Tag Archives: Biden

On the way to……

I was on route to some IP pondering when the Al Jazeera story ‘White House adviser Jake Sullivan meets Saudi crown prince for Jeddah talks’ crossed my path. Immediately the thought   “There are just so many ways you can beg for cheap oil” passed my mind. OK, that might have been out of line, but the premise still sets. The White House have send nearly every large caliber in the direction of Saudi Arabia without making it an overly clear ‘White House’ event. The story also gives us (yet again) ““We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are,” Biden said during a 2019 Democratic debate.” These were hollow words given at the wrong time. And now almost 4 years later the setting is as dire as the US has ever had them, but OK. Try to make us all believe that this is about ““bilateral and regional matters”, the White House said, including initiatives “for a more peaceful, secure, prosperous and stable Middle East”” Sure, make it about the one thing that the Middle East does not need the US to initiate. It has initiated enough imbalance to last it an eternity. Even as Reuters gives us ‘Oil settles above April peak on tighter supply’ (at https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-up-supply-tightness-view-offsets-concerns-rate-hikes-2023-07-27/). We need to consider the impact of “Still, oil dropped on Wednesday after data showed U.S. crude inventories fell less than expected and the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, leaving the way open for another increase.” You see, this scorcher of a summer on the northern hemisphere is also impacting energy costs, AC and cooling units are working overtime, as such winter could be a killer. I am using could be, because there is no clear evidence that this summer will leave us with a mild winter, implying that the US and EU are facing 5%-15% more energy needs and with the price of oil that could be a massive impact. One source is giving us today “Standard Chartered analysts conclude that crude prices are finally starting to catch up with the reality of a tightly supplied oil market.” Really? I got there months ago, so how are these clowns actually making their money? A tightly supplied market is the premise of shortages close to everywhere, and if you think that the EU is a nice place now, consider 28 members fighting each other for the same oil allotment, should be fun. I will invest in popcorn, we would all want some so we can watch the nagging tea bitches fight this one. I saw some forecast charts, but I had issues with them (optionally) for the most I might not get all the elements in that forecast. That is simple as I am not in that business. Yet the larger part is how the prices (allegedly) dip a little in early 2024, as I see it as these settings continue, the world (EU and USA) will face oil prices of $90+ from December 2023 onwards. I have no idea how high they will get, but the larger setting no matter how managed it is, the shortage will continue and press pressures up to weird levels all over Europe. All that is before China achieves a larger stake in the oil supplies. The US is silently hoping that they get it all from Russia, but without the cap in place China sees a larger benefit vying for the same stack that the US and EU are vying for. Call me nuts, but I reckon that is one scenario that could go south for the EU sooner rather than later. We all see what is given to us as to the events happening, but there is something off in sending National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan a month after Anthony Blinken went there. Something does not add up and it might just be me, but there is more to this visit than the press tells us (which is what the US likely told the press), they need something and cheap oil is the first thing that comes to my mind.

And in the heat the US and EU faces? Well I reckon one barrel of oil per household to keep it cool should do it. Oh no, there are only 2 million barrels to go round (times 90 days = 180) , so what about the other 600 million people. How will they get cooling? And what about winter, which 600 million need to face it without heating? Yes, the equation is not correct, but the sentiment is. For the first time since 1973 will we face an oil shortage. I tried to warn you all but too many called me stupid and insane (the latter might be true). So I will see you buried, frozen to death soon enough. I wonder if anyone realises how dire it is about to become and don’t blame me. All these analysts should have been there long before I arrived at that station, so why weren’t they? They can ignore it for now, but in February when the death count starts, their BS reasoning will be met with the anger of people who lost someone in the big freeze of 2023/2024. What will they do then?

Enjoy the day and enjoy the AC at current prices, the weekend is about to start.

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Weeping Whinging Whiners (W3)

Yes, that is the double meaning and it is the stage that we need to accept. And most of it comes from the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64472806) called ‘White House calls Exxon record profit ‘outrageous’’ with the quote “President Joe Biden has sought to focus blame for last year’s high motor fuel costs on companies failing to spend their profits to boost supply.” As I personally see it, trying to set to focus blame is not just stupid, it is very stupid. You see, oil is a commodity and there is offers and there are demands. A buy and sell setting that has been here for decades. And before President Biden starts laying blame. The blame is at his own address. The White House has had its share of disappointments, but they are on both sides of the isle. Massive changes were required going back to the age of Clinton and in the last 5 years alone other options were available in the form of the Tesla battery, but you all wanted to make fun of Elon Musk, so now he has the commodity you all need (but that is for another day). We are given “Exxon’s shares sank sharply in 2020, when demand for oil tumbled, leading the firm to report its first loss in decades. But the price of the shares has soared since 2021, especially since oil prices jumped when the war in Ukraine disrupted energy supplies last year”, yet the part we all forget is that oil is a commodity, and for the most (with a few small examples) it is a good commodity to have. The war is not on Exxon, the need for oil is not on Exxon, it is on the administrations of the White House. For decades you REFUSED to act when action was needed, and action was needed for close to two decades. You can blame all you want, but to see the guilty party any occupant of the White House only needs to look into a mirror. You alienated Venezuela, you alienated Saudi Arabia and you massively alienated (justly so) Iran and you are in a war with Russia. The four largest oil producing nations AFTER America. But America cannot supply its own oil, can it? It exports the bulk for cash and the American people (not just them) are short on oil, as such the price goes up. All options were cut short and you have no options left and that pesky war does not help, we get that. But none of this is on Exxon, two decades squandered and no end in sight. That is how it is. As such the White House can cry, whinge and whine, but in the end. This what they wanted and this president does not get to blame Donald Trump. Former presidents Obama and Clinton, both Democrats did far too little and now time is pretty much up. As such those who have the commodity oil will have wealth coming towards them, massive wealth until at least 2025, this will continue for a while. Even if the war ends in 2023, the shortages are getting larger and larger. Elon Musk was a solution but that bridge was burned. Cities like Austin, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles will need three to five thousand batteries to make a dent in the oil needs for energy, they will need options for heating and that list is merely getting larger and cities in Europe are in a similar state. One source gives us “Over half a million people will use wood-burning stoves this winter, and industry experts report fears of a potential shortage as thousands more turn to the appliance as demand rose by nearly 40 per cent between April and June compared to the same period last year” and this is merely the UK so what happens when heating prices grows by another 20%? Will you blame Exxon, or will you finally realise that more was required and the administrations of several governments fell flat? 

As I see it this was a system that has existed for decades and Exxon is not to blame, this shape of commodities comes from Wall Street, you do remember that greed driven institution? This problem is a lot larger than you realise and too many people are sitting on their hands.

So let them whine and cry all they like, once you realised they are partially the cause of it, that is when you get to be angry.

Good luck.

 

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And America loses yet again

Yes that is the setting. Al Jazeera dos not voice it in this way. They give us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/11/iran-says-oil-sales-strong-despite-ukraine-war-changes) with the headline ‘Iran says oil sales strong despite effect of Ukraine war’ it shows that Iran basically gets a decent share of $120,000,000 a day, that amounts to $43,800,000,000 a year. That puts them on around the 45th best funded nation. So where are these economic sanctions now? They removed the nuclear monitoring camera’s, where is the action? Let’s be clear, this in not on the Biden administration. Yet their inaction will count against them, Iran is making a jester out of America and the Yanks are letting them. 

Iran is rubbing it in and the quote “Overall, the outlets said Iran has sold 40 percent more crude, oil derivatives, natural gas and gas condensate in the first two months of the current Iranian calendar year that ended on May 21 compared with the corresponding period last year.” And Al Jazeera is kind enough to give us “refraining from publishing detailed figures as the country remains under stringent US sanctions.” I personally do not see that many sanctions, not with a nation in 45th position for budget availability (out of 230). It seems that the US has failed yet again and the failures are adding up and slamming whatever credibility the US has left. It takes me to a side that is not indicative (but could be) on YouTube last week, some might have seen a video of a nightwatch falling asleep on the spot and shooting themselves. Some say hilarious, I think it is pathetic, but that is me. What followed was that someone told me “What if we give every American a weapon, watch them shoot themselves, walk in and call it South Canada?“ The man had a point and I for one had the smirk to consider telling Candace Owens what happens next. Especially when we see the Canadian State of Simcoe Monacan which is Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia and anything east of that. The state is named after John Graves Simcoe and the Monacan Indian Nation as per request by the First Nation, any southern state will have a one third representation from local natives. The Commonwealth accepted that requested for South Canada.  At that point will people like Candace Owens shout for the rights of people? I think that scream will be more like it, when the shoe is on the other foot the game changes drastically and that needs to be seen. Iran is playing a long term game and it is not far from completion. It is time for America to take a more active role in the downfall of Iran. If not for the US, then for Saudi Arabia, Israel and several other nations that are being pushed by Iran and even as I believe that they are getting more money, the tactics of Iran are starting to show well beyond the Yemeni borders. When they get of even one attack to the degree they are hoping for, the credibility of the US will drop to below zero. 

In this Patton was absolutely right (Patton, 1970) “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time” and here we see the stage, the Economic sanctions were the move of a loser watching energy unfold and diminish. But that tactic only works if all participants are driven to that goal and with Iran they never were. That is how I see it, so whilst you wonder what the other states are called in the future, remember that Candace Owens forced Canadian hands, sometimes when we are in the markets we do the one clever thing, we avoid the screaming fishwives. A simple act, especially when the people decide that overstepping lines are unacceptable. But that is not the case is it? The long term actions show that failure and as we take tally, we better take tally of what else we are missing because the removal of 27 camera’s was planned, the question is why. It was not merely to show that the US failed, that the UN failed. That has been a known issue. What do the 27 camera’s allow for? That is the question I have and perhaps it is seemingly nothing, but that is not the case with Iran, is it? 

I will let you figure it out. I honestly do not know at present.

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800,000,000 failures and a home-run

This is what I faced today, but the two are not connected, well not directly, optionally even indirectly. They are connected by the smallest sliver of thought. To start, the first part comes from the BBC. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61080536) gives us ‘Sanctioned Russian oligarchs linked to £800m worth of UK property’, which sounds nice, but lets take a deeper look. We get “Some of the individuals deny ownership of the mansions, which may mean they are beyond the reach of the sanctions. To get to the bottom of who owns what, we carried out a detailed trawl of leaked offshore documents, the Land Registry and court papers – as well as previous reporting.” It comes down to the first part. There we see “Because of the system of secrecy here in the UK and in relation to the Overseas Dependencies it’s really easy for people to hide their assets and their funds in the UK and not even the police necessarily have sight of where those assets are,” these people are skating around the central issue ‘What they did was perfectly legal’ a setting of creating actual tax laws is at the heart of this and this is decades overdue. It should have started in the age of Gordon Brown (2007), there is a stage where we could agree that Tony Blair (1997-2007) should have started it, but the pressure was not on for the UK at that point, the meltdown in the US should have been a clear signal, but from 1997 onwards NOTHING was done to rewrite tax laws into the laws the UK needed to have in 2010, and now a decade later we see “To get to the bottom of who owns what” and there hiding behind the Panama Papers is jut a farce. This should have been adjusted in the EU, UK and US by 2010 but none of them did ANYTHING to clear the waters. They merely pretended to do so to appease political friends, they all did. And now when we see the laughingly weak “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains” this implies that laws were broken, so is he just incompetent, stupid or both? And this matters, because it is all linked. 

Roman Abramovich, has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. On Roman Abramovich we see “He has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. His most expensive London property is a 15-bedroom house on a street that is nicknamed Billionaires Row. With its vast stucco-faced Italianate mansions, it is home to royalty and ambassadors – as well as oligarchs.” The one element missing (two actually) were any laws broken? More important we see sanctioned by UK and EU, not the US. Then we get to the main event. It is Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by all three and the desert of all this is more than a Medovik. We are given “a spokesman for Mr Usmanov said most of the billionaire’s UK property, plus a $600m (£456m) yacht, had already been “transferred into irrevocable trusts”, potentially putting them beyond the reach of sanctions.” A stage that is perfectly legal and the laws were never rewritten making this a sliding scale of discrimination, a scale of injustice and no laws were broken. The law makers were too stupid, too lazy to do anything about it. In the UK, the US and the EU. The lawmakers appeased THEIR friends as I personally see it and the oligarchs merely used the laws available to THEM TOO. A stage we need to accept and respect if we are a nation of laws. More important, which of these oligarchs ACTIVELY supported the war by Putin? I am asking, I actually do not know and the media merely surrounds itself with emotional BS, not a fact in sight and it is time to call these media players out on that too. The BBC article is actually quite good, but where do we see ‘Laws were broken’? We see “Ravenmorrow Limited was set up in December last year and no individual is identified on UK company records as the beneficial owner.” A clear failure of UK Laws, a setting where it was allowed to do this and no one is to blame but British Parliament and the House of Lords. The BBC does not really state that do they? As. I see it I see not the acts of Oligarchs, I see the failures of governments not overhauling tax laws when they could and as I see it all parties are guilty (except the greens), unlike the others the green parties all over the world seem to be oblivious on what a rudder is or does, so they are going Hades knows where at a speed no one can predict to arrive at some location no one knows.

Home-run
Yes, like the side we saw before there is another side and it makes more of a case towards the end of Microsoft, all whilst Adobe is getting more and more in place of taking over 25% of their office business. It is depending on two elements, and when these elements are out I will happily hand them over what I have if Google or Amazon buy the other IP and give me permission to hand that over to Adobe, I will gladly do that, just to see Microsoft squirm a little more. 5 markets lost to stupidity, 5 markets lost to shortsightedness and Adobe will be one of the winners. The setting that comes has been out for a while and the lost sides (four at present) are things that Microsoft should have seen years ago, their inaction is now more than enough. If you are asleep at the wheel you lose the ship, it is that simple and unlike the Ever Given, others are not in the Suez Canal, we can go around this Microsoft vessel and let it sink. A home-run out in the open and Microsoft just will not wake up, well let them sleep, I reckon that Adobe is more than ready to take over a chunk of the Office users. Consider that after all this time and all these follies, people do not merely gain a program, they gain a suite of options to tantalise their creativity. 

There is no telling where the creative people are going to end, but it will be ahead of where Microsoft hoped they would be, a lag that only intensifies the losses they will face. The setting reminded me of an article I saw in LinkedIn. 

There we see a person objecting to the discrimination of scouting. There we see “The announcer labelled the boy scouts as ‘Future leaders of America’ and the girls scouts as a group that were ‘just having fun’” This is what we see as a setting for Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe instills and propagates creativity, whilst Microsoft merely sets a mediocre foundation of presenting. Yet if there is one thing I have seen from Adobe, it is a clear stage where presenters can create works of art, whilst Microsoft sets a stage of mediocre joyous presentations, but in this day and age presentations are serious business, it sets the tone for corporate stories, sales events, propagating new projects and products. Joy gets us nowhere and Microsoft joy is close to a decade old. Adobe is on the verge of setting the next generation of presenting tools. So where do YOU wanna be when your idea is ready to be shown to the world? At the edge of what is possible, or in a joyous looking meadow, one that we have seen a million times over? I will let you decide on where you want to be and be honest, do you really think that Microsoft has any serious relevance left?

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In preparation

We all prepare, but how do we do that? There are games, there are tests, there are challenges and we seem to accept some, we reject others. I see how many reject the setting of what the Russians are up to, I even see how Americans would prefer Putin over Biden, with settings that is in denial of truth, in denial of facts. A way of thinking totally impossible 40 years ago is now the foundation of failing in America. Yet, I wonder not about that. To be true, I wonder what parts are real and what are not. Not in the case of the Russian slaughter in Ukraine. Bellingcat put online the Russian actions of shooting a person on a bicycle, on a bicycle no less. But what tests do you rely on? I for one took the Pottermore test whilst waiting for Hogwarts Legacy.

In this I will be wielding a Hawthorn wood with a Unicorn core 14 ½” and a Hard flexibility wand. I have a hedgehog patronus and I am in house Ravenclaw. So for the game I am ready. Yet what happens when the next game comes along? What happens when someone takes the Divergent series and creates a new world looking like something you see in the Last of us (without the altered enemies). To create that world the 5 factions become reality, yet here you are a different person, here you can take over (possess) any Candor, Abegnation, Dauntless, Erudite or Amity. Yet the choice allows for progress like a dungeon keeper, to let the dungeon take care of itself. The people unaware of you, you are merely a hand in growing a community. Finding places in a discovered city. Showing knowledge, exploring weapons, so the city cannot be safe in the beginning. Animals that are hungry and even as slaughter seems the only option in the beginning, later on it seems like one of many solutions. The guardians, the intelligent and the honest setting a stage for the peaceful and the selfless to grow to unparalleled greatness. 

It seems we have a likeness of tests, especially from movies or books we enjoy to set a larger station for ourselves. Something we can brag about to our friends. Like the master of their Minecraft, ready to show others what you have done and the group never stops growing. As you find people with likeminded goals you share and that pushes for other sides too. Sides I am not entirely ready to reveal here, because I want Amazon (Luna) and Google (Stadia) to have the advantage (and to show Microsoft their inability) to show what others cannot see. And it is here that we see the larger station of streaming growing, not merely by playing, but by embracing that what the gamer loves. What the gamer drives and even as that is not the setting that grows the amount of people to any console, it does give the world the image that the gamer wants to show the world. All this is set through streamers and their station towards perfecting their profile, the gamers presentation to the internet. I do not think that Sony ever realised how close to perfection they were and then with the PS4 and later they dropped it completely. Unaware what they lost and now in the next phase it seems that several players have all the options at their corner. 

We want to look prepared, we want to be the one in the middle and we forgot that there are several ways to get there. Not all of them requiring the slaughter of civilians, not all of them require to be a fan of everything, yet in case of some games, the option to be more than a player of the game is expected. But who will accomodate? Who will do that to a larger station than it is now? Sony bungled it from PS4 onwards, but it is not too late, it is not completely lost, and in the stage we see online with splinter groups, for the consoles to keep THEIR splinter group safe is becoming increasingly important.

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Tools of convenience

It is 01:39, I thought it was going to be a boring Thursday. Yet, there she is, everyones favourite tool Stephanie Kirchgaessner is making another run for it. She gives us ‘Israeli spyware company NSO Group placed on US blacklist’. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/03/nso-group-pegasus-spyware-us-blacklist) comes with all posturing, yet no evidence. She gives us “It comes three months after a consortium of journalists working with the French non-profit group Forbidden Stories, including the Guardian, revealed multiple cases of journalists and activists who were hacked by foreign governments using the spyware” yet there are a few sides to consider. This so called ‘consortium of essay writers’ working with the clowns calling themselves the ‘non-profit group Forbidden Stories’ came with insinuations and no evidence. On July 23rd 2021 I wrote ‘From horse to course’, there I gave the readers “but consider that if the media has not released a dashboard of these 50,000 numbers, I believe that my case is rather clear, I would personally consider that list is nothing more than the fabrication of a stakeholder who needs the revenue that the NSO Group currently has”, in addition to that, the BBC gives us (the link is in the same story) “Of the people whose numbers are on the list, 67 agreed to give Forbidden Stories their phones for forensic analysis. And this research, by Amnesty International Security Labs, reportedly found evidence of potential targeting by Pegasus on 37 of those”, so basically they could prove it in no more then 60% of the cases which they call ‘evidence of potential targeting’, I am not debating it, but this setting where we saw a few mentions that the NSO Group pleaded innocence, we need to have evidence, and the whatever you wanna call it pointlessly blaming people without presenting evidence constitutes in my humble opinion a person too useless to consider a valid source of information.

She goes on giving us “The Guardian and others also revealed that the mobile numbers of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and nearly his entire cabinet were contained on a leaked list of individuals who were selected as possible targets of surveillance”, a leaked list that was opposed by the Verge and a few other sources which I dealt with again in ‘The same gramophone’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/16/the-same-gramophone/) We see several issues with what is stated from a few articles, but the part was that the leaked number list was from 2016, and there were other considerations too, in part that 50,000 numbers represent $600,000,000 in the cheapest configuration and so far, no evidence was ever shown that the NSO Group had made THAT much money. We also get the show of a party line “NSO has said that its spyware is used by foreign government clients to target serious criminals. It has denied that any of its clients ever targeted Macron or any French government officials”, I get that. It does not make the NSO group innocent, but so far the confused tool Stephanie Kirchgaessner and whatever master she barks to are not presenting ANYONE clear evidence. I stated it 6 months ago there too. A top line of what was available and optionally evidence would have been presented and in 6 months none of them did any of that. 

Have we stopped being nations of laws? There is a second side to all this it is seen in the headline  ‘Israeli spyware company NSO Group placed on US blacklist’, we get “Decision against company at heart of Pegasus project reflects deep concern about impact of spyware on US national security interests”, OK that is fair, the US has national interests and as such they have the right to push for their national interests, I cannot and will not debate that, it is their right. I just wished the Guardian had actually done their homework and not hide behind “It comes three months after a consortium of journalists working with the French non-profit group Forbidden Stories, including the Guardian, revealed multiple cases of journalists and activists who were hacked by foreign governments using the spyware”, that and unsubstantiated mentions makes for a shoddy article, one that is debatable on too many sides and degrades the Guardian from their AAA status to a mere B-. Feel free to oppose this, you only have to get actual evidence and so far none of them presented any and several sources debated what some presented, a mess and this is the third time I personally see the name Stephanie Kirchgaessner towards something that I personally regard to be shoddy. Once happens, twice perhaps if the career is long enough, but three times? As I personally see it, the average journalism intern is better than that. 

And no matter how we slice it, Shalev Hulio, NSO’s founder has a larger issue and optionally new avenues to explore. I wonder if that was the content of the meeting that is given to us as “But in the weeks that followed the publication of the Pegasus project, Israeli officials met with counterparts in the US and France to discuss allegations of abuse of the technology.” I think the current administration is shitting bricks, they are scared. The NSO group is the first time in history that a private company had a better grasp of technology then the NSA EVER had. And the next credit ceiling conversations are a mere 7 weeks away, I reckon that the democrats are afraid that any deal towards that comes out into the open from any non-US source. It must be awful to rely on tools you owe big time, but that is merely my take on the matter.

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A waste of space

Yes, some people are that, I believe that the tool ICIJ director Gerard Ryle is such a person (he will clim it is me). Yet how did I get there? That is important too. Those who read the previous articles will remember that I stated that a top-line display would give us the parts we initially needed. But no, after all this time, with 600 journalists at his back, Ryle never walked the walk. However I see ABC, the Guardian, BBC and others all do the motion of jabs, to create flames, to create click bitches. In a dying light they want to grab any digital dollar they can. Even the useless leader of the Democratic Party (President Joe Biden) via his administration gives us today “The Biden administration said it would “crack down on the unfair schemes that give big corporations a leg up” in the wake of the Pandora disclosures.” It is a pointless exercise in a waste of time, it is merely the prequel to something much worse.

You see the top-line would give us a better look at the “130 billionaires from 45 countries, including 46 Russian oligarchs. Bollywood actors, soccer stars, corrupt sports officials, a king’s lover, feuding princesses, movie directors and stars, supermodels, acclaimed designers and world-famous singers, 330 politicians and high-level public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, including 35 current and former country leaders” and this is linked to the even less useful quote “By some estimates 10 per cent of the world’s total economic output is parked in offshore financial centres, costing governments billions of dollars in lost revenue” 

Why is this?
The top-line would give us where the impact is. The 130 billionaires? You see there are 165 in Dubai and they are in the 0% bracket. I stated the dangers two days ago. Then from all these numbers, how many are in which nation, ho many are governmental versus non-governmental. When we see those numbers, we will likely see a created a storm in a teacup. 

And this is linked to the first setting proving that Gerard Ryle is a useless and optionally corrupt tool. “The source of the documents hasn’t been revealed to media partners but made it clear to the ICIJ he wanted the public to see where dirty money is really flowing. Ryle says the source had two conditions for leaking the documents. “First of all the source wanted anonymity. I presume for safety reasons,” he says.” Presume my ass! When we investigate the sources we see that some have well above decent protection, in my view there are only two players involved here, the CIA and the NSA. Both Russian and Chinese investigations would stopping their local laundry, as such there would be nothing on oligarchs outside of Russia. 

I believe this all to be a well managed (speculative) ruse. When it all comes out, we will get a flame of ‘tax the rich’ and that is what that useless democratic leader needs, his land is BANKRUPT and when the default hits grabbing (not taxing) whatever the American billionaires have is on the short list, reparations come later and if it all goes to shit the politicians will run for cover in any nation that will put up with them (Australia and UK). 

And when you truly read the articles you will see statements like “the documents reportedly tied prime minister Andrej Babis to a $22 million estate near Cannes, France. Speaking in a television debate, Babis, who was a billionaire before he entered politics, denied any wrongdoing.” 600 journalists and not one has added evidence of wrongdoing, merely a billionaire doing what he is allowed to do, buy a house in the south of France and France is not even a 0% tax land, so where are the incriminating papers? 

All the flames I see are about people no one cares about (the King of Jordan), yes Jordanians care about him and that is OK, people in the UK less so. And the truckloads of articles are just that small jabs to keep the readers angry, but no one is taking too much notice of “ICIJ director Gerard Ryle says the Pandora Papers reveal that some international leaders who could tackle offshore tax avoidance have themselves secretly moved money and assets beyond the reach of tax and law enforcement authorities as their citizens struggle” as such I reply “Gerard you fuck, why did the press not do enough over 30 years to make politicians tackle tax laws?” And in HIS statement we see ‘could’ and ‘secret’, but if a person buys a house in Monaco or Dubai they can have money there, it would be legal and it would be tax exempt. You (as I personally see it intentionally) overlooked that part, there is also the Caymans and a few other places, but it does not match the need of the governmental hacker who got into 14 systems, 5 of them had good security, and you could have seen that from day one, but you need click bitches, you need digital revenue and you need to make sure you are not obsolete. So where is that part of the equation?

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Dead on arrival?

Yes, we get the at times, not when the ambulance is racing to get to the ER with a guy wearing 10 knives in his chest, but a setting the is less obvious, almost like the movie dead on arrival, I saw the Dennis Quaid version (1988), I never saw the original from 1950. Yet in this version the victim (USA) does not yet know that it is carrying a deadly toxin, it was the benefit Dennis Quaid had in the movie. So as we see the USA in a stage of what they think matters, we see a larger stage, the stage Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) gives the people, with a still open invitation to India, it is the first time we get an economic bloc of this size where the USA is no longer a consideration, their 300 million consumers are in a stage where they can afford less and less. So as we get (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54949260) “President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) shortly after taking office. The deal was to involve 12 countries and was supported by Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama as a way to counter China’s surging power in the region”, we need to see the partial truth that was a problem, a global one. Some give us (in regard to the TPP “Most of the gains in income would have gone to workers making more than $87,000 a year. Free trade agreements contribute to income inequality in high-wage countries. They promote cheaper goods from low-wage countries”, in addition we get “The agreement regarding patents would have reduced the availability of cheap generics. That could have raised the cost of many drugs. Competitive business pressures would have reduced the incentives in Asia to protect the environment. Last but not least, the trade agreement could have superseded financial regulations”, and there was more, so now we see the RCEP, optionally with similar issues, yet with India optionally joining we see a severe blow to patents (not good for me), but generic medication gets better protection (really good for me), and as we now get “The RCEP is expected to eliminate a range of tariffs on imports within 20 years. It also includes provisions on intellectual property, telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce and professional services”, so if that pact grows any further, we see a larger stage, one where the US and the EU see their cushy incomes diminish by well over 25%, yet it might take a decade, but it also means that the stage cannot be continued, as such their economies will need a vast overhaul in the next 5 years or living there in 2030 might not be a nice ideal in several places. So whilst the players are all about their financial services, we see a field that will vastly adjust in the next 5 years. And as I personally see it, it means that the death clock on Wall Street is pushing towards midnight. This is the consequence of catering to the greed stricken, this is what happens when ego takes over and in this case the ego of the USA and the EU are limiting their options, but the EU can always cater to Iran. And as I see it, a third of the global population is holding on to its 29% of the global gross domestic product. A stage that is a little new for a lot of us. As I see it, in 2030 when the national budgets become reality, I wonder how many people will herald the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, remember these grannies holding up the banner, stopping the arms trade against those bad bad Saudi’s? So when their pension goes down another 20% (if it still exists then), who will they blame? Will they call for Jeremy Corbyn? Will he still be alive? The same for the USA, yet here it will be president elect Biden calling the shots (he is entitled to that), but. Can they foresee the impact that the RCEP will have on their economy? I very much doubt it, yet endangering the $8,500,000,000 deal out there tends to be a really bad call, so as the RCEP will deliver to a larger population, we see a slow push take the USA from the pool of those who matter. As I personally see it, hypocritical high morals are nice, that is until the invoices come in, and these always come in.

Today the largest trade agreement in history was signed and the USA was no longer part of the big things happening, it might be a first, but it is no longer a last, that is the impact of close to 15 years of stupidity, short sightedness and ego, all set in a near package, it is efficient, I merely wonder for who it was an efficient setting, not for the USA, not for the EU, that much is certain. 

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Outdated?

When you stop being a teenager you think that you are on top of the world, that is for about a decade, some have kids, some do not, but the you hit category three (old fart), you tend to feel outdated. This gets me to a comedian who had the setting (40 years ago) that there were three categories. Teener, Twenny, Old fart. Perhaps he was right. 

So here I am looking towards the options of data vaults, and personally I find them lacking. They are all seemingly founded on a population that hides the porn from partners and spouses. 

The problem is that there are specific needs to hide files (JPG, PPT, XLS, MOV, MP4, DOC, PDF, RTF, TXT), yes some want to keep the natural pictures of partners and spouses when she was 21-24, and even a decade or two ahead, she still has the ability to make you horny. Yet there is another person. They get horny on the dollar amount that patents represent, and in this age where 70% of clouds are invaded, this stage where data in transit is no longer safe, the need to set a secure location, with an optional link to a tablet is becoming essential. You see, those who have the IP trust no one, none at all. Having a secure application on one station, and that being the ONLY place where they can link is a setting that will grow pretty much exponentially soon enough.

So whilst I was trying to find a secondary place to keep the files, I see that the apple store caries failure after failure, and that is when you auto-delete anything that has an annual fee. A dozen data vaults, al copying the same idea, all seeing the stage to files being safe in open space. Yeah right!

But it dawned on me that there is a lack in services available. And this station is not one that I can do, merely because I am not a programmer, what is making me wonder is why programmers could not come up with this by themselves. To be honest, the app F-Vault is close to perfect, if they add the iPad app and link the two and also have players (PPT, PDF, DOC, RTF) in there it would become a pretty picture.

Yet the idea that everything has to go via your iTunes, your Apple TV and so on is weird. There is every chance that data will be copied to other places and that tends to be the end of IP.

Yet in the second, the change that Apple pushed for (in their defence) makes sense on the broad view. Yet it also gives rise to the perceived lack of privacy and safety when it comes to IP. At best you end up with 4 versions, at worst it is soon on the internet making IP public domain and that ends the value of the IP. With all these programmers, no one thought of that? F-vault has the option of fees, but for $10 (AU$15) you become a lifetime member and it all unlocks for you the VIP member. $10 is fair and if the added setting comes, it will be a steal at $20, as no-one else has the essential needs.

In NCIS it is seen as Gibbs rule #4 “Best way to keep a secret. Keep it to yourself. Second-best, tell one other person—if you must. There is no third best”, it is not merely about secrets, the rule applies to intellectual property as well, in bigger firms they have lawyers, yet hat if the inventor is you? What if the invention is one THEY want? Upload it? You have got to be kidding me. In all these settings, it seems no one thought of expanding the need, reaching the larger station, because it is about a lot more, consider the writers of their stories, the makers of a new concept. You think that studios are waiting fr the great idea? They seek out anyone who can give it to them, almost no questions asked. In 2008 today gave us ‘Million-dollar ideas often stolen in Hollywood’ with the added “37-year-old Cleveland resident Jeff Grosso, who paid his way through film school by playing Texas Hold ’Em, wrote a screenplay about it, then sued Miramax over its poker movie “Rounders.””, we get the added “attorney John Marder, who specialises in representing aggrieved writers. Many are victims of a system that favours studios and networks and offers little protection for writers and ideas”, to be honest, I do not know who is right, but I do know that at present there is only one system where my IP is safe, until some parts are upgraded, there is no way I am storing this on my laptop or tablet. So whilst we ponder our own safety regarding “Ideas are not subject to federal copyright protection and, until recently, that was the only legal avenue for relief. Federal law says only the expression of ideas — actual screenplays or treatments — are copyrightable. Therefore a writer would have to prove that a finished film or television show was almost identical to his original screenplay. A studio can get around that by simply tweaking a few details”. So when the greed driven are that driven to remove the original creator and the law falls short, is anyone even surprised that I would offer my IP to Huawei? The US claims that China blatantly steals IP, yet they cannot keep a muzzle on the greedy needs of players like Hollywood, it seems that the holy dollar is the golden cow they all worship at the expense of any soul. The article (at https://www.today.com/popculture/million-dollar-ideas-often-stolen-hollywood-wbna15641336) gives a lot more, but it mainly instills the fear that any idea needs to be safely behind lock and key and you have to have faith in yourself. So when writers consider the approach of anyone who would take it” to be an invitation not to get paid for your work, at the point we will see other studios waking up and smelling the lack of creativity whilst having coffee. Yes, there is an alternative, getting an agent or a lawyer and make their pitches with that person present I an option, but an expensive one and writers tend to lack funds. 

Yet the stage is here, and I must ask myself, have I become outdated? Has the world moved on to cater to absolute greed? I wonder, yet I also wonder what happens when a player like Huawei takes my IP and gives us an additional 5G dimension others did not see coming. At that point, I wonder what those in Washington DC will d when they missed out again and again as they catered to the wrong people. There is only so many times that you can do this until there is nothing left. It is a stage often looked away from, but President elect Biden has this matter facing him from day one. $8,500,000,000 is in danger as they angered Saudi Arabia (and I greedily hope for my 3.75%), a nation who actually has the fastest 5G now, so as app developers over there see a larger option to become app powerhouses, and they are hungry to become them. The US doesn’t merely misses out on revenue, the data usage connected to all the is monitored outside of the US, and the US has more gaps in what was a near complete picture in the past. Not merely the US, Google is now also in a setting where they are soon to be showing gaps in their data wall. We might ignore ‘Huawei’s New ‘Fight’ With Google To Beat Android Is Suddenly More Threatening’, and it seems like a joke, but Forbes also gives us “the combination of HarmonyOS, its Android OS alternative and HMS, its Google Mobile Services replacement. Until the latest sanction speculation, the HarmonyOS threat to Android was tempered by the chipset sanctions. But if Huawei’s smartphone sales can recover, that materially changes. Furthermore, Huawei has now confirmed that HarmonyOS will be available as an open-source OS, pushed at other Chinese OEMs, to build bridges, Huawei says, between China and the West”, bridges the elude Google, so the dangers I predicted in 2019 are now coming to pass and they are about to land on the US economy as well, when app revenue dives, when app data is going elsewhere, the value of Google will take a step back, so will the value of Apple. It is a simple stage, what was iOS/Android, is now iOS, HarmonyOS and Android. HarmonyOS is not just a slice from the Android cake, as Apple fails to set options in China, their Chinese slice goes directly to HarmonyOS and that is a extending well beyond China, consider that both Google and Apple lose not just the Chinese part, but no less than 30% of the Indian part on top of that. Now we see a different powerhouse, all whilst Google, Apple and others are seeking margins the are no longer where they were and IP is setting a much larger tone, so this was about a lot more than a simple data vault, was it not? And as Forbes gives us “Huawei’s ecosystem pushed further into Google territory. We now have multiple mapping options, for example, to replace Google Maps. And now, critically, we also have a search alternative as well. This is beginning to feel more like the real thing. Yes, Huawei is short on apps and a global developer network, but it’s ploughing in money to its community and it knows consumers worldwide want its recipe of premium smartphones for less—a recipe now being replicated by those other Chinese OEMs” (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/11/01/huawei-wants-to-beat-google-android-apple-iphone-and-samsung-galaxy-after-trump-ban-update/?sh=12fce8b1e39e) almost two weeks ago, the stage shifts and the players better realise that it was the lack of creativity in the US that started all this (a pretty stupid government administration did the rest). In the end do you think that some of the players will sit still? They are about to lose billions and this is just the beginning, the lack of real 5G in several nations is the foundation for more losses, all in a stage where we still have not seen any real evidence that Huawei was a security risk, other than Huawei being a Chinese company. 

So how long until the people catch on that the world map is changing and when we realise that the US is no longer a superpower (apart from super debt), what will they end up doing? I will let you see the light be yourself, when you consider who is outdated, consider that what we thought was a station of IP, a station too many players ignored from the start, perhaps the values we assign because Hollywood and Wall Street gave them to us, perhaps they too have become outdated. Just a thought to consider.

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The call was made

OK, I have been outspoken on more than one occasion, and as such, I also feel partially connected to make the call when it was made. And the call was made towards President-elect Biden. Even as a republican, I have no issue with this, this is how it is, the votes decide. It is not over yet, team Trump will trump (or rump) what is can, and the numbers are there for automated recounts. Arizona, Biden won by 0.3%, a difference of less than 12,000. Georgia has Biden by 0.3% and that amounts to 14,000 votes. I do not believe that these numbers are overcome and a win of 1 vote is all President elect Biden will need, then there is Wisconsin where Biden won, there is no automatic recount, but team Trump might push for it, they need to overcome 20,610 which amounts to 0.7%. It is a really tall order to overthrow all three and not a real realistic one at that, but that was the game and President-elect Biden seemingly won.

After 10 days of counting the calls are officially made (perhaps pre-official), which was the game. We can wait for the election lawyers to step in, but the numbers are too large to overcome, There is no way the this many ballots are invalid, they can look, but I am not holding my breath on that, yet for me, there is a sunny side (see previous blog), the scare they gave Saudi-Arabia will have larger consequences and with 5G operational there, the response is not going to be a happy one for American entrepreneurs, not when Chinese developers have a much larger app development pol to look at with options in Egypt as well, with nearly 100 million people, it is a stage China really wants and the talks we see between Egypt and Saudi Arabia and given with ‘Vodafone may reconsider price of Egypt sale to Saudi Telecom’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1733206/business-economy) two months ago, were already in the pipeline. I warned for this situation and it seems the Saudi Arabia sees the technology light, pushing out not merely Vodafone, but the sale to Saudi Telecom (STC) is set to $2.4B, which is almost a steal at twice the price. You see, with the Saudi 5G (thanks to Huawei) a lot more services will soon opt via Saudi Arabia and that setting will grow over the next 2 years. A setting the EU and the US have never faced before, and would you believe it, team president-elect has not made friends in the KSA, they can reassess all they want, but the market shares are moving away from those who had it, as will that linked data and Huawei is sitting on the side smirking and nodding in appreciation. What I predicted in my blogs as early s 2018 is now coming to pass, soon Apple and Google want their data centres to run larger services and that is when the US will lose even more. Decentralisation is the worst the could happen here and the timing is even less inviting to the US. In 2019 we saw ‘Google still pursuing Saudi Arabian data centers’, with Egypt in the setting their need increases dramatically, and what else will Vodafail lose? I doubt it is merely Egypt. Last week we were given ‘Vodafone Idea’s inadequate network investments to further accelerate subscriber loss: Analysts’, a stage the might not aid the KSA too much, but the losses will go somewhere and whatever partnership comes from there, in the end Huawei will profit, so there goes the setting we hd towards a setting the US never wanted in the first place and as we see it, we will also see that the EU will need to make a call, especially as they lose out again and again. What path they will walk is still unknown, but it seems decently clear that the path they are on now tends to lead towards self-destruction, the is seen in the Euro reporter, who gives us ‘EU and member states risk a possible WTO challenge for unfair actions against Huawei’ a mere two days ago. Even though it is not on the same setting I had, theirs will do jut as well. As we see: “US actions against Huawei based mainly on its Chinese origins simply will not stand up to a legal challenge before the World Trade Organization. This is because of international treaty obligations that Romania, Poland and Sweden as both EU Member States and WTO members are all bound by, precluding them from discriminating against or between the products of another WTO member” is not merely a costly stage, it is the setting the the path (poorly) chosen could cost the EU a lot more than it bargained for.

Even now Saudi Arabia has the fastest 5G network, compared to the US 752% faster, when Egypt is added to this, the stage changes, two nations with willing and tech hungry developers, all with a 2 year advantage over both the EU and the US, the damage they can install by having faster apps and faster infrastructure is going to cost the other two a bundle, perhaps more. Consider that the UK and US are trailing Egypt and the KSA by such a large difference, the mere humiliation of being second to Egypt and Saudi Arabia is just what the flaccid western technologists required, relying on politicians to fight for them, all whilst their technology could not keep up and that damage will continue until at least 2022. It seems to me that this is only the beginning. When the profit fall away, the real damage comes and both players (EU and US) are nowhere near ready to deal with that, as I see it, President-elect Biden inherited a leaky boat names USA, I reckon he better play nice with whatever ally he still has, the game will change and the US no longer has the lead position for choices, that much is I hope been made clear. 

Have a great Friday, especially those calling in sick so the they can test their new PS5.

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