Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

July 25, 2020 · 01:42

Champion from Stockholm

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

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

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

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

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

 

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July 22, 2020 · 01:43

A pawn in nuclearity

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

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

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

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

 

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July 13, 2020 · 17:07

The Iran and Judy show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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July 11, 2020 · 20:34

The Price of knowledge

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

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

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

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

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

 

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July 7, 2020 · 03:40

Light reading

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

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

Hezbollah, is there another one?

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

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

Location/Area of Operation: Lebanon and Syria”

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

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

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

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

Country-Reports-on-Terrorism-2019-2

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June 28, 2020 · 14:42

Where are we at?

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

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

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

 

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June 19, 2020 · 01:39

Contemplations

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

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

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

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

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

 

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June 14, 2020 · 19:34

What others decide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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May 19, 2020 · 23:30

Just say ‘BANG!’

We all laugh and we all seem to point fingers, we all seem to endure the blame game. How governments are bowing to the bully (President Trump) and convict without evidence a corporation and a nation (Huawei and China), yet at the core of it all, we are merely sheep, we bask in the sun as the wolves take one or two sheep, and as long it is not us, we merely watch and remain basking in inaction. The media helps here by trivialising news, by basking in inaction on matters that are reported on, without the need for evidence by howling ‘This was what was told to us, we merely report’. So where are the questions on President Trump, who once claimed that it would merely impact 1.5%? Now that 1.5 million Americans have the disease and 92,000 died of it, where is that 1.5% when it is already at 400% of what was expected, what do we get to see? A president blaming the WHO, stating that China is in its back pocket. Even when we realise that the WHO has no legal rights in any nation, realising that the EU has a massive reporting problem that affects thousands, nope, it is all about the blame game. It worked for Senator McCarthy in 1953-1955, it will work for President Trump too and so far, it seems to work. Yet the problem is expanding more and more. Now we see how people are more often in jeopardy. We see hackers and scammers with Covid-19 agendas, we see 5G blamed by short minded people and again we see EasyJet getting hacked and 9 million people just lost their credit card privacy, but there are voices that are trying to calm us “There is no evidence that any personal information has been misused”, yet they are doing more! “We are communicating with the approximately 9 million customers to advise them of protective steps”, yes how about one singular step? “We have instigated a death squad to hunt down the hackers and put them to death!” Not accepting any excuse from parents that their 17 year old did not know what he/she was doing, not some excuse that it was their first time. Nope, we set a gunto their temple and blow the brains out and televise the event so that others know, their time for cheap thrills is over, they become the cheap thrill. And we will all get notified by the media that this is too harsh, too inhumane, yet that is not the real deal is it? The shareholders and stakeholders pushing the media know that at some point THEY become the sought targets and they fear this.

When there are no targets, transgressors fear what will come and that is the fear they have and we need to drive the dagger home, drive it towards the targets that matter.

Politicians will shout ‘terrorism’ at any event, the media will report that, but they will not report and investigate the proper format of accusations, just like they refused to investigate the accusers of Saudi Arabia. First on a missing journalist no one cared about, after that on a mobile phone of a person who was too rich for his own good and no one properly vetted the evidence, they merely dropped it on the desk of a UN essay writer. The Guardian (and many others) hid behind ‘high confidence’ mentions and other media did similar actions, yet they never investigated it, did they? It was a week of jabs and then it quietly went away, that is what we signed up for and I for one have had enough of this media driven BS.

If we can’t direct them, we can tell them to be quiet whilst we fix things and the benefit of my approach is that in a depression, hackers and abusers don’t really get to have any voice in the matter. Hackers and profiteers in a stage where there are 320,000 dead people, it implies that well over 500,000 are affected and they do not really care about the life of a hacker (well their mommies and daddies do), who cares about them?

That is the stage that is in question, the stage where governments will not set a proper stage, where too many industries abused the situation towards their bottom dollar and in all this a new stage of McCarthyism is created by the current administration, all whilst the media reacts towards shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. In this the public have had enough and they want to see real action, not what the media and politicians call actions, but something tangible and that stage is now out in the open. 

And whilst the news is all about the Covid fears, we get to see how people like Morgan Wright, a former senior adviser to the US State department as a member of the anti-terrorism assistance program, sees similar issues, he reported yesterday “He is seeing the exploitation of human behaviour on the dark web, mainly through the TOR browser, which allows pwople to obscure their identity, it is a privacy driven status now used by criminals to do with impunity” and in all this it is clear that normal jurisprudential methods are not working, so a death squad is what we need. Perhaps you like the original term better “a CIA wet team” a wet team because of all that blood, and the amount of people demanding this solution is increasing by thousands on a daily basis, this is the result when there is no longer some form of balance, when the checks and balances are taken away and the people are settled unjustly with the invoice that should have been properly taken care of. As such we are bound to see a much less appreciated group of people demanding solutions. This is what the politicians and governments are now facing, a new form of terrorism and it is based on the lack of actions by too many. 

So whilst the media is all about privacy whilst we know we do not have any, we see the larger picture, we demand to see factual evidence, we demand repercussions for the transgressors, a stage we haven’t faced ever before, those who put us in this situations forgot that checks and balances requires some sort of balance, and as that was taken away from too many, we demand evidence on the validity of gravy trains and in that absence these people better show long term results, or a lynch mob is all that remains, McCarthy never learned that lesson, in 1950 6,000 miles was a lifetime away, now it is merely a click and nothing more than a few mere seconds. That will become clear soon enough, it comes with every additional Covid death and every lockdown hindering us, the media forgot about that too, in all this the forgotten parts will weigh against them all, and something will have to give, especially with the US in a $25 trillion debt and one in four Americans out of work, it is a situation that is worse than the combined negativity that the great depression and 2008 meltdown showed, but both together will force a new reality, it is in this setting that a loud mouthed republican was possibly the worst of the worst scenarios that the US has to content with, I am not stating that Russia and China are in better positions, but they can sit on the sidelines whilst the US and partially the EU burns down, their inactions allow for all this, there is no enemy to smite and Saudi Arabia was never an enemy, and the people love a real enemy and as such the hackers will have to do. I think that none of us saw this coming, it was never in the books, but ‘New Terrorism’ will soon become very real and the media is out of bounds on this one, their inactions helped create it. 

 

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April 23, 2020 · 23:35

Name of the game

We all played monopoly, we all played a number of board games where we were taught that there is a balance, a level of fairness about. The game Hotel lets us build a hotel, get a permit, get clearances and as the players get to our hotel, it will cost them, there is a similarity to monopoly, but Hotel plays a lot faster. We all agree that there should be balance in all this. Now let’s take you back 15 years ago, suddenly we are forced to pay an additional fee to be allowed on an airplane. The issue was that fuel had suddenly doubled in price. Fuel is the strongest and clearest view towards greed and exploitation. Forced in cars we are pushed towards spending more and more on fuel. The entire virus situation has changed the position of the seesaw, now there is another matter and the traders who have filled their pockets for decades are now in another stage. So when we are told “US Senator Ted Cruz told the Saudis to ‘turn the tankers the hell around’ on wednesday” we get the first indication on the support that politicians give the oil barons in the US. And as we are told “traders have scrambled to get out of the contract to avoid taking delivery of barrels because of a lack of storage”, it is another example of short sighted spreadsheet thinking, oris it? I will accept that the entire Coronavirus situation is totally unforseen, yet in all this, the speculators and traders are seemingly getting support on both sides of the seesaw,and that is not right. It is as I personally see it, just another version of ‘too big too fail’, and the approach that banks used before, now also applies to traders. They might make a statement on ‘stopping Saudi Shipments’, yet the opposite also remains true, if the Saudi government decides to deliver merely 80%-90% of the normal shipments for the next two years, the impact will be disastrous, fuel prices will go beyond insane and the US government only has its own shortsighted thinking to thank in that case. So as Ted Cruz ‘hides’ behind “this is SEVEN TIMES the typical monthly flow”, I merely ponder the question, what did the original contracts say? We heard last year that the Saudi’s were ‘told’ to increase production. Perhaps the Saudi government, or an official at Aramco might be kind enough to put those contracts on the internet for all of us to observe. Is it not interesting that oil ha to be ordered?  So where is that purchase order? I reckon that Aramco could optionally store some of that oil in Rotterdam, the petrochemical plants there have lots of storage (I do not know how filled they are), the Americans would have to pay as they refused the ordered delivery, so the ships would have to go via an American harbour towards Rotterdam with alternative routes to Hamburg, in the end these places would end up with free oil, America has to pay for its contracted purchase of oil. 

And I get it, no one saw the Corona issue explode the way it did, but that is the nature of the game, win big, lose big, but too many people won’t allow for the lose big and to some degree there are situations that can be adjusted for, but the need for 2 million barrels of oil per day, now in a nation where there is a lockdown, and not just in the US, all over the world, things will have to give in, yet what the media reports a whole range of wrong actions are being taken. So as we see in the Guardian ‘Trump considers block on crude oil imports to prop up US markets’, so that might be the short term, but consider that the Middle East decides due to these actions to limit export to the US to 80% of nominal, or what was initially agreed on. On one side, the Middle East takes a hit, on the other side if that limit applies, by the end of the year, heating and car fuel will go through the roof, how will that come across? And when it comes to ‘exploitation’, consider FXCM.com “Discover Potential opportunities and Trade your Opinion 24/5. Fast Execution and low Spreads. Trade Oil, Forex, indices and more” yes these traders had all kinds of options, but now, they need to get out, they do not want to pay the ferryman. I accept that, because the entire Corona issue could not be predicted, not to this degree, but how often do we get to hear, ‘there is one winner and one loser’ and this time around Wall Street (to name but a financial dimension), gets an invoice it never saw coming. Not just Wall Street, the financial districts on a global scale are getting a pummeling it has never had before. Is it just? That is a moot question, it is not about justice, there is no just, this is about the contract of oil delivery, they have pushed in the past again and again and the short story is, where are the contracts that the US has with Saudi Arabia? Last year they wanted it cheap, they wanted more and they demanded it their way. Now they have to pay.

Justice is not part of the deal, it never is when Wall Street potentates are involved. So why is it important? The issue is not merely the oil, there are all kinds of long term impacts on goods and manufactured items that will impact our lives, yet the oil traders demand their full margin of profit, even if nature banks against them.

As I see it, and under the present situations (as far as the information is known to me) the entire response from Ted Cruz was stupid, plain and simple. He turned to emotion whilst this was about a contract, is there a contract, is it valid? None of the media reports on this. The fact that a boat representing $50 million in goods leaves a port implies that this a contract or a purchase is attached to it, if not, Ted Cruz still does not have a leg to stand on, because he never made mention of that, politicians hiding behind emotions and outbursts tend to have lost the higher ground and it shows here.

And the media is (as I personally see it) in on it, none of them are asking about the contracts, no one is looking at the oil contracts whether Saudi Arabia is having an alleged hostile act, and in this, the turnabout is harsh, when Saudi Arabia limits delivery for years, the US will have a massive industrial problem. Is that not an interesting view? In the entire oil contracts, I saw nothing on the BBC, the Guardian, and a few other papers too, there is no show of the contracts and perhaps you remember that no one ships $50 million in goods unless there is a contract or a purchase order. It is not about the dumping, it is about the paperwork around it and no one is asking.As I was watching an interview with Ted Cruz, I see that he is in a bad place, his state (Texas) is the oil producing heart of America, they do not like the situation and I agree that he must do what is best for his constituents, yet in all this someone signed a contract with Saudi Arabia (a fair assumption) and no one is asking for that document, not even the media, is that not surreal?

If we are going to hide behind emotion with the hope that the invoice flys by, we ned to realise that this will hit on the flip side, and the consequence of 80% delivery after Corona is equally dangerous, but if this is a game, you should accept a lack of foresight attached to this, in business there are purchase orders and sales contracts, Especially in oil where prices can go through the roof, in this case the oil traders will take a hit unlike they have ever had, it comes with those 7 figure bonuses.

At some point regression to the middle also indicates that profit falls can fall to zero. Those not seeing that were standing on a bear trap hoping no bear would come by as they were unable to move and optionally unable to flee the environment.

 

 

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