Tag Archives: Jamal Khashoggi

December 10, 2022 · 11:33

Ruler of law goes metric

Yes, we all have settings that are part of us, for the most the rule of law is accepted by nearly all. But when do we realise that it is not that simple? There is the notion that this rule of law has an Imperial and a metric setting and that is the core of what we face today. I got my view from the Canadian CBC (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-khashoggi-lawsuit-dismissed-1.6676798). There we get ‘U.S. judge dismisses lawsuit against Saudi prince over Khashoggi killing’, s0 at what point does the US set the stage for events that took place in an alleged Saudi environment in Turkey no less? Lets look at the simple facts, Jamal Khashoggi is as far as I can tell a Saudi dissident, not an American citizen and I do not care what was planned. It never got to be. This person has gotten more ‘alleged’ assistance in a month than most American citizens have seen in a decade. Then we are given “U.S. District Judge John Bates suggested he was reluctant to throw out the lawsuit but had no choice given the Biden administration’s decision.” And I will get back to this in a moment. We are also given “Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in October 2018 by Saudi agents in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul” which is the supporting lie. You see, his body was never found, there is absolutely no evidence that he was dismembered, or killed. For all we know he is spending the rest of his days with his new mistress of 19 years old in a luxurious hotel on Bora Bora. It is equally speculative, is it therefor more wrong?

And we do take notice of “Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice said in a November court filing that the Biden administration had determined that Prince Mohammed, “as the sitting head of a foreign government, enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts as a result of that office.”” It is the stage that was always going to happen, there was no evidence of any kind, mere speculation and Daily Mail categorised forms of speculated innuendo that never goes anywhere. Lets be clear, I cannot prove the innocence of certain people, but I cannot prove their guilt either and a person is innocent until proven guilty. That is the law and there is no metrical version of that, it is imperial, it is black letter law and that is what the law is. The media wants you to forget this so that they can cater to the digital dollar a little longer. And you are the tool they are using for that. In the mean time Jeff Bezos (via Andy Jassy) denied himself an annual 6 billion and change going up to close to $30 billion in full deployment mode. This is the damage Amazon did to themselves and it is fine by my book, although a little less nice as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia decided not to buy it either. My loss and I get that. But below all this is a stage where the US is in a lot more problem. You see, they desperately need the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia assist them with cheap oil and I have stated this before. Why would they do that? The US has proven themselves to be a fleeting and unreliable ally to say the least. Do not take my word for that, look at the victims in Yemen and Syria and ask yourself, what did the US achieve? Close to nothing and now that they are at the abyss, the hangman’s rope has a very uncomfortable feeling. And as I see it, should the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia want it and limit the shipments of Crude Oil by an additional mere 1 million barrels a day, the US will explode in a stage of anarchy, just before Christmas and that realisation is at stake. The US overplayed its hand for at least two years and now we see that anarchy could become the turnstile of events. So do not think this is something that President Biden started. This is the stage 4 previous administrations colluded under (sort of) and yes, former president Trump might be the only one trying to turn it around but it would have been too little and optionally too late too. The previous congresses made sure of that. They were all too ego driven to see that impact grow and grow. And before you consider the immense state of “Khashoggi had criticised the crown prince’s policies in Washington Post columns. He had travelled to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain papers he needed to marry Cengiz, a Turkish citizen.” You see the US had the option to make him a citizen from 2017 onwards but they chose not to do that (optionally it was in the hands of Khashoggi). So for over a year there was a stage where he had the option to make a change, optionally the US intelligence office could have prevented it if there was a voice, but there wasn’t one. This implies (to me) that there was no real warning, no real danger which now sheds a light on a lot of issues and it does not look good for the US. Hiding behind some metric version of the law was never going to work well and I have highlighted close to half a dozen issues from the beginning and the fictional book of Blood and Oil merely worked for my case. When you see all these articles, all these media evidence and it comes with words like ‘alleged’ and ‘could have’, how wrong do you think I am? 

It is sad watching governments trying to cater to ego and to the clear need of a commodity that their non-allies have, it is a pathetic view and it is not getting better any day soon.

I will let you investigate that, just be sure you rely on the sources you can rely on.

 

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June 26, 2022 · 23:55

What happens when colours do not mix?

That is a weird question, it is actually a conundrum and as such we leave it out in the grass. A few hours ago the middle easters eye gives us ‘Saudi Arabia lifts unofficial trade embargo off Turkiye’, a stage and a half as I would think. There we see “That boycott was primarily due to the clash of foreign policy goals between Riyadh and Ankara in the region, with the two backing opposing sides in Libya and disagreeing over the legitimacy of the government in Egypt installed after the 2013 military coup. Turkiye was also pushing to bring to justice those responsible for the murder of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, in which it maintained that the Saudi government and Crown Prince were involved.” Which was what was expected. Whether it is dialogue, party lines or something else, the language is not a surprise. What was interesting is the article a month ago called ‘Did Turkey bow down to Saudi Arabia?’ (At https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220509-did-turkey-bow-down-to-saudi-arabia/). There we are given “Bilateral relations were also badly strained after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad at the Kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018. At the time, Erdogan accused the “highest levels” of the Saudi leadership of ordering the murder, but did not name any official”, as well as “Khashoggi’s murder triggered a global outcry against the Kingdom and Bin Salman, who is its de facto ruler. Turkey insisted on seeking justice in Khashoggi’s case and commenced legal proceedings; the CIA accused Bin Salman of ordering the murder. However, no country or international body has taken even a small punitive measure against Saudi Arabia.” Yet this is not quite correct is it? In the first we see “the CIA accused Bin Salman of ordering the murder” which they never did, they stated that it was highly likely (which does not constitute evidence), The UN report is out in the open, so you can check it for yourself. Then we get “no country or international body has taken even a small punitive measure against Saudi Arabia” and there lies the rub. You see if you had properly examined the UN report you would see that there was no evidence and the number one piece of evidence was that the report NEVER gave a proper digital report that the voice was confirmed and without doubt the voice of Jamal Khashoggi. We saw spin after spin, but no one properly digitally examined and tested the tapes. There is even an issue with the full tape, no report gives us any understanding that a tape even existed, merely bytes of audio and those were not properly forensically tested to ascertain the identity of the voices. When you see these two elements in a United Nations report no less, you will start to see what I saw within an hour of that UN report being made public. A hack job and a bad one at that. So after the blunders that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan committed, first with the EU, then with US, then Russia (S-400 missiles) it comes over that he need all the friends he can get and he will do whatever he can to not go under and he does not have that much options or any credibility as I personally see it. So when we see “Erdogan was enthusiastic about the meeting because he sees trade with Saudi Arabia as an important requirement for the revival of Turkey’s economy, and regards Riyadh’s political and diplomatic support as vital ahead of next year’s presidential election. He also knows that the catalyst for his country’s estrangement with the Saudis, the Arab Spring, has ended in all but name.” We need to realise that the only other option is China and China would want assurances, something Turkey has no option or intention to give. Commitment is not high on their calendar. And they need something now, it is not about “the revival of Turkey’s economy” it is about having a longer stand against whatever comes next. And now that Iran overstepped its options in Turkey, Turkey will see Saudi Arabia as the only option and they are not wrong. How this will play out? I cannot tell, it makes sense for Saudi Arabia to allows for trade with Turkey, it makes more sense for them to see all connections that nations have with Iran fade away. 

The media is to some degree monitoring what is happening here, but not to the degree I expected. You see there are a few options opening up for Saudi Arabia, and Turkey has to commit now, or learn that being alone with neighbours they sold short one way or another is not the way to go. For Saudi Arabia and the STC, Turkey is another option to get a true 5G middle east network up and going, optionally 2-3 years ahead of Europe and the US. As such STC could have surprisingly profitable franchises in Egypt and Turkey in the near future, it could set a new premise. It would also be the first time in history where the STC (and Saudi Arabia through it) would reach North Africa and optionally Southern Europe as well. Something that they never did before and that opens up more than Nokia, it speculatively opens up new options for Huawei as well. It is too early for predictions, but the idea that they grow by 50% before 2024 is not out of the question, especially if their foothold in Egypt and Turkey continues. A thought that people would have ridiculed in 2017 is now on the borders of reality. So when do colours not mix? When you never had the right colours in the first place, that is when. A stage we negated for too long a time and now with Turkey it comes to the forefront rather quickly.

613 seconds until Monday morning, enjoy!

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June 24, 2022 · 18:51

The size and shape of a stage

Yes that is at times what we face and it was weirdly enough Yahoo News that got me there. Their article ‘Biden’s Saudi Arabia trip denounced as ‘frightening and enraging’ by dissidents’ (at https://au.news.yahoo.com/bidens-saudi-arabia-trip-denounced-as-frightening-and-enraging-by-dissidents-140526416.html), and yet the small part ignored is that a dissident is a person who opposes official policy. So as the US is trying to make nice with the people they need, they are hindered by the people they do not need. So when we see “the street was in front of the Saudi Embassy, and its new name was Jamal Khashoggi Way.” So in all this, how much hay is being made by a nation (Brazil) where 100% more journalists were murdered in the last week? There is a lack of the 78 million articles, a lack of some CIA report (via the UN) that it is highly likely, there is a need to paint one person white, the other person black and hoping that no one will notice that Al Jolson was not African American. That is a stage we see, that is a stage people play for and we are caught in the middle. You see, the report was dubious in a few ways. It does not make the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia innocent, but it clearly shows that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud is not guilty. And this all takes a harder sharp turn because the person no one (well almost no one) gives a hoot about was a columnist for the Washington Post. And the setting merely escalates from there.  

So as we see the pressing need for the US to postpone its dollar default for as much as possible, it needs business with the KSA (it is close to the only one who can afford this), they need the oil from them to be cheaper, because the US does not have enough and they all need it yesterday and the people who opposed official policy are trying to make that impossible. 

I have nothing against dissidents, some are validly so, some are to make a quick buck and get out of the mess they were in. That first group needs consideration, yet beyond them getting out they need to realise that if the dollar defaults they could end up back in Riyadh and how will they fare then? So now we get Bethany al-Haidari of the Human Rights Foundation, who gives us “Now she is worried that Biden will be sending to authoritarians around the world the message that political expediency trumps core conviction. And while that may always be the case in the world of realpolitik, the images sure to emanate from Riyadh will starkly contrast the divide between American values and practices.” It is a valid point, yet the validity is under fire from the setting of values and practices where social commitments have lost to the profits of big business. And the US government is not innocent here either. I spoke out about the essential overhaul of tax laws 24 years ago, they all called me crazy, it would sort itself out. And now? The US national debt has surpassed the $30,500,000,000,000 They are now well over $5,000,000,000,000 past the point of no return. At this point they need to reduce debt by $500,000,000,000 per year and it would still take 3 generations for the debt to become manageable. What do you think will go out the window first? Values or practices? A setting where the larger gain for the US will be Elon Musk, they know it and that is why they hate him. Mobile and energy power in the hands of one man, one man who is seemingly a lot more clever than Bill Gates and Larry Ellison combined and one generation later.  The politicians are scared, they opened a door they refused to close and now they are setting down with a mess all over the place, because they could not adhere to values and they are left with the practices that re out there at tax laws that are still unadjusted. 

The USA is about to become a mess for well over two generations and the media is silent, because they want their digital dollars, it is all they have left and it does not adhere to values, merely to the painting of flames and flaming targets. Elon Musk can wait until desperation takes over, Google, Amazon and IBM can wait and over that time Microsoft will merely become more desperate to spin their failures. Big tech in a world that merely adheres to the practices that they can adhere to for their board members and share holders. That is the world that needs to appease  to either Bethany al-Haidari or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. I reckon that the Bethany al-Haidari in this world are figuring out that they will be getting the short end of the stick, one that was handed to big business, not merely big tech. And Biden might be the last president before the Dollar buckles completely and the US becomes a third world nation. 

Are you depressed yet? 

Good, you need to see what is coming and for the longest of times, even as the media is trying to spin that all is well, all is not well and all is getting worse. As I stated, I do not give one hoot. It was clear to me when I saw the UN report that this was a hack job, that this was a well articulated magician’s trick and in the end how much visibility did we see on the 42 murdered journalists in Brazil? Journalists, not some columnist. And that is before we realise that Turkey has it own skeletons in their closet and when that gets out in the open we see the media is not indifferent, it is and has been actively hostile towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as such the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can take its time and wait and watch the US go under one step at a time and at present quicker than several months ago. That is the reality, that is the impact of what some call realpolitik. It sounds nice on paper, but realpolitik is all about the practices, especially those who bring profit, values be damned. But the people who are lulled to sleep will see and face that part soon enough. 

So consider what you read and do your own research, do not take my word as gospel. I try to be as honest as possible, but I too adhere to practice more than value. I accept values and I admire those fighting for values, but in a place with 30 trillion in debt values will not last long, because every politician will see revenue as for the good of all and in that world people like Elon Musk are the options of tomorrow and no one has a better plan, because when that was an option the flaccid politicians saw it was easier to call me (and others) crazy and not in touch with reality, and that was not that long ago, these same people will now hide behind “It is difficult, it is a complex situation”, you tell me how I could see what was coming and I do not have an economy degree. I have three degrees, none in economy.

Enjoy your Friday and try to have a little fun.

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May 14, 2022 · 18:06

The bird and the cat

Yes, who has not heard of that setting, Tweety and the cat Sylvester, in real life duplicated by Twitter and fat cat Elon Musk. And in that setting most people will group behind the little budgie, yet is that a correct step? Reuters gives us ‘Musk says $44 bln Twitter deal on hold over fake account data’, the article (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-says-44-billion-twitter-deal-hold-2022-05-13/) gives us “Musk, the world’s richest person, decided to waive due diligence when he agreed to buy Twitter on April 25, in an effort to get the San Francisco-based company to accept his “best and final offer.” This could make it harder for him to argue that Twitter somehow misled him.” I have an issue here. Face accounts in Twitter have been the setting of conversation in many nations. 

Trolls, click farms, and many fake accounts, all thee to give people false impressions, to fake that some care about issues no one cares about and to create flames. The problem is that Twitter is (or should) be aware of this. The element that is overlooked is engagement, Some looked into a similar setting in Facebook and it seems nice that one can buy clicks, but when someone in Utah sees that they get 150,000 clicks and 65% are all in Sri Lanka (or some other vague location), who does it serve? The one buying the clicks, and the one facilitating the clicks and it has evolved in an actual economy. So when I see “This could make it harder for him to argue that Twitter somehow misled him”, I wonder just how delusional they are at Twitter. There is a larger need to have two books, one with all the numbers and one filtering for expected fake accounts and it is not some small issue, the numbers are deep in the double digits at present, and as far as I can tell, Twitter and its CEO Parag Agrawal should know better. And now that we see “The estimated number of spam accounts on the microblogging site has held steady below 5% since 2013, according to regulatory filings from Twitter, prompting some analysts to question why Musk was raising it now. “This 5% metric has been out for some time. He clearly would have already seen it … So it may well be more part of the strategy to lower the price,” said Susannah Streeter, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.” In this I wonder what (and how much) Susannah Streeter is getting paid for that view? I personally reckon that it has not been as low as 5% since 2 October 2018, when that columnist that no one gives a fuck about went missing, you know the one. And since the events Covid (2019) and The Russian invasion in Ukraine (2022) we are confronted with an even larger explosion of fake accounts. So when I see “The estimated number of spam accounts on the microblogging site has held steady below 5% since 2013”, my slightly less diplomatic view will be “Give me a fucking break please”. 

If there is one side where Parag Agrawal failed it will be to set a more realistic side to finding and creating a clear marker for fake accounts. Now, I get it, it will not be a simple setting, but I think we can agree that even Mother Goose will not tell the children in Digital Sleepy Town that 5% is realistic, no one is THAT delusional.

So when we see “prompting some analysts to question why Musk was raising it now”, the answer is rather simple, the analysts should have raised it themselves at any time since 2018 and who did? I reckon that list is rather short, perhaps non-existent.

So as some are willing to blame fat cat Sylvester, there are plenty of indications that Twitter is hiding behind some granny knowing that it was wrong from the very beginning. 

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April 6, 2022 · 19:57

The three day delay

Yes, it is not new, I had my go on this a few times, yet due to what we see now, after three days, it is time to renew this event. It started basically in 2014, the Yemen war became something serious and the west had no idea how to react. They reacted poorly and to make matters worse, events driven by Iran was kept out of the news. The people got a one sided story. Over time weapons sales went stale, were blocked and the defence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a setting of debate by people who had no clue what was going on, because the ego trippers needed their Iran peace accord through a nuclear deal, something that even now is still not done. Matters became worse when the west decided to spin the events around Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. So even as the press al invoked “By 16 November 2018, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.” In this that the CIA stated that is was highly likely that this had happened, but no evidence was EVER brought to light. No evidence that could survive the rigours of academic investigations. The essay by the United Nations did not help any, that is for certain. Then we get the hack of Jeff Bezos, a disgracefully inadequate report by FTI Consulting. It is important to take notice of the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/21078828/report-saudi-arabia-hack-jeff-bezos-phone-fti-consulting) that also gives us “Facebook’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos, for example, said that there was “no smoking gun” in the report. Some researchers said that FTI should have been able to analyze the encrypted file that the crown prince sent Bezos which reportedly hacked his phone. And one said he didn’t see evidence in the report to suggest that Bezos’ phone was hacked.” I believe that Jeff got hacked, but there is no clear evidence WHO did the job, but there were some wannabe reporters that were really happy to blame the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Even though several newspapers earlier that week showed that certain hacks allowed people to pretend they were someone else, and that too is missing from the FTI report. 

So we have all these negativity, projected on the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and now the US wants a favour? You have got to be shitting me!

So we get back to the article where we see “Why should America’s regional allies help Washington contain Russia in Europe when Washington is strengthening Russia and Iran in the Middle East?” And this is the larger folly, a stage where the wrong people cater to Iran, all whilst they require other stuff too, but you cannot get it both ways and now that China is stepping in gobbling up billions upon billions in sales and services, we see the US in a stage of denial. They now need cheap oil, all whilst the two largest suppliers are set to the mind that premium prices will do just as well. And I warned for these situations for years, but everyone was in denial. It would never come to that and now that it is coming to that, the US, the EU and others are in denial on what is required. So at present the oil prices are on the rise, just for how long is impossible to say, yet we also acknowledge that reserves are being used to stop the rise. Just how long until that stops? What do you think will happen when the reserves are gone, because most nations do not have that much in reserve. They can avoid the winter this year, but that will drain the reserves and even as they can build up some of those reserves during summer, winter 2022 will show to be the year that people will need to choose, be warm, avoid hunger and pay rent/mortgage and there is every consideration that many households will only be able to do one of the three, two if they are lucky. 

That is the direct impact of catering to the populist view, the price of adjusting one view for another, one deciding on what was likely, not what could be proven, ignoring what was proven (Iran attacks) and catering to something that is still not a reality (Iranian nuclear agreement) and Iran has clearly been catered to and now the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are telling you all that enough is enough. You want oil at a premium, you got it and at a premium means that within the next 12-15 weeks oil prices might get back to the $130 marker, at that point, how much will it cost you to get groceries, to get to work, to get home and to refuel? All that whilst these two nations are now looking at China to deliver defence systems. Slap upon slap upon slap and now 19 hours ago we were given ‘Iran Says U.S. Is Responsible for Stalled Talks on Reviving Nuclear Deal’, another fiasco and the involved political players are all in hiding as not to get painted with that fiasco. So when you wonder what happened to the oil prices, it is simple. Your government royally screwed up and gave you the bill for their failure. 

So good luck with that.

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February 3, 2022 · 00:02

Hatchet do your job

It is perhaps the first time that I ever felt shame to have given Amnesty International consideration. It is the first time that I saw a once good organisation fall from grace straight into a sewer, that is the Amnesty International I saw today.

I started to read their report ‘Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians’. The problem starts on page 14. There we see: “Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimizing the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession. In 1967, Israel extended this policy beyond the Green Line to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it has occupied ever since. Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.” Perhaps AI needs a historic education. In 1948, the Jewish population started to see the impact Germany had, the impact inaction from others had. The German European rock tour of 1939-1945 had caused a holocaust where an estimate of 6,000,000 jews were put to death, they were put to death using industrial methodology, a system NEVER used before and the Germans almost pulled it off, a complete act of genocide using industrial methodology. 

[speculative part] I believe that the allies feared what would come next, thousands of super angry Jews would hunt collaborators and antisemites in EVERY corner of Europe, it would halt European rebuilding for decades. It gave urge for a State of Israel as fast as possible. And in 1948, less than 2 years after the end of WW2 it became a reality.
So when was the last time any issue of this size was settled within a decade? 
[end speculative part]

The state of Israel was created and the first thing the jewish population needed to do was to ensure their SURVIVAL. They needed to make certain that the world could not complete what the Germans had started. And within 20 years the state of Israel was stronger, yet also angry. The millions of ‘resettled’ Jews learned that their places of living were now becoming the most sought after and most expensive real estate in Europe. Areas in Amsterdam, Munich, Paris, and many other cities were now worth a fortune, its inhabitants thrown away and cast aside.

That report does not give this, does it? The people of Israel were thrown from one place into another place, a place where everyone wanted them dead. A return to the fears of WW2. That part is not given to us either is it? The report gives us one mention of ‘Second World War’ it is in footnote 69. The report gives us First World War, yet I find no mention of WW2. I searched several other words, there is no mention making this report a joke. There was a real fear for the Israeli’s in the state of Israel, there was a real fear of genocide and AI casually paints over that setting like it never existed. The word ‘holocaust’ appears twice in a report of 280 pages, a setting that was the most real fear jews and the people of the state of Israel ever faced and that fear is still real today with the abundance of antisemitism all over the world and Western Europe, the report ignores this. And it seemingly casually edits the events. I find no mention of “Kill the Jews” a setting that the people of Israel see thrown at them from Palestine, from Iran, from Lebanon. Israel is surrounded by enemies of the state of Israel and the Amnesty International report is blatantly unaware of that, or does a real good job pretending to be ignorant. 

This is important, because this is what set the start of the State of Israel, the Jewish people accepted their own state, but it was set in a poisoned well, a well that the Allied forces set upon the world so that they didn’t need to deal with all the collaborators and antisemites in Europe, a setting still true today. It took me less then 5 minutes to get to this and yes, I did not read the entire report. Just like I never needed to read the whole story of Blood and Oil by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck a setting where journalists rely on fiction to get their wealth in. In the AI report we see “The following, by no means comprehensive, set of developments in the history of Palestine and Israel are pertinent to understanding the issues covered by Amnesty International’s report.” Interesting the the set of developments that I gave you all is not in their report. And that matters, WW2 was a catalyst of unimaginable proportions, to ignore that is to ignore the room where this political card game was played and this report is a political card game, to what end is not clear to me just yet. But just like the UN with their hatchet job on the Jamal Khashoggi case this report is equally dangerous. Certain people want to start a staged play, I do not know what stage or what play at present, but it is clear we are being played and that is a dangerous setting that the AI report gives us. 

It is a story dipped in misrepresented facts and that is perhaps the most dangerous game of all, because facts are one, but the underlying stream of events that led to these facts are in cases such as just equally important.

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December 11, 2021 · 19:16

A two sided sword

It is nice (novel too) when the press does your work. Al Jazeera (at https://aje.io/xvndmj) with the headline ‘Nobel Peace Prize winners warn of growing disinformation threat’, which sounds nice, but the complication is that the press is part of the problem, in the last two years 

I looked at issues with the NSO group, Jamal Khashoggi (the reporter no one cares about), one sided accusations against Saudi Arabia, bungled investigations involving Jeff Bezos (and the UN), Ignoring the events from Iran and Houthi forces and that running joke known as the ICIJ with their papers of hope (Pandora papers). All issues that show the press being part of the problem, not a solution. All vying for digital dollars any way they can. 

So when I see “Maria Ressa of the Philippines said the greatest threat to democracy is “when lies become facts”, while Dmitry Muratov of Russia said society is currently in a dangerous “post-truth period””, I am not opposing Maria Ressa, I am stating that the disinformation problem is a lot larger than what we hear and journalists are part of that problem. 

Journalists have with some regularity placed themselves on the axial of a seesaw and tried to keep a balance between events taking place and Stakeholders that need things go certain ways (my speculation/presumption). It is a setting that have been going on since 2012 (which is when I started to take notice). So when I see “Muratov also told Al Jazeera that disinformation was a significant and growing threat. “Manipulation leads to war,” he said. “We are in the middle of a post-truth period. Now, everyone is concerned about their own ideas and not the facts,” Muratov said” I feel an involuntary giggle coming up. It is correct what he states, but the part of ‘Manipulation leads to war’, was this communicated to the morning breakfast shows? Was this communicated to newspapers who do this way too often? 

Yes there are problems and they are all over the place, yet the press is part of the problem, it stopped being part of the solution when shareholders needed to see more money from news outlets. A plate for pigs and there are too many pigs and the plate is seemingly getting smaller. 

So it needs to be clear, I am not opposing the person who achieved the standing of winning a Nobel price, I am however pointing towards the wannabe’s behind these people maximising digital coins at the expense of clear reporting. In case of the ICIJ, has anyone seen a clear dashboard giving us numbers of people per nation, nations with government people involved and non-government people? No, you haven’t. More importantly when we see the stage of those in zero tax nations (and their right to be there), what is left? In that stage we see the ICIJ speak like parrots, repeating the same thing over and over without any real revelations, any real criminal activities. So when you see “The new data reveals confidential information about the owners of offshore entities mostly registered in the British Virgin Islands, a notoriously secretive jurisdiction, between 1980 and 2018.” You get no real information, merely some silly essay person waving his dick. The problem is that this so called “confidential information about the owners of offshore entities”, is absent of criminal activities. It is about tax laws and these clowns have not achieved anything, merely made you all angry that some people get LEGALLY away with avoiding taxation. So Boo Hoo flipping Hoo. 

So I get it that some journalists should receive protection, but in my personal view, we could do without those 600 at the ICIJ brilliantly. The term of “when lies become facts” sounds really nice, but that means that we hold journalists and what they write accountable, an act that hasn’t been the case for the longest of times, should you doubt that, read the Leveson report. The stage is changing and to some degree journalists and news outlets are responsible for that mess. Consider that the big papers which include the Wall Street Journal, The Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston globe and the NY Times. How many did a real piece on how tax laws have failed a nation? None as fr as I can tell, they are all screaming ‘Tax the Rich’ but it were these tax laws that got them in that setting. The disregarded acts by Iran are visible all over by the bulk of these papers seemingly disregard these parts, just like the assaults by Houthi’s but they are all eager to slam the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one sided reporting is disinformation, I hope that this is clear? Filtered information (like morning shows) is also a form of disinformation and they all serve some stakeholder (as I personally see it).

A stage that has to change and it should start with those calling themselves journalists. 

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August 4, 2021 · 02:43

The flavour of a dictionary

Let’s take a look at the stage. The Intercept (at https://theintercept.com/2021/08/01/saudi-arabia-twitter-harassment-jamal-khashoggi/) gives us “Before he was murdered by Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi faced online harassment from influencers and bots”. I have an issue with this. In the first, Jamal Khashoggi is merely missing. If someone states that it is likely that something bad and terminal happened to him I will not disagree. The problem is that there is no evidence, none at all that there is ANY evidence proving that Saudi Arabia did this. That UN essay writer gave a report that is riddles with ‘it is highly likely’, but in common law it does not hold water. In addition, the UN and the Washington Post did everything to flame as many newspapers as possible to repeat whatever they were giving. As I se it ad as the law sees it, a person is innocent until proven guilty. We can argue in equal quantities that the guilt of Saudi Arabia cannot be proven, yet in opposition, the innocence of Saudi Arabia cannot be proven either. I accept that, yes a person is innocent until proven guilty and if guilt cannot be proven then that person is innocent. I agree, and I disagree. I have been around long enough that the absence of guilt does not mean that this person is innocent. The law does that, I have a few more grey levels, so I do not. Yet I am still moved by evidence and the lack of it as well as the sources are not properly investigated, not by the United Nations, not by the Washington Post and optionally ignored by the CIA. 

The intercept also gives us “A short video clip posted to YouTube and Twitter this March characterised him as a mortal enemy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The narrator, Hussain al-Ghawi, alleged Golberg’s “entire work aims at smearing Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE” — the United Arab Emirates — “by publishing fake analytics banning patriotic accounts and foreign sympathisers.”” The article gives us the view of Geoff Goldberg, he makes note of al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist. I accept that, the YouTube video could be seen as evidence, that is after a forensic data specialist digs into this. Yet there is another side here, it is given to us by Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World. She gives us “The Biden administration should ask itself what it is going to do to protect Americans from these attacks, as long as the Saudis feel that they have this uncritical U.S. backing, they’re going to continue to believe that they have a license to attack their critics in whichever way that they like. These coordinated attacks against people they dislike that begin online have already proven that they can be deadly in the real world.” She is not wrong, yet in opposition, the issues is also, When will the media be held accountable for innuendo and vague references that have for the most no direct imprint on actual and factual reality. 

You see, that same media will not give us “In response to the coup d’état and reckless endangerment of live by citizen Donald Trump, we are now made aware that two more casualties with a deadly end were added to the list of numbers. Two more Washington, D.C., police officers died after defending the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters, bringing the grim tally of such deaths to four. This is merely one of the larger numbers, numbers that are given to us with the added GOP lawmaker who downplayed the Capitol riot as ‘a normal tourist visit’ doubled-down on the remark after police testified about the violence they faced”, is it true, is it false or is it a nuance of events? It seems that the western press is all about the innuendo on outside USA events, but not on internal ones. Why is that? I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is guilty, the evidence is not there either way. The fact that this happened in a country with one of the most incarcerated journalists in the world, with sources that are massively unreliable, all whilst the full tapes of events were never handed to the people who forensically established evidence on the validity of the tapes as well as the establishment of WHO was on the tapes. Sources relied on mere minutes that are debatable in a few ways, all whilst these same sources avoided mentioning Martin Bashir as the man seen to be guilty of reckless endangerment of the life of Lady Diana Spencer, optionally complicit in the manslaughter of Lady Diana Spencer. Yet they were happy to assist in mentioning of ‘faked documents’ and as they avoided the mention of ‘forged bank statements’ they optionally kept out of the reach of the Crown Prosecution Services, how good is that? But they will continue slapping others on innuendo, optionally absent of evidence.

It is the flavour of a dictionary. Don’t say he has a nightmare, mention that he is now the owner of a female night horse. The dictionary is one, the flavour is given by adding triviality to the facts, or by hiding the absence of it. It seems to me that the media is forgetting that part, which also gives us ‘Sky News Australia banned from YouTube for seven days over Covid misinformation’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/01/sky-news-australia-banned-from-youtube-for-seven-days-over-covid-misinformation) and the message here is that if we can no longer tell the difference between the spreaders of fake news, misleading news and news information, how can anyone expect the media to be held higher regard than a drug pusher on a schoolyard? 

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July 19, 2021 · 11:56

The devil rang

This is too good, I had just finished yesterday’s article and the Guardian gives me ‘Spyware can make your phone your enemy. Journalism is your defence’, in this that I have some troubles accepting that journalism is my defence, they are al about circulation and satisfying their shareholders and stakeholders (optionally advertisers too). But the article came at the right moment, even as this is about Pegasus and the NSO group. Whenever I look back at the title ‘Pegasus’ I think back to Pegasus mail and windows 3.1. It is a reflex, but a nice one. So, the article gives us “The Pegasus project poses urgent questions about the privatisation of the surveillance industry and the lack of safeguards for citizens”, which is nice, but Microsoft, Solarwinds and Cisco made a bigger mess and a much larger mess, so pointing at Pegasus at this point seems a little moot and pointless. (Microsoot’s Exchange anyone?)

Yes, there are questions and it is fair to ask them, so when we see “This surveillance has dramatic, and in some cases even life-threatening, consequences for the ordinary men and women whose numbers appear in the leakbecause of their work exposing the misdeeds of their rulers or defending the rights of their fellow citizens”, yes questions are good, but the fact that millions of records went to the open air via all kinds of methods (including advertiser Microsoft) is just a little too weird. And it is not up to me, it was The Hill who asked the people (5 days ago after the Kaseya hack gone public, the larger question that actually matters ‘Kaseya hack proves we need better cyber metrics’ and they are right, when we see “Once “infected”, your phone becomes your worst enemy. From within your pocket, it instantly betrays your secrets and delivers your private conversations, your personal photos, nearly everything about you” we read this and shrug, but at this point how did a third party operator (NSO group) get the data and the knowhow to make an app that allows for this? Larger question should be handed to both Google and Apple. The fact that the phones are mostly void of protection comes from these two makers. This is a setting of facilitation and a lack of cyber security. The NSO group decided to set a limited commercial application (more likely to facilitate towards the proud girls and boys of Mossad) and they took it one step further to offer it to other governments as well, is that wrong?

So when we see “All of these individuals were selected for possible surveillance by states using the same spyware tool, Pegasus, sold by the NSO Group. Our mission at Forbidden Stories is to pursue – collaboratively – the work of threatened, jailed or assassinated journalists”, if that were true, we would see a lot more articles regarding the 120 Journalists jailed in Turkey, not to mention the 60 journalists that were assassinated (read: targeted killing exercise) there as well. The papers are all about a journalist no one cares about (Jamal Khashoggi) but the other journalists do not really make the front page giving pause and skepticism to “the work of threatened, jailed or assassinated journalists”, my personal view is that the advertisers and stake holders don’t really care about those lives. Then I have issues with “This investigation began with an enormous leak of documents that Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had access to”, was it really a leak, or did one government take view away from them (by Amnesty International) and handed it towards the NSO group? A list of 50,000 numbers is nothing to sneer at, as such, I doubt it was a leak, it was a tactical move to push the limelight away from them and push it somewhere else. As we consider Kaseya, Solarwinds, Microsoft and Cisco, the weak minded democratic intelligence players from the Unified Spies of America come to mind, but I admit that I have no evidence, it is pure speculation.

And then we see the larger danger “But the scale of this scandal could only be uncovered by journalists around the world working together. By sharing access to this data with the other media organisations in the Forbidden Stories consortium, we were able to develop additional sources, collect hundreds of documents and put together the harrowing evidence of a surveillance apparatus that has been wielded ferociously against swaths of civil society”, who did they share access to? Who reports to another faction that is not journalism or is purely greed driven? In this, the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/jul/19/spyware-can-make-your-phone-your-enemy-journalism-is-your-defence) gives us one other gem, it is “not to mention more than 180 journalists from nearly two dozen countries”, as such we see 0.36% of the data is about journalists, so if I was to look at a slice and dice dashboard, how will these 50,000 people distribute? So when we see “If one reporter is threatened or killed, another can take over and ensure that the story is not silenced”, yes, how did that end up for those journo’s in Turkey? What about outliers in data like Dutch journalist Peter R. De Vries? He is not getting the limelight that much in the last three days, you all moved on? You pushed the limelight towards Jamal Khashoggi for well over a year, who achieved less than 0.01% compared to Peter R. De Vries. I reckon that this article, although extremely nice is there to cater to a specific need, a need that the article does not mention (and I can only speculate), but when we see all this holier than though mentions and we see an inaction on Turkey’s actions, as well as a lack of news regarding Peter R. De Vries, I wonder what this article was about, it wasn’t really about the NSO group and Pegasus, they are mentioned 4 and 7 times, the article was to push people towards thinking it is about one thing and it becomes about the 0.36% of journalists in a list of 50,000, all whilst the number is mentioned once in the article without a breakdown. Someone else is calling, when you answer, just make sure the local number is not 666.

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June 25, 2021 · 10:49

Blame Canada

Yes, we remember the song (some of us do), yet we never thought it would go this far, to this extent and to this degree. I thought I was angry when I wrote ‘Faith by the hypocrite’ on June 7th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/06/07/faith-by-the-hypocrite/), 215 children and now, we see ‘751 unmarked graves found at residential school’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57592243), and ‘Hundreds of unmarked graves found at Canadian indigenous school’ (at https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-first-nation-finds-751-unmarked-graves-former-residential-school-2021-06-24/), so where is the rage, where is the media with their unnamed sources and accusations like they did with Saudi Arabia, they had no evidence then and they are openly ignoring it now. There is no hounding of Cardinals, chasing of Bishops and a lot more is missing, but this is a stage I NEVER ever expected to happen in any Commonwealth nation, mass murder, a mass murder that involved the clergy and optionally members of the law and government as well. When I see “An indigenous group in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan on Thursday said it had found the unmarked graves of up to 751 people at a now-defunct Catholic residential school, just weeks after a similar discovery rocked the country”, I also fail to see a mass of people hunting down the Catholic church and it’s so called ‘benevolent’ actions, how benevolent was it to the hundreds of people, almost a thousand in two locations. This is not a failure, an error. This was as I see it intentional misplacing people, optionally for financial gain, optionally murdered. And at this site we also see “It is not clear how many of the remains detected belong to children, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told reporters, adding that oral stories mentioned adults being buried at the site”, enforcing my view of intent, children and adults do not die in an accident and as Al Jazeera even gave us “Pope Francis expresses ‘pain’ after remains of 215 Indigenous students found, but does not offer apology long sought by residential school survivors”, we see a failing, a very large failing from the Deacon at the bottom to the patriarch of paedophiles at the very top and we all just sit back and watch it happen. If our first impulse is to protect the children (any children), the waves of inaction I see is darn right unnatural and when did we ever embrace unnatural actions?

And when I see ““Canada will be known as a nation who tried to exterminate the First Nations,” said Bobby Cameron, Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan. “This is just the beginning.””, at this time I tend to agree and the lack of arrests is just staggering, so how long until 2-3 head honchos of the Catholic Church are ‘relocated’ to a nice place in Vatican city? 

And there is also the issue with the media, I see a lack of media supporting Bobby Cameron. Yet I also see something familiar, it was 40 years ago that I saw Brubaker, it was one of the first Robert Redford movies I saw, and it had an impact, but not to the degree it should have had and now when I think back towards Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal by Tom Murton and Joe Hyams, I am hit by some of the similarities and I am massively surprised that so far I seem to be the only one making the link, the train of thought that people in ‘assumed power’ had in those days, taking coins left right and centre is baffling, how the aftermath of then seems to be similar to what we see in Canada now and the media is not all over it. How weird is that?

I also see a lack of media asking questions of the Catholic church and I see a lack of actions all over the place, but I do acknowledge “We are treating this like a crime scene”, the entire article mentions the word Crime twice, how odd is it not? I also see the political need and savvy when we see ‘Justin Trudeau fires back at China after it calls to investigate Canada’, yet the stage of almost 1000 corpses in Canada is one that no one in the Commonwealth ever saw coming, an approach to genocide, but Justin Trudeau had a beard, it might be his one upside to the Covid era. The man looks better with a beard. I do get his response, but it was the wrong one to give at this time. You see it is all well and good to give us “a Canadian truth and reconciliation commission had worked from 2008 to 2015 to address the mistreatment of the indigenous population”, yet they failed to find the two hundred and fifteen and the seven hundred and fifty one dead people in that time, so I reckon Canada has a larger issue and this becomes the this large event that involves the Catholic church, as such the gloves need to come off and the large non-accountability events for the clergy needs to stop, as well as making the church tax accountable, the cost of digging into the past is growing and the church has had enough mulligans (with or without a blessed golf club). And as I personally see it “there may have been markers for the graves at one point but that the Roman Catholic church, which oversaw the cemetery, may have removed them” that some people were aware of the criminal activities and decided to hide what they could. Yet, as I see it, the larger stage is unmentioned, the media has too much to gain by not mentioning speculated optional Catholic Criminal Events. And my evidence? Considering that Google search reveals 225,000 hits on ‘Bobby Cameron’ in all this (total of both events), and the journalistic farce called ‘Jamal Khashoggi’ with no evidence had 10 times more hits on the international stage within 2 days. Oh, that is before we get to UN essay writers (Agnes Callamard) giving us their speculated view with ‘CIA conclusions’ in all this, how active has she been in regards to the Canadian events? I will tell you “Bobby Cameron”+”Agnes Callamard” gives you ZERO hits on Google search, so what is going on with the rights of the people that are part of the Canadian First Nations group? 

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