August 24, 2018 · 12:52

When drought sets in

That is the moment that is feared, it happens all over the world. The drought in Australia had been close to legendary, and then there is New Mexico, Texas, small parts in Oklahoma, as well as Missouri. Europe is also facing issues of drought with crop failures and loads of farmers now facing bankruptcy. Countries like Spain, Greece, even parts of Southern Sweden now having more than just a dry spell. After a summer of record wildfires that burned roughly 250,000 hectares of forest, we see that the Swedes are slamming down on the change of lifestyle that has squarely hit them in this green jewel called Sweden, they record the worst drought in 74 years.

Drought is a way of life in some cases and depending on the situation you bank, drought becomes a game changer. So when we are introduced to ‘Hezbollah turns to charity amid economic woes‘, we see that it is not merely a dry spell. We are faced with the quote “Iranian excess wealth, which has funded the group with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, appears now to be drying up“, it is in line with “Hezbollah officials have been scrambling to put a lid on the aforementioned “crisis” as its coffers have been depleted in the wake of its large outlays on fighting in Syria and from the increasing squeeze of U.S sanctions on its patron Iran“. Yes there we have it, when we see ‘its patron Iran‘, we see the setting of Hezbollah, the ‘bitch’ of Iran, a tool to be used and discarded when the situation requires and it seems that Hezbollah is a tool that can no longer be afforded and now we see “resorted to the more traditional means of fundraising through its Islamic Resistance Support Organization and Imdad Committee for Islamic Charity“. It seems that those opposing Hezbollah and Iran are making gains in this path, as Hezbollah is now in an economic crises, they might consider that for every missile fired on Saudi Arabia, a thousand people need to abandon a week of food for a thousand persons. Consider that 165 missiles have been fired, where does that leave Hezbollah? OK, that was a wrongful setting, because the missiles are seemingly coming from Iran. We see more and more evidence that this is the case, yet how exactly has remained in the shadows of speculation for now. The biggest issue is not the fact that they rely on charity, it is “Nasrallah seems to understand the severity of the problem, telling members of the group’s Education Unit, which provides scholarships and operates schools, that the crisis would “endure as long as U.S President Donald Trump is in office,” sources told Annahar“. I would think that their involvement in Yemen, being one of the main causes of the absence of humanitarian aid would be a much bigger issue. In this, the National gives us “Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington has set out evidence of Hezbollah’s deep involvement in the war in Yemen, including footage of commanders directing training for Houthi rebels“. In this, I personally do not think that the fact that they are a mere Iranian tool matters, their involvement is a key part in the extensive hardship on the Yemeni citizens. That part is shown in several sources giving us: “Because terrorists use human shields to protect themselves or cause civilian casualties “without facing consequences,” it is imperative that “terrorists and their sponsoring regimes must be held accountable for their brutal practice of using civilians as human shields,” argued two experts in an op-ed published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal“. In this Hamas and Hezbollah seem to take the same approach. When we are introduced to the Hamas side with: “they exploited “the bodies of our women and children,” in the words of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, to protect its fighters as they attempted to infiltrate Israel. Though Salah Bawdawil, another official of the terrorist group. later admitted that most of those killed by Israel were indeed members of Hamas, Dubowitz and Kittrie observed, “the television images had already done the intended damage to Israel’s reputation.”“, so tell me, what happens when the drought of human shields sets in and the lack of children cadavers becomes overly visible? What remains at that point?

This is the setting and whilst Hezbollah is seeing its drought into new requirements for other tactics, we must ask ourselves, why was the entire Iranian-Hezbollah link allowed to continue in the first place. You see, when we are ‘treated’ to “the television images had already done the intended damage to Israel’s reputation“, we are not told that the media will not correct for the exclamatory statements that they make, they will not correct for the howling negligence or incompetence towards the true setting, because the emotional feed is too useful, as they merely focus on the needs of the shareholders, the stake holders and the advertisers.

That jump makes sense in a moment. As we were given (from various sources) “Over 1.4 million people have fled their homes in Yemen and are now struggling to find food and water. There are additional food shortages because farmers are unable to pump water to their fields“. In all this, with all the shortages we see that the Yemeni’s have to make very different decisions. When we see this pristine child, clean clothed, looking not hungry or thirsty, whilst in opposition we see levels of severe malnutrition, we need to reconsider what drought actually means.

You see the dictionary gives us “a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall, leading to a shortage of water“, yet it also gives us, the version we forget about. With: “a prolonged absence of something specified“. That is the version we need to focus on. As I stated it a few days ago, we might see the setting of those clean kids, new clothes, shiny rifles and a cameraman, but in that setting, in a prolonged absence, we see that they are the most vulnerable, the easiest form of extremism, kill and you do not go hungry (for a while at least).

It is a setting that Hezbollah has used over time again and again. I will say that there is no evidence that this is a specific Hezbollah setting. They might be on the sidelines using whatever tools handed to them and these kids, optionally for the first time in years with new clothes, a proper feed, we see the setting that radicalisation is getting too easy for the players and that is also why Humanitarian help is essential. When we dig deeper, we see the amount of sources, photographs and videos pile up, a proxy war that seemingly has children on both sides, where will it end?

So as we get back to Hezbollah and its patron needs; when we consider: “the party has attempted to implement de facto austerity measures, cutting certain social programs it provides to large segments of Lebanon’s Shiite community yet preserving the payments to the families of dead and injured fighters“. When the issue becomes ‘payments to the families of dead and injured fighters‘, it is their choice, yet in a stage of a drought of basic needs as we see that “its donations have maintained funding to around 40 percent of its needs“. Perhaps setting different priorities like for example, stop being the tool for Iran is a first step in all this. Especially when we see that the funds are drying up. the idea of Iran having to step in and actually do the fighting themselves is a first step to recognising that Iran is no longer in a proxy war, but in an actual war theatre where they are clearly seen as the warring party that they are. I wonder how many European nations would be willing to continue the setting of “The European Commission unveiled Thursday a first tranche of 18 million euros ($21 million) — 8 million for the private sector, 8 million to cope with environmental problems and 2 million for drug abuse“, in some misguided Iran aid deal whilst we see that the involvement of Iran in Yemen is basically part of the children dying through proxy wars and barred humanitarian aid, as this benefits Iran to a much larger degree. So whilst we have seen all kinds of attachments to laws, Is there any clear attachment to the ‘50-million-euro effort to help Iran cope with economic and social challenges‘, with the setting that its involvement in Yemen, once proven will slice funding by 90%, or were the big business people of Europe unable to concede to the idea that there should be some level of morale in all this? This setting is important, because if the Iranian funds are going dry, it equally means that Iran is out of options and in that light we need to consider that Europe had more options to get a much stronger humanitarian based agreement, yet these steps are not done, is that not equally strange?

In all this, whilst the clear diminishing funds are shown, we are also treated (two weeks ago) to the ‘Hezbollah’s Ababil drone on display in Mleeta‘, as well as the misdirection of “the Pentagon estimates that each UAV can cost as little as $200 and will be used by Hezbollah in other combat fields“, It is my personal view that this is clear misdirection as the systems contain at least $300 in metal and $500 in optical parts, the electronic are close to another $1500. So someone at the Pentagon seems to be buttering someone’s sandwich in all this.

Yet the story is clear, it seems that Hezbollah is another player where hunger is inferior towards its hatred of Israel and its facilitating displeasure of Saudi Arabia through Iran, and we must recognise that in all this the US is equally guilty to some degree. Instead of the statement from John Bolton: ‘Hezbollah forces in Syria must go back to Lebanon‘, he should have clearly stated: ‘Hezbollah forces in Syria and Yemen must go back to Lebanon‘. It would have been a first step is setting the stage that Iran would be left with less and less options, by not addressing this we are faced with a Hezbollah who is now eagerly awaiting charity funding to prolong the Yemeni situation (among other options), a situation that needs to get cut short and right quick.

In the end, when the drought does set in and you are still all about a continuing war that was not about you in the first place, at that time when you rely on charity and donations, merely to pay the ammunition and drone bill, isn’t it time that a harsh look at ones priorities becomes more and more essential?

#59HoursUntilMondayMorning

 

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August 23, 2018 · 12:35

Liberalism overboard

We can agree that there is in many places a setting of ‘freedom of speech’. For the most, I have always supported that, and even though I know that there is an overwhelming amount of exercise in the ‘art of free speech’ for the mere setting to do harm and to inflict insult onto others, the largest portion of people are about merely voicing personal opinion, or in some cases to evangelize their version, or better stated their interpretation of events through free speech. I do still believe that freedom of speech is a much larger advocate of good then evil. The question becomes, what happens when the intent is a malicious one?

In America one of the most famous cases of free speech is still Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). From the New York Times at the time we get “the Court held that the First Amendment gives speakers immunity from sanction with respect to their speech concerning public figures unless their speech is both false and made with “actual malice”, i.e., with knowledge of its falsehood or with reckless disregard for the truth of the statement“, that is the important setting in this case, and even if this is regarding a setting in different nations, it gives a clear view on where most of us are, or should be. So when I was confronted with “a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest organized by anti-Islam PVV leader Geert Wilders“, a person who has a visible anti-Islam view, when we are clear and in the know that images of the prophet Mohammed are a massive taboo in the entire global Islamic population, why can we allow a political party leader to set a stage of mental duress to Islamic people of all ages? The fact that this competition is to be held in a closed part of Parliament closed or not reflects even worse on the Dutch government.

If I was an emotional person (which I am not), I would plead with the United Muslims of Australia (UMA) as well as a few Muslim governments on the idea of a fantasy story, the topic would be ‘How to assassinate a politician‘, it is partially important that the people realise that I am a Catholic, not a Muslim. It would be open to all Muslims from 14 to 20 years old and the story needs to surpass 8000 words. We will ask a prominent member of Muslim society to consider being the judge of all those stories.

I am as rich as a church mouse (read: therefor the opposite of rich), so I cannot make a price available, so we need sponsor willing to host the artistic exercise and the winner should get a decent award and we will send all the submissions in PDF form to the Dutch Parliament as a statement of objection on what PVV Leader Geert Wilders had set in motion.

You see, the steps are important for the mere setting that there must be a dialogue with people that is not set on hatred and in equal measure, people fuelling the fires of hatred should no longer be allowed in politics. The fact that we were offered: “In 2015 Wilders attended a Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas. He left just before jihadists tried to commit an attack“, it was a clear message (apart from the one in France). So the Dutch politician was in attendance at this event on Dutch Memorial Day (regarding WW2), when we are treated to: “Two gunmen who opened fire outside a competition for the best cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad near Dallas in the United States on Sunday. PVV leader Geert Wilders was the keynote speaker at the event. The police shot and killed both gunmen. A security officer was injured“. It was at an American event, in America that called for, and knowingly invited for an action of extremism. A hate group hiding behind “He told the audience that most terrorists are Muslims and “the less Islam the better”. “We are here in defiance of Islam to stand for our rights and freedom of speech,” he said during his speech. “That is our duty.”“. the two sides is that we do not deny a freedom of speech, yet when you use that freedom to knowingly and intentionally inflict harm to others, how does that go over with you?

In this it is the current nightmare for Stef Blok who is currently heading the foreign office. It is a nightmare, because not only is it a setting where a politician is intentionally insulting a religion, not only is this a set stage, it is one that is ALLOWED to be done in Dutch Parliament.

No matter how good most of the Dutch are, no matter how dedicated they are to excellence. when we consider the business model (at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/local/dutch-model-attracts-uae-firms), when we see that the setting of “Twenty-seven of the 60 projects come from the UAE“, when the attached “Currently, we have 60 investment projects from the Mena region together investing more than 1.1 billion euros and creating more than 2,000 jobs“, when that falls away due to the insult of their national religion, when the people in the UAE are made aware of the insults that PVV Leader Geert Wilders is allowed to get away with. How long until the funds stop and the jobs go to the UK, France and perhaps Australia? When we get Jeroen C.M. Nijland, commissioner of the Ministry of Economic Affairs at the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA), now having to state that economic times have taken a step back due to ‘abused freedom of expression’ in a stage of intentional malignant acts against Muslim nations on a global scale. When these 2,000 jobs fall away? What will be the excuse Dutch officials will announce in line to the ‘Due to uncontrollable elements, the Dutch deficit will rise from 1.1% to an expected 1.9%‘, or perhaps “The economy will grow by 3.3% in 2017 and a projected 1.3% in 2018“. When one party represents close to 50% of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, getting the scope of alienating economic partners correct tends to become extremely important.

In that regard, when the President of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan learns that Dutch parliament was allowed to be used for such an event. How do you expect that he is likely to react? When Saudi Arabia learns of this, a nation now ready to give reign to around one trillion dollars in projects for the next 7 years (the new Neom city included as well as other Saudi projects), in that light, just how stupid was the setting of facilitating to Geert Wilders in all this?

A setting where the technological growth, especially in 5G projects will be the largest in the history of the world (for now that is), when these projects could feed corporations for close to two generations, getting ‘political correctness’ a little better under control is close to everything. So, I do remain a ‘champion’ of free speech, but we should learn to see accountability equally important, especially when there is as what I personally see as clear intentional malice in play. In that regard it was never about ‘freedom of expression‘, was it? So, if we accept fair play, then the Dutch economy should rely on business partners that are not fundamentally Muslim and perhaps they can get the same amount of projects and revenue in Asia, or Africa, or perhaps America. Was America not that nation that has such a booming economy? You see, plenty of other nations to get the 27+ replacement contracts.

I think that this should be the impact of Liberalism when it goes overboard. When we dig deeper and we consider the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), we see “findings confirm that conservatives, liberals, the religious and the nonreligious are each prejudiced against those with opposing views. But surprisingly, each group is about equally prejudiced. While liberals might like to think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative counterparts are” (source: Politico.com). Mark Brandt, Geoffrey Wetherell and Christine Reyna created the paper ‘Discrimination Across the Ideological Divide. The Role of Value Violations and Abstract Values in Discrimination by Liberals and Conservatives‘ (2013). Here we see “conservatives were more discriminatory than liberals toward liberal groups, and liberals were more discriminatory than conservatives toward conservative groups. Conservatives’ discrimination was driven by their higher traditionalism and by liberal groups’ apparent violation of their values. Liberals’ discrimination was driven by their lower traditionalism and by conservative groups’ apparent violation of their values. Complicating matters, conservatives highly valued self-reliance, which weakened their discrimination toward liberal groups, perhaps because self-reliance is associated with the freedom to believe or do what one wants. And liberals highly valued universalism, which weakened their discrimination toward conservative groups, likely because universalism espouses acceptance of all“. Yet the foundation is not the setting of prejudice that we all will have to some degree, what happens when this prejudice is coated in intentional malice? What happens when malice is the cornerstone of the politician and the spokesperson on an agenda that is drenched in self-interest and in that knowingly sets the stage of ‘absence for consideration‘ towards the economic setting that is part of a governing parliament, a parliament that Geert Wilders is a part of? When we see that the economic partners walk away, is that prejudice or the cost of doing business? When we accept certain cultural business partners, should we accept that a level of accountability is to be expected when the ‘freedom of expression‘ is set towards the stage of intentional malice?

You see, for me the exposure would be merely business. I can, to some degree take the slack of these 27 projects and claim my 3.75% of 1.1 billion euros and assist in getting the UAE the quality replacements that do take a level of political correctness in their stride, especially the political players that are unwilling to play fast and loose with a billion euro’s by not allowing parliament to be used for intentional malicious anti-Islam events.

So am I suddenly anti-Dutch? Am I suddenly anti freedom of speech, or anti freedom of expression? No, I am not. I merely state that ‘intent of malice’ should not be allowed, especially not in any house of parliament. I do also accept that the Charlie Hebdo case is a sensitive one, yet in that this was acting within France, in a total satirical case and it was not merely Islam. The setting was also anti Catholic and anti-Judean. One could argue that the magazine treated all religion, as well as politics and culture to a larger degree with contempt. I do not accept that the act against the Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015 was an acceptable one. For the most also for the driving reason that they were not singling the Muslim religion out as a target for their satire. In their setting it was about freedom of expression against all they viewed, not just one religion. There was a debatable absence of malice here.

This does get me on a slippery slope and I admit to that. You see, when we set that stage, is there intent or absence of malice? Is satire an intention of malice? No, when it is done over the top and in the staged setting of a cartoon, I remain in line of the Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell stage. It is cartoon, over the top expression of ridicule, like the two Hebdo images. And as a Catholic, I can look onto that setting and giggle. We never had the absence of icons and images towards religious Christian figures. It changes the field completely.

When liberalism allows for, and to the larger stage supports intent of malice, that is when we need to sit down and wonder just how far over the top have we gone? It is a discussion that the Dutch need to have in the very near future. That pressure will grow when it is no longer merely Pakistan formally complaining, but when Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Turkey and Indonesia follow suit and stand with Pakistan. At that point it might be too late for the Netherlands to merely do this away with some political statement. At that point it will require much larger efforts by the ambassadors in those nations to go into damage control mode and fix the mess that Geert Wilders was allowed to make in the first place.

It suck to be Mr Laurens Westhoff, Mr Joost Reintjes, Dr Bahia Tahzib-Lie, Mrs Laetitia van Asch and Rob Swartbol in the coming weeks. I have no doubt that in these places there will be a lot of outrage on the matter (and a few other places too).

The fact that this started in June and was not the front page setting in many papers was to some degree an issue, the fact that Pakistan made a formal complaint about the setting and the fact that the newspapers are ignoring the issue over the past 48 hours is also an issue, especially when we are confronted with the setting “Mazari said the actions of Wilders, who heads the Dutch Freedom Party, was a clear violation of human rights of Muslims in Europe as well as a violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom“, so we see Human rights issues in almost every paper, yet when it is Pakistan minister Shireen Mazari, the papers set it aside? Will it all become an outspoken stage on the Pakistan blasphemy law that still attracts the death penalty? In this stage and those settings, we need to accept that there is a much larger hypocrisy in play, so when I limelight the issue, partially so that I can fly in with an option towards 3.75% of One billion Euro, I feel perfectly justified in my actions, at least I was always willing to state out the settings, even when I was wrong (the Jeremy Corbyn stage of a funeral in Tunesia), I had no issue about correcting the stage as to what it truly was (to the degree that I was able to validate).

 

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August 21, 2018 · 14:54

A haircut before the guillotine

That is how we sometimes see life. We are all dressed up, all ready, smooth shave and a decent look, all on route to the main event where we are the guest of honour at a dinner party hosted by Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Yes, we are the person on the chopping block. When death is all you look forward to, the way getting there will mean the most to anyone.

So out comes the master of coiffure, to make sure that the shave and the haircut were done to levels of excellence that you never considered before. Master tailor Marc de Luca will come and see you to make sure that the suit is one that Versace will look at with utter envy, the people on Saville Row will look with utter amazement on just how perfect a suit can be, because you must look your best on route to that once in a life time dinner party with Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, all the elements mattered the most on this one day.

So there is the setting you see when we consider ‘EU says Greece can ‘finally turn the page’ as bailout ends‘. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/20/eu-greece-bailout-ends-pierre-moscovici) gives us “Greece has turned the page to become “a normal” member of the single currency“. Yes in that regard it is nice to know that a mental health setting of ignorance when it comes to the economy, is still riding high with too many individuals. I mentioned it over 3 years ago in the article ‘Dress rehearsal (part 1)‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/01/dress-rehearsal-part-1/), where I stated ““Greece would face an unsustainable level of debt by 2030 even if it signs up to the full package of tax and spending reforms demanded of it, according to unpublished documents compiled by its three main creditors“, the reason that I call it questionable, is because Greece is what I call a 3G nation, which means it will take three generations for this debt to become close to manageable. So, with that I imply that the debt is still a massive form of pressure in 2061, there is no escaping it“. That part we now see with “Greece has the highest government debt in the EU, 177% of gross domestic product, and is forecast to be repaying loans until 2060“. WOW! I was off by one year and that was me using my fingers and an abacus over three years ago. Now we see that it will be all done by 2060, which is actually not a certainty. I took a few setbacks in consideration that are likely to be missing here, so considering that this started 8 years ago, we see that in the end it will take another 42 years, making my ‘three generation‘ prediction spot on. Yet the good news is not yet done. When we consider that the debt is 177% of gross domestic product, the fact that youth unemployment remains at 43.6%, as well as a few setbacks, there is merely one stupid act of starting another bonds plan and it all goes south really really fast.

The first is that with “Athens will face more exacting checks than any other Eurozone member, so Brussels can monitor whether the government’s budgets are in line with EU stability and growth targets” Greece will still be bound by some factors. The setting is a given if Greece decided to try the Goldman Sachs strategy again, the future will start to look extremely dim again at that point, with little to no hope on resolving it ever. There will always be politicians that play the fast and loose card whenever they are in a pickle, which will soon thereafter become the ‘fast and lose‘ scenario, especially for the Greek population.

Even now we see the quote: “Many analysts believe it will take a decade before Greece returns to pre-crisis living standards following a slump in which its economy contracted by 25% and unemployment peaked at 28%“, I am not convinced that it will be that quick. It might be if serious investors can be found to pump up the Greek economy like a Google space, an Apple hub and an IBM data centre. Those steps will be a turn for the good for Greece, but without a really large player opening the field, Greece keeps on lagging behind and a decade will not be enough to set the economy back on track to the pre-crises degree stated. Furthermore, there is the consideration of “levels of extreme poverty jumped. The population has fallen by 3% because of emigration and a lower birth rate“, you see, the levels of extreme poverty also slows the recovery setting and the loss of population will not merely mean that there are less jobs required, it also means that a continuation of certain aspects can no longer happen. So the setting of parent to child implies that more and more businesses die over time lowering the GDP further, which in turn shoves the debt up by 5%-10% more than previous. So it is not the percentage, it is the €336,900,000,000 that is due its interest and that amount is not shifting merely due to the shifting GDP percentage. It is rising because 336 billion implies 6-9 billion euro of interest a year and with a population of less than 11 million, whilst we get the slightly over enthusiastic “By 2023 unemployment is forecast to fall to 14%“, yes, I’ll accept that when I see it. You see, last October it was 20.7 percent. This now give us that close to 2.5 million Greeks are not paying tax. So exactly how are they not merely getting the infrastructure paid for, but in addition to that pay for the 6-9 billion in annual interest? From my point of view the picture we are given is a rosy coloured setting of ‘Bull dung and grapes’, at which point the grapes are not that appetising anymore.

The final part is seen with “As a condition of getting debt relief, Athens agreed to the EU’s demand to run a budget surplus of 3.5% of GDP until 2022 and thereafter 2%. However, the International Monetary Fund, a co-funder of the bailouts, has long argued this goal is too onerous for a country that has endured years of belt-tightening“. That shows part of the imbalance, or merely the gross injustice to the Greek population. There is close to no way to live with the ‘a budget surplus of 3.5% of GDP until 2022‘, unless you cook the books that is, which is a purely personal speculated option. It merely seems more than an impossible task and agreeing towards demands that are unrealistic is just not acceptable and utterly inhumane.

Forbes is on my side in this. The article (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/08/20/lessons-for-the-eurozone-from-the-greek-debt-crisis) gives us: “Fiscal austerity is on the menu for generations to come. Furthermore, if GDP takes a nosedive – as both business cycle theory and economic history tell us is almost certain to happen at some point during that time – further cuts will be necessary to meet primary surplus targets. In the light of this, the IMF has expressed serious reservation about the sustainability of Greek finances. If it is right, then the Greek crisis is not ended. It will be back with a vengeance in a decade or so“, I actually believe that ‘a decade or so‘, is a little optimistic. When we correct for Murphy (anything that can go wrong will go wrong), the tie line will shove the entire situation to the foreground by the year 2025.

The article is a really good read, mainly because it gives us in short the history on how it happened, which was essential in all this, because the danger of “in 2009 the Greek government lied about the true state of its finances, and that the pre-crisis boom had resulted in a fiscal deficit of 15% of GDP and debt/GDP of well over 100%” is a setting that is not unlikely to return in the 2023-2025 years, for a few reasons, especially when the Greeks are set in a stage of what is humanly called to be in a stage ‘without a pot to piss in‘. there will be overreactions and that is when things go from bad to worse and in that time, when there is still 35 years to go, a lot of people will re-enter new (read: even more harsh) levels of austerity.

So even when we think that the bailouts have ended, we also need to consider that this is academically correct, yet the truth is that we need to realise that in a little less than 16 months “the expensive debt to the International Monetary Fund, some 2.6 billion euros of which is due by the end of 2019” (source: Bloomberg), apart from the interest, posts like the maturing bonds come out to play and that is in this case well over 2.6 billion, also we need to consider ‘the interest Greece has to pay on bonds is still too high at about 4.2 percent‘, there we see that the additional pressures that Greece gets from refinancing all those bonds come at a huge cost. In addition to that part, we also need to notice ‘National Bank of Greece issued international bonds (XS1698932925) with a 2.75% coupon for EUR 750.0m maturing in 2020‘, so where will that money be coming from? We accept that seven hundred and fifty million Euros is not a lot when you say it fast, but in lieu of the outstanding debts, the budget surplus as well as bond maturities, all that whilst the economy is not on track and will not be anywhere near that in 2020, my prediction of a new stage of defaulting by 2025 might have been slightly too optimistic.

Personally I really hope that we can find a decent solution for Greece, a solution that allows for a growing economy because Greece is an awesome place and for the most Greeks are awesome (unless you’re German at that point you’re on your own). The good news is not there yet and I personally believe that some players are still stacking the cards in a way that suits them and not Greece. I am referring to the message: ‘S&P Global Ratings upgrades Foreign Currency LT credit rating of National Bank of Greece to “B-” from “CCC+”; outlook stable‘. It was given to the people on June 6th 2018. I personally do not believe it to be correct or better stated ‘justified’. Bloomberg gave us those goods an hour ago with: ‘Greek Bad Loans Are a Drag Even after Crisis Shrank Bank Sector‘. Basically an hour ago we were treated to “the problem she saw 12 years ago lingers on — Greece’s banks are still weighed down by bad loans. That’s making them cautious about new lending, which the country’s cratered economy needs to grow again after its European bailout ended on August 20th“. Basically hidden ghosts still rock the financial cadaver of Greece and there is more to come. Do you really think that ‘stable’ is the correct word? When we consider the S&P definitions we end up getting “An obligation rated ‘B’ is more vulnerable to non-payment than obligations rated ‘BB’, but the obligor currently has the capacity to meet its financial commitments on the obligation. Adverse business, financial, or economic conditions will likely impair the obligor’s capacity or willingness to meet its financial commitments on the obligation“, if the entire setting relies on ‘currently‘ I end up with the consideration that this could revert to a more negative stage by years end and then we see that the costs will increase whilst the maintenance of a budget surplus is close to a nil percent possibility at that point.

If we see that this is going on and the stage is set in several ways against Greece, who was the message ‘Greece can ‘finally turn the page’‘ for? Was it for the EU and European, was it for Greece (as an optional setting of false hope) or was this as the starting signal for Wall Street? In my mind the question becomes, who exactly was The European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, Pierre Moscovici catering for? Perhaps it is less complicated, perhaps he was merely acting as the maître des cérémonies for Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. To set the stage, where in the old days, executions by guillotine were a popular form of entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators (their version of the Roman bread and games). Perhaps that is what is needed in Europe and for now the Greek government is unaware that their status has been elevated from underdog to the proverbial ‘guest of honour’.

Yet in all this, we need to be more then sceptical, there is much doubt and most of it based on common sense. We need to realise that the setting of Greece remains close to unacceptable, these levels of austerity will have to continue not for a decade, but for several decades, mainly because until the economy gets an actual boost, the options of budget surplus seem to be so unrealistic that whatever was signed was basically signed under duress. If the CIA and others stopped torturing a terrorist because the issue was too inhumane and the intelligence was never reliable, why would you transfer such levels of inhumane economic pressure to a European ally?

In the entire Greek economic setting that one part never ever made any sense to me.

 

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August 20, 2018 · 13:19

Lying through truth

It is a sad day, it is sad for several reasons. The first is because the Press is now intentionally misleading the public. The second is that the press now decides the scope of information that the people are allowed to have, by spoon feeding us part of the information. It is about emotional impact at the expense of the truth, truth through omission whenever needed.

That is at the centre of all this and I cannot comprehend why this is continuing in this way. The articles part of this are ‘US supplied bomb that killed 40 children on Yemen school bus‘, the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/19/us-supplied-bomb-that-killed-40-children-school-bus-yemen), in addition it links to an article called ‘Yemen school bus bombing ‘one of 50 strikes on civilian vehicles this year’‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/16/yemen-school-bus-bombing-one-of-50-strikes-on-civilian-vehicles-this-year). In all this you are deceived by Julian Borger in Washington and Saeed Kamali Dehghan in London. Now, before I continue is that the part “The bomb dropped on a school bus in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition warplane was sold to Riyadh by the US, according to reports based on analysis of the debris” is not a lie in itself, it is a lie, but that is what we will look at in a moment.

You see, the more complete truth (as I personally see it) is: “Saudi-led coalition forces attacked a Houthi stronghold; the bomb either directly or indirectly hit a bus, which later turned out being a school bus with children on board. As far as the information gives us the warplane was sold to Riyadh by the US, according to reports based on analysis of the debris“. This difference matters because the attack, from several sources was a Houthi stronghold. The photo that I discussed on August 13th in my article ”Is it mere wording” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/08/13/is-it-mere-wording/),we see the ABC article gives us the footage where we see a non-scourged bus, implying that the bus was indirectly hit. The white paint of the bus was still intact. We admit there is total devastation, but this is the first part of the deception by Julian Borger in Washington and Saeed Kamali Dehghan in London. The second part is the fact in what I would regard as intentional omission. In addition, Al Jazeera gives us: “a Saudi-Emirati coalition air strike has killed dozens of children in a Houthi stronghold“, an unconfirmed part (apart from Al Jazeera) and in all this there is no mention of that part in there?

As for the setting of “US supplied bomb“, we have to realise that “As of April 2016, Saudi Arabia’s 2016 defence budget has decreased only by a relatively small amount from 2015 levels, as the government appears determined to support the economy and focus on economic diversification. Military and security still comprise 25 percent of the total budget, representing a sizable opportunity for U.S. aerospace and defence companies“, so this is a spending and investment that has been going on for years, hence the chance was great that it was American equipment that would be used. I think it is slightly hypocrite that the papers (dozens of them) on where the missile came from whilst the US economy has been barely surviving and with those dozens of billions a year the US would have stopped some time ago. In addition, if you want to go for the source, ask the people in London how they feel about the French Exocet missile, it took out the HMS Sheffield. These things happen and the fact that there was a bus full of children that was most likely indirectly hit is still really sad, no one denies that. Yet what were they doing in a Houthi Stronghold? No one really has that answer, do they? The Houthi’s have taken on board the Hezbollah and Iranian advice to hide within the population, that is a setting where plenty of innocents will get hit and the fact that this is done whilst even now we see that last Friday missiles were fired, aimed at the population of the city of Najran is not mentioned. Now, I accept that this is not part of the bus news, but several other parts were. The fact that Houthi’s have launched 176 ballistic missiles towards the kingdom so far is also a fact that is part of all this (not of the news article though). Yet the Saudi-led coalition will act in reprisal, who will get hit next? The Deutsche Welle also gives us: “arms researcher Pieter Wezeman told DW the missiles were likely not in Yemen before the war“, I am personally decently certain that they came from Iran, but how is still a mystery.

We also see important news that is clearly given by the Guardian where we see: “according to an analysis by Human Rights Watch (HRW), out of 75 incidents where civilian casualties were reported, JIAT has admitted Saudi rules of engagement may have been broken in only two“, I am willing to go as far as stating “2 out of 75, is still two too many“. The problem is how preventable were the two issues, was the bus incident avoidable? When I inspect the image again I see the white bus frame totally non burned, a direct hit would have set it on fire and there would have been no white paint left, that gives indication that the bus was indirectly hit (but still got slammed massively), I also (personal speculation) surmise that a direct hit and fire would have ended the life of the left rear tires, which is not the case. In this, there are a lot more questions in all this and the focus on the dead children is understandable, yet what were they doing in a Houthi stronghold? I equally oppose to some degree Jim Carrey’s setting. Now, the man is entitled to his opinion, and it is not a wrong thought to have, but was it the correct setting? When we see “The United States actor and artist Jim Carrey blasted on Aug. 17 the deadly airstrike in Yemen last week that reportedly killed 40 children on a school bus, calling the incident “Our crime.”” I cannot agree. You see several nations sell defence solutions. The US a lot more than most others, but the US, China and Russia all sell their governmental goods. Just like I will not blame France for selling the exocet missile to Argentina (the USS Sheffield incident), I cannot blame those three when the buying governments use them as actionable goods, for good or for bad. In this, I have always lived with the setting that bullets do not kill people, people kill people. So yes, there is a setting where the Saudi government should consider the investigation. Perhaps they do not have all the answers; equally it might never be resolved in a satisfactory way. The Houthi’s also have the setting to deal with that in a warzone children should have been clearly directed on safer roads. You cannot fire 176 ballistic missiles and expect this not to be answered. Like in any warzone, mistakes will be made, sometimes they are misguided setting of what was a valid target, sometimes it is mere technology that is off by 15 meters (whilst flying 160Km an hour, or faster, over a valid target) and sometimes it is the choice of blatant stupidity. Yet I can give you now that there is no way to prove which of the three options the case here was. We can only speculate and let’s be honest no one wants to admit to a mistake of this size.

We were also informed on “The Bellingcat report cautioned that the bomb fragments had not been photographed where they had fallen, but had been gathered together, leaving open the possibility that they had been planted“, yet that is still an option, but somehow the parts were still acquired, how is unlikely to be proven.

Even though the Guardian is one of the better newspapers, I have to question “Statistics collated by an independent monitoring group, the Yemen Data Project, suggest that the targeting of the school bus was part of a wider pattern. According to its records, there have been 55 airstrikes against civilian vehicles and buses in the first seven months of this year – a higher rate than in 2017“, the issue is that it is important to see where those buses and vehicles were. You see, a bus is not merely a vehicle; it is also a decently effective shield against missiles. We get to the setting that the bus might not have been as important as knowing what building it was parked in front of. As that data is not available, we might accept the top line event of number of buses hit, but until we know more of the vehicles surrounding there is no way to tell on what the target was.

I equally object to the statement “Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade said “the complicit silence from No 10 is a clear case of arms company profits being put above human rights and Yemeni lives“, They are separate issues, yet people like Andrew Smith will never see it that way. Yemeni lives have been declared null and void when Iran began its proxy war, but we see little of that part of the equation.

In all this there is another part, a part that is not exposed. The source (at https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1364036/exclusive-houthis-exploit-poverty-struck-children-cannon-fodder) is questionable; I will be honest about that. Yet the article has images, images that are debatable as the kids are all wearing really clean clothes. Even as we see that the images are from Reuters. The text ‘Child soldiers with Houthis hold weapons during a demonstration in Sanaa on March 13, 2015. Reuters‘ is illustrative, and also questionable. The clothes are too clean, the weapons too shiny and there is a cameraman on the car. I have an issue with the picture. Yet the article is all about ‘Houthis Exploit Poverty-Struck Children as Cannon Fodder‘, an accusation that has been seen in more than one place. So was the bus with children a military target at that moment? It is unlikely to be ever proven. When we see: “Rehabilitating child soldiers has proven to be the most difficult challenge faced by the internationally-recognized Yemeni government headed by Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. “The rehabilitation of children recruited and participating in the war costs over $200,000 for 80 children in one month,” government sources said. The Hadi administration is already trying to balance a depreciating national currency in hopes of improving one of the worst economic crises ever known to the war-torn country” should cry for anger. Yes, we need rehabilitation of children, yet the Houthi’s are using children in their war and that should stop all support to the Houthi’s as well as stop whatever consideration you had for Iran as they are part of this proxy war. So when we see (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/12/yemen-houthis-send-children-battle), the same image as Asharq Al-Awsat had, we need to re-assess a few things. For example the statement of Andrew Smith, who is playing stupid, but he is not stupid. You know what I am saying? There seems to be clear evidence that this was going on since 2015, which means that in all this, from multiple sources the intelligence on non-adult combatants has been ignored from several sources. There is an abundance of images available all over the place and it seems that this was left from consideration, in some cases they are children holding weapons that are way too big for them (an AK-47), ‘his’ weapon is well over 50% the size of the child. Information that is kept from the readers, so when we are confronted with ‘US supplied bomb that killed 40 children on Yemen school bus‘ and not ‘40 child soldiers were killed in an airstrike‘ is equally an issue and the fact that we are not confronted with the complete setting here is a much larger problem. The fact that Reuters, Asharq Al-Awsat and the Human Rights Watch had this makes it a lot more debatable on why the people seem to be misdirected and misinformed on events.

In equal parts, there is no evidence that these 40 children were ‘soldiers’ for the Houthi’s and I accept that, as well as the fact that I am not willing to call them that until there is a lot more evidence. Yet I will inform you on those elements, giving additional questions on how the Saudi’s can find their valid targets. Yet in all this, we see the lack of completeness of the information (to some extent) and that is equally a worry, because it all boils down to setting public opinion, emotional setting to shape policy whilst misinforming the audience, so how is that going over with you?

This now gets us a little away from the story and gets us the UN setting, where we were treated in 2017 to ‘Confidential U.N. Report Accuses Saudi Coalition of Killing Hundreds of Yemeni Kids. Top U.N. advisor to recommend coalition should be put on the black list of countries that kill and maim children in war‘, a United nations setting where we see the consideration: “The current standoff has its roots in the 2001 adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1379, which mandated a senior U.N. official to produce a report each year documenting attacks against children in armed conflicts, including an annex that serves as a blacklist of governments, terrorists and armed groups that kill and maim kids. But it has proven highly controversial among states, who resent being publicly singled out and placed on a list that includes some of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State“, that whilst in this we see that the information of children used in battle by the Houthi forces was already established for two years. I am the first to admit that this does not excuse the deaths of well over “600 children were killed and 1,150 injured in Yemen between March 2016 and March 2017, according to UNICEF“, that is appalling and no one denies it. Yet the information was incomplete and that is not merely the setting of the stage, it is filtering the information giving a sleight of hand view of what was going on. The mere part that Houthi’s and Hezbollah were using the population as a human shield is equally missing here. So how is there a proper setting of information?

That whilst last month was reported “Hodeida: The Iranian-backed Al Houthi militia, yesterday, bombed two schools in Al Tuhayat district in Yemen’s Hodeida Governorate“, which was not the first time it happened, so there is additional settings of the stage where we see that some parts are not even due to the Saudi Coalition. It does not make them innocent, merely that there is a lot more blame to go around and those seeking the limelight are conveniently forgetting certain established facts. We see even more debatable sides in the staging that we see (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhdZbszAekU). The start all ‘happy’, it seems genuine, but there is a part that calls into question certain other parts. Let’s be clear. I did this with the naked eye; I did not scoop this through professional equipment. In this the chairs seemed a little too dark, which could be shadows versus sunlight. In addition the outside of the bus is remarkable white. A fire would not have left it in that way. I am not stating that there was no hit, merely that it is more and more unlikely that it was a direct hit. Also the load of Unicef bags at 00:49 give additional rise to a few more questions, especially when you see that there is an utter lack of that blue in the first 21 seconds, mere staging for emotion through misdirection.

In all this we need to go back to the statement by Pieter Wezeman in the Deutsche Welle, where we see: “The missiles which have been used appear to be a type that was not previously known to be in the arsenals of Yemen before the current conflict broke out“. It is more important than you think. You see, if that can be part of the evidence that the missiles come from Iran, we need to accept that there is no nuclear deal with Iran and anyone trying to save that deal must accept the fact that they have blood on their hands, optionally the blood of Yemeni children. I wonder how many European politicians will be willing to accept that part of the equation. You see my reasoning in this is that when we accept ‘Iran Mulls ‘Solutions’ to Sell Oil Bypassing US Sanctions‘ we must also consider that part of these proceeds will fund the next shipment of missiles towards Yemen, which can then be fired on the Saudi civil population. At that point, how do you expect the Saudi government to react?

I believe that there is a much larger setting of pushing international policies by lying through partial truths and what is even worse, that the number of players is not large, it is basically a lot larger than most are willing to consider or accept, making the issue larger in some ways and unacceptable in other ways. I get it that people like Andrew Smith have a narrow vision, a vision of focus and basically his only setting is the ‘Campaign Against Arms Trade‘, it makes him an ideologist, which is not essentially bad, yet in all this the missed part are part of the true scope and in this Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan made the wrong call by leaving out certain parts. In addition, stating ”The bombing of a bus full of schoolchildren last week was just one of more than 50 airstrikes against civilian vehicles by the Saudi-led coalition” whilst hiding behind “according to new data” is increasingly deceptive, especially when there is no way to tell whether the vehicle or the building or the street was the target, especially the ‘civilian vehicles‘ part. When we consider that an armed Houthi vehicle could have been part of this and as we saw that they tend to be armed, there are enough images of Houthi Toyota’s with a .50 on it, so ‘what a feeling‘ that gives is basically depending on whether you are the driver or the gunner. In one case, the one I show here, it is able to counter a lot more, so you tell me on how ‘according to new data‘ should be seen, as I am bound to find a decent amount of glitches in that new data. Yet that will not be questioned, or the initial quote by the reporters, which should have been a first.

With the subtext on the photo stating “A military source said in a statement to “Al-Akhbar news” that the army’s national army repulsed an attack launched by the Huthi militia coup on positions in the outskirts of the Directorate of Khadir, southeast of Taiz province” (source: al-ain.com), I will not state the validity or deny it, basically the fact that this is in all setting likely to be seen as a civilian vehicle. So how accurate is the data if the AA-gun had been removed after it was hit (which would be a first requirement even if it was merely needed for spare parts)?

 

#ATruckIsAHummerWithoutHorsepower

 

 

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August 18, 2018 · 12:17

A new danger

There is a setting of dangers, the dangers are not merely setting, and for the US it is inequal discussion on how many allies they have left in the near future. It is not a new danger; the actions have been under scrutiny for some time. Yet last night something changed. We understand that electing the 45th president, a ‘former’ greed driven billionaire would always have consequences, yet the amount of consequences shown is now escalating.

The Washington Post gave uis 90 minutes ago ‘GOP fundraiser Broidy under investigation for alleged effort to sell government influence, people familiar with probe say‘, the article (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-fundraiser-broidy-under-investigation-for-alleged-effort-to-sell-government-influence-people-familiar-with-probe-say/2018/08/17/c9e55792-a185-11e8-8e87-c869fe70a721_story.html?utm_term=.774c7a3358da) a different setting. We always knew that there are two sides and the ‘less progressive’ republican side was always a little of a hot potato to some. Yet with “The Justice Department is investigating whether longtime Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy sought to sell his influence with the Trump administration by offering to deliver U.S. government actions for foreign officials in exchange for tens of millions of dollars“, that hot potato has now turned into a handgranate. With the quote “As part of their efforts, prosecutors have subpoenaed casino magnate Steve Wynn, the former RNC finance chairman and longtime Trump friend, for copies of records and communications related to Broidy” we see that there is a much larger net being used. It is not merely about Broidy, with names like Steve Wynn we see that there are several names involved, all people with almost direct access to the President of the United States, and with names like Jho Low and Guo Wengui we see another side of ‘entrepreneurship’ hitting the limelight.

Yet how real is the setting?

Part of it is seen in the Wall Street Journal, and with “through June and into July, Mr. Low had been living freely in China, a person aware of his travels said”, as well as “Mr. Low had a close relationship with former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who in turn was courted by China. Malaysia’s new government suspects Mr. Low helped arrange infrastructure projects, financed by China, from which funds were diverted to cover debts”, the second part now giving us that America as well as other players wanted access to Mr. Low, yet that in itself is not evidence against Elliott Broidy. What it does tell us that multiple players want access to this billionaire, all for their own reasons and with the US with a debt surpassing 21 trillion, we can only wonder what some people want Mr. Low for. The additional part is that Malaysia is now pulling all the plugs. This is seen as Channel NewsAsia is reprting that “The Bombardier Global 5000 aircraft, estimated to cost US$35 million was allegedly bought with money belonging to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)” (at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/malaysia-to-prove-jho-low-private-jet-bought-stolen-money-1mdb-10621726). It seems so flaky and weird to merely focus on one plane. The amounts are massively larger then the $35 million, so in that case, if that evidence falls over, will the case on that side against Jho Low collapse? When we look in that direction and look at Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, we see that hsi platform is set upon anti-Chinese activities and when we see the accusation “critic on Chinese ventures in his home country for being too expensive and has suspended three China-backed projects worth around $22 billion that were signed under the previous administration”, we see that there might be  case in that part, yet why focus on $35 million in a $22,000 million setting? We also see an additional stage in “Explaining his decision at a news conference last month, the veteran politician said the contract and loan terms behind the deals were unfair, noting that the interest rates on China’s loans were much higher than the 3 percent figure at which the government normally borrowed, the Associate Press reported“, is this all about the money, or merely a way to set the stage for re-negotiation. In that setting, the sound strategy becomes that Elliott Broidy was setting the stage for the United States to poach the finance deals away from China and in that setting, getting Jho Low to give the goods would help the US pretty decent. In addition, when we look at the education of Jho Low, we see that he is an alumni of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the same school that has President Trump, as well as the bulk of CEO’s that at one stage were the captains of the Fortune 500 lists, it includes dozens of airline CEO’s, so in that setting the Malaysian government goes looking for a $35 million plane?

So what is exactly the danger?

It is not on merely the setting of Elliott Broidy in all this, it is the setting where we all need to realise that there is a cost to doing business and it has transgressed borders for the longest of times that, whilst we accepted that in Europe to some degree, Americans never accepted or comprehended that. The media players used that part in all kinds of election setting and fear mongering for the longest of times. From my point of view (optionally a wrong one), we see how people like John Brennan is a danger to that setting. People dedicated to the protection of that their nation will not accept the global cost of doing business; they are in line with monarchists and devoted workers to their nations like we see in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, as well as Canada. In republics, republicans are in a setting that this time is gone; it is the age of the corporate setting of common sense towards pragmatism. The problem as I see it is that those of no use to the needs of such a republic lose value overnight, that whilst the monarchist setting is to embrace all the citizens and protect them all. It is done at a cost, one that those people tend to accept. Yet in the republican view, these costs are counterproductive to corporate profit, the non-consumers are a cancer, needed to be cut out. When globalisation sets in to the business degree that will be a lot easier and that is where we see the stage. So when we see “In the 48 hours since President Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, over 70 former intelligence officers and leaders have come forward denouncing the president’s decision to revoke or threaten to take away security clearances from former government officials, including a list of 60 former CIA officers who signed a statement today, obtained by Axios“, we also see that America (or is that Wall Street) are confronted with a change no one was ready for, so the economy becomes a stagnant danger to them, one where they do not make profit.

When we see names like:

  • Jeremy Bash, former CIA and DoD chief of staff
  • Bob Flores, former CIA chief technology officer
  • Kent Harrington, former national intelligence officer for East Asia and CIA director of public affairs
  • George Little, former chief spokesman, CIA and DoD
  • Phillip Mudd, former CIA analyst
  • John Nixon, former CIA analyst
  • Greg Vogel, former CIA deputy director for operations

We see that the USA is in an upcoming setting of polarisation and that is just within the republican side of government and its administration. There is a change coming and the outcome is hoped for (on both sides) but the outcry gives us that this is a round that Wall Street is likely to lose this battle and that changes the game. In addition, when we see the required application of intelligence data and who gets access to it sets a new border, the fact that others (like France and UK) need to realise that shared intelligence data is no longer safe, because the data shared within corporations while used to set a very different stage of what is regarded as needed for security. The corporate side is already countering the advantage that a national intelligence system has. We see this in part when we look at Business Wire (at https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180806005526/en/Global-Database-Valuable-Italian-Business-Intelligence-Data), where we see ‘Global Database Makes Valuable Italian Business Intelligence Data Available – Completely Free‘, before you dismiss this, also consider that “Any registered user can now access key information about 7,564.575 registered companies in Italy“, registration is free and that is merely one of close to a dozen places where this is happening. All connected, it is an optional setting of open source intelligence that is merely a foundation pillar. You merely have to add LinkedIn and Facebook to have a dataset that will allow you to extrapolate data that will make plenty of intelligence groups envious. You see, this is not about finding the criminal, or the terrorist. They are either known or not an issue. This is the setting of finding economic opportunities, the setting to see who is connected and interacting with the alumni of places like the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A group of people with connection and access to funds totaling well over 157 trillion Euro, so whilst we wonder on the fear of where is the terrorist (whilst the danger of getting run over in the street is 20 times more likely, we forgot that our futures, any future is set in the stage where there is economic viability and availability.

That is the part that we see to forget, or even worse actively avoid contemplating. In the time when we are led to believe that there is economic upturn everywhere, we seem to forget that as the river of economy changes, we will either be in a place of plenty, or we are set into the next stage of drought and it will be the one view we have until the end of our lives. It is about ability to live with a level of expected comfort which is likely no longer set to national boundaries, it will be set to the boundary of the corporation or business group that we work for and facilitate for, it will be as cold as that, and until we get past this greying generation, which is optional until 2035, that is how it will be for those in this era. The man behind the Global Database, namely Nicolae Buldumac has figured parts of that out, so that is why he and 30 others in London are doing this. When we look at the article (at https://medium.com/@buldumak/cookie-audience-vs-data-audience-which-is-better-44971ad12ee4), we also see ‘Cookie Audience Vs Data Audience: Which is Better?‘, he found a way to not create the best of both worlds, he found out how he can make both work for him and that is where he created more than economic opportunity. He has found the stage where he can optionally get the facilitators work for him and that seems to be exactly what he is doing. When he is done he will have a similar setting for France, Germany, the UK and Spain. So basically the 5 largest European economies are opportunities where he has the keys and data to.

So when we get to look at the US again, do you think that this will be about Elliott Broidy or people like him in an outdated setting? No, they are the garnishing of economic times that surpassed them and it is the data makers and facilitators like Nicolae Buldumac where the republican mindset of corporations will rely on next, they are the future and their path for enablement is what sets the stage for Europe. This is not clever technology (well in a way it is), it is about the quality of data and what it allows for and that is where we see that the moment that data hits a critical point, it will equal the value of Facebook or more. Some will argue that most of that is all in any Chamber of Commerce and they would be right, but those entities do not talk to each other, they are founded on borders of a national level or lower and in the entire euro setting they for the most never aligned, so someone did it for them and on their own dime, optionally replacing them, or better stated, reducing those previous players to mere data entry points. Governments had to realign their data dimensionality a decade ago, but everyone was so busy keeping their own pond clean that they forgot that the pond is only important to the land surrounding it, when that floods, the ponds become merely crevices of a lake, Lake Europa, that is where Nicolae Buldumac it taking them, so soon others (like Asia and America) they will look at the parts of Lake Europa and see where fishing is the best, those land borders no longer matter and that is the stage we find ourselves in. A changing setting of what sets the identity.

Am I the first?

Hell no! This was all done before. Forbes in 2013 gave us an article by George Bradt. The article called ‘How Army Intelligence Techniques Apply to Business Leads‘. Here we see “Marketing may have a bias to giving sales people a large number of leads, while sales people seek potential customers they can engage with. The answer is to move from big, unstructured data sets to “finding that guy” that really cares. This was Mishor’s ah-ha moment, realizing that army intelligence techniques could be applied to business“, yet it goes further, when you consider one, and the other, you should also realise that the parameters are bidirectional with the proper data flags. So when we see the two streams lead to the same insight. “On the one hand, Mishor is creating value with a systemic, scalable way to connect seemingly unconnected data to identify the most valuable target customers. On the other hand, Mishor built his business by connecting seemingly unconnected hopes and needs of his prospects” we see the solution at both ends, and in addition we see that we can define the need much more precise. From my point of view we can see a third direction. That part is not easily seen, so I will give an alternative example.

In factor analyses we go from many to one. We get the setting that the numbers equate to a factor, it is basic statistics. When we go into the other direction we see the foundation of a discriminant analyses. The third part is seen in that the data setting when something is proven in a factor analyses, it should almost always fail as a discriminant analyses and vice versa. I tend to use humour on that and state ‘It is sarcasm, when it backfires it is merely irony‘. The intelligence data was always on finding the person, yet in a stage of lacking resources, being able to safely remove a person as a threat is equally valuable. If you cannot find that one person, reducing the 5,000,000 stack to a mere 5,000 with 99% certainty is just as valuable, because the one final link could reduce that to 50 whilst not having to revisit the previous 4,995,000 considerations. As I see it in this day and age, not only is the stage of military intelligence and business intelligence not mutually exclusive, they are more and more overlapping. The overlapping field becomes an insightful pool of data where it will no longer be about the one person, it will be more and more about a setting where the value of Analysis of covariance will be important.

In the intelligence it could be seen that it is not merely about the terrorist and its connections. It will be about the moneyman and who else links, both optionally to the mastermind. In business intelligence that setting is not merely see as to where a person studied. It is more and more important on where the patents are and who has them as well as the people creating those patents. In this economy the economic value of a patent over overwhelmingly important. That part is seen when we get back to the 5G race, we saw that last march when we were confronted with “U.S. President Donald Trump has blocked microchip maker Broadcom Ltd’s (AVGO.O) $117 billion takeover of rival Qualcomm (QCOM.O) amid concerns that it would give China the upper hand in the next generation of mobile communications, or 5G“, in addition Forbes gives us within the article ‘Ericsson Vs Huawei: Who’s Winning The 5G Race?‘ Yet there we see two parts. The first is “However, two of particularly significant scale and market presence are Ericsson and Huawei. Will one conquer overall?“, as well as “Financial strength matters. Ericsson will have to turn the ship towards profitability and growth waters, in order to continue the required investment in product development”, which relies on “Ericsson recently announced what seems on the surface to be an impressive 5G patent application. Calling it an “end-to-end” submission, the filing combines the work of 130 Ericsson inventors and promises to include everything needed to build a complete 5G network“, the ability to set 600 million will give the optional 60 billion in return and it will in addition set the stage for European growth to a recently unprecedented (or was that non-presidential?) scale and America wants slices of that pie, if not the whole pie. The stage of corporate setting versus national setting in direct exposure of what is to come and the 5G battle theatre will be a big one, because the winners there will be the next kingmakers and everyone will want parts of it; that was never in doubt. The evidence is all over the place.

Forbes also gives us the new danger setting with the question ‘Does a global geographic footprint matter?‘ It is close to everything in this game, if only that the global footprint lets corporations walk all over government. Amazon, Apple, IBM and Microsoft have been doing that for the longest of times.

There is one part with Forbes that I do not agree with. They state “I would give Ericsson the edge here, considering its global presence includes North America“, I believe that Europe is the much larger powerhouse. You see, America is a mere 325 million, whilst the EU represents 512 million with direct access to India, China and Russia. All stages that America denied itself; if the setting of data (amounts and quality) determines their value; which players and where would they be able to grow this path the fastest and longer? The fact that Ericsson is not merely in the US, but they are showboating in Saudi Arabia is also a sign that they realise that stronger growth everywhere matters, the presented quote “Saudi telecom operator Mobily and Ericsson held a 5G demo at the Mall of Arabia in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, showcasing the functionalities of the next-generation mobile technology. Ericsson supplied Mobily with a standalone 5G system, including a prototype 3.5GHz radio, baseband, and prototype UE device for the 5G demo, which showcased 5G throughput, targeting speeds of up to 1Gbps. The demo is part of Mobily’s plan to highlight expected 5G benefits consumers and industries across Saudi Arabia“, is merely one of many.

The question now becomes: ‘is exponential growth, growing too fast in all directions not a danger all on itself?’

 

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August 17, 2018 · 12:18

A short sighted Senate?

This was always going to happen. Whenever there is a political setting, it will always be about the money. In this, I will be trying to have a field day. So, a paper will be drawn, demanding that the Australian psychiatrists and researchers will have to sign; they will not get a choice in the matter. They do not deserve a choice in the matter. It will be fun for them to openly condemn Telstra, Apple, Amazon, JB Hi-fi, David Jones and a few other places, because in the end they are all linked in this, even though they do not even realise that yet. It is as I see it, the consequence of a biased setting and we need to make sure that these people will not merely get the limelight, they will, in this setting be responsible for the economic fallout. That is as I personally see it the consequence of greed driven bias.

You see, it is clear that this is about money. The fact that we see the flock gather around a person, who is so stupid that I equally demand that this British person, who is clearly too stupid for his own thoughts must be barred from credit cards for life! If he cannot control himself to that degree, we must protect him from being that stupid ever again.

You see, you think that it is an emotional part, but it is not. Even as I accept “Video games have generally been considered games of skill rather than games of chance and thus are unregulated under most gambling laws, but researchers from New Zealand and Australia, writing in Nature Human Behaviour, concluded that “loot boxes are psychologically akin to gambling”“, a setting that I do not agree with (explanation to follow), the quote coming from Aaron Drummond and James D Sauer, which was published in ‘Nature human behaviour‘, I feel uncertain to comment on, or oppose that part as I lack the proper psychological education in this.

Why is it not gambling?

That is the important part. Yes, there is a setting of luck, but ever loot box has a similar setting. We see one rare element, 2-3 uncommon elements and the rest will be common elements. So how did this come to be? For that we need to look at the father of loot boxes, the game Magic the gathering. Consider that on a piece of paper (size A0) cards are printed. An A0 page (841 x 1189 mm) will fit 12 cards per row, and 12 rows. The cards (usually 63 x 88 mm) get 144 cards on one page. In this setting we work with 288 cards, and if printed on 4 pages, we get 576 cards. So here we see the initial setting where we see that on these pages, the rare cards would be printed once, for example, two columns of 12 per page, in total 96 cards, the uncommon would be there twice, which gets us 192 cards and the remaining cards three times getting us the 576 cards, a set of 288 cards. So we always know that we get a certain combination, but we merely cannot tell which one. So this Australian government that allegedly is ruled through law, sets the stage (at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-02/crown-casino-pokies-maker-aristocrat-court-decision/9387168), where pokies are not deceptive, whilst loot boxes are?

Am I digressing?

No, you see, in the CCG we see that there is a physical part to all the cards, with the virtual loot box it is not entirely the same setting. So even when we consider the ABC Quote “It argued the Dolphin Treasure machine, which is manufactured by Aristocrat and available to players at Crown, had been deceptively designed to give players the impression they had won, when they had in fact lost money“, yet in that same light, we see that a loot box, always gives a price, yet is it the price the buyer wanted? In this case I revert to the previous setting, now we add what is called a booster box. In a box are 35 packs (can be 30-36 depending on the CCG game), so we could argue that when we buy 3 boxes, we should have the complete set, yet with the 105 packs, we do get 105 rare items, but in that same setting, over the 96 rare items needed, if only 10% is double, we no longer get the complete set and we will have to swap with others. With physical cards that is an option, with virtual items that is not always possible. This is indeed the trap, yet is that gambling? When we know that we get a rare item, yet we cannot guarantee that item is that gambling? That is the question, yet in the case of the Crown Casino, the judges stated that that there was no deceptive conduct, and neither is there in this case. With Loot boxes you are ALWAYS a winner, but is winning and winning the price you want enough difference to warrant it gambling?

The economic setting

That is also part of this, because some power players are all about facilitating towards casino’s (go to Barangaroo if you doubt me), and we are also treated to “This is a win for 140,000 Australians who have jobs because of poker machines,“, as well as “Every year Victorians lose more than $2.6 billion on the state’s 27,000 poker machines that operate outside of Crown Casino“. This hypocritical setting is about money, plain and simple. This is a setting where the loot boxes are funds that go directly to the makers of those games and they are not in Australia. Unlike the other setting where we see “The State Government receives more than $1 billion in tax revenue from pokies every year“, yes all things are definitely not equal!

Are there issues?

Well, the quote “Games with loot box mechanics have long proven controversial” is actually true. There are two settings. Loot boxes you can earn and those you can buy. We will forever hear the argument of the game Mass Effect 3, for all, the golden standard. They could be bought, or won, the same loot box. Earn enough points in the game in multiplayer mode and you had the option to buy a golden box with earned points, instead of purchased credits. That was the best of all settings. Now we have these boxes that can be bought only, yet the foundation is that the game can be played and completed WITHOUT EVER buying a loot box, so those people are merely buying the boxes to get the insane chance of getting an over the top powerful item, which is weird in some ways. In support of some we must also acknowledge that EA Games as one of the players in all this decided to cut themselves in the finger and that is all on them. End Gadget gives u that (at https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/13/electronic-arts-loot-box-mea-culpa-e3/), so when we see ‘How EA talks about loot boxes depends on who’s listening‘, which might be good business practice, but it is really really stupid. You see, with “EA wants you to know that it has changed; that it isn’t the same company that put pay-to-win progression systems and loot boxes in two of its biggest games last fall. “We are always trying to learn and listen, and are striving to be better,” CEO Andrew Wilson said before closing out the keynote address“, we see one side, and with: “He thanked the investor for his question, saying that EA was working with “all the industry associations globally” and talking with regulators in territories where loot boxes had been deemed gambling, without naming any specific regions. He said that his company and the regulatory bodies concluded that Ultimate Team wasn’t gambling. Since players know they’ll get a certain amount of cards in each pack, and that the distribution of each pack is the same (i.e. one rare footballer, three uncommon, two common in each) it doesn’t break any laws“, here we see the part that I partially agree with, but it also shows that EA Games is all about the money and the ‘FIFA Ultimate Team‘ part of all this represents billions, billions that they do not want to lose.

There are two big parts in all of this, that is aside for that one person who could optionally be the most stupid person in the United Kingdom, especially when he ‘discovers’ he’s spent £7,500+ on FUT Ultimate Team cards (source: Daily Star 29th July 2018). The first is that FIFA is a game played by non-adults, so they will desire to optionally spend on these cards. The fact that there is no limit set is optionally an issue, if EA Games has set the stage where per month no more than £25 would be spend, that is close to half the cost of the full game, so it might need to be lowered. The second is the chance to swap any double won, so the fact that you are missing a Beckham, but have two Pele’s, you can seek someone who had the opposite setting. That could have saved a lot of issues, possibly all issues and EA Games merely made it harder by (as I personally see it) being stupid. That evidence is seen (at https://www.fifauteam.com/best-packs-fifa-18-ultimate-team/), Yet is also gives us that EA Games has free packs and they also give us “FREE PACKS. Not available to purchase on the store. They are assigned to you in the beginning of the game, as daily gifts and as draft, SBC, FUT Champions, objectives and seasons rewards“, so if free packs can be won, why is the entire matter still an issue? We also are given “Jumbo Premium Gold pack and Silver Upgrade pack both cost 15,000 coins but the first one may be purchased with 300 FIFA Points while for the second we only need 50 FIFA Points. Players should also pay attention to this aspect“, Yet I am also given “You can earn FUT Coins by playing FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) and trading within the Transfer Market, but you can’t buy them. Buying coins from a third party, promoting coin buying, or coin distribution is against our rules“, so we can transfer? Then again, why is there an issue, when there are so many factors that are not funds driven?

There is an interesting video on this (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=Igs5Ca9Nw4M), the man talks too fast for his own good, but it is very informative, giving us a clear view that there is a clear way to get items and players making it weird on how someone would have paid £7,500+ on FUT Ultimate Team cards. I do not doubt that this was done, yet it asks a few additional serious questions on the mental status of some video gamers. In all this I see several issues on both sides, but for the most, the entire setting is gambling and with the options for free packs and transfers, there is less and less a setting of gambling, merely the oversized need of greed by a government wanting non-taxable parts to stop. Yet at the bottom of the FIFA team page is also a comments section and we see the most interesting part that was also on the video.

Q: You say that we can buy coins directly?

A (Admin): My main suggestion is to trade. Buying low and selling higher is easier than most of the people think.

All given actions based on common sense, a part that someone paying £7,500+ for these cards is the setting of a person lacking common sense in spades, diamond and in clubs, basically the buyer was seemingly without hearts and common sense. Reverting to overspending and hiding behind gambling statements when there are trades and free options is overly unbalanced.

Yet I agree that this is all mostly based on FIFA, so how does that fare in other parts? With Overwatch (at http://overwatch.wikia.com/wiki/Loot_Box), we see that they are bought, yet they are also awarded.

  • One Loot Box is earned every time a player levels up.
  • One seasonal Loot Box is earned for the first time accessing the game in a seasonal event.
  • One Loot Box is earned for the first time winning some game modes in the Arcade, for example 1v1 Mystery Duel or 3v3 Elimination.
  • One Loot Box is earned for the 3rd, 6th, and 9th winning by playing Arcade game modes within the time between 2 resets. This cycle resets every week whether or not you win 9 games.

So these are options that do not require funds (yet can also be bought). It merely requires you to be a decent player. A decent player will have the option to three boxes a week by winning enough times, in all this, we see skill based progression.

This is the setting that we are faced with, and in this I wonder how thoroughly is the issue investigated, or will this merely be a senate exercise on lost (read: non-taxable) revenue?

In the end, when we move back to the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/17/video-game-loot-boxes-addictive-and-a-form-of-simulated-gambling-senate-inquiry-told) and we see no mention whatsoever that loot boxes could be earned, or are optional (under the right setting free), what other parts is the writer Patrick Lum not informing us on? In addition, when I see “Australian psychiatrists and researchers have called for greater regulation of video games that encourage players to purchase chance-based items“, whilst there is no mention on the earning option, or the initial free options that pretty much every game seems to have offered. When that part is equally missing, how fair will this inquiry be?

The article has two additional issues. the first is seen with: “The Office of the eSafety Commissioner estimated that 34% of young people made in-game purchases in the 12 months before June 2017, while the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia cited research finding that around 20% of simulated gambling players moved on to online commercial gambling and 5% of young Australians would develop gambling problems before they were 25 years old“. When we see ‘estimated‘, it should be made clear that this is not factual evidence, more important, what was the estimation based on? We are unlikely to get clearly informed on that part. In addition, the part ‘the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia cited research finding that around 20% of simulated gambling players moved on to online commercial gambling‘, is under scrutiny, because in that regard, I would want those so called ‘Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia‘ to produce the evidence and the raw data on how the ”around 20%” was obtained.

The second issue is seen with “Dr Marcus Carter, a former president of the Digital Games Research Association of Australia, argued that “predatory” practices were “pervasive”, citing potential variable odds manipulation, push notifications about limited-time offers and other player retention mechanics“, although I find his setting a much better one, there are still issues with the use of ‘potential’ in that, without evidence it is merely highly speculative and even as I would accept the danger of ‘variable odds manipulation‘, that part can be addressed clearly enough. The requirement is that there needs to be evidence that this is happening and a pre-emptive setting of making the optional issue of ‘variable odds manipulation‘ unacceptable in legislation is not wrong, yet requires proof. In addition, the entire setting of ‘push notifications about limited-time offers and other player retention mechanics‘ is equally valid, but can be stopped by an opt-in setting, in addition if that is addressed, we need to accept that all ‘limited-time offers’ in advertisement on media and TV are to be equally banned, because we could optionally get a ‘buy a new pair of shoes’ addiction (for a limited time that is). If that is to be accepted (cheating small time businesses out of advertising as well as taxable advertisement funds go right ahead, Or perhaps make it illegal to have ‘limited-time mobile offers‘, and we leave Dr Marcus Carter to explain that change to mobile providers, who will be crying over lost revenue. You see, when all players are equal there is no setting of fair play at all, merely the setting of expedited needs, in this case the government. All that when it was made aware of lines like “EA earns $1.68 billion in micro transactions in FY2017“, that whilst Australia’s biggest super villain (read: Taxman) never got a cent of any of that.

That is the actual setting and that got all those trying to set this all to gambling. Including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and now Australia, they are all about getting a slice of that micro transaction pie, all that could have been prevented 15-20 years ago by them using their brains. Yet at that time ego and greed got the better of them and they were unwilling to kick Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and all other e-store players where it would have hurt, they were in my personal view mere cowards letting actual physical shops fend for themselves, as their business was pushed online and away from them. Now we see patch upon patch, all players trying to get as much of the cream as possible whilst trying to hide the fact that they had no backbone in the first place, all merely equipped with paper backs ready for recycling.

The mere setting of ‘All online items are GST set and paid for in the country of the purchasing consume by that nations legal setting‘ would have sorted 98% of all this, but the politicians in those global nations were, in the end merely as ‘solid’ and morally strong as wet tissue paper.

So in all this there is a huge issue with the loot box and gambling setting, merely from the point of view that I have that this is not about gambling, it is about non-taxable income, a very different issue to say the least.

 

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August 16, 2018 · 14:05

When inability drives fear

It is a dangerous place to be in. We all have been there and in most cases it is as innocent as it could ever be. You see, sometimes life throws you a curveball. Gamers tend to identify it most easily. In my particular case it was a game called Magic Carpet. It was a Bullfrog game and I was testing it on the PC. It played magnificently there, and soon thereafter I also tested it on the very first PlayStation. There, because of the controller it was good, but not great. Still, it was fun to play and I tended (in those early years) to really get into a game, so when the situation blew into my face, I got a little frustrated. The next two times were worse and the last time (on that day) I went slightly angry (with myself) and I kicked the door. The issue was not the door, it was my steel tipped boot and I went straight through the door, so, I was not merely ticked off, I had a hole in the door (which would require funds to repair) and the boss in Magic Carpet was still alive. We all have had these moments. Our car, our bike, the TV, things go wobbly on you and we sometimes react wrongly to this situation and in light of that get to reflect on our own ego’s a little.

These are the images going through me when I was confronted to new information when looking at the unrealistic response by America (and Australia) to Huawei. In the case of Australia it seemed the mere application of greed and fear as politicians cater to the greed of a large telecom company, which was not seemingly the case with America. Yet that tip was raised for me less than 24 hours ago. The article (at https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/), shows how the CIA got their own systems handed to them through ego and what I would regard as stupidity. The initial headline ‘The number of informants executed in the debacle is higher than initially thought‘ is rather unsettling. It gets to be worse with “The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it. “The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.” Other factors played a role as well, including China’s alleged recruitment of former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee around the same time.” This is the most dangerous of settings. The wrongful setting comes straight from Sun Tsu where we learn that all war is based on deception. China is not some place that is tinkering at the side of the road, the Art of War COMES FROM CHINA! It gets to be worse when you consider that that book was written long before Americans had adopted proper reading and writing skills, close to 1200 years before that, so that was their first error.

When we see: “But the penetration of the communication system seems to account for the speed and accuracy with which Chinese authorities moved against the CIA’s China-based assets. “You could tell the Chinese weren’t guessing. The Ministry of State Security [which handles both foreign intelligence and domestic security] were always pulling in the right people,” one of the officials said. “When things started going bad, they went bad fast.”“. The entire matter seems to be exponentially wrong. The big issue is not on how it was cracked, or even if it was cracked. My issue had been (for a much longer time now) that for too long, the deciding voices, all listening to some CTO, often with multiple sides lacking wisdom that the setting was not merely that there was ‘a security risk’, there was for the longer time a much larger security flaw. For much too long a time, we got the ‘slides of wisdom’ on how data in transit tends to be safe and data at rest tended to be in danger. Even when I started my CCNA, the amount of knowledge given in the Cisco books gave the rise to the consideration that data in transit is not merely as vulnerable, it was that a lot more could be done unnoticed (not merely by the Chinese mind you). It was some time before the Sony hack that I expected a setting where the routers themselves might be used against the owner, it went further when we consider Wired in 2013 (at https://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-router-hacking/). The headline is not merely ‘NSA laughs at pc’s, prefers hacking routers and switches‘. It is the setting where we see: ““No one updates their routers,” he says. “If you think people are bad about patching Windows and Linux (which they are) then they are … horrible about updating their networking gear because it is too critical, and usually they don’t have redundancy to be able to do it properly.” He also notes that routers don’t have security software that can help detect a breach“. This is where I was in 2011, when I started to comprehend the working of a router and router tables, I figured out that it is not the router they can see that is the problem; it is the one they cannot see. That idea came from a presentation by Thomas Akin, CISSP, Director, Southeast Cybercrime Institute who had a presentation for the Blackhat briefings. The 2002 presentation gave me the idea. You see apart from the lack of security, the +1 hop hack allows form something truly unique. Consider [.MIL Server], that server connects to <secure router 1> and things are set into motion. Now, we cannot direct all the traffic, yet materials from that location to let’s say ‘preferred consultant one‘ will go via certain paths, yet the first router after <secure router 1> tends to be merely one or two routers (depending on traffic) to that preferred consultant. It is easy to find a router that could optionally be a link to these routers and duplicate all packages that go to that specific next step. Not only is the task easily done, the path is not hindered, the router is not intervened with and a simple reset takes away whatever evidence existed in the first place. In addition, the additional part is that the compact flash in those routers is ‘The maximum storage capacity for the CF in Slot0 and Slot1 is 4GB‘, yet the only part here is that you only needed 32 MB, which is what most of us used then, but cards that small are no longer made, so most IT people just plug in what they have. You have well over 3GB of package storage, so all packages to that one location could be stored and redirected on the ‘off’ hours as not to leave any monitored spike. Until the CFlash card is ejected from the router and investigated no one will have a clue. That was 7 years ago and the systems are even more capable now, a 3GB glitch will not register on most systems, especially when those IT people do not block Spotify and/or YouTube. By the time they figured it out, the setting is already wiped, and this path can be adjusted on a daily bases so that most IT networkers never had a clue in the first place.

You think that I am alone in this, that I am this clever? No, I am not! There are plenty of IT Networkers running circles around me and that is now set into the stage of ‘we’re untouchable‘. The CIA was never that, they never needed to be touched, the opponent merely needed a clear line of sight to the router that is one skip from the secure router that they needed to get to. We see more in the Foreign Policy article with the quotes “Information about sources is so highly compartmentalized that Lee would not have known their identities. That fact and others reinforced the theory that China had managed to eavesdrop on the communications between agents and their CIA handlers” and “an encrypted digital program, allows for remote communication between an intelligence officer and a source, but it is also separated from the main communications system used with vetted sources, reducing the risk if an asset goes bad“. Now we merely add “But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to interact with its vetted sources, according to the former officials“. I believe it goes further than that. If we see the entire layer process and consider that in the end, certain systems merely replicate a process. Cisco (at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/lan-switching/8021q/17056-741-4.html) gives us: “A device can determine which VLAN the traffic belongs to by its VLAN identifier. The VLAN identifier is a tag that is encapsulated with the data. ISL and 802.1Q are two types of encapsulation that are used to carry data from multiple VLANs over trunk links”, as well as “The DA field of the ISL packet is a 40-bit destination address. This address is a multicast address and is set at “0x01-00-0C-00-00” or “0x03-00-0c-00-00”. The first 40 bits of the DA field signal the receiver that the packet is in ISL format“, so as the destination was known, the people needing this could search very specifically. When we consider ‘It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform‘, the connection back would enable those seeking to find the needed value of the DA field. That does not merely impede the CIA, it stands to reason that to some degree the NSA would be just as vulnerable.

The main course

In my case, I tend to go for the Bambi burger, ideally I watch Bambi whilst having that lovely slice of venison. You see when we get to “As part of China’s Great Firewall, internet traffic there is watched closely, and unusual patterns are flagged. Even in 2010, online anonymity of any kind was proving increasingly difficult. Once Chinese intelligence obtained access to the interim communications system,­ penetrating the main system would have been relatively straightforward, according to the former intelligence officials. The window between the two systems may have only been open for a few months before the gap was closed, but the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability“, I believe the setting is worse than that. These players still require their consultants. It does not matter whether you call them construction workers, members of Blackwater, Xe Services, or Academi. It is those places as well as Booz Allan Hamilton and other providers that still require to be informed, and that is where the interception could start. The setting is not ‘the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability‘, it is the long term flags that they were able to test at this point and that is the fear we see with their setting of Huawei and partners. Not that Huawei is the danger, but the fact that Chinese intelligence is just as able to get into nearly all systems, it merely can get into Chinese systems faster (for now). This is where it gets a little more complicated, because it is not about the now, it is about tomorrow and the tomorrows that are coming. The only ones who have a chance of getting things done are players like the Constellis Group and Palantir when they unite abilities. It is going to be about data and about the ability to forecast how traffic goes. Thomas Akin was teaching this wisdom 16 years ago. We see this when we are made to realise

  • Live system data is the most valuable.
  • Immediate shutdown destroys all of this data.
  • Investigators must recover live data for analysis.

And the loss is merely a reset away, in most cases if there is an automatic reset; the only data available is the last transgression at best. With the coming of 5G live real-time capturing data streams is what is more likely to set the stage of finding out what happened, in this the entire setting of ‘China’s Great Firewall‘, we are already looking at outdated Chinese technology and I do believe that those behind the article, as well as some DARPA people are aware of that. America and Europe are behind in ways that we cannot even perceive, because the players that need to move forward are doing so iteratively, that whilst the time of reengineering is now merely 10% of what the development time was. We see this with “Call this the IBM problem, which faced an existential threat as soon as Asian groups started churning out cheap PCs in the 1990s. But here IBM also provides a few tips to the future, with its pivot to software and solutions. By the time of IBM’s iconic “solutions for a small planet” ad campaign in 1996, the company was trumpeting voice recognition and ecommerce — producing the sort of digital enterprise backbone that ended up helping develop the internet economy” (source: Australian Financial Review). In the first instance the Asian market required 10-15 years to catch up, the second time around it took 2-3 years and now with Google and Apple working globally, it takes months. IBM (others too) took iterative steps to maximise the economic footprint, instead of truly leaping forward whenever possible, they lost the advantage and are now trailing the markets. Huawei is one clear example where the American market was surpassed. Samsung showed its supremacy by having 5G home routers ahead of everyone else and the advantage in Asia is only growing. It is seen with “Alternatively, authorities might have identified the system through a pattern analysis of suspicious online activities. China was so determined to crack the system that it had set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security and the Chinese military’s signals directorate (roughly equivalent to the NSA), one former official said“. I do not read this part in the same way. I believe that with ‘set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security‘, was not about cracking. I personally believe that the Cisco books were so illuminating that they decided to change the setting in their own game. I believe that the Chinese now have a more advanced system. They have done what players like Cisco should have done before 2014 and they did not. I believe that when we see a partnership between Constellis and Palantir, their findings will bear that out with in addition an optional link that shows part of the accusation that China let Russia in on certain findings (and the Russian evolution of certain networking devices). This and the next part is largely speculative, but it is supported to some extent. We see this in: “Once one person was identified as a CIA asset, Chinese intelligence could then track the agent’s meetings with handlers and unravel the entire network. (Some CIA assets whose identities became known to the Ministry of State Security were not active users of the communications system, the sources said.)“. I believe that he part given in ‘not active users of the communications system‘ gives us the third part. I believe that the system was not merely invaded. There is every chance that certain systems when activated also leave tags behind and that is where the intrusion would have paid off. You see, in the Cisco setting (as an example), the data frame has an optional 60 bytes of extension headers, yet is that always empty? More important, when were these data packages truly thoroughly checked? In this speculative setting I take you to the movie Die Hard 2. In that movie we see on how someone decided to get clever and uses the outer marker beacon to warn the planes that were in danger. The beacon can be used in other ways than merely give a beep. I believe that Cisco data packages have other optional parts than can be ‘reused’ to do something different, like the optional headers. They are to most merely empty pre-set ‘spaces’, but they could have more. That is the setting that America faces and the fact that they could get overwhelmed by Chinese intelligence because they did not rely on iterative parts. Huawei had been leaping forward, for example now offering a 128GB Android 8.1 phone (the Huawei nova 3i 128GB Handset), for 50% less than its competitors. A system that is just as advanced as anything Apple and Samsung offer; at merely half the price whilst Chinese Intelligence has been digging into that device for months, unlike the NSA that needs to queue up with all the other users to get to look at the Pixel 3 and the iPhone 8 on launch day. That is the setting we seem to be seeing and America is indeed and rightfully worried, not because Huawei has backdoors (which I never really believed) but because the players here had been held backwards through iterative technology. Apple is actually staged by Forbes that way with the quote ‘a minor point update for the iOS 11.1 iteration‘, even Forbes speaks about iterative changes. That is the setting that they are up against and they have been surpassed for years and with Huawei leading the 5G stage on a global setting the US authorities are merely getting more and more afraid that not only are they no longer the leading players, they are now sidelined by not being able to keep up with what will be presented ‘tomorrow’.

That part can be supported through the CIA with analyses reports (at https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no3/html_files/Collection_Analysis_Iraq_5.htm), in here we see that Richard Kerr, Thomas Wolfe, Rebecca Donegan, and Aris Pappas give us (in a different context): “The analysis on this issue by the Intelligence Community clearly was wide of the mark. That analysis relied heavily on old information acquired largely before late 1998 and was strongly influenced by untested, long-held assumptions. Moreover, the analytic judgments rested almost solely on technical analysis, which has a natural tendency to put bits and pieces together as evidence of coherent programs and to equate programs to capabilities. As a result the analysis, although understandable and explainable, arrived at conclusions that were seriously flawed, misleading, and even wrong“. It is important to realise that this was on the WMD setting, so in a different context and on a different setting. Yet the information systems were all designed to upholster that flaw to an ‘evolved’ placement, the systems in their entirety are nowhere near ready, now even for the previous setting. The movement from a lot of staff to more fruitful consultant settings is now paying off in a negative way for the CIA (and the NSA too). This is where it gets interesting. You see, the previous setting that I gave should partially have been dealt with through the flashlight program that DARPA has. Raytheon BBN is working on that with Professor Richard Guidorizzi from George Mason University Fairfax. I think that the system is not entirely ready here, not if the packages can be duplicated via the router and as long as the original is not touched, that system will not get the alert lights ringing.

To get you on board on how far all the NATO partners are behind, let me give you two settings. The first is a DARPA Project called ‘Probabilistic Programming for Advancing Machine Learning (PPAML)‘, the man in charge is Dr. Suresh Jagannathan, yet the bigger brain might be MIT graduate Dr. Jennifer Roberts. The given setting is “Probabilistic programming is a new programming paradigm for managing uncertain information. Using probabilistic programming languages, PPAML seeks to greatly increase the number of people who can successfully build machine learning applications and make machine learning experts radically more effective“, whilst we also see the goods in the DARPA article by Dr Roberts with “If successful, PPAML could help revolutionize machine learning capabilities in fields from Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to predictive analytics and cybersecurity“, this is certainly leaping forward, but it is still based on a system. I believe that the Chinese decided to turn the funnel upside down. To illustrate this I need to get you to an app called Inke. The article (at https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/02/09/hidden-world-chinese-livestreaming-app-inke/), gives us ‘The hidden world of Chinese livestreaming app Inke‘, this is not a few people; this is a craze that has already infected millions upon millions. So with “he was actually doing a livestream, an extremely popular hobby for young people in China. China is way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to embracing livestreams.” you are missing out and missing out by a lot. These streams are real-time and often geo-tagged. I believe that the Chinese have changed the setting, they are optionally collecting Terabytes of daily data and they are converting that to actionable intelligence. Facial recognitions in phones, geo-tagged and all uploaded and streamed, all converted on the spot, like the SETI screensaver, millions of affordable mobiles (this is where the Huawei nova 3i 128GB Handset and all other new handsets come in), parsing all that data into uploaded files and Chinese intelligence gets global information close to real time, whilst their learning machines are about efficiencies of collected data, it is not about the better application by making them more effective, it is about the massive amounts of data offered to get the systems to upgrade the efficiency of parsing data, because parsing data is where the bottleneck will be in 5G and they already have a larger advantage.

In the meantime, on any given day thousands of Inke users are filming life around them in malls and famous places looking awesome doing it. Yet, if you look at the CCTV settings, how many users would have passed 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, or at London SE1 9EL, UK walking towards London Bridge? How many people were merely assuming that they were tourists face timing with mom and dad? Are you getting that picture now? and also realise that Inke is merely one of more than 300 live streaming companies, all capturing that data all those tags that a smartphone allows it to capture and at the top of all this, Facebook and YouTube are eagerly pushing people to gain following by doing just that. So how long until the user realises that uploading the same stream to 2-3 providers gets them to gain a lot more following and optionally cash? Yes, the intelligence community is that far behind at present. So when we are worrying on “The system was not designed to withstand the scrutiny of a place like China, where the CIA faced a highly sophisticated intelligence service and a completely different online environment“, we need to consider that China is already ahead of the game and the CIA systems might be merely an option to scrutinise their own data, because that remains the Chinese bottleneck, the data will require verification and that is the one field where their opposition could gain the advantage if they set their minds to a different algorithm, one on reliability, not on likelihood. It is a setting where all the players involved have a second tier of consideration. They embrace a ‘not now, but soon‘ thought, when ‘I needed this yesterday‘ is the proper setting as I personally see it, because data without proper vetting is merely used space on any given storage device.

That final part can be considered when we look at the linked article that NBC had from last January. There we see: “When agents searched Lee’s hotel rooms in 2012, they found notebooks with the names of covert CIA sources, according to court documents. But not all of the agent arrests and deaths could be linked to information possessed by Lee, who left the CIA in 2007“, an issue I mentioned in an earlier blog. We get there when we consider his actions and ‘found notebooks with the names of covert CIA sources‘, do you think that anyone, especially in this setting would be that stupid? It’s like keeping the condom as a trophy after having intercourse, its useless and stupid. I believe that either it is not the ‘covcom’ system, or not merely the ‘covcom’ system. I believe that (if it is all correct) that Chinese intelligence got in further and deeper into acquiring the data required and the notebook is the proverbial red herring in all this, especially as Jerry Chun Shing Lee left the CIA in 2007. You do not hold on to that level of information 11 years after you might have had some level of valid reasons to have it in the first place. That is the part many overlooked, or looked away from.

In the end, I do believe that it is not merely the inability that drove the anti-Huawei waves, it is the fact that those decision makers have no idea where to navigate towards next is what drives their fears almost exponentially.

 

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August 15, 2018 · 11:32

Ding, Ding! Round two

It is always nice to get to have additional entertainment at the same price. Some people are partially that gullible. So when I see: ‘Labour hits out at ‘false’ claims over Corbyn cemetery visit‘, I thought it was only fair to address the accusations and defence, one must after all be willing to stand ones ground.

So here I am looking for the setting that they claim is ‘false’.

We start with “the commemoration for the 74 people who had died was attended by “mainstream leaders”, including a Palestinian authority minister“. Well, that would be fine, but who are exactly those ‘mainstream leaders‘? The absence of names is a first indication that the entire setting was wobbly from the start. Yet now we get to the stuff that matters. They also state “None of those who carried out the Munich massacre are buried in the Palestinian cemetery at Tunis and there was no ceremony held for them“. This is important, as I basically used all kinds of journalistic sources (read: newspapers) for my findings. Yet now when we revisit: “a wreath-laying for individuals behind the group that carried out the Munich Olympic massacre“. Here we see the issue, you see. I decided to find all of them, which did not take that long. The mastermind Mohammad Daoud Oudeh is at the Martyrs Cemetery of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus. This is supported by France 24 (at http://www.france24.com/en/20100703-mastermind-behind-munich-olympics-attacks-dies-abu-daoud-palestine-israel). So are we being duped again by the publications of the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard? Let’s continue with the Attackers. Luttif Afif was buried in the Sidi Munaidess Cemetery, as were Yusuf Nazzal, Khalid Jawad and Afif Ahmed Hamid. The issue around Adnan Al-Gashey is a controversie. Mossad reported Al-Gashey died naturally in Dubai in the late 70’s. We see that in ‘Striking back : the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and Israel’s deadly response, 2005‘, yet the documentary ‘One Day in September‘ gives that the Israeli Mossad ‘healthcare cancelation team‘ deleted his existence as well as Mohammed Safady who is as far as I can tell still alive at present. The other remaining member Jamal Al-Gashey is apparently hiding in North Africa (read: Egypt) in fear of his life, married with kids.

So in that respect, from the evidence that I was able to find, there is indeed no evidence (unless someone hands it to me) that any of those part of the Munich massacre were indeed in that cemetery and in that respect (for that element only) I do apologise, not for the sentiment, which will be illustrated below.

Is there an issue?

Yes! The setting is clear. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created with the purpose of the “liberation of Palestine” through armed struggle, with the focus of violence aimed at Israeli civilians. We can accept that there needs to be a setting of a dialogue with anyone (even with terrorists), it is in the end the essential path towards ending any conflict. Yet attending the funeral event, even as it was condemned might not have been the best setting to do that. In addition, the attack (also known as operation Wooden Leg) was a response to the events of September 25th 1985 when during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, members of the PLO’s hijacked an Israeli yacht near Cyprus, and killed the Israeli tourists on board. The shock of this action was quite large in Israel. The attack was indeed condoned by the UN and nations all over the world, including America. The fact of the matter is that until now well over 171 suicide bombings have occurred in Israel killing well over 800 and close to a thousand were injured. That alone sets the stage to not attend the funeral. I do not think that there should be any condemnation for Jeremy Corbyn wanting to start talks in some way, but from my point of view the venue was poorly chosen.

The Guardian also treats us to “A column in a leading newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, warned on Monday that Corbyn’s actions, including a visit to the “grave of the person who planned the terror attack at the Munich Olympics”, were of deep concern“. I could accept that if we knew who was in that cemetery. As far as I could tell the perpetrators were almost all dealt with and none were in that place, neither was the mastermind. The names that do pop up were Atef Bseiso and Khalaf Bseiso. Here we start having an issue. It is my opinion that Khalaf Bseiso was in no way involved. It can be corroborated in two ways. The first is that all the people involved shouted their involvement from every rooftop in Europe (and Africa). That also included the mastermind and other shady figurines. There is close to nothing on Khalaf Bseiso, so little that I cannot tell if he ever accomplished anything as a PLO member. It is different with his brother Atef Bseiso. There are two opposing views; the first is from General Uri Sagi, a very able officer and tactician serving the IDF for 34 years, with a host of active operations, Most notably Operation Entebbe (you might have seen the movie with a youthful Charles Bronson). The opposition is Mossad director Nahum Admoni removed Atef Bseiso from that ‘endangered health’ list, from my personal view I would take the decision of director Admoni over that of General Sagi. Who or why in the background did change the plans does not matter, in that there is a decent amount of ‘evidence’ that Atef Bseiso was not part of it and in that regard, there is now no clear evidence that anyone from the Munich operation is in that cemetery.

The larger issue

It is my view that there is a much larger issue. We see: “Israel’s Labor party secretary general, Yehiel Bar, said: “The grave new discoveries about Corbyn are no surprise“, as well as ““The paradox is that the least anti-Semitic country in Europe is liable to fall into the hands of an anti-Semitic politician,” wrote Ben-Dror Yemini“, in light of the earlier quote by Yedioth Ahronoth we see the larger issue. I understand that we need to fight anti-Semitism, yet is the paint or the brush an anti-Semite setting?

Let it be said that I think that Corbyn is a mistake on many levels, but I will NOT falsely accuse him. There is no setting for the anti-Semite accusations. In this Al-Jazeera gives us “In an August 3 article for The Guardian, Corbyn wrote that anti-Semitism had no place in the party, but added: “It is unfortunately the case that this particular example, dealing with Israel and racism, has sometimes been used by those wanting to restrict criticism of Israel that is not anti-Semitic”“, I actually agree with that. If we cannot criticise our friends, we are not friends of them (merely my personal view). Over time Israel has had its set of bungles and errors, there is 100% statistical certainty that every nation in the world makes mistakes. I also understand that Israel ever since Adolf Hitler had his European tour (1939-1945) 65% of all Jews in the world were massacred, can you truly believe that this will not leave a mark for generations to come? So the fears of both Ben-Dror Yemini and Yehiel Bar are very understandable, yet it needs to be on the focus of evidence and the fact that the larger UK newspapers did not vet and validate their facts is a much larger issue still (I made that same mistake, and I am sorry for that), yet I can go by the excuse that I accepted some facts from ‘professionals’, so in that regard I have a small excuse. In light of all this, if the London school of Economics would be so kind to award me my honorary Master degree in International Journalism and Society I would be most graciously thankful, especially as I have surpassed the factual quality of George Osborne, Martin Ivens and their posse’s (or was that pussies?).

In all this the New Yorker (at https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/jeremy-corbyns-anti-semitism-crisis) gives us another two parts. Parts that were mentioned before, but they are important. The first is seen with “On July 25th, Britain’s three leading Jewish newspapers published a joint article on their respective front pages, warning of “the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.” When I asked Pollard what that meant, he replied, “They wouldn’t set up camps or anything like that. But the tenor of public life would be unbearable because the very people who are the enemy of Jews, as it were, the anti-Semites, will be empowered by having their allies in government. There is a fear, a real fear of that.”“. You see, the fear is fine, we get that if WW2 does not make you afraid of any Jewish future nothing will, yet in opposition, where is the actual evidence of his anti-Semitism? His setting to be friendly with Palestine does not constitute evidence. It is optionally evidence of poor diplomatic choices, yet in all this, the UK had to move forward with the IRA at some point, a start had to be made and it is the job of UK politicians to do what is best for the UK and its citizens. It might include poor choices, but that does not make them essentially wrong. Someone has to make steps, yet in that I do remains in the setting that visiting that cemetery was truly the poorest of choices.

The second part is seen with “a terrible situation for a party that has been the natural home for most British Jews for the past hundred years. “Jews have no better friends in this country than the Labour Party,” the Jewish Chronicle reported, in 1920. As recently as 2014, Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Miliband, another trenchant critic of Israel, spoke of his dream of becoming Britain’s first Jewish Prime Minister“. Here we see that a former Jewish speaker, former Labour party leader has been critical of Israel, as I stated before. Good friends will be critical of one another and can you honestly consider the setting of a Jewish politician as an anti-Semite?

So in round two we see that there are considerations that need to be made, but I do stay with the setting that I saw in my yesterday’s article, even the ‘diagnostic one’, although I will admit that a cat cornered will make the weirdest leap, yet equally we must accept that some of the leaps Jeremy made were slightly too weird for many to consider. I am happy that the Guardian informed us in all this, it is not too clear in some regards (as to the cemetery), but that ball is seemingly dropped by all the papers and it is my belief that they all have loads of explaining to do, but perhaps they can give the evidence of those buried at that cemetery and can be proven to have been part of the Munich massacre, I was unable to do that. My defence is that I am not a journalist and never claimed to have been one. So if I am proven correctly I would really appreciate the Chancellor of the London School of Economics to honour me with that honorary degree (as I do believe that I am a better journalist than those with the degree at present).

So I bid thee all a good day and remember we are still 111 hours away from Monday morning (or at least I am at this very moment).

#ItsOnlyWednesday

 

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August 14, 2018 · 16:08

The Corbynite manoeuvre

Yes, that was a Star Trek reference. I have learned a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) that the classics must always be observed. In this, the Guardian brings us ‘Jeremy Corbyn: I was present at wreath-laying but don’t think I was involved‘. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-not-involved-munich-olympics-massacre-wreath-laying) gives us the setting that a British high end tool (I apologise, I meant leader of the Labour party) where he was at “a wreath-laying for individuals behind the group that carried out the Munich Olympic massacre“, so even if you dismiss the Steven Spielberg movie with Daniel Craig and Eric Bana. The setting to be in attendance of anything ‘honouring’ a terrorist organisation is just a huge no-no.

For most (including me) attending means ‘involved’. So with: “I don’t think I was actually involved in it“, the lamest of all excuses, I do believe that the politic funeral of Jeremy Corbyn should be soon, the sooner the better. The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu would be willing to talk to anyone within the Labour party at present should be regarded as a small miracle to say the least. The weak response we see with “I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident” should clearly exclude the terrorists. Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn would also like to attend the wreath laying of Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta in Hamburg (in a non-disclosed location) next month on September 11th as one of the pilots flying American Airlines Flight 11 into a building, or is that perhaps too soon?

How stupid does a politician need to get before he is found to be unfit for office? The Guardian also gives us: “Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement via his official Twitter account criticising the Labour leader. “The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone“, we could take this a step further and consider that Jeremy Corbyn might require diagnosis against optional existing mental health issues. I need to be careful here, as not to belittle the issue here. You see, when we look at Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). The Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition gives us elements like:

  • Exaggerated feelings of self-importance
  • Excessive need for admiration
  • Lack of empathy

From my personal perspective Jeremy checks all three settings here. Let it be an important fact that I am not a resident psychologist or practicing expert in this field, so it would need to be done by an actual person educated in that field.

My reason for this?

My perception of his ‘exaggerated feelings of self-importance’ was checked as he attended the event. He had no business being there. Why was he there in the first place? Attending a Palestinian event that had (as far as I can tell) no bearing on anything other then the Palestinian need for self-exposure to the media? The excessive need for admiration is not merely his attendance, the fact that he is in the foreground holding a wreath does that. Not merely that, the setting that it was in the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine, that part alone should have been enough to avoid attendance and the fact that he decided to be there, as this was in regards to remembering the attack on a PLO Headquarters in Tunis, the PLO, who by its own definition ‘the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”‘ with a focus on violence aimed at Israeli civilians, that should have been a setting to seek any ‘conversation elsewhere’, preferably with others, like for example Benjamin Netanyahu, rumour has it that he makes a lovely cup of tea. The entire setting and the fact that he did not (intentionally or not) do his homework on what was there, who were there and perhaps talk to MI-6 before attending that place would not have been the worst idea either. The entire Black September part gives enough concern to the final part a ‘lack of empathy‘ with that, I believe my suspicions are clearly defined, yet as I also state, a professional needs to look at that. You know a (young) Freudian with a grey setting (with at least 50 shades).

The utter lack of the setting as I see it gives us a lot more to go on. It is not whether people are supportive of Palestine, or perhaps anti-Israel, is equally a question for most at present. The fact that we give support to those in support of terrorists is a lot harder to deal with in several settings. As we are given: “Corbyn, via his own Twitter feed, stepped up his response to Netanyahu. “What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children,” the Labour leader wrote“, we should be able to see that this setting is wrong. There is lots of open source intelligence from many sides (and newspapers) in all this. the setting of ‘groups of mostly young men approached the border, rolling burning tires towards the fence to provide smoke screens, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails in the direction of Israeli troops‘, so we get mayhem and Molotov cocktails (the ones you do not drink), so at that point, it is no longer a ‘peaceful protest‘ it is an intentional attack. PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah have forever used people as tools, to be human shields for their attacks. That goes back to the 80’s, some people just do not evolve, they merely continue until death.

In addition, Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar admitted in an interview “when we talk about ‘peaceful resistance’, we are deceiving the public. This is a peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies, and enjoying tremendous popular support“, several sources give us that, and the fact that this ‘evidence’ was out there as early as May 16th makes the entire tweet by Jeremy Corbyn stupid, short sighted, reckless as well as another ego boost of self-importance via a social media proclamation, which is perhaps the one element where any politician gets a partial small pass on the setting of that stage. It is the unintentional flaw of most politicians of focusing too much on looking too good giving any statement and forgetting to contemplate what they are actually saying. I will admit that leagues of conservatives have gone that path before Jeremy Corbyn did.

There is one flicker of light that we see when Labour MP Luciana Berger states pretty much the same as I did. When we see “Being ‘present’ is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support. There can also never be a “fitting memorial” for terrorists. Where is the apology?”, we see a much clearer need for his replacement to step in, as well as additional evidence towards his lack of empathy. I remain a conservative, but I am happy that some politicians on the other isle can see the light of reality and logic.

I do not completely agree with Margaret Hodge. She states “the only way “Jeremy Corbyn can put this issue to bed” is to “adopt the internationally agreed definition of anti-Semitism in full”“, you see, that is a political hoop. If he cannot accept that from the get go he should not be in office. The entire setting of ‘put this issue to bed‘ is wrong as the setting was done; he has to live with it. The question soon becomes can anyone in Labour accept Jeremy Corbyn to stay where he is?

So how does this relate to Star Trek? The famous episode was about Poker (and bluffing), in this setting Jeremy has a mediocre hand, say, middle-pair or top-pair with a terrible kicker. This whilst the other players those needing the event at the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine, Tunis, did not merely know that he had a bad hand, they already dealt themselves dead’s man hand, aces and eights, all whilst the hidden card would have been an intentional (read: pre-set) ace of hearts, making themselves ready for a party before the showdown even begins. The signs were there from the very start, the house always wins. It has been and always be a statistical certainty. Jeremy forgot whose house he was attending that day and can the UK afford someone THAT short sighted?

Sometimes it is not merely a hand of poker, sometimes it is knowingly holding the bank up for a bluff and on that day you do not want the wrong person to be playing that game with anyone’s future.

 

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August 13, 2018 · 12:24

Is it mere wording?

That is where I am at. The issues are still escalating in Yemen, the issues are a given escalation and no one is proclaiming that either side, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are both innocent. Both made choices, both decided on choices that also clearly indicate that errors were made. Some will call them judgment errors, some will call for perspectives. I tend to call for facts and evidence. Yet we can all agree that no matter how right and just your setting is, in any war, in any act of war, things go pear shaped. Errors will be part of that and the instigator of that error will have to live with that.

It all started Friday morning, when ABC (one amongst many) gives us (at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-10/yemen-air-strike-dozens-killed-including-children-on-a-bus/10104136) the simple setting: ‘Yemen: Children on a bus among dozens killed in Saudi-led air strikes, Red Cross says‘. We might get angry on this; we might get the feeling that children should always be avoided at all cost. Yet the ABC does not give the people the issue that is at the centre of it, besides the mention of: “It accused the Houthis of using children as human shields and said the strikes were carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law“, and let’s forget the setting of ‘strikes’ and ‘in accordance with international humanitarian law‘ for a moment, I just can’t laugh at his now (mainly because I was at the dentist this morning). You see, Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/didnt-find-remains-yemens-survivors-deadly-bus-attack-180812062952530.html) gives us the additional part. The missing part is “a Saudi-Emirati coalition air strike has killed dozens of children in a Houthi stronghold.” Now the fact that Al Jazeera had the news 18 hours ago and ABC gave it on Friday morning, I partially pass for ABC, because information might have been missing, which tends to be the case in the first hours. Yet the setting: ‘dozens of children in a Houthi stronghold‘, so what the EFF were children doing in a Houthi stronghold? If that can be confirmed, it does not merely give rise to the human shield part, it might be evidence and that makes the setting a very different one.

In addition, the Canberra Times gives us 11 hours ago the setting (at https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/saudi-bus-bombing-marks-a-new-low-in-yemen-20180810-p4zwsm.html) “The bus, which is reported to have been taking a group of children to summer camp, was travelling through the crowded Dahyan market in Sa’ada, the capital of Sada province. The region is the traditional homeland of the Houthi rebels who rose up against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in 2014“, it sounds innocent enough. Yet in a war, taking a bus full of children THROUGH a Houthi Stronghold shows a massive lack of insight, does it not? The fact that several newspapers lack that information seems more deceptive conduct than journalism, which is merely my view point on all this. In addition, the Canberra Times, makes light of this with “bombing of a school bus in Yemen probably doesn’t qualify as a war crime because the Royal Saudi Air Force is so incompetent the odds are it just made a mistake“, so the Canberra Times hides behind ‘Credible commentators, including a leading German analyst‘ (no names though, odd is it not?) No, it becomes some ‘silly Arab not knowing how to use a bomber or fighter jet’ anecdote. Yet when we dig deeper, we see all kinds of information that require scrutiny, on both sides, mind you. Another comment here is “the Saudis, even with the active assistance of the Americans and the British, can’t differentiate between hospitals, schools, orphanages and school buses on one hand, and missile launching sites on the other“, this sloppy comment is all absent from a few facts, how were the missiles fired? In addition, the fact that the missiles were fired towards Riyadh and civilian targets is also brushed aside. In addition, the entire setting of how the missiles are fired into Saudi Arabia as well as the fact that both Iran and Hezbollah are part of those firing teams are just as easily brushed aside. So a terrorist organisation is firing missiles at Riyadh and we seem to focus on the most emotional part in the aftermath. I personally call that really bad journalism, I call that emotion creation on a false premise, and now that Fairfax is part of Channel Nine, not that big a surprise, is it?

The fact that this article does not have a name and is merely from ‘the Canberra Times‘ is equally a worry, is it not? The end of the article giving us “are some innocents more equal than others?” is an interesting side, especially in the trivialisation of Iran as well as the absence of Hezbollah, the utter absence of missiles being launched towards the Saudi Capital is also worth noting. In all this, what has the Canberra Times shown other than its sliding regard for journalism?

If we dig, we see that Gulf News gave last Thursday: “165 rebel missiles launched since 2015, according to the coalition“, that is a lot of damage fired, whether they made it or not does not matter, they were fired. The Deutsche Welle gave us last December (at https://www.dw.com/en/how-did-yemens-houthis-obtain-ballistic-missiles/a-41873594), a few niceties. With “The missiles which have been used appear to be a type that was not previously known to be in the arsenals of Yemen before the current conflict broke out. It is known that the previous Yemeni government had invested in different types of ballistic missiles. For example, some were delivered from North Korea, some 15 years ago or so. But it’s not those missiles that appear to have been used right now. The images and information we have shows that this is a different type of missile“, so the Houthis are clearly supplied in some way. A few sources state the ‘evidence’ from the US that the missiles are from Iran. It is indeed most likely, yet not unlike the Deutsche Welle, there is no clear independent confirmation and that is equally important. We can accept that we know (from several sources) that Iran and Hezbollah joined the Houthi ranks, but that does not give rise to the evidence regarding the missile, until an actual missile is independently tested. Several sources show that the Houthis are firing the Burkan 2-H, it is shown to be Iranian (or Yemeni), but no evidence can be shown ruling out (or in) the direct involvement of Iran shipping the missiles in all this. It is more likely than not, yet still unproven.

Now we get to the good part. You see, to fire one of them bad boys, you need a decent launch pad. the more stable the setting, the better the result. We need to realise that a static launch setting is not possible for the firing party, so they need to have something really sturdy, something decently large and metallic. I have not specific details, and as it is based on the Qiam-1, an 11 meter long missile, the setting of a bus being used as a launch platform is not the silliest idea. In addition, there are some issues with the entire smuggling setting, in this Jane’s Intelligence review stated: “it would be difficult to ship entire ballistic missiles to Yemen, suggesting the Burkan-2 is a Scud modified in Yemen for longer range“, that is certainly one setting. The other version (my version) is that it was shipped in 2-3 parts and assembled in Yemen by parties unknown. There is some intelligence that this is why Iran is there, equally reasonable is that engineers are there to teach both Houthi and Hezbollah troops to do these actions, giving them a better bang for the buck (as well as the fact that Houthi forces need to shell out a hell of a lot more towards Iran in the end), all optional settings that have evidentiary support, but not enough to state it as a fact or as a given truth.

All issues linked in all this and all missed by the former Fairfax outlet. In addition, several other sources, merely skated over the facts and the stopped the icing at ‘children dead’. We all agree that this is not a good thing, but the answer on what those kids were doing in a Houthi stronghold is equally important and avoided. That all reeks like Hezbollah and what they have been doing for the longest time (as well as Hamas), Israel has plenty of evidence on that matter.

In this, we also need to set the stage against Al Jazeera in all this. Especially when we see: “Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow reports from neighbouring Djibouti on what has been described as the worst attack on Yemen’s children“. In this I question the voice of Mohammed Adow in this. I do not doubt his view, but when he stated ‘the worst attack on Yemen’s children‘. Were children the target? That part lacks evidence as they were, by his own admission ‘in a Houthi stronghold’; one does not mix with the other, does it? When I see: “It targeted a bus carrying children“, was that the case? I am assuming that optionally the bus was the target, yet the wreck shown is that it was right next to a building, it was in a setting where (a little unlikely) missiles were fired from, it was a Houthi stronghold, all parts shown from more than one source. I did state ‘a little unlikely’, for the mere reasons that all missile launches, the ones that made it to YouTube and likewise sources were fired from the open area setting. That does not mean that they all were, but until evidence is given, I am not merely accepting that the bus was a launch platform, merely that a bus could optionally be one, which is not the same. And I am making that distinction, as it matters as a distinction.

Even as several sources are stating that the missiles have too many Iranian ‘Characteristics’, we need to realise that Industrial espionage is not a non-option. (it is extremely unlikely), the fact that none of the parties involved has been able to give enough evidence (real physical one) that these are Iranian missiles, and in this regard I mean independent evidence, the setting is a twofold one and even as we say that when it walks, quacks and swims like a duck, there is still some regard whether it could optionally be a small goose. I know, it is far-fetched in a few ways, but evidence of this nature needs to be beyond all reasonable doubt, making it a lot harder, yet equally more essential. A setting that the press has been skating around for the longest of times and with certain ownership of certain papers changing, that setting will not change any day soon.

From my point of view the setting has changed where we need to distill the truths form several sources, not from one source, it seems that there is enough evidence that one source will in the end intentional or not, not inform you at all. Not even ABC, for whom I have had a much higher regard then most other news media providers. Yemen shows that there is a larger issue in all this and the media seems to cater to the need of emotional imprinting at the cost of the quality of journalism, but that too is merely my own personal view on the matter and I personally do not believe that I am the most impartial source in all this, I will admit to that too.

 

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