Tag Archives: princess Latifa

July 23, 2021 · 12:32

From horse to course

Yes, there is a horse, it is not Mr. Ed, there is no kind conversation. This one has wings, and there are a few versions, including the off-spring of Lord Poseidon. Whether we believe Hesiod or not, it does not matter. Pegasus became a part of our oldest mythological stories. Yet today, Pegasus is something else, a figment from the imaginations of the NSO group and it was made real. It has been out for some time and last week we got the media and their overemotional response that it had a connection to 50,000 people, with 0.36% of these people journalists.

So what gives?
It is important to look at a few sources. The first is the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-57922543) who gives us ‘Princess Latifa and Princess Haya numbers ‘among leaks’’, perhaps yes, perhaps no, who cares? We do get “The discovery of the princesses’ phone numbers on the list – and those of some acquaintances – has raised questions about whether they could have been the possible target of a government client of the group.” And here the questions start and the BBC is not asking them. Just like it is steering clear of alleged man-slaughterer Martin Bashir. So when we see ‘could have been the possible target of a government client of the group’ could is here the operative word. You see, no one is doubting that list, no one has given us a clear rundown of the names, a dashboard if you like, with the option to drill per nation and per class of person. This could all be a ruse of anti-Israeli groups, optionally the ruse of a competitor. And when we see “NSO has denied any wrongdoing. It says the software is intended for use against criminals and terrorists, and is made available only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies with good human rights records”, so which government leaked the list and how did THAT government leak what is implied to be a complete list? Then we get to the option that the leak came from within the NSO Group, which might be the most ludicrous thought, but I tend to look at all angles, so it is an angle that is most unlikely, but the chance is not zero. The article is all about Princess Latifa, not much about the NSO Group, it is an emotional lamentation to steer clear of massive screw ups like Jimmy Savile, Lord McAlpine, Sir Cliff Richard, and Lady Diana Spencer. As some say, the credibility of the BBC has never been lower. 

The second article is also from the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57922664) less than a day ago gives us ‘Pegasus spyware seller: Blame our customers, not us, for hacking’. Here we are given “Investigations have begun as the list, of 50,000 phone numbers, contained a small number of hacked phones”, silly me for thinking that when we see ‘Investigations have begun’, we also get ‘a small number of hacked phones’, as such there is a much larger stage, and the BBC gives us “Pegasus infects iPhones and Android devices, allowing operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones and cameras”, so if there are only a small number of hacked phones, how does that part matter? And when we get “a consortium of news organisations, led by French media outlet Forbidden Stories, has published dozens of stories based around the list, including allegations French President Emmanuel Macron’s number was on it and may have been targeted.” We get the real deal, a consortium of news organisations, led by Forbidden Stories hide behind ‘allegations’ and ‘may have been targeted’. Is anyone catching on? The media want to create emotional waves, yet does not want to be held accountable for their actions. The stakeholders are key here. A ‘consortium’ implies shareholders and stakeholders. It implies also that their issue is not that the NSO Group might do something outside of governments, it might show that the media does a lot more to anger the audience it desperately needs. 

And then the media does one more jab towards a currently missing journalist no one cares about with “including those close to murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi”, this is the emotional stage handed to us. It is “67 agreed to give Forbidden Stories their phones for forensic analysis. And this research, by Amnesty International Security Labs, reportedly found evidence of potential targeting by Pegasus on 37 of those”, so out of 50,000 we see that 67 are investigated and potentially we see 37 are targets, but there is no evidence that the NSO Group did this, these 37 might have been targets of the NSA or even the DGSE. 

And at this point there is one interesting flaw. If it was me, the first think I did was set up a dashboard that allows us to see where these 50,000 names are part of, where they are and how they were hacked. They have had a week and the stretch of media that gives us emotion after emotion is a much larger stage of stakeholders that need a negative view to be pushed onto the NSO Group. I admit that my view is equally speculative, but is it a wrong view? 

Finally there is the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/22/israel-examine-spyware-export-rules-should-be-tightened-nso-group-pegasus) where we see ‘Israel to examine whether spyware export rules should be tightened’. Here we are treated to “An Israeli commission reviewing allegations that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was misused by its customers to target journalists and human rights activists will examine whether rules on Israel’s export of cyber weapons such as Pegasus should be tightened”, I can accept that view, but that also means that governments are largely to blame for this mess, if the list is real that is. There is every chance that this was a ruse to make the NSO Group less large, less of a challenge to a competitor and this is exactly what stakeholders tend to do, and using the media as their bitch is not out of the question.

My view is reinforced by “NSO has said Macron was not a “target” of any of its customers, meaning the company denies he was selected for surveillance using its spyware, saying in multiple statements that it requires its government clients to use its powerful spying tools only for legitimate investigations into terrorism or crime”, so as Macron was never a target, the BBC articles are less than accurate and that leaves the media open to all kinds of attacks. Yes, I will admit that it is a he said she said setting (she being the media), but that also means and implies that the NSO Group is not out of the woods at present. And let’s be honest, who needs a tool like this to keep track of the Dalai Lama? The man is out there in nowhere land and when he is travelling we see 50-150 reporters surrounding him, all ways to keep track, no NSO Group required.

As we see the horse Pegasus go on a course towards the government destinations, I see less of an issue with the NSO Group and a hell of a lot more with the Stakeholders who do not have the ideas, the innovations, but they really like the money attached to it. Do you still think I am on the wrong horse track?

There is always the time will tell part, but consider that if the media has not released a dashboard of these 50,000 numbers, I believe that my case is rather clear, I would personally consider that list is nothing more than the fabrication of a stakeholder who needs the revenue that the NSO Group currently has.

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May 24, 2021 · 22:20

The limits of an intellect

We all have them, we all see we have them, but do we realise the limitations we have? I am confronted by this, confronted in me. We all want to see the BBC as the big evil one, yet they are not evil. The issue that Martin Bashir brought to the forefront in not the evil in the BBC, yet I wonder how strong the needs and the facilitation of the Shareholders and stakeholders are in the larger setting of the BBC. I know that data leads to information, which leads to knowledge, leading to insight and optionally to wisdom. Yet we seem to forget that the lines of wisdom are really thin at times and some lead to shape a dragon of the conspiracy theorists. Any person not on the setting there is lost. Consider a cloud, you are looking at the clouds in the sky, then you see one shaped as the island of Crete, one is shaped like a sheep and one is a face. Is it real? Is the likeness a coincidence, or is it shaped due to your imagination, and the connections it makes? If all clouds are randomly shaped (well within the limits of liquid particles), there is every chance that one cloud will look just like Crete, so what (optional missing) part did the brain fill in? 

That is the stage we face, or better it is the stage I face. I get it, Martin Bashir has made me more angry than anything else. I personally always believed that the BBC was above certain matters and now I see this is a kitten, in the dark just as grey as all the other kittens. And it matters here.

Consider the BBC middle East page, we see all kinds of information, on ‘Princess Latifa: Dubai photo appears to show missing woman’, a day old. So who cares? I do not mean this in any negative way, there is news that is 5 days old, news from the 16th of May, yet the news from Yemen, news like the Arab News gave us 16 hours ago ‘Saudi project clears 2,500 more mines in Yemen’ and Reuters, who reported 4 hours ago ‘Saudi-led coalition in Yemen foils Houthi attack south of Red Sea’ we are shown news that the BBC should have been on top of, but they were not, why not? Or perhaps what ABC News gave us 11 hours ago ‘US military presence has deterred Iranian aggression on Saudi Arabia’, where we see statements by US general McKenzie. Why is the BBC not all over that? Why do we see a setting of limitations, limited exposure to what is happening, as I personally see it, the Martin Bashir setting is one that has larger ramifications. And here we see the problem, and I see the problem optionally within me, do I see lines of knowledge leading to wisdom, or are they showing me the lines that will form a unicorn, an Afreet or a dragon? Some roads will feed the conspiracy theorist, some will feed the wise and the nance is at times not visible, too small to spot the difference, and what we see is not always a given, or as Freud would say, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but we are here now and we will be in this stage for some time, it will be this way because the BBC now correlates to the CIA, two organisation that decided to wash away their credibility and we are all a little more paranoid and largely distrusting because of it all.

That is the road  the BBC faces, so when we get “أنا سائح مرتبك أحاول فهم إشارة الطريق”, will we know what to do? And is this any better? “المهرجون إلى اليسار حيث توجد المناجم ، يمزحون إلى اليمين حيث توجد الثعابين”, it is limited to what we know, what we understand, the Vatican does understand “laqueis mortis sinistra dextrorsum anguis mortem”, so what will they chose? Perhaps they will wait for option three or four to open up and that is the problem, we do not know what drives the BBC at present, and we might never know, yet we need to act, we want to act but is any act by those who do not know what is the situation bare value, or bear recognition? (Sorry, I could not resist that pun), yet in intelligence analysts, business analysis and geologic, we do not always know and it is the fate of missing data, the recognition of data that I not there and more important, some decisions are arbitrary, not valid, not invalid, merely arbitrary, and in this we merely ignore the shareholders and stake holders. Is it right, is it wrong? I cannot tell, it depends on the data and there is none, recognising that is a first in the difference towards the lines making insight and the lines showing a unicorn, we need to accept and understand that, or we are lost.

We would like to blame the BBC for all kind of things, let’s make sure that the reason of blame is a valid one.

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February 25, 2021 · 22:32

Filter by Gender.

Yup we have all done it, we tend to filter. The horny (especially teenagers) want to talk, chat and video whatever to the members of the other gender (well, most of them anyway). We filter by the needs we have, business needs, personal needs and artistic needs, we filter. There is for the most nothing wrong with that. Yet it also tends to keep you in a little box. I come from the previous internet era, I never got into Napster but I loved Audiogalaxy. I had it so I could listen to music when I was travelling and it opened up doors. I learned about the Corrs, Bond, the Dixie Chicks, Linkin Park, Orbital and a few others. It grew my CD collection by leaps and that made me happy, in an age where my work kept me from MTV, Audiogalaxy showed me other venues of music. I forwent the filter and I learned about and got to appreciate bands I would never have considered. Filtering is not all bad.

Yet what happens when filtering goes overboard in another direction? Today I learned a new word, I word I should have been aware of but I do not remember hearing it. The word is ‘Femicide’ and it is not a good word. It was Al Jazeera that made me aware, the article ‘Rage boils over amid Argentina’s unrelenting femicide crisis’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/24/rage-boils-over-amid-argentinas-unrelenting-femicide-crisis). It got my attention in the first as it was about Argentina and my mother was from there. In the second it was the by-line “Femicide of 18-year-old Ursula Bahillo pushed thousands into the streets of Buenos Aires this month to demand action”. In this there are two parts, the first is “About 87,400 results” (when we look for Ursula Bahillo) and the second part is that the big newspapers are missing on the news search result on the first page. A Spanish version from the BBC is at the bottom of the page, no Washington Post, no NY Times, no Times, no Guardian (the list goes on) and it sickens me for another reason. You see, one hour ago the Guardian gives us ‘Princess Latifa letter urges UK police to investigate sister’s Cambridge abduction’, some princess gets the news on optionally being abducted and whilst Al Jazeera reports “Nearly 300 femicides were reported in the country in 2020”, other newspapers keep us in the dark and these idiots demand money from Facebook and Google, whilst not informing us? I see this as one of the clearest ‘What the Fuck?’ moments of the year.

I never felt comfortable bout honour killings. I understand that it exist and in those countries there is an issue, I am massively against that setting in other nations. I cannot convict it as I am not Muslim, yet outside of Muslim nations it is an issue, yet femicide should not be ANYWHERE and the fact that we are kept in the dark by most papers is a larger issue, but I will let you worry about that. It kind of intersects with ‘Australia urged to follow allies in denouncing China’s repression of Uighurs as ‘genocide’’, the fact that genocide is happening and someone needs to ‘urge’ Australia shows that we are not as evolved as we think we are. By the way, the first 5 pages of that search shows no Australian papers at all, as such should they be allowed to exist? That is a more serious question than you think. If the ACCC are all about media laws and the need to blame tech companies, in this my message after seeing ‘ACCC chief claims victory after Facebook standoff’ to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims will be “Sir, I consider you to be a fucking joke! You are hereby responsible to make sure that the events around Ursula Bahillo are to be seen in EVERY Australian newspaper as per immediate. If you (as it seems) champion discrimination, you need to be openly told this”, my issue here is that Microsoft was left out of the media consideration, they were waiting all their resources on their Azure cloud and now that we see “Microsoft will ensure that small businesses who wish to transfer their advertising to Bing can do so simply and with no transfer costs.  We recognise the important role search advertising plays to the more than two million small businesses in Australia” (source: Microsoft) all whilst we see western media absent to the plight of Ursula Bahillo and hundreds more shows that the media was never to be considered any options (if the Leveson report was not enough evidence). As such, how much action did the UN take to the Femicide cause? I know they have done some work, yet when I see ‘United Nations asks UAE for proof that Princess Latifa is alive’ all whilst the Google Search “Ursula Bahillo United Nations” gives no real links on the western media, why is that? That is even beside the fact on how active UN essay writers became against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they even went so far to push for issues regarding  cyber crimes on an American Industrial (Jeff Bezos) all whilst the presented evidence had several shades of debatability. As I see it, we need larger changes and if the media relies on political bitches (as one might say) to do their revenue work for them, they will need to be held liable, yet I reckon that some editors will cry like little bitches and point towards ‘freedom of the press’, I wonder how long it will take for someone to consider that ‘accountability of the press’ is also a matter that needs consideration. Al Jazeera brought more to the surface than some media players are happy with. Consider your paper, or their website (whichever it is) and look for Ursula Bahillo, how many articles did you find? What we are shown matters, whether is be Femicide in Argentina, persecution of Uighurs or any other news. As I personally see it when we filter by gender and the filtering agent is the media we have lost control and the insane are at the helm of a ship called sanity. That’s merely my $0.02 on the matter.

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February 21, 2021 · 20:47

Our Disney lives

Yes, we have a life, it is staged on the Disney mould, but we do have it. We are empowered by the marvel characters, we are defended by the Jedi, we feel entrusted by Frozen, a Disney production. It has to be, there is no other explanation. You see there was a story that I saw on BBC, and now on the Dutch NOS. We are given “The Royal Family of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, has released a statement about Princess Latifa, the Emir’s daughter. Videos appeared this week in which she says that she is being held hostage by her family and that she fears for her life” (source: NOS), I get it, it plays nice yet it is a princess, one princess. Yet in this, who remembers “Yemeni minister accuses Houthis of using displaced people as human shields in Marib” (source: Arab News), over the last two weeks, the NOS was all about reporting on how the Houthi movement is not a terrorist one, and that is it. We now see ‘UN: Houthi Attacks in Northern Yemen Risk Triggering Humanitarian Crisis’ (at https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/un-houthi-attacks-northern-yemen-risk-triggering-humanitarian-crisis), there we are given “The Marib governorate has been relatively unaffected by Yemen’s six-year long civil war. That is until Houthi rebels recently mounted a military offensive to try to seize control of the region from Yemeni government forces. Because of its relative safety, hundreds of thousands of people have fled there to escape fighting in other parts of Yemen. At least 800,000 of them are now in the region” and they are not alone we also have ‘Yemeni minister condemns Houthi bombing in Taiz’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1813001/middle-east) mere hours ago where we are given “Mubarak said the militia had drafted students to frontlines instead of schools, and was working to change school textbooks to “lay the landmines of death and extremism in the minds of young generations instead of dialogue and peace.”” All less than a day ago, most of the western media ignores it, merely the Disney approach towards a frozen stage, a stage of a princess. So at what point have you, the reader become obsessed with the Disney life? 

Consider the stage that Yemen has and stop blaming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran has been fuelling this from day one, but the news ignores it. Terrorist actions by Houthi’s against children and civilians, yet the media ignores it. Why is that? Why are these actions not on the front pages of EVERY newspaper in the west? This is what I meant with filtered information. I wonder if you investigate the news not given which share holders and stakeholders are seen with their fingers in the pie. Yes, there are several issues, there are hard times. The people in Texas are seeing that. In the UK we are given ‘More than 7,500 families across north-east given winter hardship payments’, which is fair news, it is news yet it seems that the BBC did not pick it up, yet the princess story did.

We seem to be given an emotional charged Disney life, are you not sick of that? There are huge problems out there and someone is trying to make us look somewhere else. When is that ever a good idea?

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February 17, 2021 · 23:23

Sleight of hand

We know the term, we see what is connected and we see just how it tends to work, yet the term is larger than that. The term is to some “Sleight of hand refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate”, it is also know to some as ‘skilful deception’ and that is where we are at. To see, and to understand this sleight of hand, we need to consider a few items. The first element in this is seen in the BBC with ‘Princess Latifa: UN to question UAE about Dubai ruler’s daughter’, we get that there might be an issue, yet what was also happening is seen in the Arab News ‘Houthi snipers accused of targeting children in Taiz’, interestingly enough there is no mention in the BBC of that. What would be your interest? The daughter of a ruler, or people using children for target practice? I will let you decide. Yet linked to this is the news that Al Jazeera and several other newspapers gave us ‘Biden admin ends Trump-era Houthi ‘terrorist’ designation’. Yes, you do not need to be a terrorist to use children for target practice, it makes perfect sense. A normal person uses children to align his sights and make sure to test their sight in case actual soldiers drop by and what is better than trying to shoot children? They are much smaller than adults, so you need to aim better.

And in this we get back to the Princess Latifa story, it is not about her, but about one part that was in the article. ““I’ve seen some of the footage and it’s deeply troubling”- Dominic Raab”, I will agree that a cushy life in the UK is optionally all that UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab knows, or so we can presume. So what does that have to do with the other parts? Yes that is a good question, you see last November Dominic Raab Tweeted (see image), and he was eager to condemn the Houthi people, yet in this he seems to forget that the Houthi forces could not have done it. The distance, the precision and a few other facts make the setting that Iran was the only perpetrator. The hardware could not be made in Yemen, the hardware could not be operated by Houthi forces and there is no way that Houthi forces got over half a dozen targets with almost 100% precision when an inverted setting (one in six) is all they could have hoped for (at best). So how come Dominic Raab was that badly informed? As I see it this is a political sleight of hand and the USA whilst showing a short-minded slight of brain (aka delusional setting) is adding to the Fues of chaos and confusion. So how come that the BBC will do whatever it can to avoid settings? I am not ignoring ‘Yemen: The boy who saved his sister from a sniper’ (source: BBC), but when you see the amount of visibility a princess gets (with Dominic Raab rhetoric) whilst the actions of Iran are ignored again and again is a massive issue. When I look at the top 50 articles on “Houthi” and “Iran” the BBC does not show up once, yet Fox News (you know the channel that is criticised by all others) gives us ‘UN experts find ‘growing’ evidence Iran sending weapons to Houthi rebels in war-torn Yemen’, personally I believe that they are a bit late to the party and we should accept that they showed up at all, so how much evidence on Iranian involvement in Yemen did the BBC (and a few others) give us? So when one MP gives the other MP (Dominic Raab) ‘Classifying Houthis as Terrorists will Worsen Famine in Yemen’ we need to consider that NOT designating them terrorists does not help matters. The Houthi transgressions have been going on month after month. I gave voice to that in ‘Be the bitch’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/07/07/be-the-bitch/) well over 198 months ago. As such they are to be seen as terrorists, a stage where Iran is equally guilty, so after a years, it is time for these so called ‘distinguished’ journalists to come to the party and properly identify the players as well as their acts. 

Consider over the larger regions, what news we are given and what news we are not given, that is beside the setting of what information makes the news and what not. The setting that we are ‘offered’ with ‘EU has role in salvaging Iran deal, says Tehran UN envoy’ (source: Euronews) all whilst Iran has transgressed set limits by well over 1000%, so well over ten times the allowed amount. But the larger groups of newspapers are unlikely to show the flim-flam show that Iran gives us, and those who do see it as an opportunity,  all whilst no one is stopping the stage of Iran and more, they are trying to limit that protection and military options that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gets, all whilst the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia continues. It is the Financial Times that gives optional light to that. The article ‘New Iran envoy shows Biden is serious about reviving nuclear deal’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/eae24633-844a-4bb5-b5a9-28deead96ab7), an interesting stage, especially when we consider “Mr Malley was an important actor in the 2015 negotiations with Iran. Before stepping down last month as head of the ICG he published what amounts to a calibrated road map for negotiating with Tehran — an approach the Biden team now seems to embrace.” We can look at the article in a few ways, but for me the stage will be set to ‘calibrated road map’, I merely wonder how much news will end up becoming ‘filtered information’, that is the setting and the silence on Houthi transgressions (to a larger degree) as well as the ignorance of Iranian actions in all this is a stage that we cannot ignore. 

Yet, I will not be surprised for some of the International politicians to give us a weighted ‘it is a complex situation’, or perhaps ‘we are still looking into some of the data we are given’, all whilst gave light to a lot of it well over 18 months ago. I will let you figure out what you missed (if you care that is), because I do accept that not everyone is interested in what is going on in the middle east. 

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