected, there are seemingly larger connection where the military decided on policy and not President Rouhani, or at least that is how it appears. So anyone who wants to apologise for the targeted killing whilst ignoring the thousands of deaths that Iran has orchestrated for are out of their minds. The man who gave us (in May 2019) “Iran’s most prominent military leader has recently met Iraqi militias in Baghdad and told them to “prepare for proxy war”, the Guardian has learned. Two senior intelligence sources said that Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s powerful Quds force, summoned the militias under Tehran’s influence three weeks ago, amid a heightened state of tension in the region. The move to mobilise Iran’s regional allies is understood to have triggered fears in the US that Washington’s interests in the Middle East are facing a pressing threat” has been stopped, there is no doubt that Iran will not stop and the devil you know beats the devil you don’t, yet the devil we knew was extremely adapt on the world stage, whomever replaces him will be nowhere as good as Qassam Soleimani ever was, of that I am decently certain.

 

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January 3, 2020 · 12:30

Car Ghost

Yes, the news is full of him, the news is all about the great escape now, but what set it all in motion? You see, the numbers do not add up, not to the degree that we see at present.

Some might see it as a setting where it all comes from a strategic partnership among those automotive manufacturers through a complex cross-shareholding agreement where the alliance of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi has set a 10% market share ownership for the last 10 years and to comprehend this, consider the amount of car brands you know on a global scale, whilst we see that three brands have a 10% market share. As such in 2003 Fortune identified him as one of the 10 most powerful people in business outside the U.S. that is not a small matter, to get on such a short list a person needs to have pull on several levels. So when I see that he was arrested at Tokyo International Airport on 19 November 2018, on allegations of under-reporting his earnings and misuse of company assets. I was not surprised, I did not blink and more important, I shrugged it all off with the flair of ‘whatever’. The fact that Renault an French officials at some point cut ties and made him surrender his CEO and Chairman position of Renault was the first moment I took notice, this is a rather large setting, as the man was part Lebanese I wondered if Hezbollah ties were involved, knowing the DGSE does not tend to show the hand it holds and would not surrender such knowledge until it was common knowledge. 

Ghosn was re-arrested in Tokyo on 4 April 2019 over new charges of misappropriations of Nissan funds. This time around, I had a few more runs on his name and more importantly a run on a finance hub on the dark web, my searches went dark (almost literally) and whatever exists, there was no way to get a handle on it (for me at least). Now, I already had access to the NY Times who gave us “Nissan said it was cooperating with Japanese prosecutors and that its investigation into Mr. Ghosn began after a whistle-blower said he had been misrepresenting his salary and using company assets for personal purposes“, all whilst France.24 gave us “Renault uncovered 11 million euros in questionable expenses by him, leading to a French investigation and raids“, so this is not his income, or his bonus, these are two places where multi million expenses were found and whilst some might digress on the fact that it came from a whistleblower, it seems that two places have in he first an incapable CFO, in the second the fact that this was not raising alerts on where that money was and more important there is an optional Hezbollah link with close to €16 million missing. All this whilst we see no explanation to ‘donations to nonprofit organizations‘, isn’t that how Hezbollah gets loads of its revenue? So whatever Carlos Ghosn states as to ‘political enemies’ might have a ring of truth, they would be anyone opposing the terrorist actions of Hezbollah. So when I see ‘Renault says an internal audit with partner Nissan found 11 million euros in questionable expenses at their Dutch-based holding‘, I merely wonder how this could have been going on for so long, this is not something that happened overnight, there is a trail and some players never woke up (apparently). So whilst I have absolutely no feelings on some CEO, I am actively hostile to anyone supporting and financing the actions of Hezbollah. 

Here is where I need to make sure that you realise that the Hezbollah link is assumed and implied, yet there was a lack of intelligence that is until Ghosn escaped to Lebanon, eve now as the Guardian gives us (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/31/carlos-ghosns-escape-from-japan-was-aided-by-lebanese-officials), we see “Carlos Ghosn’s flight from criminal charges in Japan to Lebanon was aided by Lebanese state officials who were instructed by political leaders to smooth his arrival“, it is one way of stating that Hezbollah OK’d it all. And whilst another Guardian article gives us “A private plane was waiting to whisk the former corporate titan to Istanbul, Turkey. From there he appears to have boarded a Bombardier Challenger private jet for a flight to Lebanon, where he arrived before dawn on Monday“, All whilst no one asks the questions how a person apparently handing over his passports as part of his bail condition got out of the country, and I have less faith in “News of the escape came as surprise to the Japanese authorities – who have charged Ghosn with falsifying records about his personal pay in order to enrich himself“, when state players (Lebanon) goes out on a limb to this degree, and as he was able to get not on one, but two jets one in Japan (who has decent security) and then in Turkey (an Iranian puppet, and they love their Hezbollah HVA’s) we see a shifted picture and it is not merely an executive with too much money, you see, he is still a registered Brazilian as well, and there we see: “Article 77(I) determines that extradition must not be permitted when it involves Brazilians, unless the acquisition of nationality takes place after the fact that motivates the extradition request“, as such the extradition to Lebanon was about more than just moving house. Yet the Washington Post adds fuel to the fire, there we get “In an interview with the Associated Press published Thursday, Lebanon’s justice minister, Albert Serhan, said that Ghosn had entered the country legally on a French passport. “Lebanese authorities have no security or judiciary charges against him, he entered the border like any other Lebanese using a legal passport,” Serhan said.” (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/02/accused-serious-crimes-he-smuggled-himself-out-japan-carlos-ghosn-may-escape-extradition-lebanon-too/), in addition, France would not extradite to Japan, implying the mess is a lot larger and there the DGSE and Hezbollah situation makes sense, if there was something, fleeing to France would be hazardous, not only does he have a DGSE marker, there is every chance the CIA would want him as well, and they have ways to get to braziliams, getting to Lebanese HVA’s is a lot less likely, a person like Ghosn would be protected to the highest political level possible. We also see “If Mr. Ghosn comes in France, we will not extradite Mr. Ghosn, because France never extradites its nationals. So we will apply to Mr. Ghosn, like everyone, the same rules of the game,” French junior economy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told TV station BFM on Thursday“, and this is from Junior economy minister, not from a senior justice member, they would ‘no comment‘ the issue for two distinctive reasons. 

Even now as the case escalates in Turkey, the BBC reports “According to Turkish media, seven arrests have been made in connection with the case – four pilots, a cargo company manager and two airport workers” (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50972149), the given information is open as arrests do merely imply, but give no specific intelligence, merely an implied issue, when these people get convicted it is a larger issue, yet Hezbollah will see this as the cost of living, an HVA like Carlos Ghosn bringing in millions, with what he knows of the car industry trumps those lives and the fact that that the Guardian gives us “A policeman leaves the Beirut residence of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn on 31 December” whilst the image is a person with three stars, that is not a policeman, that is someone in authority. In the meantime, we forget that he has surrendered his passports as part of the deal so when we see that his lawyer gives us that “he still had all three of his client’s passports in his possession” implies a larger set of contributing people in a larger time frame, this was orchestrated and this was planned. Even as his lawyer gives us: “I wanted to prove he was innocent,” said Hironaka, who last saw Ghosn on Christmas Day. “But when I saw his statement in the press, I thought he doesn’t trust Japan’s courts“, my take on it is that someone found something and Ghosn knew the gig was up and Japan will cooperate with the USA on the drop of a hat (especially when it is terrorist linked), as such Ghosn needed to get away and from all we see he did not go to Brazil, there is a larger play (but that is my take on the matter). Then we get two parts that optionally bear links to one another, there is “A Lebanese foreign ministry official told Reuters that Ghosn entered the country legally on a French passport and using his Lebanese ID with normal security procedures. The French foreign ministry press office said it had no immediate comment“, as well as “a person resembling Ghosn was recorded by Lebanese officials as entering the country at Beirut airport under a different name“, this now implies a fake passport, whilst that is partially a problem for Ghosn, we also see ‘using his Lebanese ID‘, not his passport (according to the quote) so now we see a planned move from Japan from a person who claims “I have escaped injustice and political persecution“, all whilst he has broken fiscal and financial laws (according to the whistle blower) and all whilst his actions are one that a person does seeking to escape justice, all whilst this is in a state of so described “discrimination is rampant and basic human rights are denied“, all whilst we have seen that in Japan the standard of life for a convicted criminal is better than most european countries give their unemployed and homeless people, as for the evidence on that see the Abashiri Prison Museum, where the prison meals can actually be bought (two meal optons each less than $9) and they outdo most average restaurtants, interesting is it not?

There are still a lot of unknowns and some dark web sources are not that reliable, but one thing is certain, to arrange two jets, a fake passport and the trip takes doing, there will be a trail, I merely wonder what the press (is allowed) get to print and state on the larger screens, and that is where we get to Le Parisien where we see “he had not hesitated to impose a new head for the group’s intelligence unit, in the person of Rémi Pagnie, formerly of the DGSE (Directorate General for Security) indoor)” (Le Parisien, Nov 2019). An act from 2005, yet I believe that such an act requires scrutiny, not in regards to the DGSE, but in regards to the stage in France, there is a much larger setting (maybe why Ghosn did not go to France), it is seen in Le Journal Du Dimanche (a French source that I do not know, as my French is really really bad), the source (at https://www.lejdd.fr/Economie/Les-nouveaux-secrets-dans-la-pseudo-affaire-d-espionnage-chez-Renault-293909-3109724) give several question marks that go back to 2011 and also include: “Even if he denies it today, Carlos Ghosn would then have given instructions “complete silence” on this aspect while ordering “to continue the investigations”. A special financing network, via a company in Dubai, was then set up” calls for a much larger level of scrutiny, this was going on since 2011 and I wonder why no action had taken place and why Carlos Ghosn was allowed to roam free to this degree, I do not know the French source, but I found several sources raising questions regarding the inactivity and lack of investigation regarding Carlos Ghosn from at least two sources and as Dubai is validated the inactions of the CIA are also in question, especially as there is an optional implied money link towards Hezbollah, and in that regard, if Carlos Ghosn was acquitted from that, the lack of reporting on that is equally an issue as this would show a larger support to the statements of Carlos Ghosn, not merely on Japanese grounds , but almost global. That is not supported, but it leads to questions if the French source could be vetted for “It was still Carlos Ghosn who gave the green light in mid-December to dismiss the three suspected French executives. Another revelation, the offices where the layoffs took place were “soundproofed”“, soundproofing requires plausible deniability on a few levels, the issues if true gives rise to an optional persecution of Carlos Ghosn, the opposite opens Renault for almost titanic settlement with the three allegedly guilty executives, this mess keeps on growing and growing and the inactions are almost unbelievable, especially when you consider that his positions at Renault would not be given up until early 2019, almost 8 years later, and we see a lack of questions on several fronts and close to no reporting other then the absolute minimum. It took me two hours (delays as Google Translate needed to help me with French) to find this and I still see the seven hour old report from the BBC stating “Mr Ghosn, who was also boss of French car-maker Renault, has been under investigation in France but no charges have been laid“, all whilst there is a larger play in all this and it is not money. And there is one more part that flagged me. When we consider “He had been under house arrest in Tokyo awaiting trial but managed to evade police surveillance” whilst the BBC gives us “According to Turkish media, Mr Ghosn’s private jet landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport at 05:30 (02:30 GMT) on Monday, having flown from Japan’s Kansai airport in Osaka“, and when we consider that Osaka and Tokyo are a little over 500Km apart, he went unnoticed for such a long time? The more I see, the more questions I have and I am only in my second hour looking at the presented evidence. 

As I personally see it this Car Ghost is trying to evade a lot more than is so called look on injustice. When we see stories like “At a halfway house in Hiroshima – for criminals who are being released from jail back into the community – 69-year-old Toshio Takata tells me he broke the law because he was poor. He wanted somewhere to live free of charge, even if it was behind bars” we see more than a setting of persecution, we see an implied solution for poor people and they accept and prefer jail? That is uncanny, even in the west on a few lines, so in all there is a larger setting and even as a happy go unlucky Carlos Ghosn is setting out to be, his lifestyle might be a lot higher than what the other end gets, still his response and the actions connected to it should raise more questions, and they are speculated on by many, yet I see a lack of questions that go all the way back to 2011, interesting, is it not?

 

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