Tag Archives: Russia

August 20, 2022 · 04:17

Is it intentional ignorance?

I saw an article yesterday. It was ‘Doubts cast over Elon Musk’s Twitter bot claims’. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62571733) was seemingly eager to attack Elon Musk’s side, but the same media has not now or ever asked serious and critical questions on the Twitter side. But lets start here, those who read my articles know I have had a larger issue with Twitter for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter. I like it a lot more than Facebook. As such I have issues. If it isn’t with their new bully tactics of suggestion topics, without switching that nuisance off in the profile setting, then it would be with the attitude they take on fake accounts, as well as the delusional stage that it does not go beyond 5%. People I have been in contact with and THEY have data shows it to be well over 40%. I personally found 40% high, but they have data and they have data on Russian trolls and fake accounts pushing Russian ‘needs’ regarding the Ukrainian war to be in the thousands of trolls each of them using a massive amounts of click farm numbers. And it does not matter whether Twitter deactivates these accounts. The trolls have more and new methods of creating thousands more each minute. It shows in the first that the 5% Twitter claimed is bogus, more important it shows my initial thoughts that if it can be proven that it is well over double, we have a situation that Twitter has been overvaluing itself for a very long time. The data that places like Trollrensics has, shows this to have been the case for over 5 years, long before the Elon Musk events started. 

But back to the article. There we see “Botometer – an online tool that tracks spam and fake accounts – was used by Mr Musk in a countersuit against Twitter. Using the tool, Mr Musk’s team estimated that 33% of “visible accounts” on the social media platform were “false or spam accounts”.” OK, that is one side to go. I would personally advice Elon to take a step out of his circle and talk to Trollrensics. You see, they have been monitoring and recording events on the Ukrainian war (as well as Russian trolls) for a long time. Now consider that there should be some overlap. But take two circles (like below) we see the two solutions, the overlap is speculative on how much they overlap. 

They are different solutions for different options. As such the overlap cannot be 100%, in theory the second image could exist, but we can prove that, or better stated Elon Musk could prove this. You see, when the two lists of accounts are set together, Twitter has a problem, if image one is true, Twitter’s problem increases by well over 100%, it also blasts the 5% claim out of the water. 

If image 2 is true, Twitter has optionally a smaller issue, but Trollrensics has numbers stating over 40% of all accounts are fake, if so it will be a list supporting the case of Elon Musk, and well over 5%, Twitter will have a hard time opposing that much data.

And now we see in the article a strange event. With “However, Botometer creator and maintainer, Kaicheng Yang, said the figure “doesn’t mean anything”. Mr Yang questioned the methodology used by Mr Musk’s team, and told the BBC they had not approached him before using the tool. 

Mr Musk is currently in dispute with Twitter, after trying to pull out of a deal to purchase the company for $44bn (£36.6bn).” The readers will wonder what is going on, but no fear the BBC did its homework and we see that a little further below with “Botometer is a tool that uses several indicators, like when and how often an account tweets and the content of the posts, to create a bot “score” out of five. A score of zero indicates a Twitter account is unlikely to be a bot, and a five suggests that it is unlikely to be a human. However, researchers say the tool does not give a definitive answer as to whether or not an account is a bot. “In order to estimate the prevalence [of bots] you need to choose a threshold to cut the score,” says Mr Yang.” Now to me this makes sense, but there is a hidden trap. The numbers tend to be less reliable when a hybrid model exists. Let me try to make an image as below.

The hybrid system has three parts. The core (the foundation of that troll system) but it connects to real accounts. The accounts are real, tools like Qanon or whatever tool out there exists to gain coin and perhaps hoping that they are the false prophets that they once hope to become. Trolls and hackers give them a nice little tag and now the troll core has one real account that links to a whole range of people and click farms to like by the thousands and as this hybrid model can go more than one level deep and  consists of an unnamed amount of groups, Botometer and Twitter tools are (speculatively) in a mess, they now can no longer really decide on how real these groups are, and if the troll is intelligent and makes a slightly different message for each group, it can continue almost unabated. Still the Botometer is methodically sound to get the stupid accounts found and there are a whole range of them. Hundreds of thousands of limited click farm accounts, they should be found decently easily. And there I think is Elon Musk, he found the simple ones and he comes to 30%. The stage is real and the fact that is open to debate and moreover starts question the Twitter side of thinks is important. The article has more “Clayton Davis, a data scientist who worked on the project, says the system uses machine learning, and factors like tweet regularity and linguistic variability, as well as other telltale signs of robotic behaviour.” I agree with Clayton and there is also a larger issue. ‘Tweet regularity’ is real but debatable. You see it depends on interaction and time stations. A person has a shifting set. The person who looks at a tweet at 03:00 and retweets it because it is a friend, is different from the same person who is in the office at 11:00 and sees the same or a different tweet. There are more sides to that person, dynamic qualities and I wonder if a learning machine can learn (read: be taught) this. Not telling it cannot, I merely wonder and that makes it harder, than the time zones shift for the travelling person. All elements that can play a role. So when we get “In 2017, the group of academics behind the tool published a paper that estimated that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts were bots.” Which is interesting for me as I considered the number to be around 20%, still that makes it 400% larger than Twitter’s claim, so Twitter does have a problem. And then the gem of the BBC article comes into play. With “Some bot experts claim Twitter has a vested interest in undercounting fake accounts. “Twitter has slightly conflicting priorities,” says Mr Davis. “On the one hand, they care about credibility. They want people to think that the engagements are real on Twitter. But they also care about having high user numbers.”

The vast majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising, and the more daily active users it has, the more it can charge advertisers.” Or as I would state it, there is your Dorsey factor and that part shows both that Twitter is in deep trouble and also that Elon Musk was right all along. There is still a larger debate on how large that stage is, but if proof can be shown that the fake accounts exceed 9%-11% Elon Musk wins and Twitter gets to have a large problem. What I said all along, Twitter is bound to lose this and the media supporting Twitter for their own needs are likely to lose credibility by the day at that point.

A stage that was out in the open and has been for a few years. It was my view and the view of several I knew and now that we are proven correctly, I wonder under which rock the media will hide. The law sees intentional ignorance as a right, a legal station where we are allowed to keep ourselves ignorant, but should the media be allowed that very same thing? I will let you ponder that side of the equation, because it will come out in the open. In the mean time I will consider a few idea’s on Neom and the line bubble to the surface. Perhaps I should have a conversation with Saudi Arabia’s consul general in Sydney, Mashare Ben Naheet. If I am correct it might be worth a few million to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I could use the money (I need to pay my bar bill sooner then I would like). 

The problems of old age, they come into play at the least comfortable times.

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August 17, 2022 · 19:11

I’m not crazy, I’m an airplane.

It is an old joke from the 70’s, and when the NOS (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2440333-russische-bevolking-kampt-met-collectieve-depressie-sinds-inval-oekraine) is treating its readers to ‘Russian population suffers from collective depression since the invasion of Ukraine’ we get another part of Russia problems thrown into the face of daily events. We are also given ““Society is collectively in shock. I received a lot of people who were completely panicked. Since March there have been four times as many requests for a consultation at our clinic. Almost everyone is consumed with horror, incomprehension and fear. And they don’t know how to deal with that.” According to Khokhlova, this is a fairly natural reaction to such a drastic event. “Many people are reacting in this way to the terrifying news about Russia’s actions in Ukraine.”” It shows us a Russia that Russia does not want anyone to see. Apart from the events where we see more and more stages where Russian soldiers are now being charged with war crimes. A setting where President Putin was making short claims and this is now turning into a long term war, something that is embarrassing and humiliating to the Russian Kremlin. Not something it was looking forward to, it even nullified that chance, but that is merely the beginning of the problems, the problems go far beyond Russian borders. In the Netherlands, Dutch politician Thierry Baudet — leader of the Forum for Democracy (PvD) and the head of its parliamentary group is so pro Russian that it conflicts with the status of the Dutch, even when the Russians have to back down, this person will ‘hide’ behind the misrepresented ‘nuance’ of the statement. It is not the only nation with rather large issues, but it is the most visible one. There are two streams in all this. I am with the second one. It is a persons right to choose sides, no matter how wrong that choice is. However, there needs to be accountability, as such There will be larger issues for the Dutch Forum for Democracy (PvD) and the longer the war between Russia and the Ukraine takes, the larger there issues will be. And I reckon that its members are starting to see this, which means that the 5 seats that the PvD currently has, little with be left of it in the next election. 

In all this the mental state of the Russian people matters, because that gives a handhold to the actions of its current government. And even as we get sporadic information, often unverified. The larger setting for Russia is not merely the war, there is every stage that Russia needs its fuel to warm the houses of Russia and that is not looking too good, as I personally see it, the Russian fronts will have to do with 20%-35% less fuel, if that does not happen, many Russians will not survive the winter that comes and with large explosions on the Russian airfields, the Kremlin might have to choose in the very near future to either fuel the tanks they still have, or fuel Russian houses. It seems that the 10,000 bonus for women who have more than 10 kids was not a short sighted idea. (As one source gives us) ‘Putin brings back award created by Stalin that rewards mothers with 10 kids’ it could possibly be the only way they can stay warm this winter, and as such, has anyone figured on what life will be created? In a nation that is short of nearly everything? That is the short sighted knee jerk reaction from the Kremlin and it seems to me that Russia has much larger problems, mental health is at present possibly the smallest one of all. But that would be merely my speculated view on the matter.

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August 10, 2022 · 19:50

The jab from the left

That is the setting I was contemplating today. It all started with the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62488144) where I saw ‘Elon Musk sells $6.9bn of Tesla shares as Twitter lawsuit looms’ it was at that moment I was contemplating a larger jab from the left. Consider that I reckon that one of my IP will bring in half a billion a month. What if I offer that to Elon Musk? It is not his field, but that has never stopped him before. What if I was the on giving him optionally surpassing 5 billion a year (not in the first year) for some time to come? My way of giving the media the finger, as well as some tech places. We still see the BS from media ignoring the Fake Twitter accounts, we see some BS approach like ‘she cried, she cried louder and we wonder what happens’, well if it helps Elon Musk, I am game. There is also the augmented reality IP, as such there might be another stage where Elon Musk gets the visibility in 116,000 malls. I think it is a good day to give the finger to hypocrisy and the media with there digital dollars? They can watch from the stage as they become more and more redundant. Hmmm, the idea has merit, and if I can set the stage for places like the Line to show it all first we will see all these tech companies come up with “We are working on something much better” yes, like the virgin who is in denial that she was pregnant, a toilet seat must have done it. Well, two can play at that game and I have the IP to make it happen, as such I see a much larger option to have a go at these hypocrites. 35 years of frustration watching wankers and weaklings hide behind fake it until you make it, hide behind their bullet points, like it was the ammunition that could not miss sales targets. There is something totally satisfying watching them cry like the little chihuahua’s they actually are. Will it happen? I have no idea, I think not, I doubt Elon Musk even knows about this blog and he has more pressing concerns at present, but the idea to show the media that we have had enough of the BS they spout by giving billions in revenue to the man they hate, and for that reason only will upset big-tech in a way they have never seen before. 

There is nothing like the sight of a hungry glutton being denied their next meal to see chaos truly explode and that is what would happen. Never mind the Microsoft losers, places like Amazon and Google will take notice, for them having to acknowledge Elon Musk as their equal in mobiles, cars, battery technology AND gaming. That will have a much larger impact and the media will seek all kinds of shelter, crying that their was no place in their publication, crying that they never hd the know how, that it is all the right of publications to chose what to write about and if I can drive the dagger home with a few issues on the EEA and their ignored reports, so much the better. 

So whilst the BBC is not doing anything wrong with “After news of the share sale was made public Mr Musk responded to a tweet asking whether he had finished selling Tesla shares with “yes”, adding that he needed the money in case he was forced to buy Twitter and was unable to secure some of the funding for the deal.” Some might realise that the recent ‘confession’ that Twitter is deleting a million accounts a day and that adds up to a lot more than some are comfortable with. There is a larger station and I feel it is not the worst idea to scorch the media with a flamethrower (I had run out of daisies). 

The jab from the left is one the media is too often not ready for, they will ‘debate’ that there are compromises, all whilst we know that compromise politics is the most corrupt of all politics. And it is time that the proper people get the proper acknowledgement and we can get there by denying the other players their slice of cake. I’ll make it even more extreme. There is at present nothing stopping me to make it all public domain, and when the lists go public on September 30th that might very well happen. All it will take is 1-3 clever people who can look beyond the rim of their coffee cup (something most politicians have not been able to do for some time). Clever people on 4chan could end up with a treasure trove of IP on several grounds (apart from melting down Iranian and Russian nuclear reactors), that one I left somewhere else, I am not THAT irresponsible. And the idea I had came from a snow-globe, but I already wrote about that. 

Just in light of the setting of these days a solution for Iranian arrogance, through a snow-globe ending their nuclear reactors. How could I ever pass up on that? I reckon that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would owe me too and that is not the worst setting to be in, to be owed a large favour from the richest nation in the world. All that because the media would not do their jobs, how is that for freedom of the press and freedom of expression? I am using my freedom of expression the way I can, and they use the freedom of the press to get digital clicks through flaming. I reckon I am in a better position, but that is merely my view on the matter and lets face it, they could call it delusional. I wonder what they will call it AFTER I am proven correct? I reckon it will be stated that this was too complex an issue for people with a university degree in journalism. 

In the end, I still get my money, or my share and I am willing to make amends to that setting, the reward of screwing over the media will be that big a deal for me to cut a few corners leaving me with millions less. Or I still end with the amount of zero, the amount I always expected to end with when it all becomes public domain. I wonder, if I do this, will it be public domain, or pubic domain? Not the weirdest question to get, although, pretty extreme for a Wednesday. 

Such is life!

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August 4, 2022 · 21:49

Monopoly

My introduction, like many of my generation came at an early age. I was 8 or 9 when the first setting of law was introduced. It was the game of monopoly. I still have a few versions. I still have the first version (a replica). It was a wooden box with coins, the rest was pretty much the same. The coins were a nice touch. A game has rules and we have to adhere to these rules. It was then that we learned to play by the spirit of the law. The letter of the law was something I learned much later and it was even later when I was introduced to black letter law. My generation went through similar steps, some more, some less, but the generic stage was in play. 

And today I got my introduction to ‘Banned Russian oligarchs exploited UK secrecy loophole’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62410715), so the title gives us the first setting, not a loophole but a legally allowed setting, and with that we get to “Ministers have acknowledged concerns that these companies, known as English Limited Partnerships (ELPs), have also been abused by criminals” as well as “In 2016 and 2017, the government introduced measures that forced almost all UK companies to identify their real owners. ELPs were not covered by these new transparency laws” yet no one (including the press) seems to ask why the ELP’s were left uncovered by identity stages? This is not merely a loophole, this is what I would call a backdoor. The UK (optionally government) needed a stage where owners could remain hidden for whatever reason was in play and others have the same rights as anyone else and these others (criminals and tycoons) used the law to avoid detection. And as we get “more than 4,500 of them have been set up” we see the larger station, you see this has been going on since 2017, did you think that whomever requires avoidance of detection will not use them? There is a reason why some accountancy firms charge so much, they know the law, they know all laws and that is in play. And I will go one step further when we see “According to Graham Barrow, an expert in financial crime, they are also “vulnerable to misuse” because of how little information about their activity they are required to make public” that is exactly why the backdoor exists. For some to avoid certain matters. I feel decently certain that they were not meant for criminals, but the law is funny, it will parade on the just and unjust alike. So when we are given “Our data shows the number of new ELPs being set up has gone up by 53% since 2017” I am actually not surprised. The rules of the game are clear and anonymity is coveted by the lawful and unlawful alike and now we have a situation. So whilst the BBC is trying to stage the wow factor with “Just five companies, known as formation agencies, have been responsible for 1,500 ELPs, with hundreds listed at registered addresses including one above a burrito bar in central London” I would like to remind them that MI-5 was build on a sewer. So instead of the burrito bar, they could have stated above a burrito bar in Soho, a different setting, not? And the empty statement “FBI agents investigating the Boston marathon bombing probed an ELP registered at an address currently home to a barber shop in Bristol”, so what was the result? Why was that ELP probed? What was the stage of that barbershop? And in that setting when we see “We have established that among those to take advantage of the secrecy of ELPs are members of President Putin’s inner circle.” So? It is a legally allowed setting, that is what the BBC is trying to make muddy. A legal setting is staged and no one sees anything of the politicians that ‘overlooked’ that part of the stage, why is that? And when we are given “there is no requirement to disclose who was behind Sinara, which was dissolved in 2019” we see no listing of illegal activities, merely “facilitated purchases for the Rotenbergs”, so was anything illegal purchased? We do not get any of that, it is a mere sample of BS journalism that we normally get from a Murdoch publication. And it sounds nice that we get Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, who chairs a parliamentary group on tax and corruption making statements regarding ‘scandalous’, but what politicians allowed for that, who raised their voices when the ELP’s were left outside the identity stations? Transparency requires ALL to be revealed, not all minus ONE. But that part of the equation is quickly brushed over by the BBC, why is that? So when we are given “In an emailed update to clients dated 18 May 2017, under the heading “Alternative Solutions”, LAS proposed ELPs as, “a way out and as a substitute for Scottish Partnerships”.” We see a simple setting, a firm updating their clients on what is legally allowed, but that part is not really given, is it. It is a setting of emotions, flaming stages but the people behind the overlook are ignored, left in the dark, why is that? And the one gem in the article is seen with “The government says it does not have any evidence of significant misuse of ELPs. A government spokesperson said: “The UK already has some of the strongest controls in the world to combat money laundering, and it’s vital that we continue to upgrade our governance to crack down on criminals abusing UK corporate entities” it is the stage of ‘significant misuse’, what makes it significant? The fact that the bulk of these ELP’s were created by 5 firms was a much larger station and could have been dealt with years ago, now it becomes a millstone around someones neck there is ‘sudden’ visibility. Yet in the time 2017-2020, who gave light to this? Who acted to stop it? These are questions that I do not see answered, why not?

In this there was a lovely simplicity to monopoly in my youth, perhaps for this day and age it is too simple. Perhaps we need a new version of Hotels, but in Hotels 2 we get to choose options like accountants, corrupt local government and a few other items, or will that make the game a little too realistic for the young? I will let you consider that, I am going back to brooding on new IP towards non repudiation, I reckon that new building in the KSA (the Line) might have need of some IP soon enough. 

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July 25, 2022 · 21:39

Let’s dance

That is the setting. Several papers gave it, but I am going to stick to the Guardian for a specific reason. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/08/elon-musk-twitter-deal-legal-consequences) gives us ‘Musk’s withdrawal from Twitter deal sets stage for long court battle’ to be honest, I am not convinced. In my mind Elon Musk needs to win and he SHOULD win. The premise is seen with ““For nearly two months, Mr Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform’,” Musk’s team stated in the letter. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.” The data in question centers on the number of spam accounts on the app, which Twitter has claimed make up about 5% of more than 200m users but Musk believes is higher.” There is the setting. You see, I personally believed it was close to 20%, a friend of mine has data showing it to be well over 40%, he stated close to 50%. This is not speculation. HE HAS DATA! That should be seen as evidence. The trolls in the EU, Russia and China, the click farms progressing the needs of wannabe’s, politicians and fake information spreaders from the Trump elections, the Covid misinformation settings, the Ukraine war. These are not done by one or two farms, this is done by thousands of players all wanting to grab a piece of the revenue pie. Twitter states that it is a mere 10 million people. I disagree, the elements I mentioned makes it well over triple of what Twitter claims. As such they are intentionally setting a fraudulent price to a product that is overpriced and the media knew this, they have had the largest part of that evidence under their own fingers. FoxNews gives us “NBC News Senior Reporter Brian Collins discovered Vladimir Bondarenko and posted about him that, “He’s a blogger from Kiev who really hates the Ukrainian government. He also doesn’t exist, according to Facebook. He’s an invention of a Russian troll farm targeting Ukraine. His face was made by AI.”” Do you really think that such a ploy is used for one account? Russian troll farms have been all over this and they have been over a few other things too. That friend of mine has data going back years. 

And it gets to be worse. You see there are trolls and click farms and the media has done very little to dig into the amount of either version, they have gone out of their way to avoid clear investigation. Even as some research it and some of it remains debatable. One source gives us ‘19.42% of active Twitter accounts are fake or spam: Analysis’ My issue here is that I do not know the source, hence I do not trust the source (whether valid or not). Consider the Twitter claim. 5% at the most, that implies that a mere 10 million are fake. Now consider the elements I mentioned earlier, there is no way that this matches up. Now consider that Twitter deletes a million fake accounts a day and this has been going on for a while. Now consider that we can not find any clear information on how many NEW Twitter accounts were created in 2021 and 2020 (or 2019 and 2018). That is important information, especially if well over 60,000,000 accounts were deleted in 2022. I believe that this shift is large enough for Elon Musk to start the case, when he gets the data from places like Trollrensics he might have enough to bust the Twitter deal. The setting is and always was that Twitter claims that at most 5% of the accounts are fake, I believe it too be a lot higher. I never speculated the numbers that Trollrensics have, but it is my speculation versus THEIR data, as such they win.

I believe that it will prove the case for Elon Musk.

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July 18, 2022 · 20:47

For those not seeing the oil field

There is a larger field, a larger oil field if you wish. And the people aren’t getting it. I get it, it isn’t an easy equation and it is not really your fault, because the media is guilty as hell in all this, but lets start at the beginning (well, some kind of beginning). One such headline is ‘Oil trumps human rights as Biden forced to compromise in Middle East’, it is one way to look at it, but it is the wrong way. My headline would have been ‘Greed is eternal at the expense of everything else’. The point here is that we get to see a few sides that the media is not giving us. It starts with the oil and that part is a lot more important than you think it is.  So lets take a look at the three nations and the barrels per day they pump.

United States11,184,870
Russia10,111,830
Saudi Arabia (OPEC)9,313,145

So America pumps out a lot of oil, now it makes perfect sense that they will not deal with Russia, but it is at present still an unequal information package.

You see the United States exported about 8.63 million barrels per day (b/d) and imported about 8.47 million b/d of petroleum. And now you think it does not make sense. So lets just say that the US is selling oil at $50 a barrel and buys it at $35 a barrel, so they get 8 million (rounded) times $15, is $120 million of profit a day and that amounts to $43.8 billion a year. Profit they basically got for free. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not willing to give away $43.8 billion after the way the US treated the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is just so much any person will take and I reckon the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken enough of the treatment handed to them. So the US instead of catering to self sells 73% of all the oil they pump, so why should the KSA after the way they were treated cater to that situation? Even an alternative that the us keeps 50% of their sales, they hand the KSA 50% it might be seen as a compromise. The US could stop selling 2,500,000 barrels a day and cater to its own needs, but the profit of some are not easily swayed. They are seemingly willing to let the US population freeze to death (or boil to death). And these numbers are out there, the media has had them for the longest time. All these BS articles on going crude oil free whilst the US is selling 73% of whatever they drill. Seems a little hypocritical, doesn’t it? 

That 73% does cater to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories, no one denies that, but the profit goes somewhere and not all of it to the US coffers owned by the US treasuries. Someone is getting rich and the media is happy for you to be in the dark about it. Ask yourself “How many media outlets have given view of the amount sold? Why is the US short on oil whilst the oil harvested goes somewhere else?” I get it, there is a need for profit, no one denies that, but we see all these articles that imply and suggest that the Saudi’s are the bad paty whilst the US is trying to get cheap oil so that they can sell it at a profit. And believe me, when we change the prices of the earlier given $50 and $35 into the real numbers the equation changes really quick and the numbers become exceedingly large. 

So why should the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hand over profit that they are entitled to? Did you honestly think that Aramco was some non profit organisation? If it is it will be non profit for Saudi Arabia and its citizens, not for the US and their citizens, or the 176 countries that they could cater to. And the media does not really give you that, do they? So when the Guardian gives us “Brent crude hit a 14-year high of $139.13 a barrel in March, fuelling global inflation and a worldwide cost of living crisis. In the US, inflation is at 9.1% and accelerating, which is likely to translate into lost seats for the Democratic party in November’s midterm elections.” What happens when they sell 2.5 million barrels a day less and let that go to the US shortage? The equation changes by a lot does it not? 29% less sales will be felt all over the US and by Brent in particular, so why exactly does the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia need to play ball with the US, especially when China is exceedingly courting Saudi Arabia for all kind of goods and when I see the revenue setting of 375 billion + 530 billion that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is spending on improving Saudi Arabia, there is every setting where the US has overplayed its hand and China is now in a premium position to get their revenue balls rolling. A setting I warned about before Covid before 2019, there were courters in the field and when that overpriced US plane wasn’t going there, China could sell the Chengdu J-20 at a nice price to Saudi Arabia (I admit I was trying to get my foot in the door and make a play for a simple 3.75% commission), and when you consider that this bill might go up to 15 billion, my 3.75% makes for a nice half a billion (we all have overly big dreams), and merely to play the courier? You have got to be kidding, I am so ready for that part! 

But this was about oil and the US played the wrong hand several times over (like shaking hands with air) and now Saudi Arabia and especially Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud might feel that the US played them for a fool and the problems start when the US could not afford problems. A stage where we see that Brent Crude is not so innocent and the media should have been on top of this, but I will let you people decide how that should be seen.

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July 17, 2022 · 22:39

The media gets it this wrong?

That is more than a question, it is a statement and the ABC is joining the tool section of media. This all started today when I saw a piece by Stan Grant. The article (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-17/joe-biden-upholding-rules-based-order-shaking-hands-with-killers/101242386) gives us ‘For Joe Biden, the price of upholding a global rules-based order seems to be shaking hands with killers and tyrants’ and the article is lousy from the start. We get “So this is what the global rules-based order looks like: US President Joe Biden sitting down with a Saudi leader with blood on his hands. US intelligence says Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. His body is believed to have been cut into pieces and incinerated.” A little recap. The UN report (at [381]) gives speculation what had to be done, but there is no evidence of any kind that the CIA or other intelligence agencies had ANY realistic level of evidence that Khashoggi’s life was in danger, more important none of the evidence shows that there was a definite evidence. I saw one report that gives us that it was highly likely that a member of the royal family was involved. Lets repeat that ‘Highly likely’ and that is not evidence, as such the statement ‘sitting down with a Saudi leader with blood on his hands’ is a farce and pure speculation. In addition the statement “His body is believed to have been cut into pieces and incinerated” is equally speculative. Then we get to the statement “Osama bin Laden, who plotted the attacks, was a Saudi. Of the 19 terrorists who carried out the attacks, 15 were Saudi citizens. An FBI report has linked a Saudi diplomat to the attackers.” Lets look at that. The more correct version is “Osama bin Laden, who plotted the attacks, was a Saudi, trained by the CIA” as such the attack on America was done by a rogue CIA agent, but that is bad PR, is it not? Then we get “When it comes human rights, China ranks higher than Saudi, according to Freedom House.” Based on what data? How many nations were tested? These seem like harsh questions to ask, yet the writer added the line in the middle, so these questions are valid. Especially as Freedom House is added once in the entire text, the context is gone. In all this the Uyghurs might not agree with that statement, but behind every silver lining a new dark cloud is hiding. 

Is Saudi Arabia a perfect state? Not according to many in the west, not according to non-islamic people. I do not know, I have never been to Saudi Arabia, what I saw was from YouTube. I saw the Hajj today, I saw Mecca, a place that a christian will never visit because it is off limits to non islamic people. Am I upset? No, I am not. I reckon that there are places in Saudi Arabia I would want to see before Mecca ever graces my list. It is nothing negative, it is that Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam have a lot to offer. I saw the video’s and they look awesome. I saw the Hajj, thousands of people united in one faith and these people are a mix of Sunni and Shias, praying next to one another in peace, more important they all have the same Quran. Try that in the western world. The Protestants and Catholics have been at each others throats for centuries and they still are. There are over a dozen version of the bible and they all claim theirs is the real one. There is ONE Quran! In the Mecca walk that someone posted I saw Mecca. I saw the streets, I saw a surprising amount of high rises. I saw Haagen-Dazs and I saw two KFC’s. I saw a shopping mall that is every bit as luxurious as the ones I saw in Sydney, Bangkok, Chicago or New York. I saw a vegetable store handing out bananas to passing people. Try that in London. I saw people happy and walking in joy. I think that we are more alike than unlike and it made me happy. The streets were clean, the people were walking all over and as they were closer to the Mosque, the pilgrims stood out in their white cloaks, all unified in faith. I can honestly say that I never saw such a sight in Lourdes. I saw no discord, It was an awesome sight. 

This all reflects back to the article. Is MBS guilty? No! He is not, is he innocent? I cannot tell because there is no evidence, and that what is there is warped. I stated that several times and there is something to say for the rogue agents. We have our own Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) to thank for that. Wasn’t it he who said “Oh, who will relieve us of these blasphemers?” No order was ever given, but the blasphemer was gone. Was this the same? I cannot tell, there is no evidence, but it seems clear that rogue agents were hoping for some reward. I like the response of one of the spokespeople best “Khashoggi doesn’t make the top 1000 of worries of the Crown Prince”, it is paraphrased. I tried to find the article again, but I was unable. Consider the facts, when Khashoggi was alive he was a mere columnist for the Washington Post. I reckon that less than a thousand non WP readers had a clue who he was. And now his name is stated in nearly every article that mentions Saudi Arabia or the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, have you not noticed that? So in this age, the US needs cheap oil and Saudi Arabia is the only source left for America. And in that race no one is asking why the US needs Saudi oil. You see America is the largest oil producer, followed by Saudi Arabia, Russia and China. In this day and age of everyone screaming to reduce oil, why does the US need Saudi oil? Perhaps the US needs to reconsider the stupidity they preach and come out clean why they need more oil. They are by several sources the largest producer of oil, so why would they need more? Perhaps I was right all along, to reduce oil usage one must redefine what is essential, it seems that the US is not doing that. But that side of the equation does not make it into the media, does it?

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July 11, 2022 · 18:52

Meme by Elon Musk

The guardian is giving us a part, other papers are giving us a part. Yet no one is treading on the side where they have to be, the media pussies on patrol. Trying to keep safe their digital dollars. And it is about to come to blows. You see the article ‘Elon Musk may have to complete $44bn Twitter takeover, legal experts say’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/10/elon-musk-may-have-to-complete-44bn-twitter-takeover-legal-experts-say) gives merely part of the painting. Yes, legal experts state “Quinn said Musk’s information requests on spam accounts were not “reasonable” and would not be accepted by the court. “He can’t use unreasonable information requests to create a pretext to claim a violation,” he said.” But the setting is incomplete. Twitter has maintained that no more than 5% of the Twitter accounts were fake, I have data suggesting it is as high as 20%, another source (www.trollrensics.com) has data showing the number of fake accounts for trolls and misinformation to be as high as 50%, this implies that Twitter is trying to sell a bill of goods, but the bill is only 50% filled and that has been at the centre of this all along. So whilst Jack Dorsey and friends and now in a stage where the gig is up, they need to get as much out of it as possible, because the media will at some point ‘wake up’ and take a much deeper look. Consider hundred of media outlets and they have been avoiding this part all along. Politicians setting their premise, misinformation on covid, election misinformation, and the Ukraine war thousands to troll accounts working day and night to give a false premise of what is going on and in all this the media remained SILENT. 

Trollrensics has data spanning 8 years (at least) and that is merely the beginning. You see, on route to home I remembered that trolls and click-farms rely on greed. As such we see a different setting. First there is the ‘unmonitored source’ that gives us “Twitter doesn’t reveal IP addresses of its users. They use it internally and strictly restrict the public from this information. But there’s always a way. In this article, we’ll discuss how to find someone’s IP address on Twitter.” This implies that we need another path, but criminals and click-farms are lazy, they will reuse what they can. Every second they can tweet is another few cents in their wallet, as such more is better. This implies that if you create a database of the @TwitterAddress and you strip all the messages, you can look per message and see how it moves. This is not a simple solution, you need serious computing power for this. But as such, you get a message that is spread (in the near same instance) from different mobiles in the same location you optionally have a click farm point. Now if we get a multitude of misinformation from clusters of mobiles, we have found such a place. 

This is a mere setting to get to the numbers. You see, Russia and China have hundreds if not thousands of these click-farm locations. And now we have a serious number, when we move that action from nation to nation, we get well beyond my 20% and way past the 5% claim of Twitter. When that is obtained, we get what might be considered evidence towards what some would call the alleged fraudulent sale of Twitter to Elon Musk. Why Fraudulent? Well, Twitter maintained that they have no more than 5% fake accounts. These numbers would prove them wrong and with the previous part that they had IP addresses they had the information a lot longer than anyone would care to speculate on and as they speculatively lived by the rule that they look sexier with 330 million active users, than with 120 million active users. And one source gives us “Twitter has some 330 million monthly active users (MAU) based on its last reported data that leveraged this metric in the 1st quarter of 2019. As of 2020, Twitter’s monetizable daily active users (mDAU) stands at 166 million, which represents a 24% growth from 2019.” In the middle of Covid Twitter grew 24%? I am not saying it is not possible, after all Amazon pulled it off, but how many stores were active during coved? In addition to this, where did these funds come from? In all the presidents men we hear ‘Follow the money’, that equally applies to trolls and click-farms. They got paid, they paid for things, that money trail is equally important in discovering what was what. It is not fool proof, because others use similar paths for valid reasons, but that is one person, one business. Not a person or business with hundreds of phones. 

All this should have been seen and looked at by the media years ago, but it wasn’t interesting is it not? And as for the meme, see below. When you consider the elements of the meme, the silence of the media makes even less sense. Yet, I leave that to you to look into. 

Meme by @ElonMusk

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July 9, 2022 · 22:47

Today in the price is right

Yes, that is at times the question. What is something valued at and what are the reasons and facts of this valuation. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/08/elon-musk-buy-twitter-withdraw) gives us ‘Elon Musk withdraws $44bn bid to buy Twitter after weeks of high drama’ Yes, it was high end drama, and it was high end drama because the media doesn’t like Elon Musk and because they should have known better, but in their race for digital dollars, they really do not want all the facts to come out. Even as we are given “Mr Musk is terminating the merger agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr Musk relied when entering into the merger agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect” yes legalised porridge this is, but it is a setting of a truth, one that the media was clearly aware of. And we see the dice roll high when we are given “Musk and his lawyers accused Twitter of withholding information about the number of “spam” accounts on the platform. This week, the company revealed that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day.” As such we need to take a much stronger look at “This week, the company revealed that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day”, and this has been going on for a while. I saw some data that indicated that not 5%, but well over 20% was fake, a reliable source (which I discussed) earlier gives us (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/06/08/what-the-media-silences/) ‘What the media silences’, a setting that is closer to 50%, that is a really high number, but with the Ukrainian war, Covid and Chinese trolls the number of fake Twitter accounts is going through the roof. And this source has ACTUAL data, data that they collected over years. And when that is proven, even if the evidence shows that it is only 30% (speculative) it implies that either Twitter was incompetent as they see only 5% fake accounts, or they were intentionally fraudulent. I cannot tell which of the two it is but the media had a much larger sight on this FOR YEARS and they did nothing. Now they try to use it to flame for a little longer, but consider that the media was lying to you for years, knowingly keeping us in the dark, I reckon that Twitter might be safer in the hands of Elon Musk. And in this Jack Dorsey has a lot to explain, no matter how the cake knife falls. As I personally see it, he was either incapable of keeping Twitter safe, or he was intentionally grossly overpricing Twitter.  I am willing to let him explain what it is, I feel certain that Elon Musk is dying to hear that part of the equation as well. Either way, he wins, a setting that was never in question.

So when we see “Musk stood to take control of a social media network with more than 200 million users. An avid, but critical user of the platform, he had vowed to push through various reforms, including relaxing its content restrictions, ridding the platform of fake and automated accounts and shifting away from its advertising-based revenue model.” Is anyone wonder if this is including the fake accounts? You see, this would amount to a maximum of 100 million users and if we are to believe some facts, Nicky Minaj has 25,449,548 follower at present, this amounts to 25%, so I reckon that Elon Musk could buy that account for less then 10% of what Twitter is asking. That is one way of doing it, and consider that of all the users one in four is following Nicky Minaj, what is the actual value of Twitter? You merely have to look at it from another side. But that is merely my view on the matter.

 

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July 5, 2022 · 01:50

Everything must go

Yes, it is a term we see in fire sales and in all all kind of desperate needs. But lucky for the Ukraine there is a solution. After the war, the EU and US take possession of EVERYTHING in the hermitage. It might not be enough, but it should be enough to cover well over 50%, and the Russians could redecorate it for all the oligarchs who are not that welcome in Europe or the US. To some degree I feel for them, because there is no way that they were all aware, or all agree what is going on, and after they lost everything (thanks to Putin), they will need to stay somewhere and it better looks nice, so the Hermitage is a decent solution. It will be a bit barren after we take everything from it, but there are a few other museums, as such the Hermitage could be decently decorated as a refuge for oligarchs. If there is one oligarch I feel for, it would be Roman Abramovich. I do not know the man, but he was nuts about his Chelsea team. I personally do not care about football, so I cannot relate, but I can relate to loss of something a person worked on for that long. He became owner in 2003, and in that time the club won 18 major trophies, that is some achievement, you cannot deny that and a person that vested into a football club has his minds far away from the war machine of Putin. I reckon many will disagree with me, but that is how I see it. And his actions on keeping the club safe were highly commendable. 

It needs to be said, we cannot rule out all oligarchs, but if there would be even one, this man would be it. And this also relates to what comes next, the Russians might think that this is over, that this is going their way, but the EU and US are ready for them now, they are willing to take over Saint Petersburg as a breach for Russia. As we can see the Russians who were supposed to have the largest and most powerful army (they would be in first or second position) Now they are nowhere near that and as such Russia is about to face an army a lot stronger and better trained than the Ukrainian one. They were 21st on the military power list and they stopped and fought back an army a lot stronger than them. Now that the damage is all over the place, they have no reserves left for NATO making it also a very dangerous stage. It reminds me of the cornered cat and the weird jumps they will make. The problem is that Russia is also a nuclear state and even as they know that it will be the last move they ever make, Russia will not handover the treasures of the Hermitage, they are already in a stage of stealing grain, as such we will see that their position is sliding from bad to disastrous. And when you consider that the Hermitage has 3 million art pieces from all kinds of era’s, the idea that 2,755 billionaires would want to buy a piece of art (at discount) is not to be disregarded. And now as the BBC gives us “We need $750bn to rebuild country – Ukraine”, is see a simple sum. If all these billionaires spend $345 million, we end up with $963 billion. Solving the repair issues. I reckon that the costs will increase, so if we could get the upper echelon of these billionaires spend twice or three times that amount (with a little more discount) Ukraine would be in a better place. There is still all the confiscated oligarch materials, but I am actually not sure if that will all go the proper way. Some of this stuff is properly registered in trusts, so we might not get that much from that group. Yes, I heard all the noise, but in the end legal settings prevail and as such some of these oligarchs have their stuff securely set in paperwork. As such, I thought out of the box and I am setting the stage of confiscating 3 million pieces of art from ONE place. I do not think that anyone else had thought of that, or at least not in places I read materials. 

Russia has a few more places like that, but the Hermitage is perhaps the most famous one of them all. So let the bidding begin. I want an omelette tomorrow, So I am bidding $0.35 per faberge egg, 6 eggs make an omelette, so where would I deposit the $2.10 (plus shipping and handling)? You think that this is a joke, and it would be a bad one. I reckon that the ‘true’ friends of Putin are securing their hold on these art pieces even now as I am typing this. In the end, in 2023, what do you think the Russian state will be worth when new years day 2023 comes calling? You think it is long, but it is a mere 25 weeks away and at present the Ukrainian war has lasted now almost 4.5 months is nowhere near one, yet the Russian machine is running out of generals, colonels, fuel and a few other items. What do you think will happen when NATO knocks on the door at the border of Poland and Belarus. I reckon that they will not put Finland in a bind by going there to invade Saint-Petersburg, but the NATO navy could sail straight through to Saint Petersburg and use it as a beachhead (whilst confiscating the art in the Hermitage). These are pure speculations, I have absolutely no data supporting this, but I would take that route. Belarus will have to put up or shut up and from there it becomes a simple race to Moscow. With the Russians having so much damage, the rest of their equipment might not in a much better state. Just a thought!

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