Tag Archives: Eu

February 13, 2020 · 14:06

Middle of the seesaw

To be honest, I am not sure where to stand, even now, as we see ‘Google starts appeal against £2bn shopping fine‘ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51462397), I am personally still in the mindset that there is something wrong here. 

We can give the critique that my view is too much towards Google, and that is fine, I would accept that. Yet the part where we see 

  • In 2017, €2.4bn over shopping results.
  • In 2018, €4.3bn fine over claims it used Android software to unfairly promote its own apps.
  • In 2019, €1.5bn fine for blocking adverts from rival search engines.

Feels like it is part of a much bigger problem. I believe that some people are trying to stage the setting that some things are forced upon companies and I do not mean in the view of sharing. I personally do not believe that it is as simple as Anti-Trust. It feels like a more ‘social mindset’ that some things must be shared, but why?

The BBC also gives us: “Margrethe Vestager, who has taken a tough stance on the Silicon Valley tech firms and what she sees as their monopolistic grip on the digital landscape” this might feel like the truth, yet I personally feel that this was in the making for a long time, Adobe was on that page from the start. I believe that as the digital landscape was slowly pushed into a behemoth by Macromedia, who also acquired Coldfusion a change came to exist, for reference, at that time Microsoft remained a bungling starter holding onto Frontpage, an optional solution for amateurs, but there was already a strong view that this was a professional field. that stage was clearly shown by Adobe as it grew its company by 400% in revenue over a decade, its share value rose by almost 1,000% and its workforce tripled. There was a clear digital landscape, and one where Google was able to axe a niche into, the others were flaccid and remained of the existing state of mind that others must provide. Yet in all this Social media was ignored for far too long and the value of social media was often ignored until it was a decade too late. 

For example, I offered the idea that it would be great to be in the middle of serviced websites where we had the marketing in hands, my bosses basically called me crazy, that it had no functioning foundation, that it was not part of the mission statement and that I had to get back to work, I still have the email somewhere. This was 4 years before Facebook!

I admit that my idea was nothing as grandiose as Facebook, it was considered on other foundations an I saw the missing parts, but no one bit and now that I know better on the level of bullet point managers I am confronted with and their lack of marketing I now know better and my 5G solutions are closed to all but Huawei and Google, innovation is what drives my value and only those two deliver.

But I digress, the Digital Landscape was coming to be, and as we realise that this includes “websites, email, social networks, mobile devices (tablets, iphones, smartphones), videos (YouTube), etc. These tools help businesses sell their products or services” we can clearly see that Microsoft, Amazon and others stayed asleep at the wheel.
some might have thought that it was a joke when Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered the email service on April 1st 2004, yet i believe that they were ahead of many (including me) on how far the digital landscape would go, I reckon that not even Apple saw the massive growth, perhaps that Jobs fellow did, but he was only around until 2011 when it really kicked off. IBM, Microsoft and others stayed asleep thinking that they could barge in at a later stage, as I see it, IBM chose AI and quantum computing thinking that they can have the other niche no one was ready for. 

When we consider that we saw ‘Google faces antitrust investigation by 50 US states and territories‘ 6 months ago and not 5 years ago we see part of the bigger picture, of course they could have left it all to China, was that the idea? When we get “Regulators are growing more concerned about company’s impact on smaller companies striving to compete in Google’s markets” we will see the ignoring stage, when it mattered smaller places would not act, as Google acted it became much larger than anyone thought, even merely two years ago we were al confronted with ‘companies’ letting Google technology do all the work and they get all the credit and coin, why should Google comply? Striving to compete with Google is no longer a real option and anyone thinking that is nuts beyond belief. The only places that can hold a candle are the ones with innovative ideas and in an US economy founded on the principle of iteration no one keeps alive, but they are all of the mind that franchising and iteration is the path to wealth, it is not, only the innovative survive and that is being seen in larger ways by both Google and Huawei. Those who come into the field without innovation is out of options, it is basically the vagrant going to the cook demanding part of the pie the cook made as they are hungry, yet the vagrant has no rights to demand anything. 

And as we are given (read: fed) the excuse of “Alphabet, has a market value of more than $820bn and controls so many facets of the internet that it’s fairly impossible to surf the web for long without running into at least one of its services. Google’s dominance in online search and advertising enables it to target millions of consumers for their personal data” we can give others the state where Microsoft did its acts to take out Netscape, how did that end? It ended in United States v. Microsoft Corp.. In all,  we see that in the end (no matter how they got there) that the DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.

As such, in the end Microsoft did not have to break up hardware and software, they merely had to adopt non-Microsoft solutions, yet how did that end? How many data failures and zero day breaches did its consumer base face? According to R. Cringely (a group of journalists and writers with a column in InfoWorld) we get “the settlement gave Microsoft “a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other ‘platform software’ under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition.”” (source: Webcitation.org). 

Yet all this is merely a stage setting, it seems that as governments realised the importance of data and the eagerness of people giving it away to corporations started to sting, you see corporations can be anywhere, even in US hostile lands and China too. That is the larger stage and Google as it deals in data is free of all attachments, as governments cannot oversee this they buckle and the larger stage is set. 

From my point of view, Google stepped in places where no one was willing to go, it was for some too much effort and as that landscape shaped only google remains, so why should they hand over what they have built? 

It is Reuters that give is the first part of it all (at ) here we see: “EU regulators said this penalty was for Google’s favoring its own price comparison shopping service to the disadvantage of smaller European rivals“, yet what it does not give us is that its ‘smaller rivals’ are all using Google services in the first place, and Google has the patent for 30 years, so why share? This is a party for innovators, non-innovators are not welcome!

Then we get “Google’s search service acts as a de-facto kingmaker. If you are not found, the rest cannot follow“, which is optionally strange, because anyone can join Google, anyone can set up camp and anyone can advertise themselves. I am not stupid, I know whatthey mean, but whe it mattered they could not be bothered, no they lack the data, exaytes of data and they cannot compete, they limited their own actions and they all want to be head honcho right now, no actual investment required.

In addition when it comes to Browsers, Wired gives us “I spent the summer and beyond using Bing instead of Google for search. It’s a whole new world, but not always for the better“, I personally cannot stand Bing, I found it to have issues (not going into that at present), so as we are ‘not found’ we consider the Page rank that Stanford created for Google (or google bought it), when we consider when that happened, when was it reengineered and by whom? And when we got to the second part “Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords“, that was TWO DECADES AGO! As such, who was innovative enough to try and improve it with their own system? As I see it no one, so as no one was interested, why does there need to be an antitrust case? As such we see the Google strategy of buying companies and acquiring knowledge, places like Microsoft and IBM no longer mattered, they went their own way, even (optionally) better, Microsoft decided to Surf-Ace to the finish, I merely think, let them be them.

We are so eager to finalise the needs for competition law and antitrust law, but has anyone considered the stupidity of the iteration impact? If not, consider why 5G is in hands of Huawei, they became the innovators and whilst we are given the stage of court case after court case on the acts of Huawei, consider why they are so advanced in 5G, is it because they were smarter, or because the others became flaccid and lazy? I believe that both are at play here and in this, all the anti-Google sentiment is merely stopping innovators whilst iterators merely want to be rich whilst not doing their part, why should we accommodate for that?

so when we see (source: Vox) “United States antitrust officials have ordered the country’s top tech companies to hand over a decade’s worth of information on their acquisitions of competitor firms, in a move aimed at determining how giants like Amazon and Facebook have used acquisitions to become so dominant” who does it actually serve? is it really about ‘how giants like Amazon and Facebook have used acquisitions to become so dominant‘, or is it about the denial of innovation? Is it about adding to the surface of a larger entity that governments do not even comprehend, let alone understand? They have figured out that IP and data are the currency of the future, they merely need to be included, the old nightmare where corporations are in charge and politicians are not is optionally coming to fruition and they are actually becoming scared of that, the nerd the minimised at school as they were nerds is setting the tone of the future, the Dominant Arrogant player beng it sales person or politician is being outwitted by the nerd and service minded person, times are changing and these people claim that they want to comprehend, but in earnest, I believe that they are merely considering that the gig is up, iteration always leads there, their seeming ignorance is evidence of that.

Yet in all that, this is basically still emotional and not evidence driven, so let’s get on with that. The foundation of all Common Law Competition Law is set to “The Competition and Consumer Act prohibits two persons, acting in concert, from hindering or preventing a third person trading with a fourth person, where the purpose or likely effect of the conduct is to cause a substantial lessening of competition in any market in which the fourth person is involved“, yet in this, I personally am stating that it hinders innovation, the situation never took into proper account of the state of innovators versus iterators, the iterator needs the innovator to slow down and the foundation of Competition Law allows for this, when we see ‘preventing a third person trading with a fourth person‘, in this the iterator merely brings his or her arrogance and (optional) lack of comprehension to the table and claims that they are being stopped from competing, whilst their evidence of equality is seemingly lacking (as I personally see it). 

In this the Columbia Law School is (at least partially) on my side as I found “Scholars and policymakers have long thought that concentrated market power and monopolies produce more innovation than competition. Consider that patent law—which is the primary body of law aimed at creating incentives for innovation—was traditionally thought to conflict with antitrust law. Known as the “the patent-antitrust paradox,” it was often said that antitrust is designed to prevent monopolies and other exclusionary practices while the patent system does the opposite, granting exclusionary rights and market power in the form of patents. Given this framework, it makes sense that scholars, courts, and government agencies have only recently considered antitrust and patent laws to be complementary policies for encouraging innovation.” it gives the foundation and when you consider that iterators are the foundation of hindrance to innovators, you see how competition law aids them. In the old days (my earlier example) Microsoft and Netscape that was a stage where both parties were on the same technology and comprehension level. Microsoft merely had the edge of bundling its browser with the OS and got the advantage there, Netscape did not have that edge, but was an equal in every other way. 

Another name is Gregory Day, who gives us: “a greater number of antitrust lawsuits filed by private parties—which are the most common type of antitrust action—impedes innovation. Second, the different types of antitrust actions initiated by the government tend to affect innovation in profoundly different ways. Merger challenges (under the Clayton Act) promote innovation while restraint of trade and monopolization claims (under sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act) suppress innovative markets. Even more interesting, these effects become stronger after the antitrust agencies explicitly made promoting innovation a part of their joint policies” yet I believe that iterators have a lot more to gain by driving that part and I see that there is actually a lack of people looking into that matter, who are the people behind the antitrust cases? Most people in government tend to remain unaware until much later in the process, so someone ‘alerts’ them to what I personally see as a  ‘a fictive danger’. In this I wonder who the needed partner in prosecution was and what their needs were. I believe that iterators are a larger problem than anyone ever considered.

In the case of Google, Amazon and Facebook, we see innovators driving technology and the others have absolutely nothing to offer, they are bound to try and slow these three down as they are trying to catch up. 

Ian Murray wrote in 2018 (CEI.ORG), “Yet there is no such thing as a dominant market position unless it is guaranteed by government. AOL, Borders, Blockbuster, Sears, Kodak, and many other firms once considered dominant in their markets have fallen as the result of competition, without any antitrust action” and that is a truth, yet it does not give that the iterators merely want innovators to slow down, so that they can catch up and the law allows for this, more importantly, as the lack of innovations were not driven over the last decade, South Korea became a PC behemoth, and China now rules in 5G Telecom land. All are clear stages of iterators being the problem and not a solution, even worse they are hindring actual innovation to take shape, real innovation, not what is marketed as such.

As such, governments are trying to get some social setting in place by balancing the seesaw whilst standing at the axial point, it is a first signal that this is a place where innovators are lost and in that are you even surprised that a lot of engineers will only take calls from Google or Huawei (Elon Musk being an optional third in the carbon neutral drive)? 

It gets to be even worse (soon enough), now that Google is taking the cookie out of the equation, we get to see ‘Move marks a watershed moment for the digital ad industry to reinvent itself‘, this is basically the other side of the privacy coin, even as google complied, others will complain and as Google innovates the internet to find another way to seek cookie technology, we will suddenly see every advertisement goof with no knowledge of systems cry ‘foul!’ and as we are given “Criteo, which built a retargeting empire around cookies, saw its stock tumble following Google’s announcement. Others such as LiveRamp and Oracle-owned businesses BlueKai and Datalogix, as well as nearly all data management platforms, now face the challenge of rethinking their business” (source: AdAge) we will see more players hurdling themselves over Competition Law and optionallytowards antitrust cases because these players used someones technology to get a few coins (which is not a bad thing, but to all good things come an end).

And I am not against these changes, the issue is not how it will be reinvented, it is how some will seek the option to slow the actual innovators down because they had no original idea (as I personally see it). Yet we must also establish that Google did not make it any easier and they have their own case ORACLE AMERICA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. to thank for.

That verdict was set to “With respect to Google’s cross-appeal, we affirm the district court’s decisions: (1) granting Oracle’s motion for JMOL as to the eight decompiled Java files that Google copied into Android; and (2) denying Google’s motion for JMOL with respect to the rangeCheck function. Accordingly, we affirm-in-part, reverse-in-part, and remand for further proceedings.” in this situation, for me “The jury found that Google infringed Oracle’s  copyrights in the 37 Java packages and a specific computer routine called “rangeCheck,” but returned a noninfringement verdict as to eight decompiled security files. The jury  deadlocked on Google’s fair use defense.“, as I see it in that situation Oracle had been the innovator and for its use Google was merely an iterator (if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it).

Basically one man’s innovator is another man’s iterator, which tends to hold up in almost any technology field. Yet this time around, the price is a hell of a lot higher, close to half a dozen iterators ended up giving an almost complete technology surge to China (5G), which is as I personally see it. They were asleep at the wheel and now the US administration is trying to find a way around it, like they will just like ORACLE AMERICA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC.  more likely than not come up short.

And one of these days, governments will figure out that the middle of the seesaw is not the safe place to be, it might be the least safe place to be. As the population on each end changes, the slow reaction in the middle merely ends up having the opposite and accelerating effect, a few governments will learn that lesson the hard way. I believe that picking two players on one (or either side) side is the safest course of action, the question for me remains will they bite?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Law, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 10, 2020 · 17:30

It’s all about interpretation

It started late Friday for me when the Financial Post gave me ‘Fearing Huawei curbs, Deutsche Telekom tells Nokia to shape up‘, the article (at https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/fearing-huawei-curbs-deutsche-telekom-tells-nokia-to-shape-up-2) gives a few items and linking that to another post gave me a lot to consider. First we need to see “Deutsche Telekom has told supplier Nokia it must improve its products and service to win business installing the German group’s 5G wireless networks in Europe, according to internal documents and a source with direct knowledge of the matter“, the issue is twofold, yet the important part is not a given. Here we see the story behind ‘Nokia must improve its products and service‘, yet the story focuses on services, a little less on the product. So as we take notice of “the German group considered Nokia the worst performer among all suppliers in 5G tests and deployments“, yet because of the US bully tactics, Nokia is feeling a little too safe to be worried, which is nice for Nokia, but it is one of a few items hitting the European Telecom providers. The entire Nokia matter is shown with one simple statement “Deutsche Telekom’s willingness to give Nokia another hearing shows the difficulties mobile companies face over pressure from the United States“, it is more than bully tactics, the station we now see is that those giving in to the US are facing 2 larger ones, the first being the implementation by players like Nokia on a European front, the larger issue is not merely Nokia, the larger issues is seen in the IP Watchdog that gives us (as did the news a few days ago) ‘Huawei Sues Verizon‘, we are given that “Chinese telecom giant Huawei filed two lawsuits in U.S. district court, one in Eastern Texas and the other in Western Texas, asserting claims of 12 patents against Verizon Communications. The suits were filed after Huawei “negotiated with Verizon for a significant period of time”“, let me explain why it is a larger issue. 

Firstly, the fact that we see ‘negotiated with Verizon for a significant period of time‘ leaves us with the larger setting that this isn’t nothing, in addition, as the US was so proud to give the stage of 5G ready, we see that at least one vendor might not have been ready, no matter how this case slices and dices 5G, a dozen patents are in this, as such they can be checked and if so, the entire 5G bubble will explode (not burst) in the Trump administration face right in the middle of re-election. In addition, the fact that the US has not given one part of evidence setting the stage against the US at present gives a much larger scene over the optional backdrop of failing US equipment whilst they are trying to roll out 5G, in light of all this that earlier speculated 4-6 years delay for national 5G will optionally reach up to a decade, which means that the entire 5G setting is game over for the US (optionally depending on this trial). As I personally see it, the Trump Administration will have to rely on the brightest minds at the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) to investigate BEFORE the trial commences how big an issue it might be, if that is not done the Trump administration will end up with egg on its face whilst the 5G networking issue will hang around its neck like an anchor keeping them in place, it would be a global setback for them.

Now we cannot state that Huawei has a case or that Verizon is innocent, but a dozen patents will impede it as they need to be examined and the courts will take up to two years, no matter what delays are seen, if Verizon continues, all their revenue will go straight to China with a lot more in penalties, that was never in anyone’s cards.

Returning to the FP we also see: “It is well known that Deutsche Telekom is pursuing a multi-vendor strategy so that we are not dependent on just one supplier. This is an elementary part of our security philosophy,” said Claudia Nemat, Deutsche Telekom’s head of technology and IT. “In 2019 we have made many steps together with Nokia to make Deutsche Telekom’s networks evolve towards 5G readiness, including all network domains, from radio and fixed access to transport and core, and continue to do so in 2020 and onwards.” Federico Guillen, Nokia’s president of customer operations in EMEA and APAC, said: “We continue to work extensively with Deutsche Telekom which is one of our most significant customers, both in Europe and the U.S.”” this all makes sense, there is no hidden agenda (or is there), most larger companies will not be set to the leash of one large giant, there is no opposition to that, but in this case we see that for some reason Ericsson is not considered, a Swedish company that is supposedly ready for 5G deployment, now we can say that Ericsson is a large player and it is (to some extent) the pride and joy of Sweden with as far as I can tell a much larger state of international readiness than Nokia ever was, as such why is the focus on Nokia? In this stage of 5G and the need to grow where a telecom player can, why is Ericsson not regarded as a backup for Nokia? When we realise that “in 2017 Nokia was dropped entirely from that market segment when Ericsson was handed a 30% share of Deutsche Telekom’s spending on it, reports in the trade press said at the time. It was the first of several wins for Ericsson“, Ericsson is indeed the other player, it seems like a desperate setting to have merely to keep Huawei out, so in this, these so called cut-throat players are unwilling to play hard ball. I wonder why? I have seen some of these players play fast and loose and play hardball as well and seeing the optional failure by Nokia and the subsequence unwillingness to consider Huawei, we see a puch from Germany orchestrated by the US, the EU 5G solutions will take a firm beating at present making them (optionally) ahead of the US and optionally behind other players, players that were never in such a high place before and that was before the patent infringement accusations, now the mess becomes a much larger setting.

All whilst we consider “Deutsche Telekom then suspended vendor talks to await the outcome of a debate in Berlin over the security of critical national networks, where senior lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party back the U.S. call to bar Huawei” in this I believe that the US has set the fate of Angela Merkel as well, when the US stumbles even once, and the beginning of that was shown 5 days ago (at CNN) with ‘Angela Merkel lambasts her party’s cooperation with far-right AfD‘, this 5G anchor is not merely around the neck of Merkel as well, it could limit the actions of the CDU and give power to the AfD. Even as we take notice of ““It’s a very big deal … the consensus amongst democrats that there would be no cooperation with far-right parties ended yesterday,” Kai Arzheimer, a professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz, told CNN. “So it was a historic day,” he added“, the impact is larger, when the US bully tactics are seen for what they are, and as the US remains debatable in not presenting any evidence against Huawei, there is every chance that the far right in Germany will get to shout that the CDU has reverted to being a puppet of the US and they will point at Deutsche Telekom, a group laced with cut throat profit makers as evidence, the moment that is accepted, the US will not merely lose Germany, at that point it needs to consider France, the Netherlands and Spain lost as well, Italy is a larger problem (for Huawei) but it is too early to shout on that. In addition, as 2 of the big 4 change course, especially as the patent infringements fire up the others will take money for promises and full steam reverse whatever plan they had, the waters will be too shallow and too dangerous to sail in the US domain.

All this remains an issue when we see the Huawei stage of affair as they give the world “Huawei negotiated with Verizon for a significant period of time, during which the company provided a detailed list of patents and factual evidence of Verizon’s use of Huawei patents. The two parties were unable to reach an agreement on license terms. “We invest heavily in R&D because we want to provide our customers with the best possible telecommunications solutions,” continued Dr. Song. “We share these innovations with the broader industry through license agreements.”“, this does not give any details of who is in the right, but if the Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. is anything to go by, the court took almost 5 years and in the end “On December 6, 2016, the United States Supreme Court decided 8-0 to reverse the decision from the first trial that awarded nearly $400 million to Apple” in this there is a larger stage to patent infringements and in this it was a global impact, in the Huawei case it is more than merely infringement, if the US has a 5 years setback there will be a much larger stage and even as the US wants to push through this case, the world is watching. Not only has the US given accusations against Huawei without clear evidence for the world to scrutinise, the Patents will be open to read for all and this changes the stage to a much larger degree. The fact that the Apple issue went past Dutch, Australian, British, German and Japanese courts give rise to that, the Huawei case could be an equally large and for the US a much larger consideration towards indiscriminate judging of American values, the world will scream for evidence in the middle of an election campaign, it does not sit pretty to be part of this administration. OH and the Apple trial was merely about a phone, a 4G phone, the Huawei stage will be about 5G and the infrastructure, the stage where the US is screaming on Chinese intervention whilst Verizon is delivering all over the US equipment allegedly based on Chinese patent transgression would feel uncomfortable in anyone’s point of view.

There is however the other side, Verizon is still on the ‘There’s 5G. Then there’s Verizon 5G‘ horse. I get it, it is their marketing, so when we see ‘Not all 5G is the same‘ where their hype creation department (read: marketing) gives us “Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband has the power to deliver speeds more than 10 times faster than some other 5G networks” here we see a dangerous tune, that is when you disregard ‘Ultra Wideband‘, the stage becomes that they are about to go to court with a dozen patents linked to their name, patents owned by Huawei. And as we were treated last Thursday to ‘Verizon sticks behind ambiguous 2020 DSS rollout plan‘ (source: FierceWireless) we get the stage where their entire marketing needs to sit on their hands, the moment this gets to court and the Patent lawyers will go over every word and punctuation, when the Patent IT people will investigate the claims and this hits the news cycles 24:7, Verizon will need to steer in different directions and the US administration will push them, the last thing this administration needs is a global expose on Chinese patent infringement all whilst they are pushing non-Chinese hardware on a global scale, the entire Verizon issue, whether true or not will be tested in courts and that is a large bone to pick, even today the 9 years old case between Samsung and Apple is on the minds of too many people, this was a setback the US could have done without.

It does not matter at present who is in the right, this will drag on for years to come (as court cases on infringement do) and it will hinder 5G growth in the US and 5G deployment  in Europe, in all this Huawei has too much to gain and the lack of evidence on Chinese government interference claims will not help any, not until clear evidence is presented by the US administration, which is unlikely to happen.

This will be a new technology in waves of interpretation, it is so because the US never gave the rest of the world evidence on Chinese government dangers and that is about to backfire. When this hits the media, it is more likely than not that Verizon shares will plummet, it will plummet to below values they had on August 14th 2019 ($55.72), which would make it a 15% drop which in 5G terms translates to the first coffin nail that Verizon will have to swallow, I reckon that at that point corporate reorganisations will be the talk of the day at Verizon for weeks to come.

Can it be avoided?

That is hard to say, we need to see that interpretation goes both ways and the patent infringement accusations are a larger issue, until we see them investigated by qualified senior Patent lawyers (like the USPTO has) we are merely speculating and even after that, as the court starts it will impact and impact larger than expected. Avoiding that stage would have been the issue to a much larger degree and the talks that ended in no resolve might require a push from the US administration to get those resolved, still the accusation is in the air, that had to be avoided (as I personally see it), no matter what deal is struck, we see the accusations against Huawei whilst Verizon was optionally (and allegedly) using Chinese technology in their hardware. That part is now in the open, and questions will be asked internationally, if not by the governments, it will be a good stick for their opponents to use with any of their upcoming elections. 

Settling this beforehand was the larger economic need and it was not done (not judging whether the cases will have merit at present). That is what a lot will remember in the end, especially those who needed a big stick, Huawei just gave them a bat to end most matches.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Law, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 21, 2020 · 11:28

The second lap

We always seem to have a problem with the second lap, the first lap is OK, it is new, we just started, it is the second lap that is the problem, it is that stage where you are tired from the previous lap and the second wind has not started, mainly because the second lap is not the moment where the body adjusts for prolonged exercise.

That is how some see the EU at present (mainly the Observer). The setting of ‘the EU’s weakness on the world stage‘ is however no laughing matter. As we are introduced to “Ursula von der Leyen believes Europe should take a leading “geopolitical” role in international affairs, reflecting the EU’s status as the world’s largest trade bloc. But turning words into deeds is proving problematic“, and it is “We must use our diplomatic and economic strength to support global stability and prosperity… and be better able to export our values and standards” that is part of the problem, in the first, the EU is su up to the gills in debt through the idiotic scheme by Mario draghi that the EU has no economic strength. The IMF gives the EU in GDP growth 2.8% (2017), 2.2% (2018), 1.5% (2019), and 1.6% (2020). This seems like an improvement, yet 0.1% increase is not really an increase and when we consider that the devaluation of the currency gives the EU debt that is currently around € 10,593,000,000,000 a much larger issue to battle, at present only the German debt is decreasing slowly, but the debt in Spain, Italy, and France (all in the trillions) is still increasing, so where does the EU think it has economic strength? And all this whilst the Financial Times informed us yesterday on ‘Europe braces for new fiscal battles‘, here we see Paolo Gentiloni trying to shake things up (no idea why he was referring to shaking up). The issue is larger than anyone can see, because the stage of “widely disliked given their impenetrable and convoluted nature“, the game where you adjust the rules in the middle of the game with 27 players, the entire stage goes awry in this game where the option of “On the Italian social democrat’s reform wish list will be changes making the rules more symmetrical — allowing for countries to be pushed to boost their economies via fiscal policy in downturns, rather than just reining in deficits and debt” (at https://www.ft.com/content/a062fb2e-3b24-11ea-a01a-bae547046735), and it is the debt these never elected officials are trying to be in deny with. Yet there is also an upside in this (as I see it) if this play goes on, the German population will not tolerate the EU to continue. None will address their debt and Germany (as one of the big four) is the only one who got the debt below 72% of GDP, the rest is in a bismal state and whilst we get that the Italians (French and Spain also) are all about ‘new investments’ they are doing it on a maxed out credit card. And whilst we all see this, we also see “One idea is to give countries extra scope to borrow to fund green investment“, yet the basic issue is that this is yet another idea to IGNORE outstanding debts and the people will have to pay for that. So as we see “has already run up against opposition from conservative northern European states“, we see that the Italian factor (Genitoli) is hiding behind “the urgency of the green agenda could improve its chances“. So whilst we now see “Some will want to use any reform opportunity to loosen the regime. Others will wish to use the greater clarity to make the deficit rules even tighter“, we see a basic fight between the spenders and the none spenders and the non spenders have had enough of it all, it founded the Brexit and there are others who do not want to be caught with the consequences of another nation in a stage with their pants down, as such all the other players will have to grab their ankles (you get the idea). 

So while we go back to the Observer view (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/19/the-observer-view-on-the-eus-weakness-on-world-stage ) we might see “Trump’s illegal, and unilateral, action effectively blew up the most prized achievement of Borrell’s predecessors, Federica Mogherini and Cathy Ashton – the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which was already on life-support because of US sanctions“, it seems that the EU is in some kind of a delusional stage where they take the filtered media view on Iran. Iran had been in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia, it has repeatedly threatened the state of Israel and whilst we are given “the US then insisted that the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) trigger the deal’s dispute mechanism“, whilst the violations by Iran on the Nuclear pact are completely ignored. All in a stage where the delusional parties are setting the stage where Joseph Borell is in a stage to ‘talk’ with IOran whilst Iran has been refusing to do so and littered transgression upon transgression and the EU remains in denial and seemingly gives the EU press the stage that they are not to report on it for all kinds of unknown reasons. And when we look at the media, they are all so against war that it scares them (which it does), I merely wonder if the US and the UK press would have written ‘The Wrong Track for Confronting Germany‘ in 1943, as we see the New York Times write up the Iranian stage 12 hours ago. In addition, Al Jazeera reported 5 hours ago ‘Iran’s new Quds leader vows ‘manly’ revenge for Soleimani killing‘, which is fine, but this escapes the entire stage as they already had their missile go, yet their ego is not satisfied, so as we are treated to ‘Iran warns of ‘repercussions’ for IAEA after European moves over nuclear deal‘, as well as ‘Iran says it still respects 2015 nuclear deal, rejects ‘unfounded’ EU claims‘ (yesterday, source: CNA), all whilst there are dozens of reports as well as public statements that Iran had transgressed on set limits, so exactly HOW they are ‘respecting’ the Nuclear deal? 

In all this the lack of strength in response from the EU has been frightening. And in regards to the responses, we see on the 20th of January “Mr Mousavi said: “Tehran still remains in the deal. The European powers’ claims about Iran violating the deal are unfounded“, all whilst the news on January 5th was ‘Iran will no longer abide by uranium enrichment limits under 2015 nuclear deal‘, as well as the fact that Iran on state television, on January 5th responded that they pulled out of the Nuclear deal agreement (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsQ-NBaOUMw), as such we can all speculate on what Mr Mousavi is smoking, but more importantly, in light of all this, the utter lack of diplomatic power by the EU, as such the EU statement “We must use our diplomatic and economic strength to support global stability and prosperity“, Ursula von der Leyen sounds nice, but she cannot deliver on any of that. The EU is in the second lap, out of energy from the first lap and their second wind is nowhere near kicking in. Iran might be the strongest example, but it is not the only one, the lack of action in Syria, the lack of action in Yemen and the opposing support against Saudi Arabia, whilst ignoring the actions of Iran in a proxy war, in a speculated stage of a nuclear pact that was not sustainable in any degree and several parties are in denial of all this whilst there is enough optional evidence that the creation of the amounts of enriched Uranium that is now at the core of it all could not be produced by the amount of centrifuges allowed, there are more factors to consider, yet the supporting evidence is at present too thin (a lack of exact numbers is in play too).

In the end, the EU is an organisation that is on its final steps of becoming irrelevant, the debt made them so and these so called elected officials never stepped in when they were supposed to step in as debt levels were pushed to excessive levels as even now, people like Paolo Gentiloni (not just him mind you) are trying to find ways of getting around the debt for spending purposes.

And the matter will get worse soon enough, as the EU nations are in shambles on the EU budget, especially as Brexit is nearing completion, the members are all in a desperate setting of non-union, as we see news like “a French minister has warned nations they will have to pay more“, which is slightly weird as this was always going to be the setting, I warned of that almost 3 years ago. The stage at present is that Germany (at present) pays 20.78% of that budget and France is up for 15.58%, those are the big two and they are looking at an additional 3%-4% after brexit, which now implies that the long term budget up to 2027 will get a massive slam into a wall, it is in that setting, where nations are now feeling the pinch are confronted with a Paolo Gentiloni who wants to spend more and as such all nations have to pay more. Even as the big three are confronted with the impact on their loans from that change, the smaller nations are still in shambles as they were eager to overspend in their first option and they too will have to pay more, so now we optionally get to see an EU gravy train where none of the members agree on anything, as such that expensive train will keep costs high and not produce results, merley delays. 

So when we look at the stage of the EU and the setting of Ursula von der leyen with her “We must use our diplomatic and economic strength to support global stability and prosperity“, all whilst there is no economic power left in the EU and its diplomatic strength (which is linked to their economic power) dwindles basically as fast as their economy does, I wonder what Ursula von der Leyen is looking at, because the outlook from this side is really grim for the EU.

The second lap is the killer for a runner, as the runner gets better he can run longer, yet the reality of crossing that startline the first time and realising that you have less energy whilst you are at the beginning is the realising factor, yet there is a difference, a runner tends to be realistic about where he is and where he is going, as I personally see it, the EU is seemingly a lot less focussed on the reality of the matter as I personally see it. You merely have to read enough media and focus on the quotes to see that part of the equation.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 17, 2020 · 12:04

As the house comes down

There are two articles in the Guardian, both are mere hours old and it shows the impact that bully tactics have. In the first it is the EU who starts with ‘EU trade commissioner ‘will call Trump’s bluff’ over Huawei security‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/16/eu-trade-commissioner-will-call-trumps-bluff-over-huawei-security), where we also see ‘Phil Hogan convinced US president will not withdraw intelligence cooperation with UK and EU‘, it appears that Mr. Andrew Parker was right as I expected him to be. The text “The EU trade commissioner has said he will call Donald Trump’s “bluff” on threats to withdraw the US’s cooperation with the UK and the rest of the bloc on intelligence and security over Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant” and it is important to note that the US has still not shown one lick of evidence that Huawei is under the intrusion thumb of the Chinese government. It was an odd situation, do you think that the Chinese government would interfere with such a large setting of income, whilst the data will be coming to them already through the direct means of applied usage of social media? However, we need to recognise that the US is n a worse state now, even as direct numbers are not given, the political hounding of Facebook and Google, could see a much larger jump of people to Harmony OS and as such these companies could lose a large stage of data coming their way. I personally believe that this is the direct impact of electing into the oval office a man who is known for the one-liner ‘You’re Fired!‘, but that is just me.

There is also the given part of “Phil Hogan has also risked the wrath of the US president by declaring that the EU is not, in principle, opposed to giving the Chinese tech group access to 5G plans. At a press conference in London he said the US did not have exclusivity on safety and security of its citizens, and predicted Trump would come round to the EU view that they had shared interests in that regard“, I believe that Phil Hogan is right, the foundations of the threats were not based on evidence (as I see it), in addition as the US is losing more and more ground in intel gathering in the Middle East, they will become more and more dependant on the EU and UK sources out there and not sharing is really disadvantageous for the US, it will take well over a decade to regrow the size and quality of sources they had. 

The second issue is seen (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/16/iran-says-it-is-enriching-more-uranium-than-before-nuclear-deal) in the article ‘Germany confirms Trump made trade threat to Europe over Iran policy‘, as we are introduced to ‘Defence minister says Trump threatened to impose 25% tariff on European cars‘, here the stage is different, it is not Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, it is the larger EU political community that is the danger. Iran is a clear and present danger, it was so before America offed Qassam Soleimani and Iran will remain a threat after. The media on a global scale has been all about minimising the impact on Iran, even as there was no way that some nuclear deal would ever make it, but the political hacks in the EU had the arrogance to think that they could (a valid option), yet even now, well over a year later, there is still nothing there. Even now as we get from various sources in the media that Iran is presently enriching more Uranium than ever before, we are given the raw dangers. Even as the EU members are in denial through “In invoking the dispute mechanism for the Iran nuclear agreement or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – in other words, in deciding to hold Tehran to account for its breaches of the deal – the UK, France and Germany insist that they are still firmly behind the deal” we see a dangerous escalation delusion from the EU side. the problem is that if Iran makes a false move on willing to talk, we get the same situation that America faced when Japan stated that they were willing to talk in the months before Pearl Harbour, the problem now is that the target is Israel and optionally a scare tactic towards Saudi Arabia and for some reason people are oblivious to the fact that if the ground of one nation is radioactive, that dust is likely to spread to neighbouring nations. As I see it, Iran will not care about what happens to Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, optionally it will cross the mediteranian and impacts Italy, Spain, Turkey and Greece for generations. If the radioactive matter hits the sea that will happen for certain. Yet the arrogance of the EU politicians that a place like Iran will talk whilst their Uranium enrichment is running at full force is a dangerous precedence. I do believe that America is doing the wrong thing for the right reason and when (not if) that first missile mysteriously makes it into Hezbollah hands, the denials from Iran will be as loud as possible as it will ‘hide’ behind the military power of Russia, I am just not certain if Russia will be willing to be part of that mess.

So even as we see: “Iran initially denied responsibility for the crash, but three days later admitted that it had downed the plane believing it was an incoming US missile. An Iranian national security commission is investigating the episode“, it does not mention that the person releasing the video is now arrested for matters of Iranian national security. Still the EU politicians think that they can weave some kind of deal and the months of delay is working into the Iranian hands as well and those politicians need to be woken up as soon as possible, because once it is too late, the costs will be beyond comprehension and at that point the EU politician will hide behind ‘fair play’ and ‘unforeseen complications’ all whilst history has seen these issues all before. And in all this, the one part that matters is not addressed. Even as we see and are told that Uranium enrichment is at an all time high, the method of how they are doing it is ignored. Thousands of centrifuges were under critical eyes disposed of, so how were they replaced so easily? With the response as to the killing of January 3rd, we now see that there are Iranian claims that enrichment is back, yet how was this done in under two weeks? It could only have been done if the hardware was already there and if enrichment was the main agenda point from before July 2019, and that means that Iran intended to break the Nuclear accords long before they lost one general, is no one seeing that part?

The media is certainly not making any mention in that direction. The fact that one part of the deal was the reduction of centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,104 (at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/16/middleeast/rouhani-iran-uranium-enrichment-intl/index.html). So how can they be back to enriching so quickly? The second part is that enrichment would stop at 3.67%, there is no clear word on how rich their uranium is (at present), but there is also the locations, only Natanz was supposed to be active, but the implied amount stated gives rise to the importance of the fact that there is no way that Natanz can produce that much, implying that Arak, Ishafan, or Bushehr is either back online, or that the EU missed a few places (not entirely improbable).

The second part is that the only registered mine is Bandar Abbas, to continue on the track they are now, the traffic there would have increased massively and no one noticed? An optional issue is that there is MORE than one Uranium mine in Iran, this has two distinct issues. In the first it would mean that Iran has a much larger Uranium consideration, the second is that another mine has been largely unnoticed. It all adds up that in the first the EU dropped the ball to a much larger extent, in the second that the EU was unaware and therefor unable and unwilling to be a true investigator. Now we see the bully threat that America wrongfully made for the right reasons. My small speculation becomes, what is happening to the South, South West and West of Tabas (South Khorasan Province)? And in addition, why is there no open awareness in the EU in these matters? 

It gets to be worse, but I will spare you that part (for now). 

There is another side to all this, it is the financial side. All these actions are costing a boatload of money, money that Iran should not have and that implies that it is getting fueled to some extent from somewhere. Even as we are treated to ‘Defying U.S. sanctions, Iran boosts gas oil sales to neighbours‘ (source: Reuters), we are looking at a larger Iranian infrastructure need, and as far as I can tell, gasoil sales will not fuel that need, and even as we are given “more than 80% higher than the previous quarter and nearly four times higher than the first quarter, data from consultancy FGE showed“, the math doesn’t add up.

So either Iran had the means hidden, or there is a larger play going on. Consider that Iran had to replace well over 5,000 centrifuges to make their setting truthful, these things each costs a bundle, the mining operations needed to be ‘upgraded’ through manpower and that is another infusement of funds, last we see the missile and drone programs, it all adds up to the costs that they cannot afford, someone has handed Iran a credit card, or made funds in other ways available and I cannot see where it comes from (which makes sense as I do not walk in those lanes), yet the media is also not reporting on any of that and finding this would be a massive scoop for any paper, so why is there nothing? Is there nothing? If that is so then the nuclear threat from President Rouhani is hollow and empty, but I do not believe that to be true (personal conviction). 

The main problem for all nations is that Iran has an advanced weapons program, one that does NOT include nuclear weapons, yet the technological knowhow is largely there, as we see enrichment continue, the setting for a dirty bomb is merely months away, so Iran could use a dirty bomb in 2020 if it chose so, an actual nuclear weapon is less likely, yet not impossible. The problem that a weapon like that would be developed in unknown (read: unvisited Iranian) locations and the trigger would be part of a non-nuclear bomb, even if there was nuclear fission, they need the bare minimum to test that, hence hiding a 1Kg bomb in 3 tonnes of TNT would be easily hidden. 

When we go by “The total radioactivity of the fission products is extremely large at first, but it falls off at a fairly rapid rate as a result of radioactive decay. Seven hours after a nuclear explosion, residual radioactivity will have decreased to about 10 percent of its amount at 1 hour, and after another 48 hours it will have decreased to 1 percent. (The rule of thumb is that for every sevenfold increase in time after the explosion, the radiation dose rate decreases by a factor of 10.)” (source: Britannica) and a weapon with less than one Kg would be acceptable for testing, Iran has plenty of places where this would happen unobserved and within hours the larger extend would not be registered, the only path is the EMP, as long as there is no measurement around, it will go unnoticed if the bomb is small enough, so as Iran tests its nuclear detonation options, it can go a long way in staying undetected end the nuclear trigger is pretty much the same for a 400Gr and a 10KT bomb, so that is the danger and we have no idea where Iran is at at this point. Yet the latest info is still that Iran has NO nuclear weapons technology. However, if it can create the amounts of fission that Iran is claiming to be making, they might not be far off, in the most positive scenario they are at best a year away from that.

And in that environment the EU politicians rely on ego and arrogance that Iran will play ball, I might not agree with the bully tactic, but in this case the US and all others have very little to go on. My issue is that I personally believe that anyone (including Iran) is innocent until proven guilty, yet as we witness the statements by president Rouhani and the actions by Iran, can we afford to take that path? Can we actively set the stage of endangering the State of Israel (the most likely first target) to this level of danger? And when that happens, what are the levels of danger that Saudi Arabia faces? More importantly, depending of the first blast, what are the dangers of the surrounding nations of the target? Lets not forget that the Suez Canal goes straight through that area, not only destroying an economy, but endangering the economy of the entire EU. 

When we are in a house as it is coming down on top of us, we need to see what our options are and that part is in no way clear, all whilst we know that running out of the house will bring new and other dangers.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 16, 2020 · 10:30

The time is now

Yesterday, an article in the BBC made me aware of a few items. Now, I was aware to a larger degree of most items, yet I kept it in the second drawer of the third desk of my brain, it was something I took for accepted and then shrug it off, so what changed? Nothing actually changed, but the article seems good enough to take a few items on view.

The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51115315) gives us “Google has announced a timeline for implementing new privacy standards that will limit third-party use of a digital tool known as cookies“, now this is nothing new, it was always going to happen, yet we also see: “analysts say the move gives Google more control over the digital ad market where it is already a major player.  To make advertising more personal web browsers collect small bits of information that allow them to create a profile of the users likes and online habits“, the question becomes, is that actually true? And when we see “This presents a core problem from a competition perspective. It is yet another example of Google diminishing ad rivals’ access to data for the stated purpose of protecting users’ privacy“, a quote from Dina Srinivasan, a lawyer focused on competition issues is not really that truthful, is it? Apple made a similar move in 2017 and when we go back in time, we see Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Most will have forgotten Netscape who became defunct in 2003, and basically stopped making a blip 2 years before that. We seemingly forgot about the exploitative market that Microsoft had in those days with Internet Explorer and all the crap it added to our HTML files (as did Word when we saved as an HTML file), in those days data in files was still an issue because there was a limit to what we could safe when we were not rich. Chrome was the first to keep our files clean, or at least lacking a lot of rubbish. Netscape was however on a different route, an employee of Netscape Communications, which was developing an e-commerce application for MCI. MCI did not want its servers to have to retain partial transaction states which was a killer for storage, as such they asked the people at Netscape to find a way to store partial options and methods of transactions where it mattered the most, at the side of the buyer, Cookies provided a solution to the problem of reliably implementing a virtual shopping cart, Google found a new way of using that idea and used cookies in the far reaching solution it currently has, they innovated, others merely took on board someone else’s solution and not they are all crying foul. Perhaps when these people had taken the time to innovate, they would have the choice, and the option of two years seems decent, so when I read “advertisers had hoped to have more time before it was implemented” is as I personally see a larger BS issue on timeframes and exploitation, if advertisers are in the now, they would be all about advanced implementation, yet they like their bonus and they seemingly do not like to spend money on investments to counter the timeline (an assumption from my side). 

Google’s director of Chrome engineering, Justin Schuh gives us “Users are demanding greater privacy – including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used – and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands“, which seems slightly too political to my liking, but there we have it. Business Day gives us “But GDPR also made life harder for a cohort of second-tier adtech players trying to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook. The regulation’s provision to prevent data being shared wantonly with third parties seemed to give the tech giants an opportunity to tighten their control over user data” where we see that this was one of the foundations that led to the end of SizMek, some state that it was DSP Rocket Fuel that ended the heartbeat of SizMek, yet everyone ignores a simple truth, ‘an overcrowded ad tech market with independent vendors with an inability to face serious cost pressures to their pricing structures‘, they all arrogantly believed that THEIR solution was the real one and they all basically read cookies like the ones Google had distributed. You can all claim to have the magic potion that Asterix drinks, but when the truth comes out that he drinks Darjeeling tea from India, the playing field gets overcrowded and when the customer figures out what they get priced for the end is pretty much around the corner of the next door you face.

So as we are told “third-party ad sellers will need to go through Google to get information about internet users. But critics say that is an advantage that makes the market less fair and safe“, in my view my question becomes: ‘Which critics, names please!‘, the problem is that third party ad sellers have no rights, none at all, the rights should be with the owner of the computer, Google (Apple also) are setting (not by their own accord) that stage, Microsoft is using their Azure Cloud to counter the Cookie option on PC and Microsoft Console, but the hard sight is already there, the people who are unable, unwilling and cannot afford to set the stage still want their freebee and they are now starting to complain as they are made aware that their time has ended, even though this was the direction we saw in US politics and EU politics well over three years ago. The EU had their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and everyone shrugged their shoulders stating that it would not happen that fast, yet that was three years ago and now the time has been set back to merely two years to go and the ad sellers are feeling the pinch of the cost they will actually face. Moreover, they are seeing the red lights of career ends. The Verge gave us “an industry that’s used to collecting and sharing data with little to no restriction, that means rewriting the rules of how ads are targeted online“, they gave us that on May 25th 2018, so 1.5 years ago, why is this now a problem? The people wanted this, ad soon it will be here, Google has not been sitting still updating their systems accordingly, and as such we see that the flaccid and non-concerned rest is now looking at a deadline a mere two years away. When we look to the larger field we see Criteo, LiveRamp, Trade Desk, Rubicon, and Telaria, all losing value as ad-tech providers, yet the opposite could also be true when they offer to the customer a value, a value where most ad-tech companies never bothered going. Yet the power of any ad-tech was never the cookie, that was for the most merely the revenue. They had 5 years to consider the power of ad-tech and they didn’t. The power of this is basically engagement. Facebook showed this year after year and now it is out on the larger field, those who engage will survive, the rest will end up on a dog eat dog football field and a few will survive but only as long as they push to the next hurdle and make it, if not they will end up on the obituary page (just like Netscape, however Netscape ended there for other reasons). 

I wonder if that is why Google is so adamant about its stadia? It would get a massive tier of small time developers creating engagement content to be released on mobiles. That i me merely speculating. 

Still the words of Dina Srinivasan are not entirely without merit, she gives the Facebook issue (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/yale-law-grads-hipster-antitrust-argument-against-facebook-findsmainstream-support-11575987274), and she makes a good case, yet the history of certain players need to be taken into account. Even as she was her own misgivings about the evolution of the digital advertising market, history had been clear, some of them basically did not bother, they wanted it handed to them for free and in the beginning they got away with it. And she made a point with “How could a company with Facebook Inc.’s checkered privacy record have obtained so much of its users’ personal data?“, yet equally we need to weigh this with the words of U.S. Attorney General William Barr. He gives us “he is “open to that argument” that consumer harm can exist through the use of personal data, even if a service is free. “I am inclined to think there is no free lunch. Something that is free is actually getting paid for one way or the other”“, which is what I have been saying on my blog for around 4 years, so happy to see people wake up in January 2020. So when I see “Ms. Srinivasan would prefer that Facebook be forced to change certain business practices, including how it tracks users when they are off the company’s platforms“, I wonder when they give account to the small truth that Facebook is a free service for a reason and they are no longer alone in this, you are going after the large players when they are in the largest danger by losing slices of that revenue pie to contenders elsewhere in the world (EU and China). 

Whatever you want to do is fine, but realise that it will put a large group of people in the streets without a job, I am not against them losing their job, but that revenue and that data will also flow in other directions and that is the one part that all players (with political support) are trying to counter as much as possible. I wonder if they will succeed. The weird part is that if this group had been properly taxed 3 out of the 5 major issues would also fall away and in that view a workable solution could be pivoted to.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 15, 2020 · 12:08

Devil in the details

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider these statements:

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

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

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

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

Could I be wrong?

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

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

January 14, 2020 · 12:27

The cornered bully

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 10, 2020 · 11:43

It took one funeral

In the left corner

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

In the right corner

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

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

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

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

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Law, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 7, 2020 · 11:11

Inheritance for the weak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 19, 2019 · 15:08

Paranoid

OK, I admit it, I am calling myself paranoid (at present). You see, I have been looking at the news (nearly all news in Europe) and there is seemingly a low creation of rumbles going on. The strongest two are the Netherlands and the UK. The issue is not easy to explain, but I will. Corporations are in a frantic level of actions, Brexit has scared them and the unfolding of the EU is basically becoming reality. In a corporatocracy, that is a scary realisation, but they have an alternative. You see, the balance of the EU is not the nations, it is the two most powerful ones that set this tone. The difference is seemingly small but essential. Any nation can govern by the needs of its corporations, yet a monarchy has the responsibility to take ALL its citizens into account, a lot of issues would not exist if these monarchies did not exist. So the need of corporations is to destabilize and overthrow monarchies. In the end overthrown they might take their value and business interests, and those corporations do not care, they can tighten the screws and focus on the 80% that is consumer, not the 100% that is population. We have seen these acts in the US for the longest time in the Walmart family, not the strongest example, but the most visible one. They have spent well over $4,500,000 this year alone on lobbyists. Firms like the Alpine group, Capitol counsel, Cove Strategies, Ferox Strategies, Mehlman, Castagnetti et al and several more to represent their needs in political Washington. Let’s be clear, they are not breaking any laws, they committed no crimes, the Walton family merely uses the tools available to them to set the premise as powerful as possible towards THEIR needs. This is where the issue become a problem, as a republic driven political might adheres to the needs of a corporation, the people lose. In this the Walton family grows its wealth by a little over $100 million a day, some sources indicate that their total wealth grew by over 20% last year alone. That family has a wealth that puts the wealth of Bill Gates (Software Man), Jeff Bezos (the Amazon Boy) and Warren Buffett (Mr. Investment calling himself the Philanthropist Man) and their wealth combined to shame. That is the impact of a corporatocracy, when the companies rule a nation, their needs are set as the number one, followed by actual consumers and enablers as a second.

Poverty in the US might be the lowest in the last decade, but it is still set to 11.8%, in the Netherlands it is a little below 5%, that is not because the Netherlands is so rich, or their situation is so much better, it is because a monarchy looks at the needs of all its citizens (the rich, the poor the enablers and the non-enablers). So when I see ‘Money is the Achilles heel of a monarchy‘ (at https://www.nu.nl/economie/5991045/de-kosten-van-het-koningshuis-geld-is-de-achilleshiel-van-de-monarchie.html) with mention of “Alles samen kost het koningshuis daarmee op papier in 2019 bijna 36 miljoen euro” (All together, the cost for the monarchy are set on paper to be around 36 million Euro). Now in opposition I will throw that Robeco paid a new CEO €30,000,000 annually around a decade ago, so it seems a little farfetched to look at the cost of royalty, and we need to consider that a monarchy comes with cost, it is in part also the cost we pay to keep all citizens safe, in other settings this tends to be the consumers and rich people. 

The second large monarchy is the British one, even as we have a lot more to look at, I will not, yet I will highlight that the attacks on Prince Andrew were more than attacks. It was the need of media to get circulation and in the UK that sells, it is money. OK, I will admit that HRH Prince Andrew received some real bad advice from direction he was listening to, yet beyond that the man is under constant (and not just him in that family) attack, even today I find well over a quarter of a million articles (not just from the UK) with headlines like ‘Who’s your Prince Andrew? Ten signs one of your employees is deadwood‘ (Source: Smart Company, Australia). Titles like ‘surplus prince‘ and statements like “The total number of people in the world who believe his side of this super-creepy story is one. You’d ground your small kid for telling tales like: “I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when I was shot at … it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”“, from my point of view, the royal family is under non-stop attack by the media and haters. In the UK we see optionally one part that is an issue, their Monarchy is a lot larger, yet so is their population, yet the UK is a monarchy, both the Netherlands and the UK would not have made it to the place they are now if they were a republic, that much is almost certain. Europe has other monarchies, There is Denmark, Monaco, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain and the small ones Andorra and Liechtenstein. Norway is not part of the EU, yet they are so close to the Danish and Swedish families that they are part of the problem for corporations. Yet for corporations the Netherlands and the UK are the largest problems, they have strong political ties, they have well organised systems and they both have the ability to limit the actions of most corporations. 

Now, just to be clear, we see the cost of royalty (especially the Dutch one) almost every year (the Dutch are cheap as), yet the underlying story is still within me, there has been a larger attack on royalty in Europe and I personally believe that corporations are fuelling it through their links in the media. The attacks are subtle and for some reason two links I saw earlier this week are no nowhere to be found, the right to be forgotten is seemingly used to a wider degree (my speculation). More important, I believe that the Brexit delivery from Boris Johnson will open up a lot more than just the Brexit, at that point these corporations in denial realise that the overall force of greed will end in 2-3 years and when Brexit is complete there will be a larger need in the EU breaking it up faster. When we see ‘EU ministers opt to continue overfishing, despite 2020 deadline‘, we see more, we see a larger need towards greed and as we read “ministers ignored science and fought bitterly for their own vested interests” we see some of the signs that the EU has ended, the fact that they knowingly, willingly and intentionally ignored “By 2020, all quotas were meant to be based on a maximum sustainable yield – the most fish that can be caught without damaging the ability of the species to recover itself” should be regarded as evidence, I personally stand by my original thought, merely end the lives ot 94% of the global population and the problem is solved (that did not take long did it?) The issue is larger and more complex ad as such my thoughts towards the monarchies can be seen as paranoia. The two nations (UK and Dutch) have all kinds of interactions and even as the attacks on Prince Andrew are actual attacks, they are often done by circulation desperate media, which is still a corporation, but it would be a twisted example. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I feel that there is a larger attack on EU monarchies, I will let you look at the evidence in your own newspapers and tally the articles that are an example. Oh and I am not dismissing the fact that there are other driving factors either, that was shown by the NL Times last April (at https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/15/dutch-royals-less-popular-among-young-people-study). Here we see: “Support for the Dutch monarchy among young people fell sharply over the past years. In 2007, 70 percent of Dutch between the ages of 18 and 34 were enthusiastic about the Royal Family, last year it was only 55 percent, according to surveys by Ipsos commissioned by NOS“, I wonder how the percentages fall when we tae that number and set it in two groups, 17-26 and 27-34. You see until 25 you have no need to take things into consideration (like retirement), after 25 you do and that is when people get to realise that a Monarchy is a larger economic umbrella than a republic is. Yet they also illuminate the other side “support for a republic with an elected president is not increasing much. In 2007, 14 percent of respondents supported the idea of such a government, last year it was 15 percent, according to the surveys“, I reckon that the people realise that their cushy life is over when it becomes a republic, but the Netherlands and the UK are too large spoils of war for the large corporations and it is my personal believe that they will not give up on rich grounds of that nature, the breaking of the EU will force them in that direction soon enough, in that regard I have absolutely no doubt, greed remains an eternal journey.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,