Tag Archives: Eu

February 21, 2023 · 00:43

The new rulings

This is change of scenery. This is not about who is in charge, even as we did set that stage, but the stage where we prefer to live. You see, the US is soon becoming a dangerous place to live, as its infrastructures are collapsing, as its debt is over-towering to such an extent that within three years the interest on that debt alone is close to 50% of all collected taxes. A stage that was visible for decades, but no one wanted to overhaul tax systems and now the rule of debt is due and the US has no solution (other than sell of its IP) and now we get a new stage, the stage we admired through the 50’s and 60’s and the US is no longer the main player. 

The new stage is seen (at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230219-muslims-react-to-plans-for-new-kabaa-development-in-saudi-capital/) where we are given ‘Muslims react to plans for ‘new Kaaba’ development in Saudi capital’ and lets be clear, this is nothing to sneer at. This has NEVER been done before.

We are given “On Thursday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) announced the launch of the New Murabba Development Company, which aims to develop “the world’ largest modern downtown in Riyadh”. The project will see the redevelopment of Riyadh’s historic Al-Murabba (“The Square”) neighbourhood, which was said to be named after a square-shaped well from which the area derived its name.” And that is merely the beginning. The building will be 400 by 400 by 400 metres making it one of the largest ever build (if we ignore the line). The second building which is taking the architectonical cake. More important what happens when a building of THAT size is covered in solar paint? It could make it the first building to be carbon negative in history. There are so many other settings that need consideration, but the overbearing case is not merely what Saudi Arabia is achieving, it will soon be about how the US (and the EU) have not been able to do anything near it for over a decade and they will not be able to do something anywhere near it for decades to come. The trendsetters achieve, the rest merely watches the options go by and with the debts the US and EU are in that is what it amounts to, they are watching options pass by. 

There is a lot more to this, but that is for another day. No matter how we slice it, Saudi Arabia is now on the architectonical forefront of the world for pretty much the timespan of 2020-2050, that is the consequence of debt driven nations. We tried to all tell you, but you did not want to listen, so now the most major achievements over the next decade will be held in Saudi Arabia, now if we could do something about Iran’s nuclear hunger that would be nice too. I already submitted my idea for Iranian nuclear meltdown solutions, but that is not up to me to do, I might give it to Israel as well, just for jollies.

But the deeper truth is not that Saudi Achieving all this, it will soon become on how Iran will react and make no mistake, it is equally important. As Saudi Arabia rises, Iran falls deeper into economic holes and there is no way that their nuclear options are set to friendly needs, you do not need uranium to pure needs that Iran is making them, that level of purity is only needed for war, so when will someone wake up to that issue? Or is the US awake and they wait for the first bomb (either in Israel or on Saudi Soil) to explode before they put their foot down? No matter how you slice that, it will be much too late for that. As I see it, when that become clear the Saudi government can cut their oil deliveries to the EU and US and sell it all to China. That part was clear, was it not? Saudi Arabia is waking up to the project the US (and EU) dreamt of half a century ago and now Saudi Arabia is making them a reality showing the world that we have been watching the wrong channels for too long a time. Did you realise that?

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February 19, 2023 · 11:55

The stage between two stages

Sounds weird and perhaps that is a little true. You see, I saw the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64178956) ‘Staff must be free to work for employer’s rivals – US regulator’, the article was from January 5th and I did see it, but I was unsure how I felt. You see, that setting allows for poaching and there Microsoft has been a little too active in the past. Now they are in the process of trimming the fat by well over 10,000 people and so are the others, so you would think that this is a moot process. But it is not. Microsoft is pretty much done for and their setting (a personal view) is to create shortages everywhere else so that they can get an extension on life. So we would see hundreds of essential workers at Amazon and Google now being offered a nice cushy position in Microsoft. IBM is also on that list, but IBM and Microsoft have too much alike, so there will be issues. They both preferred image above creativity and that is on them, it is also their right. As I personally see it IBM has a setting and poaching might happen, but it is often directly in league of what they are trying to design, so there is less of an issue and their stage of representation does not feel the same. I have less of an issue with IBM on that horse (which is seemingly rare), Microsoft however has a different setting. Just like their acquisition of Bethesda and Activision. It is not that they needed them (well they did in one way), it was to take away choice from Sony players and that is just not on with me. It would be nice if Amazon bought my IP, so I can really stick it to Microsoft, but that is another matter. The case is poaching. 

As such the article gives us “The FTC, which enforces competition law, said a ban would foster a more dynamic economy. The proposal was immediately challenged by the business community. It will now enter a long rule-making process. Non-compete clauses were developed to prevent leavers from joining rivals and sharing trade secrets”, it is not untrue, but to have people trained by Google, or Amazon (Web services) leave after a year (or two) of training and then use all that know how in the service of a player like Microsoft is a dangerous step. I understand and to some degree support non-compete clauses. The problem is that some of the players abused that non-compete setting in a much wider scale that should have been allowed for. So I am on the fence here and there is another stage that the US now opens up for. These people can due to this change now join a player like Tencent, who can open up European markets to a much larger degree. I wonder if they thought of that? Yes, we see the US limiting their workforce from joining Chinese players. Yet the EU has different stages and there these players are still shedding thousands of people and the UK is ripe for Tencent to come in and create a new workforce. If they weren’t becoming a hazard to my pension, I would not care, but they could be and as such I would care.

You see, I have in part opposition to “Lina Khan, who leads the agency and made her name criticising the might of big tech firms such as Amazon, on Thursday called the ability to switch jobs “core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy”. “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand”, in this my opposition is that we see the clear mention of Amazon, and the weirdly avoidance of mentioning Microsoft (or Google) in this and that matters. Amazon has one of the most complete Web Services solutions including cloud solutions. Both Google and massively more Microsoft need people with these skills. I am not sure where Apple is with that but they all have some return to office setting and the noises we hear all over the place, they all have extensive needs soon enough, but Linda Khan is mentioned with her opposition of Amazon, who is leading that trump with most than a nose-length advantage. A player like Microsoft wants to get ahead and getting their hands on senior developers at Amazon is for them the way to go (Azure sucks too much according to some). 

As such with these elements in play, the need for a diminished non-competition clause is not entirely wrong, but the timing sucks and would luck have it, the timing would work for Microsoft and Tencent alike, a setting I am actually not happy about. Yet, I will admit that parts of this are personal views and personal settings I saw evolve over the last 30 years. And that is not all, in the last week we were given two parts. The first is “Microsoft last week laid off around 150 employees from a team tasked with convincing medium-size companies to adopt cloud services such as Azure server rentals and Microsoft 365 productivity apps, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter”, which in part makes sense, but when you add the next view that came 2 days later “Microsoft has officially joined the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit organisation that promotes financial management in cloud technology.” Consider that they need to promote that with 150 less staff, does that make sense? It makes a lot more sense when you poach the Amazon AWS staff pool and replace 150 narrow minded watchers by people with a much wider cloud view. It is pure speculation on my side, but they did a similar track in the Netscape days, as such I worry and you should too. A choice by a lack of options is not a choice and that is where Microsoft has been playing the field a little too long as I see it, which is why I am on the fence a lot more on the non-compete clause as I personally see it.

You should watch too because when your choices are lowered and Microsoft is clearly in the ‘surviving’ pool of choices. We see the power of stakeholders and they were never there for you, merely for their own wallets. But I might be seeing it too dark as some will respond.

My view is merely one view, make sure you learn all the elements in play when you go one direction. Its almost like the life of Harry the Hermit (Harry Styles), he makes an album of his house and the 13th track is about the love of his life (Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, M.D) which makes sense, but when you make 12 songs about your house and one about Olivia Wilde (mucho LOL), you do have your priorities wrong. It is all about the glasses you wear when you see the events unfold. This is nearly always true as is my view on Microsoft. They wanted to be the IBM clone, they played there games and they played it on Netscape and others alike and those who have been in IT long enough see the bitter taste that Microsoft leaves behind and that is before you add the Microsoft failures, they have become obsolete and in this I much rather support Amazon and what they could bring to the table of tomorrow than Microsoft who is merely copying the plate settings of yesterday. Yet that is a personal view, believe me or not but make sure you get a good view on where you stand, that is worth a lot more than merely following me. I want you all to be your own leader, not my follower. I am not some shepherd, I never was.

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February 12, 2023 · 09:40

Introducing: The nightmare

Yes, that is where we are at. It is not the beginning of some horror, although that is not out of the question, the larger stage is who the horror will hit. The setting of this stage begins with ‘Biden prepares largest Pentagon budget in history as spending cuts loom’ (at https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/10/biden-pentagon-budget-debt-ceiling-00082302). This could be any day just like any other day, but it is not, it really isn’t. You see, the debt ceiling is about to get hit (yet again) but there is no raising it this time, with the debt surpassing $30,000,000,000,000  this debt is also surpassing the national GDP. It is even more dangerous. Last year the interest on this debt surpassed 25% of the national budget. It has become that bad. And I tried to warn people that the media and the puffy politicians were playing a game with you, but most never listened and that is not on them. There is no reason to listen to me. It is much better that you find out for yourself. So here we are, all whilst something serious should have been done from the age of former President Barack Obama. Let’s be clear, I am not blaming him, the fault is on BOTH sides of the isle. Tax laws and a tax system that was never overhauled, budgets that were not kept in control and things went from bad to worse. So now we get the pentagon budget. I am not saying what should be done, the issues with Russia and their invasion of the Ukraine is still a massive factor and there is every chance Russia does not stop there. Something needs to be done I get that, what the best course is is only known for those who know the actual facts and we don’t have them, but with a stage where that budget is now getting the additional “lawmakers appropriated $858 billion in national defence funding — $45 billion more than Biden sought”, almost a trillion dollars is added to the total debt slamming pretty much through the debt ceiling, as far as I can tell issues will rise and things will start to collapse the things got this far out of hand and now the US will face a new domestic danger. You see Wall Street might actually embrace a default. It would give them unparalleled powers in the US, not for a few years or decades, it will solidify their powers for CENTURIES to come and that will make them richer then anything else. That is the nightmare scenario and it is here 3-5 years before I thought it would come, but then I am not an economist and my predictions are more on point than some of the predictions the IMF made, so there.

And if you think that this is merely some paper run, think again. If the US goes into default, where do you think the Ukraine will get there hardware from? When the US falls, so will Japan soon thereafter and the EU is not far behind them, a world that overspent for decades. A world for the taking by China to say the least, optionally 2-3 more players enter that field, but about that more later. And if you think that this is just prancing, think again. As I see it to avoid this setting the US would have to cut budgets by 50%. That pretty much ends the social settings, infrastructure and a few other stages. The nightmare scenario has arrived on the porch of US households and there is no way to predict how this unfolds, we cannot tell because the path will be in part on how Wall Street deems it to be and that is never in favour of any household.

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December 26, 2022 · 22:34

As conditions changed

There is a movie, it was a movie that had impact. I was never in a military academy, but I do have military training, so the movie affected me in different ways. It was a good movie (any movie with George C Scott will become one) and it had Timothy Hutton from ordinary people. Tom Cruise is in it, but he was relatively unknown at the time. It might have been one of his first movies, before Legend and Risky Business.

But the movie was good (I thought it was), and it comes to mind that in this day and age (invasion of the Karens), the shift of values as well as the squandering of morality in the US there is actually a need to make a new version of it. Especially as we see Russian values move into every basement there is, the clear stage that some man will hold onto values is not too far out of place. I reckon that a movie like this in 2023/2024 could be a new start for a new generation of actors and actresses. In addition the changes that the military have faced over the last 4 decades might be an additional reason. There is actually no need to shoot this or base this on American settings. NATO an the EU would introduce a whole range of issues. The political field has changed from the rejection of military value to the embrace of its stability. There are plenty of reasons to do this, but a few to not do this either. It is more than a remaster, it has new storylines and new challenges. In all this the additional setting of an academy in shutdown could be seen as one of the main stories, but 4 decades have shown us that there is more. The gender setting has changed over 4 decades, as such this is not merely a male and a male led environment. The one part that I missed originally was the stage of why (really why) the shutdown was ordered. It was a little in the middle and now we could rectify it, or better stated, the filmmaker that takes up the gauntlet will be able to rectify it. A stage that launched Tom Cruise and Sean Penn is not something one should overlook and they did a lot more to stand out, but it was the beginning and TAPS excelled in a few ways, too bad it was never seen that way but there is hope that the new movie might also inspire the original to get more visibility.

Just a thought, do with it what you will. In the mean time, it is back to the drawing board. I just had a new idea for a video game. Perhaps I will be able to tell a lot more about it in tomorrows episode. 

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December 20, 2022 · 23:26

The murky river

The mind can get murky and this case it is me. I do not believe it is the case, but I must be willing to consider that THIS time around, I could be wrong. It all started when CNBC (at https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/19/meta-could-face-11point8-billion-fine-as-eu-charges-it-with-antitrust-breach.html) gave me ‘Meta could face $11.8 billion fine as EU charges tech giant with breaching antitrust rules’, now to be clear, even for the legally trained mind (mine) anti-trust cases are a nightmare from start to finish. So here goes! 

“The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that it found Meta breached EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the markets for online classified ads. The Commission took issue with Meta’s pairing of the Facebook Marketplace service, which lets users list items for sale, with its personal social network, Facebook.” My issues is ‘Are you f’ing nuts?’ Facebook is a free service, it makes income by selling ads, what is wrong with that? With the added “Furthermore, we are concerned that Meta imposed unfair trading conditions, allowing it to use of data on competing online classified ad services”, now lets be clear, I do not have the highest regard for Danes to begin with, but two things will happen if this fine becomes a reality. In the first I will demand that Coca Cola will it its premises be forced to sell Pepsi Cola on that same term, Pepsi Cola will have to sell Coca Cola on their turf, as such Coca Cola might win, but this is about the form. In the second she would need to get her chest into gear and make sure that EVERY Danish supermarket has Danish AND Swedish mineral water. The EU would not act when Microsoft destroyed Netscape, now that it has no place to go, it starts to cry to the EU, but this is not merely Microsoft. This is the EU trying to find ways to spice their pockets. I will make it my mission in life to evangelise the need to anti trust cases all over Denmark and the EU. All with a slightly personal nature. 

It might not have acted in the case of Google and Meta, but that leaves them with an additional avenue which knocks on the door of Amazon (yet again). Anti-trust is a complex setting, it is also a setting that is based on stages that are decades old. So when we consider “EU Antitrust policy is developed from Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Article 101 prohibits anti-competitive agreements between two or more independent market operators.” And I wonder how far this goes. Yet it was Yahoo! Finance that gave me a handle. It is “Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network Facebook to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means that users of Facebook automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace, whether they want it or not.”

In the first, Facebook gives a free service because they sell advertisement, that is still a factor. The second part is that if you seek Google, you can find several other advertisers. Yes they have a disadvantage because THEY HAVE NO CASH and Meta has billions. Still there are issues, but the largest one is that I want to see who gave the complaint. It is time to see what kind of wanker the EU works for. Facebook (now Meta) created a system, they offer it for free as they sell ads, this was in play for over a decade. In the same thing that Google Ads was the place for those who wanted to specify where they were. They were the visionaries, the leeching rest (like Microsoft and their Bing) missed the train because they thought they were clever. They were not. Now, I am not the greatest ally of Facebook, but fair is fair, they brought a system no one saw coming. And now they are screaming ‘foul play’ because the viagra managers forgot that whilst they were having their fun, others create new borders (like TikTok), or as a comedian would say ‘Content Homo Erectus got eaten before injecting its DNA’, for me it is a split case. This system is open to interpretation, it is open to outdated laws and inadequate CEO’s, COO’s and more of that trash. My Evidence? I placed in Public Domain IP worth over 20 billion a year. And when my first 5G device is released (encrypted) on 4chan the game changes even more.

It shows the wannabe’s how far they were off target, and my happy moment? Google and Amazon were both in the dark for part one, how much more they are missing? I have no idea and I do not care, at the end of my life I will end with the last laugh, because they cannot overcome public domain. 

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December 12, 2022 · 22:21

Mashed faith

That is the setting I am in. To be clear, I do not think I am in a good place right now. There is the abundance of islamophobia. There is the abundance of far right whiners, there is JustStopOil and the list goes on. To be honest I am a little at a loss on how to solve it. There is a creative idea that is forming but it is extreme to say the least. 

The first drops
In the first stage we take a look at far right person Rasmus Paludan. He is stirring hatred on many levels, the Swedish police is trying to stop him, but it is not working. He is item one. Item two id Dutch anti-islam movement Pegida, they too have made claims of burning a Quran. To stop these first drops of inciting much more anti Islamic violence I call on ALL the Arabic nations to reduce oil shipments to the EU by 500K barrels a day (250K for each and whilst these people are still alive). When the EU has to deal with the reduced oil shipments they might finally do something. And for any far right anti Islamic activity an additional 250K barrels a day are taken from the stockpile and where they go is up to these nations, to China is most likely as they require (and have requested) more oil. 

Is it fair?
No, and that is not what matters. You see this world is becoming a powder keg and we either harshly reduce the danger, or we control how it implodes, minimising casualties. These governments have had years to do something about it and they keep on screwing things up, so lets give them in incentive. This is one way and there are others, but I need to make sure that the people start seeing where the real power is and it is not in the US and not in the EU, not anymore. So we need to make sure that the implosion is directed and directing it to the far right makes perfect sense in this case. 

We are now in a dangerous stage. You see the Catholic churches have shown to be too unreliable. There is corruption, sexual abuse against minors and we saw less than a month ago that this was known all the way to the top of the Vatican a decade ago. There is now a much larger stage to massively separate church from state and it becomes massively important to reduce christian powers all over these governments. And whilst they still enjoy too many benefits of their transgressions we ned to do something. Like in politics is is about alliances and now the atheists and Muslim populations make one massive alliance, outranking christians by a lot. We can sit back and do nothing or set the stage how it really is. Not to the loudmouthed abusers, but to the people who are truly in power and it is not Strasbourg and it is not Washington DC. No matter how we slice and dice it we are running out of time to act, if there is one clear signal than that has been the signal that JustStopOil has been sounding and we see that the people have had enough in London, Munich and Paris. And we better do something clear before this all explodes, because that danger is getting bigger by the day. 

Are there better actions? I feel certain that there are, yet I do not see them and the governments are not acting as they should, as such my method comes to the top, not because it is better, but though a lack of real alternatives. Time is no longer our friend, that time has passed.

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December 2, 2022 · 19:04

Would you like some sugar with that?

I got a message yesterday which I initially ignored. Nothing wrong with the message, but I can only go to so many places in an hour and this message stretched me too thin, as such I let it be. Yet this morning I had a few moments so I checked out the message from Defense One. It gave me ‘US Trying to Persuade More Allies to Send NASAMS Missiles to Ukraine, Raytheon CEO Says’ (at https://www.defenseone.com/business/2022/12/exclusive-us-trying-persuade-more-allies-send-nasams-missiles-ukraine-raytheon-ceo-says/380382/) the thing triggered something, but I did not exactly know what was triggered. I thought I knew, but it was too far into the past for that to make sense. Yet the article set me straight. Initially we might see “U.S. officials are working to broker a deal with NATO and Middle Eastern nations to send some of their NASAMS interceptors to Ukraine, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes said Thursday”, it did not help me much and “the Pentagon awarded Raytheon a contract for the first two NASAMS batteries. The company delivered the interceptors within six weeks, Hayes said, because it had many parts on hand and because Doug Bush, the Army’s top weapons buyer, helped speed things along.” So I had to seek out more information and there the other cog fell to the floor. NASAMS or Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System is the child of the Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) and there the cog felt. It is a system from 1980. Kongsberg is led by Eirik Lie (weird name for an honest person). And there my defence knowledge partially kicked in. I knew of it, but that is about all I had. The Norwegians had designed the system to replace two Nike Hercules facilities in defending Norway’s southern air bases, where it would act in conjunction with F-16s in providing a layered defence, and that it did very well. I reckon that the engineers are proud as peacocks that this system can go to town on Russian missile systems 42 years later, there is no replacement for true innovation. I always said it and here you see it. OK, it was upgraded to a third version in 2019, but still it was tailored to a good design. And now we see Raytheon seeking assistance (of a sort). Here is also the problem I see. If manufacturing is a hard part, there are two sides to helping out now. What if this was Russias plan all along? What happens when Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Oman, and Chile ship what they can ‘spare’ and a week later Spain and the Netherlands feel the brunt of running low on stock? I am not saying that this will happen, but the steps of Russia have to a larger extent not made sense and the pro-Russian coalition of the Dutch FvD will use that setting to every extent and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

An alternative could be to assist Saudi Arabia with their 2030 goals and create a NASAM production facility there. If distributed manufacturing is a solution, creating an additional pool of manufacturers would become essential. In addition, the US and EU need every positive vibe they can muster as such the option has two benefits. Adding these solutions to Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France make perfect sense as well. When that happens we see five additional manufacturers, but that is not a short term solution, Ukraine needs missiles now and 2 years is too long. Yet with 5 additions, 2 years would be shrunk to 13-15 months, already a large saving. Now sending part of the needed missiles makes sense as there would be 5 additional creators. I see the simple setting that resources are required, then we see the manufacturing and after that shipping. The last part has plenty of options, the first two less so, although we can see that manufacturing is the bottleneck, Russia will soon see that if these 5 nations unite, Russia will end up having less and less options. And that is before we consider alternatives, You see Iceland has only 4% unemployment, but it might be reason to create another plant on the US base there (or next to it) which could create up to 2500 jobs. As such we see six options, is it a solution? I honestly do not know, but when the waiting list is two years something needs to give and it would be nice to see this before Russia gets to be creative with their missiles, ask Poland how that worked for them. The EU (US too) needs to act now, but merely getting others to send what they have might not be the safest path, not with current timelines. That is how I see it and if someone says I am wrong, I will not deny that my idea was completely ‘ad hoc’ and it would require scrutiny, but what would you do when you get told that anti-missile solutions are two years away? Especially when you consider what Russia is doing to the civilian population of Ukraine?

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November 23, 2022 · 21:35

Oil in the family

This is not exactly new, it is a stage that evolved in the last week. To see that we need to take a look at ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) which hands us (at https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/opec-production-cut-has-washington-questioning-the-value-of-its-saudi-alliance/) a mere three weeks ago ‘OPEC production cut has Washington questioning the value of its Saudi alliance’, in itself the question is not invalid. Every nation assesses its value towards services delivered, but in that same stage, the direction can be inverted and as such the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is questioning the value that the United States brings to the table. President Biden asked to make Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud a pariah. It has stopped deliveries of defence equipment to the KSA all whilst the KSA was under attack by terrorist forces who were receiving aid from Iran. And when we see “Critics of the OPEC decision say it will increase the price of oil at a time when US consumers are already feeling the impact of high energy prices. A higher oil price will also provide a significant boost to Russia’s struggling economy.” All whilst the US exports 90% of its oil, as such they are sitting pretty as well. But the article does not mention that, it is increasingly one sided. Then we get the second setting and it is seen with “Saudi Arabia has lost much of its prestige and is in damage control to rebuild its image internationally and shore up its relations with the US. To reset the relationship in Washington, Saudi-backed lobbyists have spent millions of dollars. Biden responded by visiting Saudi Arabia, presumably as a gesture of goodwill and to attempt some recalibration.” It is the ‘lost much of it prestige’, by what standard? The KSA gained massive silent prestige with Neom and the line, two stages never seen before and the US has nothing in opposition to that. It will be relying on the coattails of Saudi achievements for the next 20 years. A nation that is so broke it cannot fix its support structures, and that all before we see the damage the ultra right is making in the US. And where is the so called hypocritical ‘honest’ media? When did you see any clear article on the line or Neom? The mainstream media is steering clear of it, no doubt due to the (my speculative view) word from stakeholders. 

This is in contrast to the Vox a week ago where we see “Biden “wants to be able to reevaluate in a methodical, strategic, effective way,” clarified national security adviser Jake Sullivan, “rooted in his fundamental interest in making sure that the relationship the United States has with Saudi Arabia serves the American people effectively.” Sullivan in essence suggested that things so far had not been going well.” We see this (at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/17/23423031/why-america-cant-seem-to-quit-saudi-arabia), it is showing us a stage set. We are given “Now that the Biden administration re-evaluates its approach a third time, will it come to a new conclusion? It will be tough to change much. The US, after all, relies on the kingdom as a major oil producer and economic power with important shipping lanes, a close partner in countering Iran and terrorist organisations, and a significant trading partner and number-one purchaser of US weapons.” But that stage is not entirely true, that WAS the stage, but as China moved in, we see a spiralling US economy. Lets not give food to the speculator’s there. China increased exports and services to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 24 billion in 2019 to 30 billion in 2021, some views give us that it is now approaching 33 billion and as Neom and the Line grows, China will gain more. That is 9 billion the US and Europe lost, more importantly China is now getting more oil and the talks implying that Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan gives us the indication that this will not halt any day soon, it also implies that the US is partially done for. Its games are now backfiring, should oil deliveries decrease by as little as an additional 1 million barrels US economy could implode with all the nightmares and trimmings that come with that. I personally do not care, I warned the US and the UK that there will be a price to pay soon enough and I made that prediction in 2020, now that this is about to happen, President Biden can play its games and let the media decide how much they hate the KSA and Muslims, or he can fold the game. The UK with its CAAT is in a similar position. They had the upper hand towards 2-3 billion in weapon sales, predominantly the Typhoon, now that money is most likely to go towards the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, China will be extending its arms for extended services towards Saudi Arabia.

The players wanting to keep Saudi Arabia on some kind of leash are now forced to fold their game. They lost to China and the damage is increasing. It is a fair assessment that the Russian – Ukrainian stage did not help, but that is how the cookie crumbles at times. As some stakeholders encouraged anti Saudi sentiments, they forgot that they weren’t the only players and what is coming now is hurting their long term policies in the Middle East and in the Far East. Did you think it was a fluke that the Silk Road was investing in Indonesia? It has over 200 million Muslims and that opens up new commerce borders and Saudi Arabia is ready to collect. I saw part of this last year and I tried to bank on it, but alas the KSA was not assisting (poor me), now that we see this evolving stage, players like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Company will make increasing profits in new areas, all whilst the US and EU are given their walking papers. In the next two years their share will decrease by well over 40%, all whilst their political power in that region is most likely to be a trivial one. One ego driven stage led to the larger loss on influence in the Middle East and soon the Far East as well. A stage that China is happy about, the others? Not so much.

But I saw parts of this a year ago, so why did the media not see this? I am not more intelligent than them, but I can read raw data and that was where a lot was all along. But feel free to disagree with me, it is your right, yet when the oil valve closes a little more, just watch the chaos unfold. When you create a mobile industry you need to be weary of essential parts you need, fuel being one of them and the other solution is not as fast as people keep on slapping Elon Musk with his Tesla. All elements in a game where the people who have oil in the family will have the last laugh. Which remind me, how much longer will the US export 90% of its oil? Is there no shortage in the US? 

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November 17, 2022 · 20:13

Brain drain, by design

I was sitting in my room, enjoying the sounds of David Bowie. Then the track ‘This is not America’ came. It took me back to 1985, the movie ‘The Falcon and the Snowman’ which uses that song was released. I saw it, but I did not get it. You see, we steal for our governments and we commit murder for our governments, these things happen, yet I personally never understood treason I never accepted that act. I believe traitors are due a bullet to the back of their head. They are a little better than child molesters, but not by much. 

And at that point the mind started to move the cogs. You see we see acts of treason against employees all the time, but we ignore it. Some listen to the reason of Wall Street and that is when people get hurt, it is business as usual for Wall Street and America. But what happens when someone takes that given foundation am makes something of that. In this we see India and a conglomerate is acquiring talent. These people are offered a choice of two places. One in Himachal Pradesh and one close to the Kumarakom Lake Resort. To places, one for summer and one for winter. These are closed resorts and they are set as 5 star resorts. The difference is that these two resorts are only for the invited. As India sees the betrayal of staff, these people are approached and offered a different way of life. They merely have to create IP, the value is the ante for staying there, when breakthroughs are made, when these people make the numbers they are off for the rest of the year if they want. Optional these people can work forward, as such if they create the IP that exceeds the numbers they are given the option to relax and rest. A person could work three months in year one and if the value exceeds the numbers he has a paid vacation until the end of year two. All orders these people have are managed online. And that is how their version of paradise works. Yet there is more, that project is managed by India and China. They are sitting on a wealth of IP, and as the people create and commit, they are treated like kings, nothing is missing in their lives, their kids get the best private tutors and their partners have access to a life of wealth and good health. The one downturn is that they cannot leave the resort. 

The beginning of a miniseries, it will be too large for a movie, but a 4-6 episode mini series with a run time of 60-90 minutes could work. China remains below the surface (at lest in the beginning) and the idea that we see a list of damages

United States $275 billion, United Kingdom $43 billion, European Union $27 billion (and so on) and now consider that the stage where two 5 star resorts are created to facilitate for the acquisition of $345 billion dollar. This could work and the settings I saw over the last week where Google and Amazon are firing staff, people are in a runt to make ends meet and they casually left $6 billion on the floor, I reckon this approach to a new kind of logistic assault on nations is merely a heartbeat way. It is not 5G, it is not the stage of greed. It is facilitated by the simple need of people wanting a decent life, the question is do the people still remember what a decent life was? In this day and age the cogs of labour are changing and companies are finding out that holding the people against the bottom line of a corporation will facilitate such places and there is a chance that some will be willing to move to a place like China. The US has a much bigger problem than they realise and that is the setting for this script and exercise. It took me 3 hours to set up the station for this story and consider, what happens when 200 engineers take the road towards a decent life and a decent way of life. You figure out how much certain places could lose and more importantly how that impacts their economies, because the last time I checked the loss of $275 billion in value could drive a place like the US into utter bankruptcy. They all forgot about what happens when the makers and creators leave, just like Covid, they were never prepared for that scenario. Why not? And if that I true why not treat those people better? The foundation of  story and optionally a TV series.

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November 2, 2022 · 17:43

And you still want cake?

A few hours ago I was alerted to an article on the BBC site. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63260648) gives us ‘Cyber-attacks on small firms: The US economy’s ‘Achilles heel’?’ In itself no real surprise, but then I saw “It was a total head-in-the-sand situation. ‘It’s not going to happen to me. I’m too small.’ That was the overwhelming message that I was hearing five years ago,” says Ms Graham, co-founder of CYDEF, which is based in Canada. “But yes, it is happening.” There we see the first instance of utter stupidity, a setting where insurance companies go ‘well, I am sorry to report that it is on your dime that this is happening’ and that is not a speculation, this is about to happen. In addition to that the insurance against cyber attacks will skyrocket unless you have state of the art equipment (something small businesses cannot afford). A stage that is waiting exploitation. There are all kinds of speculations. One of them is “Cyber-crimes are expected to cost the world $10.5tn (£9.3tn) by 2025, according to cyber-security research firm Cyber Ventures”, I do not completely agree, for the most I do, but the big bucks are depending on national 5G, which is not happening in many nations before 2027. You see, one source gives us “For example, in November 2020, one cybersecurity company estimated that global cybercrime costs will grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching US$10.5t annually by 2025, up from US$3t in 2015 (Cision 2020)” they are seemingly ALL quoting the same source and that source is Cyber Ventures. That does not make it incorrect, yet I have reservations. That number is completely acceptable under 5G, under other conditions (when big tech do not screw up and hand over the keys to hackers) should not go that fast (yet), but when 5G, a national 5G stage is there this number will increase swimmingly all over the globe, which is why I shouted for law adjustments well over two years ago, but the law is seemingly sitting on their hands, all about ‘letting all parties’ swim in the large all whilst the swimming pool has close to zero protection, so this will get worse a lot faster and the EU will see plenty of drowners (aka floaters) soon enough. My speculative view is that the larger problems are a mere 6 months away. 

Then we are given “The pandemic created a whole new set of challenges and small businesses weren’t prepared,” says Mary Ellen Seale, chief executive of the National Cybersecurity Society, a non-profit that helps small businesses create cyber-security plans. In March 2020, at the cusp of the pandemic, a survey of small businesses by broadcaster CNBC found that only 20% planned to invest in cyber-protection.” This sounds nice, but I wonder what we will see in 2023. I expect that it is then that we will learn that less than 40% of these 20% will have actually done something and that is when a lot of people (insurance especially) realise that this is about to become a sinking ship. There was clear indication in 2010 that setting up cyber security was essential in players a little larger than SBE sized companies. They had issues too, but the revenue was too small. The problem is that clever hackers do not grab the whole enchilada. With “It typically takes 200 days from the moment of the hacking until discovery” we see the pattern. The clever ones will hit places for about 150 days then they go underground. That gives them enough to live like a king for a decade. They stay under the fold, they stay inconspicuous for as long as they can. They book a weekend in Vegas and then they launder what they had going home with $5-$15 million. The caper has worked and they are in the clear. Yet these same clever people can clear $50-$150 million when they get access to a fully deployed 5G network and the BS argument of “We will have a solution before that” does not fly, that excuse is a decade old and they have no adjusted laws, there is no adjusted technology and whatever the NSA has is not shared. So as you can see, the numbers are not entirely in the air (the Cyber Ventures one) but it will rely on a fully deployed 5G network which should be around 2027. 

It is time that ALL businesses take cyber security serious. The moment that there is no insurance for that these Achilles heel companies go under with no options for the owner, that person will have lost everything. So when Kirsten Dunst stated ‘Let them eat cake’ (Marie Antoinette) she stated a good case for Cyber criminals. They are having cake every day and those not using Common Cyber Sense will be paying for that meal day after day after month after month after year (you get the idea). It was essential to properly adjust laws for that. And when we look at the data from April we get “according to industry data only four to five percent of hackers are actually caught, but high-profile cases showcase how even the most skilled can make simple mistakes which lead to them being apprehended” so between one in twenty to one in twenty five gets caught. Do you really want to hope on that statistic? This is not a pun against law enforcement or the FBI, they are in a fight with both hands tied behind their backs. Not a good position to win a fight. And that is before we look at state funded hackers. Lets be clear both Russia and China have every benefit for American and European business to lose way too much, proving that part is close to impossible. These players are almost never caught. The arrest by the FSB of REvil was a rare instance, but not all was lost. At https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransom-cartel-linked-to-notorious-revil-ransomware-operation/ we learn “Researchers have linked the relatively new Ransom Cartel ransomware operation with the notorious REvil gang based on code similarities in both operations’ encryptors” and that was two weeks ago. At present with Russians not being able to wage war against an enemy that is at best 15% of their own army gives rise that the people behind REvil will be out and about soon enough (if they aren’t already). 

So those who want cake, better find a place to enjoy it before the hackers get it all and I will not care. I have been clearly evangelising the essential need for Common Cyber Sense for years now. And if Optus Australia is anything to go by there are plenty of big fish not too interested in that approach.

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