Tag Archives: Iran

August 5, 2020 · 05:26

What light is the limelight

We all wonder at times why certain matters are brought to attention, we now automatically assume that issues are revealed to seat the limelight, not merely TV and other media, the press is seen in that same way. It is not that we are bombarded with fake news, there is now the assumed feeling by many that the media is giving us fake news (they tend to call it direct and speculated views from experts). 

This view is supported (to a degree) by Al Jazeera who gave us “Long before “fake news” had a name, the BBC was a master of fake news, in fact fake news of the most dangerous, the most vicious consequences, casting nations, not just individuals, into direct calamities”, they did so in November 2018, they also give us “The role of BBC in the overthrow of Mosaddeq was not out of character or unusual. In a piece titled Why the taboo tale of the BBC’s wartime propaganda battle must be told published by The Guardian, David Boyle writes about characters like Noel Francis Newsome (1906-1976), who “as director of European broadcasts … led what is still the biggest broadcasting operation ever mounted, in 25 different languages for a total of just over 25 hours a day, across three wavelengths.””, in this the BBC does not stand alone, there are scores of producers that have had the ear of their governments. 

The problem now is that the media is flaunting the #Fakenews items and procrastinate on what they regard on what is fake news, yet they themselves have been heralding tweaked news and scores of misinformation through either omission or ‘non disclosed sources’ and the people have caught on, they have caught on for a while, so whilst they disregard newspapers, they embrace another level of debatable news that others publish on social media. 

And everyone is seeking the limelight, yet the most obvious question becomes slowly apparent to some, what sort of light is the limelight? And what sort of light was it supposed to be?

That is the question, in people like Freddy Mercury and David Bowie got to be exposed to the purest form that was discovered in 1837, at that point we had: “limelight was used for the first time to illuminate a stage, at London’s Covent Garden. During the second half of the 19th century, theaters regularly utilized this powerful form of light, which could be focused into a beam to spotlight specific actors or an area of the stage”, the stage was set to illuminate and give visibility to, in this case titans of music. In other forms we see the pink limelight, which in this case is not a version of ‘La vie en rose’, it is a version to make softer the harsh reality of a situation that we face, we see it whenever the limelight needs to be on Iran, we see it when bad news must be tempered for the good of that government or for the good of the political needs of THAT moment. In this stage we also need to see the omissions of news and I am not buying the usual ‘we ran out of space’ BS all whilst digital space costs nothing and any additional space implies more advertisement space too. Some might have noticed on the massive lack of reporting whilst Houthi forces (via Iran) were firing missiles on the Saudi government. To merely quote one of the (many) sources “When important news is omitted, we get a skewed or biased perspective”, as I see it, the Saudi example shows a few issues, as the larger lack of reporting was shown, right around the time several governments were setting the stage of no weapons to Saudi Arabia. And in all that mess, the lack of reporting on the actions of Iran take a larger view and we need to do that. We see a global stage that is changing, whilst a group of politic Ians are setting the stage based on their egotistical needs, and that group is getting too large, all whilst the political field of the US is dwindling down and European politics is getting a dangerous overhaul. In this stage of changes, some have figured out that a new way of setting the tone of news is not changing the story, it is adjusting the limelight. As I see it it will open differently across forms of media, but the readers will have a lot more issues to distinguish between news and fake news, you see, there will be news, adjusted news and fake news. The problem is that all have a professional looking character, yet the impact differs. It gets us back to the 90’s when the 256 greyscale solutions came, but the setting is an important distinguishing one. We cannot distinguish these 256 grey scales. Our eyes are not that good, and our brains are even less distinguishing, as the overlap between real, adjusted and fake messages increases, our ability to distinguish becomes a larger issue. In this a personal view is that there is a correlation between phishing and adjusted news. It becomes harder, if not close to impossible to see the difference. I almost fell for two phishing attacks, even as I knew what to look for, the message was indistinguishable from the real deal and news is going the same way, the media relying on ‘adjusted news’ is not helping any. The one clear part (from factcheck.org) is “Not all of the misinformation being passed along online is complete fiction”, the question is when does it become too hard to see the difference between a story that is not ‘all fiction’ and a story that is not ‘all true’. When can we no longer tell the difference? And as some come with the treated excuse ‘Is there not an AI solution?’, the stage becomes rather large, because AI does not exist, not yet at least. You see, the salespeople are selling AI, because it is marketed at all, just like the 80’s when printers had to be sold, they came up with Near Letter Quality. Wit AI we now have True AI: “True artificial intelligence is autonomous — it does not require human maintenance and works for you silently in the background” and there we see the problem, the identification is still done with human intervention, and the part in this that I did not report on is that AI, or perhaps more clearly stated True AI requires to be learning. That is not yet possible as it requires quantum computing with shallow circuits. IBM is close to getting it, but not completely there yet, only when that is ready, complete and true AI becomes achievable. So whilst that stage is still evading us, the issues of adjusted and fake news keep on going. Yet I am concerned with the question “What is the light they use as limelight?”, in this we consider it as we need to contemplate that news should not change when WE change the light, so real news will remain  the same whether it is rose or lime light, adjusted news will change slightly, but perhaps just enough for us to see the difference. It is speculative, but I believe that it is a future option.

 

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July 25, 2020 · 01:42

Champion from Stockholm

I feel a little out of my league, I will be honest, the moment my view, the view I belief to be right is under fire by a Nobel laureate, I feel that I am on the losing side. Yet, the article cannot be avoided. To do this, there is a time track, no matter how we are given “Saudi Arabia is legally responsible for war crimes in Yemen”, we need to take a look at the time line. “The help from Saudi Arabia was requested by at that time the rightful ruler of Yemen. So as we are given “The human rights activist made her comment after it was reported that the French judiciary has opened an investigation against Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed who is accused of complicity in the torture of prisoners in Yemen detention centres controlled by the UAE armed forces. The French can look into such cases on the basis of universal jurisdiction.” (at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200722-saudi-arabia-is-legally-responsible-for-war-crimes-in-yemen-insists-nobel-laureate/), we are not seeing the actions that both Hezbollah and Houthi forces are a part of, so how are these entered in the whole of things? 

As I see it no version of “In a related context” is seemingly correct, the matter does not add up, and optionally for me it never will, I am aware of that, yet there is no version and no related context where we can look at all this and set apart the atrocities of the Houthi forces, the acts by Hezbollah and all in a stage where Iran is the puppet master behind the screen. So whilst Houthi forces are calling for an investigation into both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, when will the acts of the Houthi forces be held to account, not after, that much is a given. 

In all this, my sage is that Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman has a rather large station to fill, in the first there is the ‘legally responsible’ part, a stage we ignore because it is uncomfortable, but the stage includes that official help was requested by a legitimate elected office and that office is what the Houthi forces detest. Their actions make the entire ‘legally responsible’ moot to say the least, and that is before we add the station where they fired on Saudi civilian targets, war is hell, but as I see it they ca take a kissing booth ticket and present it to the nearest Afreet (he is currently resting in a bed of sand and stone around 140 KM North of Ubar Oman), perhaps there they will find the ear they were hoping for, of course Aarif was never one to pass up the taste of the ignorant soul, so good luck with that. 

No matter how you view this case and we do agree that she (Tawakkol Karman) is entitled to a view, and as she is Yemeni, we can all (including myself) agree that she has a more entitled view than I have. Yet where was she in the last 5 years? When we seek her Google search entries, we do not see that many, and a few are not relating to her view on the war, so why is she ‘so active’ now? Is that not a fair question too?

We see all the mentions on her being part of the Muslim Brotherhood, her setting as a Yemeni-Turkish activist. It might be true, it might not, I have not investigated that evidence, this is about her view of making Saudi Arabia responsible. I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, but any guilt needs to include the actions of Houthi forces, Hezbollah forces in Yemen and Iran and that is not happening. So as we give visibility to this Stockholm Champion, we need to also see that she is painting an incomplete picture. As a Dutch comedian once said, you cannot refer to the book ‘Ali Baba and the 40 thieves’, it is apparantly now named ‘Ali Baba and the 40 fighters for the Palestinian cause’, time changes everything, even the foundation of what we see and the timeline is important in all this, time is thee only valid measurement. It shows us where the situation was and the mess started with the elected officials calling for help, it is interesting how many people are dismissing that part of the equation. And seemingly it includes people wth a Nobel Price, it is as interesting as the way that price got its money in the first place.

 

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July 22, 2020 · 01:43

A pawn in nuclearity

There was an article, now 7 hours old, but I had seen it before, a day earlier I believe. I left it alone as I had to ponder a few items in this stage. You see the article reading ‘Nuclear Gulf: Is Saudi Arabia pushing itself into a nuclear trap?’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/nuclear-gulf-saudi-arabia-pushing-nuclear-trap-200718155513128.html) is giving us the part that matters “if Iran gets them first”, and as I see it focusses less on the danger that Iran is to the entire Middle East if they have them first. Even as we notice “The spectre of the Saudi-Iran Cold War escalating into a nuclear arms race is not beyond the realm of possibility”, we remain increasingly ignorant of “EU says Iran has triggered nuclear deal dispute mechanism” (at https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/04/eu-says-iran-has-triggered-nuclear-deal-dispute-mechanism-348680). The setting is not merely that Iran is seeking to become a Nuclear power, when we see “In January, the European architects of the deal triggered the dispute resolution mechanism provision in the accord, which is aimed at forcing Iran to return to compliance or potentially face the reimposition of international sanctions. They later suspended the action” we see the setting that the EU is sanctifying the Iranian actions, whilst diminishing the powers to stop Iran, this is a path that EU (et al) want this to happen, there are forces that want destabilisation of the Middle East and Iran having a nuclear options achieves that. 

And that is not the end of the EGO of the EU, when we see “EU’s top diplomat said that he remains “determined to continue working with the participants of the JCPOA and the international community to preserve [the deal]” and we see that this was three months ago, all whilst since then  we see no later than yesterday ‘EU Vows Greater Efforts to Safeguard Nuclear Accord’ (source: Financial times) we need to realise that this imbalance will have larger consequences in the Middle East and the players are not of the cooperative type (read: the EU and Iran). So even as Saudi Arabia is not looking forward to becoming a nuclear power, they are pushed by a larger group into this direction, and I wonder why this is. The stated setting that adding to the nuclear pool was to be stopped by nuclear forces is now setting a stage where an entire corridor from India to Israel is nuclear loaded. How is this a good idea ever? Consider India v Pakistan, Iran v Saudi Arabia & Israel, this can only end in disaster and as I personally see it the EU ego is not ready to deal with the fallout from this (literally so), as such I wonder why a larger group of nations is not standing pro-Saudi Arabia or anti-Iran in this (which of the two does not really matter). So as Al Jazeera gives us “Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions date back to at least 2006, when the kingdom started exploring nuclear power options as part of a joint programme with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council”, they fail to give us the reasoning that Saudi Arabia “Saudi Arabia’s population has grown from 4 million in 1960 to over 31 million in 2016”, as I see it, power requirements have grown somewhere between 300%-500%, making Nuclear power one of the remaining options in the short term for Saudi Arabia, Iran on the other hand has been clear about becoming a nuclear power weapons wise, Al Jazeera also does not give us the fact that Saudi Arabia openly stated that they prefer not to have Nuclear weapons, but if Iran has them, Saudi Arabia feels forced to have them as well, making Iran the instigators in all this, yet the EU is seemingly oblivious to this. I wonder why? So when we look at the Financial Times again and see “He pointed to the beginning of discussions in 2003, which led to the conclusion of JCPOA and said, “It took 12 years to break the differences and to cut a deal. It was a big success for effective multilateralism and it has been a success because the JCPOA has delivered on its promises.”” We see an absence. The absence is that it took only 3 years for the deal to be broken by Iranian violations, but it seems that this part is largely not shown in many places. Yet in all this Saudi Arabia is named the pawn. I wonder why?

So as Saudi Arabia is entering the nuclear stage soon enough, we need to worry in other ways too. The EU was massively ignorant, or perhaps from my point of view it was intentionally ignorant on all these Houthi forces (as well as Hezbollah) have been practicing their missile firing abilities on Saudi Arabia, who what happens when one of them is a nuclear one? What happens when Iran ‘accidentally’ misplaces two of them? One for Israel and one for Saudi Arabia? Where will we find these Eu ego’s? The issues we have seen over the past give rise to this train of thought and Iran is not above the act of misplacing items. Has anyone found all these misplaced drones yet that accidentally made it into Houthi hands?

When we see the amount of pussyfooting around Iran, we need to consider the trap we set up for ourselves, it does not make Saudi Arabia the pawn, it makes us all the payers of high priced oil, because when this goes bad, really bad he price of oil will be close to 400% of what it is today, so when you at the pump, you realise what is about to happen to your budget, all thanks to the ego of some EU officials who should have played hard ball from the start.

 

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July 13, 2020 · 17:07

The Iran and Judy show

We have seen the show, we applauded for Punch and his stick (we were kids after all), yet there is no punch this time around, punch was mixed with watermelons, pineapple, cranapple juice and blackberry juice, with a few added distilled options and he got served in a room a small meeting room on 405 East 42nd Street, New York. The meeting room had a limited population, primarily what most meeting rooms have in that building, so there is nothing special about that, and it is just like the meeting on the use of Sarin in Ghouta 2013, for some reason the important question of WHO was avoided by a whole range of paperback politicians (as well as spokespeople of the UN), so I am not surprised to see the next axe job in Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/qa-agnes-callamard-drone-strike-killed-soleimani-200711080404877.html). You see the stage is a lot larger and we need to be aware. Not the question, even as the staged outcome is not one anyone not Iranian can agree with, the stage is larger and that needs to get the forefront.

So even as there is no objection to the set ‘UN’s Agnes Callamard on drone strike that killed Soleimani’, anyone who has any clue on the massive amount of stages that Qasam Soleimani was connected to sets a stage we cannot agree with, so as the article gives us “I had been speaking with a number of experts for the last year or so about focusing one or more of my thematic reports to the UN on weapons, particularly those being tested or under development, and what these may mean for the future of policing, warfare and, ultimately, the protection against arbitrary killings.” Now consider ‘the protection against arbitrary killings’, we do not disagree with this premise, as to why the Houthi stage against Saudi Arabian CIVILIANS is a much larger stage. The fact that experts have given evidence that Houthi forces have no options for produce Iranian drones, they have no expertise in building the drone, deploying the drones and managing the inflight stagers of drones sets a much larger decor in all this, the report, or at least the Al Jazeera version of it, goes out of its way to make sure that Iranian involvement in all this is averted. Why is that?

It is also set to the question that gives us: “we have entered what I have described as the second drone age, characterised by an increasing number of states and non-state actors using them, and by drones becoming stealthier, speedier, smaller, more lethal and capable to be operable by teams located even thousands of kilometres away.” It is a decent answer and I find little to oppose it, yet the stage we see in the Middle East is largely avoided, and it cannot be avoided. It is the approach that we see with “operable by teams located even thousands of kilometres away”, the optionally avoided “operable by teams located beyond the strategy of the involved theatre” is the question, she is setting the stage of a limited amount of state actors, optionally invalidating the involvement by Iran, again, why is that?

Finally there is “Drones are not unlawful weapons. What need to be regulated is both the technological development and their usage. The use of drones … must be lawful under three bodies of law: The law of self-defence, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law.” No one disagrees with that, yet the stages in several fields is not the technological side, it is out there, it is the stage where players like Iran deploys their drones via Houthi and Hezbollah forces and the report (read: UN Essay) was written to avoid all that. In a stage where Iran has ignored the existence of both International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law, we see the need to chastise this report on a few lacking merits. 

So when Agnes Callamard gives us “Thus far, courts have largely refused to provide oversight to drones’ targeted killings extraterritorially, arguing that such matters are political, or relate to international relations between states and thus are non-justiciable. A blanket denial of justiciability over the extraterritorial use of lethal force cannot be reconciled with recognized principles of international law, treaties, conventions, and protocols, and violates the rights to life and to a remedy.” We find it hard to disagree with this, but in all this, the larger stage of proxy wars (and therefor Iran) is left out of the equation, out of a equation that matters NOW, so why is that?

It all coincides with “The killing of General Soleimani shows how dangerously close the world has been to a major and deadly crisis”, a stage whether valid or not is optional, but the lack of references that Saudi civilians have been under attack on well over half a dozen stages is left unexplained, as such we could wonder why the hatred of aka Eggy Calamari in regards to the Saudi people is not asked. This is the third report that attacks Saudi Arabia (without proper evidence) or negates the attacks on their civilians, all whilst those attacks were show with evidence and the stage of the refineries is show to a degree that it should have been impossible for Houthi forces to be THIS successful, the attack amounts to a person buying tickets to three different lotteries and getting the jackpot on all three of them, it is statistically so far out of reachable stages that it boggles the mood on how certain players were willing to put their name on such a disgraceful place of strategic thinking. 

I am left with the stage where the UN is massively setting the stage to Iranian needs, all whilst Iran has not now, not ever shown any humanitarian resolve, and there is decades of evidence in that bucket. So what is the UN, specifically Agnes Callamard playing at?

So as the article ends with “War is at risk of being normalised as a legitimate and necessary companion to peace. We must do all that we can to resist this deadly creep.” In that stage, can anyone explain why the absence of the actions of Iranian and Houthi forces give light of the avoidance of the deadly creep? No one disagrees that the entire drone stage is setting a much larger stage, a stage we never held before, yet doing so in a way that keeps a player like Iran out of reach of it does not really solve anything does it? And as for Qasam Soleimani? I mentioned his actions on several occasions, as such we need to read that UN Essay with a different light. The fact that the life and attacks under Soleimani does not get the 50 pages of disclosure is a much larger stage and optionally that is not up to the UN, but ignoring that whilst it matters as to why he was killed, optionally with the entire Iraqi stage as to why he was there in the first place is a little bit weird, but perhaps Agnes had some of that funky punch in the meeting room, I do not know, I am merely hazarding a speculation.

 

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July 11, 2020 · 20:34

The Price of knowledge

There was an article in the BBC two days ago, I kept it on the side as I wanted the knowledge to sink in. There is optionally nothing wring with the writer, yet the stage is flawed. The stage includes everyones favourite Essay writer with a matching political agenda, It’s Eggy Calamari. Although she apparently uses her altar ego identity Agnes Calamard at 405 East 42nd Street, New York. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53345885) gives us ‘Qasem Soleimani: US strike on Iran general was unlawful, UN expert says’, OK, we are in a stage where we need to differ between what is just and what is lawful, and I get that. Not all just actions are lawful and plenty of lawful actions are not just. That is how it has always has been, so what gives in this case? Well that part is seen with “the US had not provided sufficient evidence of an imminent threat to life to justify the attack”. Are these people for real? Qasem Soleimani was direct threat to Middle East stability every moment he was breathing. This is not some general like most nations have them, this was an absolute virtuoso in the art of terrorism wherever he went. 

So when we see “He was in charge of the Quds Force’s clandestine missions and its provision of guidance, funding, weapons, intelligence, and logistical support to allied governments and armed groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad”, we see that apart from whatever lawful way he had destabilising the Middle East, we also see that he funded three terrorist organisations, namely Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that is not enough evidence? These three are a constant threat to imminent threat of life any given day of the week. It seems to me that just like in previous attempts, Agnes Calamard is all about catering to the ‘concerns’ of Iran for some politicians to keep the conversation going for whatever needs these politicians have.

For those who are not in the know of General QS. Let’s take a look. First is 2019, when we consider Iraq, we are given “Baghdad: The Iraqi people refuse the pro Iranian personalities”, I will let you guess what happens next, next we see “Soleimani traveled to Iraq aiming to convince various political parties to maintain Mohammed Shia’ Sabbar al-Sudani? as the new candidate for the prime ministry, the Al-Arabiya website reported on December 16. Al-Sudani? is member of the Islamic Dawa Party led by former Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maleki who is charged with embezzlement, corruption, murder and terrorizing his opponents. al-Sudani? was also a minister in Maleki’s cabinet. Another candidate is Ghosi Al-Sahih. He was a minister in Adel Abdol Mehdi’s cabinet and close to Nouri Al-Maleki. Following his nomination for the PM post, the Iraqi people protested in numerous cities including Baghdad, Naseriyah, Najaf and Basra.” The issues becomes that Qasam Soleimani is not a diplomat, he doesn’t negotiates, he hands out ultimatums and if they do  not know that at the UN, then those people have become slightly less than useless. 

We can go back in time, 2018, 2017, 2016, Qasam Soleimani was there dispersing his brand of justice through the powerful arms of terrorist organisations in the Middle East. That can all be set to the stage of a direct threat to life, an imminent threat to life and an absolute waging of war against civilians. So when we see two botched reports (as I personally see it) against Saudi Arabia, relying on cone cure and ignoring the lack of evidence and now we see her making a black letter law call? I wonder who is paying her ticket, I am not much for conjecture but this is the third case that calls for an investigations into the acts of Agnes Calamard, the fact that this is not happening, implies that certain people require the need for Middle Eastern imbalance and who does that serve? In this economy it actually serves no one but the ones needing funds to go in specific directions for a longer time to come, whilst the need cannot be shown. I would ask the people at Palantir, but they are too busy going public regarding their shares (I am not stating that this is illegal or a bad call).

We can hide behind the price of knowledge, but the actions of Qasam Soleimani are well documented for close to half a century and the opposition got to him before he made a mess of Iraq as well. I reckon that this is the part that upsets them optionally more then taking out the financier of three terrorist organisations, and those are the three we openly know about, there is enough to indicate Qasam Soleimani in dozens of other cases, other fund distributing actions. In most cases he merely approved them, he was not directly involved and we will never find any, including his hands in the entire Yemeni situation, which is interestingly not investigated. Can anyone tell me how 50+ Iranian drones and 200+ Iranian missiles got into Houthi hands without him knowing and approving it? #Just-asking

 

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July 7, 2020 · 03:40

Light reading

We all have those moments, when the reading gets tough, because we decided to take a stab at Umberto Eco’s the Name of the Rose, James SA Corey’s Tiamat’s Wrath or Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, we tend to require some light reading, in this I am no different, although, my choice was ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2019’ the US Department of State to provide to Congress a full and complete annual report on terrorism for those countries and groups meeting the criteria of the Act.  It is here that I found a few items that made me wonder, I’ll merely look at one of them.

Now, the important part in all this is the fact that we need to consider what constitutes ‘a complete annual report’, I need to set it in that way, for the simple reason that the application of ‘complete’ is not always a given in some settings. This piece of light reading is set to 304 pages, so I will safe you the state of affairs in a few items and focus on an immediate issue that could be seen as a direct danger and not merely to the US.

Hezbollah, is there another one?

The US Department of State names them Hizballah and then gives us “Aka the Party of God; Islamic Jihad; Islamic Jihad Organization; Revolutionary Justice Organization; Organization of the Oppressed on Earth; Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine; Organization of Right Against Wrong; Ansar Allah; Followers of the Prophet Muhammed; Lebanese Hizballah; Lebanese Hezbollah; LH; Foreign Relations Department; FRD; External Security Organization; ESO; Foreign Action Unit; Hizballah ESO: Hizballah International; Special Operations Branch; External Services Organization; External Security Organization of Hizballah”, OK, fair enough, they are known in several ways, so we get the entire list of references and no one will ever object to clarity. Yet then we see “In September 2018, Brazil arrested a Hizballah financier, and in December 2018, tunnels reportedly built by the group were discovered on Israeli territory along the boundary with Lebanon. In September 2019, Hizballah launched attacks directly on the Israeli military, firing anti-tank missiles targeting an army base and vehicles near the border. 

Strength: Hizballah has tens of thousands of supporters and members worldwide. 

Location/Area of Operation: Lebanon and Syria”

This is all true, yet it is incomplete. The entire setting to Hezbollah in Yemen is overlooked, intentionally or not is not important. 

The first source is Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-group/saudi-led-coalition-says-hezbollah-fighters-killed-in-yemen-battles-idUSKBN1JL0YR). They give us ‘Saudi-led coalition says Hezbollah fighters killed in Yemen battle’ in June 2018 “Forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition have killed eight members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group in Yemen in battles with the Iran-aligned Houthis, the coalition said on Monday. Hezbollah officials could not immediately be reached for comment.” In addition we see ‘Yemen’s Houthi rebels raise nearly $300,000 for Hezbollah’ in 2019 and the entire setting continues until deep into 2020. As I personally see it, the Area of Operation has been proven (via several sources) to include Yemen and that is overlooked. In 2019 there are over half a dozen sources giving us news of Hezbollah in Yemen, I see that as a massive reason for actions and identification, especially as several sources name Hezbollah as the trainer/co-operating partner in the missile attacks on Saudi Arabia.

It gets to be worse if some sources can be trusted (unchecked), When we see ‘Hezbollah Isn’t Just in Beirut. It’s in New York, Too. The trial of a senior operative reveals the extent of the terrorist organization’s reach in the United States and Canada.’ We need to equally question “But last month, the criminal prosecution and conviction in New York of the Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani revealed disturbing new information about the extent of Hezbollah’s operations and activities in the United States and Canada.” The issue is as I see it a lot larger, it is not enough that they are recognised as a terrorist force, yet the lack of mentions of their activities outside of the Middle East in 2019 is a rather large factor, especially if their activities in the US, Canada and Europe were published by media sources. The British newspaper ‘the Telegraph’ (OK, not the greatest reliable source) gives us ‘Europe has not faced up to the threat of Hizbollah’ with the added text “Iran’s primary terrorist proxy group, Lebanese Hizbollah, has been deploying operatives to Europe for many years.” We can add text after text, yet the question in all this becomes, why is the ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2019’ incomplete? As I personally see it, it is an ‘incomplete annual report’, all this whilst this year there are added factors, that give rise to the fact that the Houthi forces as well as Hezbollah has been firing drones and missiles on civil targets in Saudi Arabia making them a much larger threat and optionally the proven threat that Israel has always claimed them to be. 

Light reading or not, when the item is set to complete, I say, it is not. I wonder if I am the only one claiming this and the only one claiming that Hezbollah is a much larger problem than the US Congress is being made aware of. I wonder why?

Country-Reports-on-Terrorism-2019-2

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June 28, 2020 · 14:42

Where are we at?

That is the question I am throwing out there and as I am sitting in a mall enjoying a large cappuccino, I see the phrase “your safety is our concern” pass by, yet is that so? I am not opposing it, yet in the same stage the phrase “Our safety is your concern” is equally valid. We might ignore it, we might oppose it and for the most, the pussies in the field are all about ignoring the safety of others, their ego’s are all about setting the stage of what THEY need, whilst disregarding the simplest safety. I get it, it is not. Normal flu, but the realisation needs to be on the foreground of EVERY person around, and it is not, it there is one certainty, then it was seen in the scenes I personally witnessed yesterday. Th world moves on and whilst we see another clambake article on the hardships of Yemen, we need to realise that the Coronavirus will hit there a lot harder, it is not merely the stage of “5 yeas of hunger, 5 years of war” that the BBC gives us (they make no false claims there), we see that Saudi Arabia is trying to raise $2.41 billion in aid. In all this we see that the European support is dwindling down, support after support project is shutting down, the money is gone and pleads from the UN is seemingly falling on deaf ears. And the noise the people like Andrew Smith are making does not help anyone, even less the Yemeni people. So whilst we are given partial parts on Scotland by the Campaign Against Arms Trade, we simply ignore the massive support that the Houthis are giving by Iran. Do you think that this was was going on if Iran was not involved? If anything we could give out the considerations that the Yemeni war is going on because of Andrew Smith and his band of rascals. We see the accusations on both sides and we can draw a parallel to our own Corona issues, the  entire matter is in a stage of imbalance and the Yemeni people are paying the price. And it is important to see that this was not due to the Saudi intervention, they were asked by the rightfully elected government, a small titbit that is set not mentioned often enough, and now that the Houthis after 3 years are getting better in shooting their missiles, the mess will escalate faster and larger. The problem is not whether the Saudi government gets the support they need, it becomes the question on why full support was not given 3 years ago, now that the Yemeni children are dying left, right and centre, we are all in a stage of “Awwww!”, yet this has been going on for years and for the longest time no one cared, there is merely the presented concerns on these ‘dastardly Saudi’s and their guns’, whilst our concern should have been on ending the blatant disregard fo lives that Iran was ensuing (and ensuring). As I see it, the Saudi coalition had the high ground and even as the media is now calling it the Saudi Arabian led intervention, the Saudi coalition does include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Sudan, and it also used to include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. This thing was always a lot bigger then we thought it was whilst the sources are clear to ignore the Iranian involvement and setting the stage of opposition to a revolutionary committee, the Houthi forces and the pro Sales Houthi. Did you think that this stage would still exist without Iran? We ignore the larger stage and we help it coming of age, killing thousands of children, we have due to our inactions blood on our hands and we are in a stage of ignoring that part.

Just like the corona virus, we seemingly push the responsibility onto others, whilst our actions did matter all along, but feel free to ignore that part and when you see more people die in Yemen. On TV tonight, feel free to switch to Big Brother, hoping to see one of the girls taking a shower, your life almost seem perfect, so enjoy the nightmares you have from prolonging a war that could have ended in 90 days, and consider that someone is feeding the houthi forces ballistic missiles, especially in light that thee isn’t a building left standing to produce these bad boys in the first place. Materials that the Houthi forces could not own or afford, they have them by the dozen (cheaper that way), in a stage where they have no economy, they have spend more on weapons, missiles and drones than a nation like Sweden could afford, did no one realise that part of the equation? A setting of imbalance that players like the CAAT is fuelling and no one takes notice.

When the children of Yemen start chanting “Our safety is your concern”, which excuse will a person like Andrew Smith offer? He’ll probably know someone to blame, but the fault is in us all. Iran should have been dealt with well over 10 years ago, but we were all fooled by a mediocre puppet all whilst the battle hardened IRGC was ignored, in that regard our inaction should pave an interesting highway to hell.

 

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June 22, 2020 · 04:00

The start of a joke

We all have these moments, it all starts with a joke, and 15 months later the joke can walk. There is within us all an innate ability to rely on the absence of proper decorum. It is nothing serious so to say, one might remember the story on how Peter Dinklage broke his neck on a ladder whilst climbing a Bonsai tree. The so-called joke is lost on us, that is until we know what a Bonsai tree is. No matter how we feel, the side of what is called inappropriate jokes is within us all, and the funny part of it is that for the most there is no malice attached to it. That is actually an important part. So as we became part of the Politically Correct humour brigade we threw away a side of us, we actually became less. 

That sense of humour is actually an important side, not because it matters, but because it does not. It is in that flair that we see ‘America trying to ‘rule the world’, says Russian spy chief’, the man is incorrect (ofcourse), yet the feeling has been brought and we need to see the American failing to a much larger degree. We might consider the quote “Russia doesn’t trust what the British government says about the Salisbury poisonings” and Sergei Naryshkin would want us to believe that this is what it is, but it is not all and by no means the focus of what needs to be. You see, even as we know that greed driven America is on its last legs, we have no real idea on how far along Russia, China and India are on that track. They are far along, just the ‘how far’ is not a given and it matters, it matters a great deal. You see the interview on the BBC gives us an interesting quote: “Using weapons like cyber attacks and disinformation, the European Union only recently accused Russia of a campaign of disinformation over the Coronavirus. Why is Russia doing this?” This in a light of massive misreporting by the EU members themselves? And the part where he basically accuses Russia is another matter. I actually do not know whether it is correct or incorrect, what I do know is that I have not seen the evidence, as such I do not trust any of it. Evidence is key and the BBC knows this, as such the question as asked is giving us a stage that is not about Russia, but on the non-reliability of the BBC, does that make sense? 

Now, as for the misreporting, if the EU is setting itself so high above others, it seems only fair that Russia would have every issue of IT and data collection that is in equal if not on greater measure than the EU (or America for that part). I am not stating that their technology is flawed, but they have less resources committed to technology and data collection, that much can be seen on any tourist trip to the good old CCCP. And in that same setting when we see Russian hospitals, we might notice a lack of computer driven states, as such data collection is all a bust. 

It is a choice Russia made by America letting them not be able to buy any American computers, or so the story goes. Even as we see one side, we forget about the other side. I am not claiming that Russia is innocent, I am claiming that we do not see the whole picture and the BBC interviewer reminds me on a conversation I once had with a protestant Pastor, And I stated: “We both serve the lord, you in your way, I in the way he wanted it to happen”, it is nice to claim thesis of real truth, but that side tends to be undetermined. And it also sets the tone that god needs to be served, by what standard, on whose call? Where did he say that this was so?

From the cold war I would see Sergei Naryshkin as my opponent, yet this is not the cold war, and that does not mean that Sergei is no longer my opponent, but there is a larger issue over the last weeks where we have to wonder who the BBC serves, as I see it, they serve the people a lot less, so who are their stakeholders and shareholders? So in that matter, who took a long hard look at the BBC Bitesize GCSE Business Studies? I am merely asking. Or we might look at the fact that Freud could not get into the nightclub because he forgot his ID, or perhaps what does Freud says comes between fear and sex? Funf! That last joke made no sense unless you know German. And that is where we are, it is not lost in translation, it is that some media is intentionally depriving us of the translation that needs to be.

And we actually have to be aware. It is easier if we turn to Russia (as less speak it), and we will be offered pancakes whenever we set that stage (it is a ‘blin’ joke) and here we need to see that translation software could not see the difference. That is the story, the sources state that Russia at present has a debt that is only 0.04% of the American debt and that is a gamechanger. In all honesty, I personally do not believe it, but the truth of the matter is that I actually do not know, Russia does not hand its budget choices to the media and the ones they do give are debatable on a few sides. And in that stage is America, it is on its final legs and they have no plan to take care of the 25 trillion they owe. So in that approach we would see that ‘America trying to ‘rule the world’’, is incorrect, they merely are trying to bleed others to the same degree, or find a way to dampen the economic bleeding that they are facing and that is a tall order, in that it seems that larger companies are setting pressure on governments to let them continue the financial bleeding, yet when we realising that the US government gets (at best) 10 cents on the dollar, these board members are setting pretty for the next 3-4 generations, so where was the BBC to this level of disinformation?

I am (in part) grasping at straws, there are sides that I cannot prove, as such it is to be seen as speculation and I am not telling you different. I am speculating and it matters, but ask yourself, how much digging has the media done lately? It does not prove me right, but it should give you a few questions. And that is all before China is added to the equation. Yes, for the most we are focussing on Huawei, but China is to some degree an actual danger to the west. Focussing on Huawei is stupid, but the risk of China actually exists. There is in part the stage where American business are colouring Huawei black which opposes black lives matter (a joke, I could not resist), but the colour of fear is there, and those in fear are losing their mind with the American economy skating so close to the abyss and that part is ignored by too large a population. All this especially in a stage where this holiday could end up being one of the darkest in American history, and that is before people realise that the US is facing the fear of trainloads of evictions right as we see new spikes in the Coronaviral population. And this part is not small, the US is looking at no less than 3% of its population becoming homeless if rents are not protected, a stage no nation has ever faced in history to this degree. 

As such the General owing rent is not a general, he is a left tenant. Yes another joke but if we consider who are in the hot zones for rent, my view is not that far off. So why the jokes? Jokes are a form of creativity, wordplay and sometimes out of the box thinking and to evade the traps we are given in 2020 we need all three to stay standing. We can blame so many people, but in the end blame does not get us anywhere, and lets face it, the Russians will at most send us pancakes. Consider that I am on average an average person (misplaced humility), in the stage of 2 years I came up with new 5G IP, a stage of optionally setting the work environment towards 3 videogames and one expansion and I came up with the theoretical stage of a new weapon that takes care of the Iranian fleet. I am merely one person, so what else is out there and how much IP and ideas are floating around whilst some players are servicing their needs through the speculated approach of misinforming others?

So if we continue on that same track we need to get the joke legs and see how it solves it for us. Yet expecting others to solve dilemma’s is a two edged sword and we need to be aware of those dangers. On the grand scheme of things, the Coronaviru is not the danger, I am not worried about the 10% dying, I am worried of the 90% that has nowhere to go, as such we need the economie on a much better schale and in that we need to stop greed, we need to halt it completely, we cannot afford the stage it leaves the others. I am capitalist enough to not diminish it completely, because greed is a forward momentum force as well, yet the idea that Apple is now a 1.5 trillion dollar business, whilst their stores are nothing more than glorified display cases and I have been waiting for my laptop for 6 week, because it all gets made in the US, and the stores merely point (for the most) towards setting up an online sale should have been raising questions with over half a dozen governments, the stage is too weird and they get tax returns that no company has ever dreamed of, we need to change and the politicians are staging this through levels of inactivity that are unheard of.

And now as the economy collapses, we see protests, yet they go nowhere, because the tax laws remain untouched to the largest degree. So these politicians might be deductible, but they remain taxing on their best days.

In this I feel it is appropriate to end the story with a da dum dum.

Happy monday everyone and remember that if you wake up today before 17:00 you did something wrong.

 

 

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June 19, 2020 · 01:39

Contemplations

We all contemplate, we consider, we weigh and we make decisions after the contemplation. Yet it is not always that simple, at times the contemplation comes after what preceded. I cannot continue my novel until the laptop arrives, and even as it is completely unrelated to the idea I had for an optional TV series, the idea is still sound, as such I am considering whether the elements in it can be added to my novel, I am only at 60,000 words, it is something that I have to contemplate. We all have similar issues, it is notalways about writing, or playing a game, some contemplations are serious, some are not, yet they too tend to refract into serious parts of our lives, even if we are not initially aware of it. 

It is not the only thing that I am contemplating. I have seen over the last few days all kinds of messages, ‘tweaked’ advertisements and messages of a sort on how we can change business decisions after the Coronavirus. I am baffled on the premise of ‘new approaches to business’, I am willing to accept that new business is where you find it, yet the oversized issue is misreporting, mismanagement of government funds and mismanaging of attempts to look cool, all whilst we know that actual scientists need actual time to investigate. The greed driven elements before the Corona situation had created empty shells with the idea that some time in the future it would fix itself, all whilst those elements knew perfectly well that these things never fix themselves, they are merely pushed onto the next administration. An abuse on a global scale and the people see the impact now, they now get to live in a new situation and they elected the people that put them in that position. These governments never went out to muzzle the EU to the degree needed, as such well over € 3,000,000,000,000 in debt, as such the EU had no reserves left for what is coming now. And it did this after it was clear that the first trillion did not do what they hoped, yet they wanted it, because money has to roll and as such another stint of spending became the concept of normal. All this, whilst the proper stage of properly setting up tax laws for corporations have never been done, delayed decade after decade. All this whilst the EU had no issues to reject (in November 2019) any move to show names of those using tax avoidance a stage where the people would see the proposed situation where firms had to reveal profits made and taxes paid in EVERY EU nation they operated in, I reckon that the FAANG group has powerful friends all over the EU, and these 12 members should be looked at with a lot more scrutiny. The FAANG group is avoiding an estimated $500,000,000,000 a year, as such the irony is laughable, it would have paid for the issue they face now and in that same setting education and housing in Europe would be close to fixed, a stage history never had before. Yet, those with a low tax shelter option were happy to reject, they included Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic. We all see the damage, but we are all so relieved that Apple is now a $1,500,000,000,000 company, Yes, at what expense? It is food for contemplation.

So as we see not on how we can work from home and what we need to do it properly, I wonder what happened to all those tax reductions in the 90’s so that we could work from home, there is an apparent lag in what was regarded as enough and is now showing to be inadequate. So whilst some applaud ‘EU did not witness any major internet congestion’, it comes without the mention that Netflix and YouTube slowed down services to avoid congestion, apparently full services are not possible, but that is a story for another time (in the very far future if it was up to them). So whilst BEREC (an EU regulator) was all about the reporting mechanism to monitor internet traffic, we see that I gave you the links yesterday to other people who see that most of them cannot even report the amount of people getting the Coronavirus and optional those dying from it. As such we see another optional example that human lives matter less than any danger to what is laughingly called ‘the economy’, weird is it not? 

OK, I agree that one is not the other, but it seems that when the economy is in danger a whole additional range of support services come into play, when the lives of people are on the line, this support is seemingly missing. The EU shows even more signs of lag on different levels. In other news (as stated in my previous blog) we see Humanitarian actions that are empty and other pacifist actions that are useless, yet their actions pushed close to $13,000,000,000 out of UK and US hands and handed it to both Russia and China, in addition there are several damaged deal thatSaudi Arabia had with Germany, but I have no numbers on that. So whilst I am not anti-Humanitarian, I am a pragmatist and it seems that hollow actions are just that hollow in a time and age that none can afford, even now, we seem to be utterly anti-Saudi Arabia, yet there is no factual reason to do this. In opposition we see that the actions against Iran are close to non-existent, all whilst Forbes reported yesterday that there are 100 new naval vessels in Iran, it seems that there is a lot to contemplate, especially as some EU players are hiding behind the Nuclear deal like it is a Santa wish list, all whilst we see from several directions, some less than a day old ‘New tensions dim hopes for salvaging Iran Nuclear deal’ and ‘New IAEA report is reminder of old problems with the Iran Nuclear Deal’ a stage that shows that Iran does what it pleases and takes no time to be civil about it, when it is conventional it is one thing, the nuclear side is a direct threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia and the EU players are willing to burn those two elements if they look better, because Iran will make some bullshit excuse on how it was not their fault, that it was a fanatic and they possibly misjudged the situation and those European players will all nod in agreement, their pockets optionally lined with income never earned. And we are all letting it happen.

It is perhaps our greatest flaw, we do not act when we should, we let greed driven motivations overwhelm our needs and we seek to blame someone when we all let this happen, as contemplations go, we have to think through a lot at present and we need to do it faster.

 

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June 14, 2020 · 19:34

What others decide

We see it every day, there is a side that withholds resources, because it is theirs to do so, and there is a side where people decide to keep resources away from others for reasons like margins, profit and needs. They are at times not nice decisions, but the decision was theirs to take, at times we have to accept that. Now we need to consider what the wisdom is in keeping information away from us. Not intelligence, that is up to those grim boffins to decide on, butthe events that have taken place and the news decides to not inform us, so what is the wisdom there and how does that reflect on them? 

ABC seemingly does not inform us, yet the BBC gives us ‘France’s ancient burial brotherhood’, Reuters has no mention of it as far as I can tell, yet the BBC gives us ‘What will clothes shopping look like’, and as I mention the BBC a few times, they have nothing either.

It is Al Jazeera that gives us ‘Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed missile targeting Najran’. The news 17 hours old gives us that Houthi forces are still targeting Saudi civil population and the people in charge of bolstering peace (or so they claim) are seemingly making sure that this news does not reach us. In that news given to us we get the words from the coalition spokesperson Turki al-Malki gives us the part that the missile was launched from Saada, all factual given. What Al Jazeera does not give us (for decent reasons) is that there is still uncertainty how much support the Houthis get from Iran, how ‘supportive’ Hezbollah remains in all this. Elements that matter, but too many sources are intentionally blind to that part of the equation. In Yemen the bulk of all UN support will falter due to a lack of funding, as such the stage of humanitarian aid will close down leaving the Yemeni population to die.

Even now as Iran makes claims that the Iranian-Russian ties serve international security, we see a faltering level of information by the newsgroups. Even as the source can be debated, the information lacks scrutiny because the public was not informed, it has not been informed for months at a time, as some ego driven politicians had the nuclear accords carrot and they needed that carrot to be looking as sweet as possible, and keeping people in the dark on what was actually happening was a first. 

Yet the Russian collaboration with Iran gives Iran the nuclear parts that they need and the Yemeni pressures are almost an insuring valve that the parts are to be used, Saudi Arabia is between the sea of Dammam and a hard case and its so called allies are floundering the support in the empty air. A stage where Iran is the larger evil and the news is either embargoed, or stupidly keeping the people in the dark on the actual setting. Because shopping for clothes is where the actual newsworthy part is at, or is it? 

We can point and blame all we like, but the Houthi events are a larger stage and the news is not covering it, why not? The largest humanitarian collapse in history is about to happen to a nation and the people are left in the dark, optionally merely because of the resources.

A stage we all made happen, and we now need to be blind of the actions that follow, why will we never learn?

We might not have resources, we might not have power, these things happen, yet when we accept that information is filtered to what others decide what we need to know, that is when we give up our own personal power, when did we decide that this was ever going to be a good thing?

 

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