Tag Archives: Douglas Adams

Saudi Arabia goes Hiragana

That is the word, as we read Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.jp/en/uncategorized/article_146218/) with the headline ‘The dawning of a new era in Japan-Saudi Arabia relations’, there is no real puzzlement. As America goes on with its “We’re doing great”, often merely repeated in all the media, the reality is different ‘Too many ‘life long allies and great friends’ are seeking greener fields as they are in deep fear of getting scuttled alongside the good ship fairytale (oops America). So this article was not really a surprise. As we are given “Based on the idea of leading the international community from division to cooperation, I have decided to visit Saudi Arabia, which plays a crucial role for peace, stability and prosperity not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. Saudi Arabia has achieved some remarkable developments under Vision 2030, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, through undertaking extensive economic and social reforms, such as the diversification of industries and decarbonization. I believe that it is of great significance that my first visit to the Middle East as foreign minister of Japan is marked by this visit to Saudi Arabia.” This is not a love letter, but a setting of recognizing that Japan requires a more stable friend and optional long standing ally and Saudi Arabia likes the market of 125 million people. Not as much as America or Europe, but nothing to be sneered at and Japan sees the need for this union, if only to do something about the $8.84 trillion debt as of January 2025. They haven’t reached the point of no return yet and whilst everyone merely swallows the “we’re doing great line” Japan knows better and Iwaya Takeshi, Japans current Minister for Foreign Affairs sees opportunity for Japan and as we are given “Japan and Saudi Arabia are strategic partners that are this year celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1955, bilateral relations have developed in various fields. In particular, the friendly relations between the imperial family of Japan and the royal family of Saudi Arabia have been an important pillar.” This is continued with “In February, I signed with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan a memorandum for establishing a strategic partnership council, which will be chaired by the leaders of the two countries. This will be a vital framework to further strengthen our cooperation for the future of our two countries under the guidance of our respective leaders.” You might think this is all simple coating the setting, but it is not. You see Japan imports approximately $84.95 billion a year from America, with as I see it $3 billion in Organic chemicals, half a billion in Articles of iron or steel and $124 billion in Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers. Items they can get from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, optionally without tariff and I reckon that in the setting of Vision 2030 Saudi Arabia will be really happy to supply and the latter part will be discussed below. They will not get it all, but that is a setting where America loses another $20,000,000,000 in revenue and they have such a good economy, they can lose this setting, no worries. Well, can they really? 

You see, the second article (at https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Is-Saudi-Arabia-Preparing-for-Another-Oil-Price-War.html) OilPrice dot com gives us ‘Is Saudi Arabia Preparing for Another Oil Price War?’ The setting deteriorates for America. When we see “US benchmark WTI crude is down nearly 4% as Saudi Arabia reports emerge that not only can the Saudis sustain today’s low oil prices, but output increases are likely to be announced next week, for June output, sources speaking to both Reuters and Bloomberg have indicated. On Wednesday, Reuters cited five unnamed sources as saying that the Saudis have no intention of boosting oil markets with further supply cuts, as Riyadh’s budget can tolerate sustained low prices.” This is bad news for America, you see, they rely on the ‘profits’ and resale from the Brent Oil range of profit making and that is about to come under fire, even if it is only 3%-5%, that is a drain of a lot. As we are given “Oil had dropped over 2% amid demand worries and expectations of increased supply from OPEC+, with Saudi Arabia signaling it can tolerate lower prices and may push for more output at the May 5 meeting. Additional pressure came from growing production in non-OPEC nations like Guyana.” (Source: Trading Economics), we need to realise that another drop in revenue will make people relying on this push the panic button (even as Douglas Adams told them: ‘Don’t Panic’), I reckon that is not a venue that America will follow. And as Japan moves more and more to Saudi Arabia, the chance is that more oil will come from Saudi Arabia, as well as a lot more than the three topics I raised. So how much will America lose from their long standing friend and Ally Japan? Even at 10% the slowdown of the $84.95 billion a year will be close to immeasurable. I reckon that it could go up to an estimate max of 30% (which is a little over 25 billion), but add to that the shift in oil, it becomes serious money. As I see it Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud earned his daily dose of lamb shawarma today. (It might be chicken shawarma). There is a massive shift happening and as I see it, according to Irwin Stelzer of the Times, America is going strong, so how are these simple ‘facts’ overlooked? Too far in the future? The new memorandum was drawn up in February, and as I see it, these two giants (meaning Japan and Saudi Arabia) could set a beginning to scuttle the good ship America. This is not a given, but in a trade war it will be more than about getting more revenue on one side, it is the other side that is overlooked and as I see it, this partnership could definitely set ill winds to the barometer of the America economy. 

So have a great day and enjoy your Sushi with Japanese Sobacha tea today.

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics

Imagination is king

Yup, I had been busy brooding over a new story. In this case the foundation is an eco warrior who is sick and tired of his government. He is sick, dead sick and he is willing to share his disease with the rest of the world, all the world. 

To get there there needs to be the way to get there and that is the rough path, you see a story is dismissed too often because the setting is just too far fetched. So I had to grasp at history. And there I found an interesting story. In the original setting the story is a sort of cyano salt. All cyano salts are extremely poisonous. The trick is that treatment needs to start IMMEDIATELY. So doctors do have the immediate questions like do you have rat poison in the house, if yes there is a clear path, but if not the test takes too long for treatment, but if the disease is slow that path is often to easily fixed. So I came up with a DNA solution, a portable genetic disorder. A disease caused in whole or in part by a change in the DNA sequence away from the normal sequence. So I started to tinker and I found an interesting setting. It would cause the same stage, it could not be immediately detected and when it does it would be too late. I touched on the subject on September 5th 2021 in the story ‘Eradication’. The story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/05/eradication/), the story had some of the parts, but I was nitpicking it now, see if I could find flaws in the stage, you see, the lie (the story) is so much easier to swallow when people believe it to be an option, or perhaps Mary Poppins said it better with “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down”, and that setting matters. A good story has the elements that drive the persons mind. For a lot if minds it tends to be sex (but those stories already exist), so I had to go into other corners and the eco warrior did the trick, but how to set the stage when we have had so many delusional minds bend on destroying what is around them? And as the young tend to be driven to do the right thing, no matter how wrong it is, as long as they believe that they are doing the right thing they will not care, until it is much too late and there in that setting I had the actual solution. He spread the story that he had found a new way to stop pollution, which he had to test, so he headed of to India and then to China. The larger industrials saw it as a cheap solution to get what they wanted so they pushed officials to apprehend them. A stage was created where he was in India, the Indian government trying to stop people getting to him (allowing him to infect more) and when they got to close to him, he raced off to China where he repeated the stage and then he allowed himself to be captured and raced to the US where he completed the circle. Three hotspot areas where the population pressure would do the work for him. A stage where the initial dangers are not seem, but when you realise the stupid people with the covid setting, the stage becomes believable. Like a chess board where the first square has one rice grain and it doubles every square onwards. So you get one, two, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768. After that it spirals out of control fast and consider the healthcare options that India and China have. Now consider that these are the infected, how many will they infect? A chess board has 8 rows, so in the second row we have 32768 and there are 6 more rows to go, by the end of row 5 you surpassed the population off the planet. It also reminded me of a image I saw yesterday. It might be the push I needed. The image gave me a chalkboard that stated “I guess we have to retire the expression ‘avoid it like the plague’ given how little effort people put in avoiding an actual plague” I do believe it gave me the idea to let things rise to the surface and now that the elements are at the surface we need to set the second story on how efforts are thwarted into capturing the person as the greed driven industrials want the ‘invention’ before the government can get their fingers on it. Greed tends to be a great motivator, if you doubt that see the lobbyists at COP26. 

A disease that is man made also has a few other parts to it, it calls for all kinds of taboos to be brought to the surface and that too allows for other sides. There needs to be a ‘flaw’ but what if that is an intentional side? What if the original pure people have a dormant immunity? Like all Native Americans, all pure Hindu’s and so on, what if the multi cultural side allows that disease to flourish? That idea is not out of the blue. 

I thought on this when I was brooding over peanut allergies. You see, when I was young (long long ago) I had never heard of it and I also never heard anyone at school have it. It came over time. So what if the allergy comes from multi racial, multi cultural parts? I reckon most people in Indonesia are immune (their peanut sauce is the best in the world) so what when we combine thoughts and see how quickly the medical world goes insane with fear? You see, if they believe it could be done the story will catch on and catch on a bit quicker. 

Imagination is a fearful thing. It allowed me to create new 5G, it gave me the idea to set a new concept stage in television. A direction optionally never thought of before. Not by Sony and not by DARPA (I think). It allowed me to create stories for TV series, mini series and movies (see the other stories I wrote), it gave me the insight in creating sequels to games and I create a new RPG game to piss of Microsoft as I made it free to anyone making a Sony or Amazon exclusive and I set the stage where the Amazon Luna could optionally sell 50 million consoles more. Yup, it is not merely the imagination, it needs a realistic foundation and that is gained by being able to see in a direction and from an angle others are not considering. Now if I can just find the right angle to another story which I have not put online yet (as I am still mulling things over) I feel that I will have had a productive life, plenty of people never get to this stage and now I have another story on ending mankind and optionally save the dolphins, perhaps they will tell me on my deathbed (somewhere in the future) the same thing they told Douglas Adams: “So long and thanks for all the fish!

Not the worst epitaph to consider.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, Media, Military, Politics, Science