Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

October 19, 2018 · 13:12

Raging against the media

Last night I lost it, I will be honest, at roughly 02:23 I went slightly berserk. You see, I have had the longest of issues with the media for the longest of times. The media has no interest in you or me, it does not care about the individuals, whenever they say so, and they are lying. You see, the media has shown to care for 4 allegiances

the shareholders
the stakeholders
the advertisers
themselves

In that order of business! I will disregard actual investigative reporters here; they hunt the story, some of them really good. Overall this is about money and journalists are in that regard, merely catering to the economic three and after that person called self. It does not matter whether you are in the US, UK, Australia and to some degree even most European countries. The reverence of journalists is no longer valid for well over 90% of them.

The entire Jamal Khashoggi event escalated. Now, I am not stating that nothing happened; I am not stating that Saudi Arabia in innocent, but their guilt has not been clearly established. All the actions so far seen were aimed at the clear exploitation of the audience to increase circulation and keeping the webpage clicks high. Some (like the BBC for example) are doing their job and asking questions, the right questions. The entire matter is more of an issue as it is a person that matters in this case, if it was a reporter from the Daily Mail, no one would give a fuck (pardon my French), no, it was a reporter (or columnist) for the Washington Post, and actually really good newspaper, and of course the ante goes up by a fair bit.

According to BBC News, the so called recording of his torture (according to Turkish sources) has been requested. We see the quote “Mr Trump said America had already asked Turkey for a recording said to provide strong evidence that Mr Khashoggi was killed inside at the consulate” and that makes perfect sense. So why has it not arrived at the White House? If I can mail a MP3 in 17 seconds, why has it been 17 hours and why have we not heard or seen anything acceptably reliable concerning the evidence?

In my speculative view, the statement of the recording is a fake and the media has been playing with ‘Journalist Jamal Khashoggi ‘butchered while still alive’, horrific audio of his murder allegedly reveals‘ (NZ Herald), as well as ‘Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing, Turkish Official Says‘ (NY Times), the list goes on and on. Now we get that some titles merely seem unacceptable. Yet the misrepresentation through flawed reporting is still on the papers even the New York Times. The Washington Post should get a pass on this as they seemingly lost one of their own.

Why is it an issue?

You see, Saudi Arabia is in a proxy war with Iran and Turkey as a puppet of Iran is getting into the good graces of Iran as much as possible. that part is not shown in ANY of those newspapers. Then we get the kill squad references. references like: “A still from surveillance camera footage shows a man thought to be a member of Mohammed bin Salman’s security detail“, really? Based on what? You see if these reporters had done their job they would have added footage from that person in the details of the crown prince. I have not seen that footage, have you?

Then we get to the Guardian. there we see “Over the past two weeks Turkish officials have leaked increasingly shocking evidence that they say proves that the journalist, who was critical of the Saudi crown prince, was tortured and killed inside the building and his dismembered body driven to the nearby consul general’s house where it was disposed of“, here the Guardian is also in a questionable stage. You see, the link there merely gives us the recording request that no one can produce. In addition, we see ‘Turkish officials have leaked increasingly shocking evidence‘, so exactly what evidence was released? Is that not a valid question?

Now, we can all accept that something happened, that there is a more than likely chance that Jamal Khashoggi is not in a good place, the chance that he is optionally is dead is also not lost on me, and I can accept that, yet the media is pushing it into a frenzy of speculations and allegations with no support, or at least support of the most dubious kind, that whilst the tether between Turkey and Iran remains unlit and no one mentions that Turkey has reasons to be set in a anti-Saudi Arabia stage, we see none of that.

In addition, over all this we have been given “Liam Fox, the UK trade secretary, and the US Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, joined key European partners in pulling out of a major economic forum in Saudi Arabia nicknamed Davos in the desert“, ok that is fair. It is their choice. So exactly what actions were taken against Iran regarding Syria, what actions were taken against Iran regarding Yemen? We were treated to “Iranian and European officials are meeting at the United Nations to try to salvage a nuclear deal that the US pulled out of” less than a month ago, in light of the hundreds of deaths in Yemen, a slaughter that Iran is part of, why are they even talking to Iran?

Yet if Neom is pushed through, if it becomes a reality, the IT infrastructure and interne options could optionally represent between $2-$5 billion a month if the full coverage is obtained after 2030, and a lot more besides that, such values and some people are walking away form that table? It seems hypocrite and it does not make any sense after the willingness shown to make deals with Iran. In addition the notion of walking away from serious cash and walking away from that ‘on principle’ whilst that same principle stops them from properly taxing the FAANG group is just a little too hypocrite to stomach. If I get the option, I would move in in a heartbeat, even mere crumbs from a $2 billion a month pie is still serious cash to many players, and as we are told: “Bruno Le Maire said on French TV channel Public Senat that “I will not go to Riyadh next week” for the conference known as Davos in the desert“. Russia will not have that issue, they will most likely state: “Who the fuck was Jamal Khashoggi anyway, and who do we thank with a bottle of Vodka for ignoring such massive economic opportunities?” There are plenty of players who will think the same. Some will state that it is a good thing to take a distance and set the stage in a less friendly way, yet they never had that consideration after Wall Street made millions of Americans live the life of destitution, did they?

ABC News added flavour to it all with the report: ‘Pompeo listened to an alleged recording of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi: Turkish Source‘, yet the article also gives us: ““The secretary addressed this yesterday. He has not heard a tape,” his spokeswoman Heather Nauert told ABC News in an email. Asked about receiving a transcript of the recording, Nauert told ABC News: “I don’t have anything on that.”“, so is there a recording? Why is no one jumping on that story plane hitting Turkey with that question EVERY HOUR? The story is 24 hours old and inaction on the truth prevails whilst actively pushing the alleged unconfirmed reporting is winning; it is that part of pushing hype towards emotion and not true journalism, keeping the emotions high, instead of properly informing the people. Last night that stage just got to me.

That whilst we understand that governments are walking away from economic events, yet they do not get to cry on the entire Brexit setting either, at that point their useless and fear mongering attempt to fill the bucket with false staging needs to be met with the very same tenacity, but that is not going to happen, is it? Wall Street will not allow for it, will it?

So as the New York Times gives us: “Investors raised concern that if Saudi Arabia were sanctioned, it could restrict oil supply and prompt a rise in energy prices. “As soon as the news came out it increased the selling,” said Robert Pavlik, chief investment strategist at SlateStone Wealth LLC in New York. “Anything that has a semblance of the possibility of trouble, people in this environment see it as a much larger problem than it may really be.”“, the article (at https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/10/18/business/18reuters-usa-stocks.html) will get a twist or two before the end of the weekend and when we contemplate the message from Robert Pavlik, chief investment strategist at SlateStone Wealth LLC in New York. The answer is simple, you have the media to thank for that (as I personally see it)!

so when we are in a stage of what happened, I wonder how many of these reporters remember the entire Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles case and how it all came to an end after 30 years, or did it?

In the end, it is the lack of journalistic integrity that gets to me. It is all about staging the story; it is no longer about reporting the news. There will be the players that do the right thing and the BBC is currently topping that list, but the issue is that this list of better journalistic publications is shrinking and it is not getting better or larger.

One of the players who set me off was TalkRadio (UK), she is not the best soul on this planet (in more ways than one). I think that when Tweeting a bombing pic as satire is just as low as any person can get and I do not fault her for being stupid, but she should not be that blatantly obvious about it, and in her defence that she is a staunch republican, I would say that so am I, yet I try to push for higher values within my own party and other parties. that does not mean that I am absent of humour, mine can be direct and perhaps to some offending at times, but it is never done in malice, Julia Hartley-Brewer tweeted in malice, which is not the same. Perhaps it was not satire, but sarcasm and when it bites back, it will merely be irony.

The example is actually important as we see at times the satirical presentation of events, and making sure that this is filtered out is equally important. In addition there have been places like Today, where we saw former CIA director John Brennan. Here we see direct answers on good questions, yet here we need to see another filtering. Here the filtering is that this is a former operative who was in Saudi Arabia, who knows the country and the people. It is a much better level of reliability and we should not ignore that, in opposition to other reporters who are unlikely to find Saudi Arabia and Riyadh on a blind map. In addition the other reports never added any reliable parts like John Brennan to the equation, merely their anonymous source, one that has more likely than not an anti-Saudi state of mind.

Whatever!

In the end, we need to look into ourselves too, I am doing just that and even as I understand why I was in a rage, I am still looking into the matter how that rage got to me. Just an hour ago, we see the BBC giving us: “The Turkish authorities say they have audio and video evidence of the killing – although these have not been made public. Turkish media with close links to the government have published gruesome details on the alleged audio, saying screams, and the voice of the consul, Mohammed al-Otaibi, could be heard in the recording“, yet the latter part cannot be proven at present, can it? that remains at the heart of the matter and as the BBC adds: “Russian President Vladimir Putin has said it is a pity that Mr Khashoggi has gone missing, but that Russia cannot damage relations with Saudi Arabia without hard facts” we are again confronted with the issue, there are for now no facts, nothing tangible and that is what matters, the additional disregard of the media because they are no longer trustworthy is making matters worse, they are worse as they could have been prevented. For us we are lucky that BBC news is still there to give us the quality goods.

There is one ironical part in all this, the final column by Jamal Khashoggi give us: “it left Saudis “either uninformed or misinformed”“, we are for the most in that very same position, in our case it is not the freedom of the press, it is the overly large freedom that allows the press to play with us for their direct needs and the need of the first three priorities that leaves us either uninformed or misinformed by making us ‘informed’ allegedly and though insinuation, which in the end is still misinformation.

Even now in the last hour, we get: “But a steady stream of unconfirmed leaks from officials to Turkish media have painted a detailed and horrifying picture of Khashoggi’s last minutes, allegedly at the hands of 15 Saudi agents waiting for him when he came to the consulate for paperwork”, all about unconfirmed, yet the setting that Turkey is an Iranian puppet is still kept out of the entire equation, is that not interesting too? How far can we be deceived and when it falls to holding the media accountable in all this, when we force that discussion to the table, how will the media react? How many politicians will suddenly take a step back and forget to voice concerns on properly informing the public?

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Tagged as Arizona Republic, BBC, Bruno Le Maire, CIA, Daily Mail, Davos in the desert, Don Bolles, FAANG group, France, Iran, Jamal Khashoggi, John Brennan, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Liam Fox, Mohammed al-Otaibi, Mohammed bin Salman, NY Times, Riyadh, Robert Pavlik, Saudi Arabia, SlateStone Wealth LLC, Steven Mnuchin, TalkRadio, the Guardian, Trump, Turkey, UK, UK trade secretary, US Treasury Secretary, Vladimir Putin, Washington Post, Yemen

October 17, 2018 · 11:57

Fake tits or big lungs?

Yes, this is a reference to the oldest marketing ploy: ‘Sex sells!’ There is however a part that people do not consider, in news, fake news does exactly the same nowadays. So even as we are up in arms on the setting of fake news, and the players in the open are all about chastising fake news, we are forgetting the important parts in this. Even as News24 with the message “Search giant Google has been identified as a major enabler for the proliferation of disinformation, or “fake news”, websites“, we seem to forget that Google search did exactly what it was designed to do, to answer someone’s search query.

You see, part of the answer is given not there, but with the reference to https://www.poynter.org/news/study-fake-news-making-college-students-question-all-news. Here we see the part that starts going into the right direction: “half of the nearly 6,000 American college students surveyed said they lacked confidence in discerning real from fake news on social media. And 36 percent of them said the threat of misinformation made them trust all media less“. That is the partial setting from the beginning, the news outlets themselves are part of the fake news drive. Just as sex sells, fake news does too; it is the drive to clicks and gossip. The news themselves are becoming much larger sales points for fake news. I am not talking about the jokes in media (like PressTV). The outlets like CNN are now also part of the fake news cycles. In this game 2 million additional clicks reverts to coins and circulations and the news is seemingly becoming more and more dependent on it.

CNN is one of the more visible ones and it was seen yesterday with: ‘Saudis preparing to admit Jamal Khashoggi died during interrogation, sources say‘, the story (at https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/15/middleeast/saudi-khashoggi-death-turkey/index.html), it has been 24 hours and nothing yet! So when we consider the part: “One of the sources acknowledged that the report is still being prepared and cautioned that things could change“, these 18 words allowed them to put a story in the media space with no accountability of any kind. Then there is the setting of “The body of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi was cut into pieces after he was killed“, with merely a reference to ‘a Turkish official’ and no revelation who that was, the underlying fact that Turkey is an ally of Iran in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia is gleefully ignored by all these players, because the anonymous source puts them in the clear. They merely use an unconfirmed ‘under the pretence of anonymity’, knowingly and willingly the NY Times and CNN are used as tools and puppets into the pushing of agenda’s and circulation. So with ‘first made to the New York Times earlier in the investigation into Khashoggi’s fate‘, CNN uses the same material whilst there is no reliability of the materials handed. It’s good to be a circulation tool, is it not?

The Daily telegraph is also a newspaper that is happy to go for fake news. The entire 2014 matter regarding “Flight MH370 ‘suicide mission’” should be all the evidence you need, and the less stated on that whatever he is now (Martin Ivens) and the Qatar 2022 setting of the Sunday Times and the claim they had and all those millions of documents proving corruption they seemingly had seen, yet never published any of them, did they? Most readers merely accepted the setting and took it all in as gospel. The newspapers have become the much larger spreaders of fake news and we are auto filtering them out, for the most these newspapers have lost the reliability they needed to have and in light of the entire Lord Justice Leveson inquiry on the practices and ethics of the British press it seems to have gotten worse, not better and the direct solution that these so called newspapers are no longer allowed to have their 0% vat and revert them to 20% VAT would solve a lot of spreading of fake news, yet there we see that there will be no ‘fairness’ so as kicking Google Search is the cheapest solution in all this, we need to consider in opposition that not only is the current generation ‘trusting all media less‘, there is the option that the next generation will be ‘not trusting all media at all‘, the inactions from us all is driving towards that future and the consequences will be on us. The VAT trigger could force them to become clearly critical on what they allow to be published, diminished funds tends to do that. So even as we might notice a story that the a lady has ‘nice tits‘, whilst we are handed the notion that she has “according to sources close to the lady on condition of anonymity was diagnosed with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease“, to hit us with a ‘feeling sorry for her‘, whilst at the core of the setting she merely had ‘two silicone implants‘ by choice. When the media intentionally shows a situation like that into the circulation game, how much consideration should we give the media at all?

Oh and the claim of those audio (as well as video) proof that the Turks have proving he was murdered in the consulate. Where are they now? And as the Daily Mail (and others) gives us ‘Horrific audio allegedly reveals Jamal Khashoggi ‘was butchered while still alive’‘ merely an hour ago, of course this comes with “An anonymous source claims to have heard an audio recording of Jamal Khashoggi being executed“, we need to recognise that the media themselves are now the larger propagators of fake news and we need to do something about that, but that is not going to happen is it. So in light of the earlier involvement by the New York Times and their connection now (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/facebook-fake-news-philosophy.html) to fixing ‘fake news’ as written by Regina Rini where we see: “Technology spawned the problem of fake news, and it’s tempting to think that technology can solve it, that we only need to find the right algorithm and code the problem away. But this approach ignores valuable lessons from epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with how we acquire knowledge“, she is absolutely correct there and the New York Times starting to up the game of quality and taking a closer look at ‘how we acquire knowledge‘ might be a good first step. The entire Jamal Khashoggi issue, is an actual issue, yet some players are using this to set a political stage in support of a proxy war and circulation pressures that is going on and that part is completely ignored on several levels and the NY Times is not alone there, but they are with the Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the BBC and the Guardian one of the more revered ones and they need all need to up their game that is the only direct path into solving the issue (oh and no longer making certain guilty publications tax exempt is a decent second choice), I am of course 😉 totally ignoring that this would additionally help the local tax coffers, would it not? When we realise that the Telegraph Media Group ended up with ‎£319 million in 2015, the HMRC would love to get an additional £60 million for their coffers have, as they currently have less than the church mouse treasury coffers at present, so that is an idea to contemplate, is it not?

Now it is only fair I end the story with the BBC, is it not? They gave us 5 hours ago: ‘Jamal Khashoggi: Turkey widens search for clues to disappearance‘ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45879941), and as we are treated to “The decision to widen the search was announced to reporters by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who added that he had received no “confession” from the Saudis“, which is interesting, because did we not see (from several sources) that there were audio files of him being tortured to death? Why not play those to set the political stage? Interesting that we see the effort and not the revelations from any of these anonymous sources, is it not? We also see that the BBC mentions: “unnamed official appears to have told the Associated Press that police found “certain evidence” showing Mr Khashoggi was killed there. No further details were given“. It is merely a cold mention and I get that, it is not the focus of the news, merely a by-line, there were two more, yet clearly stating what others reported, cold and almost academic. We can accept the mention, not the way some others used that mention, it was all in the text that others exploited unconfirmed news, not merely stating it.

So when we are considering the news, we now need to acknowledge that fake news is used on a much wider scale and until we do something about that wider scale, we end up not having a clue on how to stop it in the first place. The fact that the British papers did not up the quality of their game after the Leveson inquiry is further evidence still that the fake news cycles are here to stay for now.

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Tagged as BBC, CNN, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Flight HM370, google, HRMC, Jamal Khashoggi, Leveson inquiry, Lord Justice Leveson, Martin Ivens, News24, NY Times, Poynter.org, PressTV, Qatar 2022, Regina Rini, Saudi Arabia, Telegraph Media Group, the Financial Times, the Guardian, The Times, the Washington Post, Turkey, UK

October 16, 2018 · 15:57

When wrong is right

There is now too little doubt, I got it wrong, and I will happily and freely admit to it. You see, the entire Salisbury and Novichok was a shamble from the beginning. There was little doubt in my view, as I have been around the world twice, as I saw things on several levels, there was a massive issue with the entire Skripal case, as such I had a massive lack of faith in the reports all over the news. Not merely the setting where we see from the early setting that GRU players were mentioned, the fact that the hit was unsuccessful and the setting that I still see as an event framed in stupidity. A setting with a whole host of issues that could go wrong from the very beginning, how could anyone support it?

And I decided not to do it without clear evidence.

So I was in a stage of impressing denial, plain and simple. Apart from the setting that was brought by the media, there were issue with the evidence as Vil Mirzayanov gave clear evidence that was countered from day one with publications in all kinds of magazines, even the documents in the OPCW gave rise to doubt, but the media all ate it like flame baked chocolate chip cookies. The Guardian brought its version of doubt and also gave us valid questions and in all this the media machines continued with a mix of facts and speculations (as media would have done).

Yet we have seen that and in the stage of all this, the LA Times now gives us ‘Spate of fumbled spycraft may be laughing matter for ordinary Russians, but not for President Putin‘, now that we see that there is a chance that the FSB has messed up to this degree cannot be ignored. So as we are treated to both “Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, the GRU — the country’s military intelligence agency — is more accustomed to being feared than being mocked. But a recently exposed run of bumbling spycraft — think Austin Powers, not James Bond — has made the spy agency the subject of biting humor, at which Russians happen to excel“, as well as “the Kremlin is worried about its “brand, image and reputation as a great power.” And Putin, a former KGB officer whose approval ratings have been slipping, is doubtless “unhappy with the image of Russia as being incompetent, and the potential public perception of themselves as fools,”” Finally we get “Putin-watchers saw peril for the head of the GRU, Igor Korobov. Unconfirmed reports in the Russian press said that after the U.S. indictments of seven military intelligence officers, the Russian president summoned Korobov for an official dressing-down” It is the final part that makes for the entertainment as I wrote yesterday: “How badly are these ladies trained (me stating the need for a well-paid job and replacing Colonel general Igor Valentinovich Korobov), I mean, I could hardly do any worse, could I? Let’s face it, in Australia a general’s pay starts at $235,595 with 0 years of experience in that rank. I’d accept that as a starting wage (LOL), even if it turns out to be merely for a year“. I wrote it in ‘Consideration for dinner‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/10/15/consideration-for-dinner/). So now we see that in the end, I would have been a better director of Russian Military Intelligence than Russian General Igor Valentinovich Korobov, who would have thunk it? Yes, I stated that expression and in light of history it would be quite apt.

So as we have been treated to all kinds of sources far, wide and speculative, I have tried to maintain to the facts as much as possible. A few years ago, the open setting of who were GRU officers, who would rely on an operation using unstable elements, the lack of investigating a certain laboratory. Yet, now looking back, there is additional implied evidence that there was a much larger issue and it is not with the UK, it is with Russia. We see this in the writing of Mark Galeotti. We see: “If Putin is showing his anger, it is not because they are spying and hacking and killing, but because they are not doing it well enough“, a statement from a senior fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague. He is correct. It is nice to see that there is an implied failure on the Russian side and it sets the GRU back to the age of the early cold war where they would walk in the US wearing a weird trench coat, thinking that everyone in the US looked and dressed like Humphrey Bogart. It makes counter intelligence exceedingly easy for the FBI and MI-5, so they should be relieved, but they are unlikely to be that. All these issues are pointing towards a larger game and falling asleep now is perhaps the largest of all failings to embrace. Part of this was tipped on in February by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42636245). Here we see the mention ‘Just weeks before Litvinenko died, Russia passed a law giving the FSB authority to act against “extremists” and “terrorists” abroad‘, yet the issue is not the statement, it is the Russian definition of what THEY consider to be a terrorist and an extremist. You see an extremist is someone who holds extreme political or religious views, yet in case or Russia is that a political view that is not their political view? Then we get the part of terrorist. Here we see that this is a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Yet is the word ‘violence’ mandatory? We have e-terrorism, which is still terrorism, is it not?

So as we were going into the entire Salisbury debacle, we were treated to two people allegedly called Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov and they were giving us: “insisting they were sports nutritionists on a holiday jaunt to Britain — and that with all the iconic tourist sites available to them in London, what they really, really wanted to see was the cathedral in a provincial city“. I was in disbelief! Someone was going to be this stupid about it? Now, I have heard and seen the folly of underestimating an opponent, yet until this week I had never considered that overestimating an opponent could be so equally deadly. It is like watching that old series The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs, where I am thwarted by Briggs, in this case played by Igor Valentinovich Korobov, it feels that unsettling, to face an opponent you rigorously overestimate.

It got to be even worse when they were caught ‘red’ handed, trying to hack into the computers of the OPCW, which in light of the fact that I got most their memo’s merely Google searching them. OK, they wanted the Skripal case documents, which were likely slightly more secure, yet in all that, when we are faced with such bungling, how can we lose sleep over any operation the GRU does when we can read it on page two of The Sun staring at the ‘lung’ section of a page three girl. It seems that the job (for now) for MI-5 is exceedingly simple. So as we are treated to the operandis modi of the Kremlin (according to the LA Times, where we see: ““Step No. 1 is deny; Step No. 2 is to undermine whoever made the allegations,” said Polyakova. “And usually Step No. 3 is to spin multiple versions of the story, to try to confuse the public narrative about what is the truth, and what is not.”” so, if we give a view to Alina Polyakova and her view in this, we need to compare that to the political field, the US political field might be the most apt one. So, the deny part, how did that work out for former president Bill Clinton? Then we see the undermining part, how did that work out for former (being the operative word) FBI Agent Peter Strzok, and the third and final part, the spin part? Well, the spin part is actually decently effective (usually it is), partially as most people can no longer tell the difference between journalistic news sources and morning TV shows that cast some version of the news on a malleable turntable. So that one the Kremlin is seemingly getting right (at least partially), although having a much better trained GRU might not be the worst idea in all this.

If we can keep a sense of humour in all this, we should take notice of Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist who stated: “thanks to the efforts of the two (Russian agents), the word “Novichok” was now better known to non-Russian speakers than “Sputnik.”” Yes, that is certainly true. The LA Times also re-staged the setting of: “the Kremlin not only vehemently denied involvement, but demanded definitive proof of the suspects’ guilt, which seemed at the time like a tall order“. That is where several insiders were, as well as myself, as we saw the train and CCTV footage and saw such a large lack of tradecraft that is seemed a joke to consider it at all, yet the egg is on out faces, I admit that! The fact that my skills surpass these so called Special Forces people at the GRU is just blowing my mind (quite literally). It gets to be even worse (or more hilarious depending on your placing on the table of intelligence) when we consider “seeing the cathedral in a provincial city“. So with the options ranging from Aldershot to Wrexham, they went to Salisbury? How could this be sold in any believable way?

There is one additional consideration and yet it is also a danger. As we are laughing at what the GRU is unable to do, we need to be weary that the SVR has not made these levels of blunders (a speculative statement, I know). In this, we need to recollect the words of Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin: “Russia couldn’t have been behind the operation because it was done so unprofessionally“, me and several others agree on that, so if that is the setting of the stage then we need to consider that the SVR might be poised to take over that part and properly train those people, giving us optionally new waves to deal with. Now, in all honesty, one would think that this is never going to happen, yet Vladimir Putin is an SVR alumni, so the thought is not that crazy and being placed in a setting of such embarrassment might make him jump and demand success stories, just as Saudi Arabia has its own optional folly to deal with, getting on board selling non ethical solutions is not beyond any opponent of those relying on overly ethically accepting solutions.

You see as several sources are now all heralding “Saudi Arabia is preparing to acknowledge the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi happened as the result of a botched interrogation” into the media (CNN et al), I need to accept that I was wrong twice, considering that generals have a much better handle on things, so me getting proven wrong twice (so close together) is not the craziest theory to embrace at present. The fact that there is no reliability on the sources at present makes me a little cautious. As CNN gives us: “The Saudis are preparing a report that will conclude Jamal Khashoggi’s death was the result of an interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey, according to two sources“, there is not just the lack of who the two sources are, there is a larger setting that is still weird, so after we were informed on “Turkish authorities have an audio recording which indicates that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed“, we see Reuters give us: “A team of around 10 Turkish police investigators had already left after a nine-hour search“, so why not just publicly play the audio? It would have given Turkey huge bonus points with Iran, yet that part we do not see (or hear) do we? We get to hear no evidence for now, which is another matter of concern. As Turkey will not play the audio, they would if the audio is not openly played that they are merely showing that their claims cannot be trusted (here is me hoping that I am not played a fool a third time in a row).

And all the sources, the Sun being the weirdest one give us: “Audio and video recordings which emerged yesterday proved Khashoggi, 59, was tortured and murdered inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, by a 15-strong hit team yesterday“, so where is that evidence? And a hit team of 15? This is part of the entire fake news matter and the UK newspapers (if you call the Sun a newspaper) is part of the problem, is it not?

So I might have been wrong, but in the setting where even the news is optionally fake news, I still think that I walked the right path in the end, even as I overestimated the abilities of the GRU to an almost unfathomable distance, I feel that I was bringing the news better, more complete and with the right questions, questions that some parties have never and will optionally never ever be able to answer. So, London School of Economics, I will happily and with a slight case of humility accept my master in Business Intelligence and Master of Journalism.

Thank you very much!

Elvis has left the building, until tomorrow that is!

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Tagged as Aldershot, Alexander Petrov, Alina Polyakova, BBC, Bill Clinton, CNN, Edgar Briggs, FBI, Foreign Intelligence Service, Grigorii Golosov, GRU, Igor Valentinovich Korobov, Iran, Jamal Khashoggi, LA Times, London School of Economics, OPCW, Peter Strzok, reuters, Ruslan Boshirov, Salisbury, Saudi Arabia, Sergei Naryshkin, SVR, the Sun, Turkey, Vladimir Putin, Wrexham

October 15, 2018 · 15:01

Consideration for dinner

It is Monday, Monday morning and I am in a stage of contemplation. There are all these events going on and for the most they are hollow, empty and merely the setting for the next stage for whatever the staging area needs to be. It is at this point that the Guardian gives us: ‘Two images that show we need to be sensitive about our photos‘, or perhaps the article started the contemplation I am in, it works either way!

The article was actually a quite excellent read, so well done Paul Chadwick!

Where’s Wally (Khlalid Masood)?

The article discusses Khalid Masood, who killed 5 people in March 2017 at Westminster. Now we get the goods. We are offered: “Over several days of covering the hearing, Guardian editors had access to a limited range of images of Masood. For one report they used a photo of him taken in the Great Mosque of Mecca, Islam’s holiest site“. We are then treated to: “From an editorial standards perspective, there was nothing wrong with the image. Legitimately obtained, it depicted a smiling Masood dressed in the traditional white, and behind him the Kaaba, the great cube, around which pilgrims walk seven times. Conscious that the Muslim community can suffer discrimination when terrorist acts are committed in the name of a political ideology that feigns religiosity“.

My thought becomes: “How many criminals and murderers were photographed in a church, or cathedral?” That does not seem to happen either does it? Of course in that specific example Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals were taken away from consideration in this case. I searched Google and a few other sources and I could not find an example. So when I see: “as a gesture of goodwill the editors replaced the photo for another image, a police mugshot. Muslims who had raised the issue were appreciative“, I do accept that the Muslims are appreciative of the gesture, yet the question remains how many criminals were photographed and observed in church? It also gives me the question on how they were able to identify Khalid Masood in that picture to begin with. I understand that the photograph exists; I reckon that the hearts of Muslims will flutter at the sight of being able to see the Grand Mosque of Mecca on the inside to begin with. I myself am struck with wonder, amazed to see this image. Not for the religious reason, but the fact that the original parts were build 1380 years ago is important. You see, it would take centuries until the Netherlands had decent housing (places not made from wood, or a mixture of shit and clay). The oldest house in the Netherlands is almost 500 years younger than this mosque and only parts of a wall in that Dutch building are that old, the rest of the house would not be build (or restored) until 230 years later. When we consider that, seeing the grand Mosque of Mecca should have an impact on anyone, Muslim or not. So as we realise that the building is not merely a beautiful building, it is a millennia old marvel for all the religious reasons, we understand that anyone would want to be photographed in that place and be recognised, but as you take a look at the inserted photograph (click on it to see the full version), finding that person, considering the resolution of the film remains a slight miracle at best. So what would have been the value of showing thousands of Muslims in that one place whilst we cannot tell with any certainty who exactly Khalid Masood is there. Yet, the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/14/sensitive-images-upsetting-photos-essential-truthful-account), is still important. We see that with: “Coverage can justifiably include images of perpetrators but should take care not to glorify them. Had the photo related directly to evidence given in the inquest it might have been necessary to retain it“. I personally do not completely agree. If we accept that a picture is 1,000 words, which photograph ads a 1,000 words or more to the story? Is it the one in Mecca, or the photograph of the scene (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/12/westminster-bridge-attack-khalid-masood-lawfully-killed-inquest-concludes). I like it that Paul Chadwick makes us consider the use of a photograph and when not to do it. It gets us to the linking of another event. You might have heard of a disagreement between the elected government of Yemen and Houthi’s which has since spilled over into a much larger disagreement. the amount of times where the western world trivialised the attacks on Saudi Arabia whilst Iran backed Houthi’s were firing missiles into Saudi Arabia has been too large to ignore, In addition the Washington Post gave us a mere two days ago (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/foiled-paris-bomb-plot-raises-fears-that-iran-is-planning-attacks-in-europe/2018/10/11/2ccf8d0a-c8b9-11e8-b1ed-1d2d65b86d0c_story.html). Here we see ‘Foiled Paris bomb plot raises fears that Iran is planning attacks in Europe‘. In this article, the use of the image of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) supporters makes perfect sense. In light of “The diplomat, based at Iran’s embassy in Vienna, had been under surveillance for some time and was suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb a rally of Iranian dissidents in Paris. Despite his diplomatic status, he was arrested and extradited to Belgium, where two others, suspected of planning to carry out the attack in France, were detained”, yet would the image of the ‘Iranian diplomat’ not have made more sense? The fact that he is not mentioned anywhere by name is also a consideration in all this. The fact that this indirectly links to the proxy war that Iran is having with Saudi Arabia is linked in all this. So when we consider these elements. So as we get back to the Diplomat named Assadollah Assadi, we need to some degree also look at Jamal Khashoggi. You see, you cannot turn a page in any paper and Jamal Khashoggi shows up. Probably best known as a contributor to the Washington Post, we wonder why he ended up MAAC (Missing as a contributor). ABC gives us: “But his troubles began later, when he was fired from his post as an editor at the Al-Watan newspaper just two months after he took the job in 2003. The country’s ultra-conservative clerics had pushed back against his criticism of the powerful religious police and a medieval cleric viewed as the spiritual forefather of Wahhabism, the conservative interpretation of Islam that is the founding tenant of the kingdom“, and the question becomes not merely did he vanish because he was a critic of ruling Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. I reckon that the Crown Prince has been surrounded with people disagreeing with him, as such Khashoggi might not have been a blip on his radar. Yet, when we see the Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/06/read-jamal-khashoggis-columns-for-the-washington-post) we see a different story, one that opposes mine and I am fine with that. Yet consider that the people in charge in Riyadh are actually decently intelligent (compared to me) and the entire event in the embassy does not make sense. Lt. Gen. Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan is not stupid, he is a general and he has been around the war time sandbox long enough, to just let a person vanish in an embassy, whilst there are dozens of cameras pointed at it is not seemingly the brightest act. This leaves me with the setting that there is either orchestration, or someone not as bright listened to the wrong person and acted individually. The quote in the Post, which was “Dozens of Saudi intellectuals, clerics, journalists, and social media stars have been arrested in the past 2 months — the majority of whom, at worst, are mildly critical of the government. Meanwhile, many members of the Council of Senior Scholars (“Ulema”) have extremist ideas“. So here we have a setting that certain people are seemingly opposing the forward drive that HRH Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud is trying to move towards. The post mentions both Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan and Sheikh Saleh Al-Lohaidan and also we see “protected by royal decree from counter argument or criticism“. Yet when I search for these two men, I find close to nothing at all in the present media. Now, that is not an essential part, but in light of the Washington Post articles, I wondered what would drive an implied assassination this short sighted. Whether you agree or not, targeted killing is both an art and a skill and in the digital age, the skill outguns the art by a lot. There are additional parts that do not make sense, yet when you look at the larger picture, there is (highly speculative by me mind you) an active stage of attacking Saudi Arabia any way possible. the overly leftish liberal side to break up US sales to Saudi Arabia, the UK is on a partial similar setting, yet they trivialise any attack on Saudi Arabia (I did filter for the fake news from places like PressTV and a few other sources), yet the attacks are quite clear and even as I understand that the press at large (in more than one way) would want to be protective of fellow journalist Jamal Khashoggi and I get that, yet the absence of critical questions is also a larger issue. When you see this, does the openly defensive stance of Saudi Arabia not make sense?

So how does this get us from where we started?

There are two parts here. The first is the image of the Grand Mosque, whilst we know that Saudi Arabia is its protector, and the view from Paul Chadwick makes perfect sense. Yet, here too we should take caution on certain notions. Mind you, I am asking the question, I am not implying that there is more. that part is seen when we look deeper into the ‘Cricklewood mosque’ event of September 19^th and when we search the international news bringers, the shiploads of newspapers that would strike out against Saudi Arabia and others in what I perceive to be non-hatred stories, yet they are certainly not pro Saudi Arabia, or pro Muslim, they did not show up in any google search when I look for the ‘Cricklewood mosque’ event, not at all. That too is important, whilst some are taking down the steam a notch, the opposition events are also ignored to a much larger degree. It leads us to the question, was the mosque image not added as it made for an overly clear anti-Muslim article?

The second part is the setting of events and more importantly how certain parties decided to illustrate them. Anything that is about Jamal Khashoggi carries his photograph and that makes perfect sense, no one debates that, yet when we seek Khalid Masood, we see no image of him in several Westminster attack articles, merely the stage and the victims. Now, here we see clearly that some will say that it might glorify him. There is equal voice not to give Islamic State any kind of visibility. I do not totally agree, but I understand the logic behind it. Yet the article I mentioned earlier, ‘Westminster attacker lawfully killed by minister’s bodyguard, jury finds‘ shows no mention of Islamic State at all, which is actually a little weird. all the other parts are there, the justification of the protective units, the victims, the stage as well as the attack on Sir Craig Mackey, which gets more light in another Guardian article with “The Express front page on Thursday read “Police hero who put his boss to shame”, comparing Mackey’s actions unfavourably with those of the armed protection officer who shot Masood dead, while an article on the Sun website was headlined “Mark of cowardice”“, the actions of Sir Craig make perfect sense and the Express, not the most intelligent player in the news world under the most optimal conditions was left in a clueless state aiming for (a speculated) increased circulation that day, whilst the actions of Sir Craig made tactical sense to say the least, cowardice was not a factor here as I see it. Mind you, getting fired at is unnerving under the best conditions, seeking out a hair storm of lead is just stupid to begin with and Sir Craig staying out of the way, especially as he had no useful gear makes sense. Yet the Independent gave us in March 2018: “A review by Mr Hill’s predecessor found that neither MI5 nor the police had any reason to anticipate the attack, concluding that Masood was “a long way from the top of anyone’s grid”“. From the little that I was able to access, all the elements make sense, the Guardian article leaving Islamic State mention out does not.

It is the illustration by the news that matters, because it causes a lack of illumination and more important we see the shifting balance of a seesaw in the direction of emotional acts, which has never been a good thing. There are questions regarding Jamal Khashoggi no one denies that, yet the stage we see ourselves in is expanding. We see this with: “The event is being hosted by the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman to promote his reform agenda. Several sponsors and media groups have decided to withdraw“, as well as “US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and UK International Trade Secretary Liam Fox might not attend an upcoming investment conference in Riyadh, but White House aide Larry Kudlow said Mr Mnuchin had not yet pulled out.” Now I understand that such a situation would not have been expected, or even anticipated. Not by me. Yet, do you think that this was not on the mind of Lt. Gen. Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan? when we see settings that are adding up to half a trillion dollars, do you think that a Saudi event like the one we see now regarding Jamal Khashoggi would not have been looked at from every angle? And in light on how highly regarded journalists are in Turkey, the overreaction by turkey is equally unsettling (or let’s just call it suspicious). In the entire setting towards the consulate, we see that the one event now taking shape is a direct win for Saudi’s indirect enemy (Turkey as a supporter of Iran), no one seems to look too deeply there either. It does not mean that Turkey was involved, or that Turkey did anything. The mere absence of looking is an issue and that would drive the defence from the side of Saudi Arabia high up, all this in an action on Saudi soil (the embassy) where there would have been absolutely no tactical advantage for the Saudi government by acting in a building everyone is watching 24:7.

The elements do not add up and the photograph of the Grand mosque brought it to light (read: the forefront of my mind). You see, in opposition to the Christians and their bible (they have over 40 different versions), we see that there is ONE Quran, Sunni and Shia they all have the same Quran, exact to the letter, yet their split happened as you can see in the New York Times (at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/world/middleeast/q-and-a-how-do-sunni-and-shia-islam-differ.html) through: “A schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, and disputes arose over who should shepherd the new and rapidly growing faith. Some believed that a new leader should be chosen by consensus; others thought that only the prophet’s descendants should become caliph“, I am not wise enough to give any level of wisdom here.

I do feel I am wise enough to look into the matters we currently face. Until the press has a more balanced view of the matters in the Middle East, specifically the acts by Iran and the acts by Houthi’s in Yemen, we will see a prolonged level of distrust. Let’s not forget that the building of Neom in Saudi Arabia continues and that it is the utter need of American stability that requires cheap oil. In all this, merely going back to 2017 levels will drain the American economy to the levels if cannot sustain and its need to do business with Iran at that point will be the largest moral defeat the US has ever faced. In addition, the Saudi coffers are getting $73 per barrel against the optional setting that the prices return to $121 per barrel, as winter sets in the US (UK too) that impact will be felt by these populations to a much larger degree, so in all this an optional demand from Saudi Arabia to get the news more balanced is not the weirdest request. Yet the foundation of issues giving rise to the price of oil next month by a mere 2% is not out of the question, and that is not all. The overreaction by President Trump with: ““severe punishment” if Khashoggi, who has been critical of Bin Salman, has been killed“. Fair enough, yet in all this, he has been merely setting the stage where Russia comes for a visit and is the reason for cancelling orders, whilst Saudi pilots are suddenly optionally ‘retrenched’ to get better in using the Mikoyan MiG-35 (Fulcrum-F), and a few other alternatives. Shutting down options for American business seekers in Neom is not a good step to take either; no one can afford walking away from 1,000 billion dollars in projects in this day and age. In addition, for Saudi Arabia having a united technical air force corps with Egypt might not be the worst consideration either, and as ties with Egypt and Russia optionally strengthen in Saudi Arabia, the US will be finding itself on shallow ice with fewer options for their economy and even less possibilities over the next 10 years. All elements out in the open and it would be a strategy that Iran would love to see happen, whether it was to weaken Saudi Arabia or to kick the US where it really hurts, it would be an Iranian victory either way.

So when you consider these elements as well as the notion that for the most there is not a high regard for journalists in the first place (for a few years now), do any of the overreaching actions by certain players make any sense? It is there that we see the consideration for dinner.

Yet I could be wrong in all this. I openly admit that. I have had the longest issues with the entire Skripal setting, the Novichok debacle in Salisbury. Yet there is no denying the Reuters article that gave us ‘Russian website names third GRU officer involved in Salisbury poisoning‘ 4 days ago. With: “The Russian news website Fontanka named on Wednesday a third GRU military intelligence operative, Sergey Fedotov, as having been involved in trying to kill ex-spy Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury“. You see, the facts did not add up, there was too much noise and too little reliability. I have no reason to doubt Reuters, yet I still have issues with this. I do acknowledge that they name a Russian site, yet I know next to nothing about the Fontanka online news agency. When I read (yet again) on this, and the fact that they all seem to know the staff directory of the GRU, as well as the setting of travel, there are things not adding up. Not the travel, that part can be verified in several ways. The fact that we now have a third player, one that apparently did not show up in all those CCTV stills, the fact that three people were involved in a failed attack does not speak highly of the abilities of the Russian GRU, is that not weird either? The fact that humidity decreases the potency of the Novichok, but the perfume was dumped in the trash, not merely ‘accidently’ dropped in a pond, where retrieval would have been unsuccessful and the lethality of the Novichok would have been close to nullified. So with Salisbury basically surrounded by the Avon, they did not consider dropping the ‘perfume’ in there? How badly are these ladies trained (me stating the need for a well-paid job and replacing Colonel general Igor Valentinovich Korobov), I mean, I could hardly do any worse, could I? Let’s face it, in Australia a general’s pay starts at $235,595 with 0 years of experience in that rank. I’d accept that as a starting wage (LOL), even if it turns out to be merely for a year.

Getting back to the Russian stage, Bellingcat gives us (at https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/) the goods which are hard to deny, but it is merely their word against others. Yet they also become the doubt in this. Even as we accept: “The suspect using the cover identity of “Ruslan Boshirov” is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated GRU officer bestowed with Russia’s highest state award, Hero of the Russian Federation. Following Bellingcat’s own identification, multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect’s identity“. When we add “Anatoliy Chepiga graduated the academy with honors in 2001. He was then assigned to serve in the 14th Spetsnaz Brigade in Russia’s farthest-eastern city of Khabarovsk, one of the elite Spetsnaz units under GRU command. Chepiga’s unit (74854, formerly 20662) played a key role in the second Chechen War, and was also observed near the Ukrainian border in late 2014“, we see an optional picture of a dedicated Russian officer, no one questions that, yet in that light, how come that he was involved in active failures of this degree and in the end a second event caused the death of an innocent bystander?

He could have used a knife, a mere piece of thin nylon rope, all methods that optionally makes finding evidence a near impossibility. Then we get the doubt again with “The research team was able to find Anatoliy Chepiga in two locations and time periods in the database: in 2003, in Khabarovsk; and in 2012 in Moscow“, you see, even by their own admission, heroes of the Russian Federation tend to be really well documented, so why do we see awards, failures and almost no documented admissions (even less photographs, beside the point that most photo’s never made it into newspapers)? It makes no sense and that brings us back to the Saudi Arabian setting. Even now as we are treated to so called audio evidence, evidence that was debunked by the BBC on more than one level, yet in all this Al Jazeera gives us: “Technology experts are sceptical that Jamal Khashoggi was able to sync recordings from his Apple watch to a phone in his fiancée’s possession from inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The claim, as reported in Turkey’s pro-government media, is that Turkish officials have audio recordings from Khashoggi’s smart watch that prove the Saudi journalist was tortured and killed while inside the embassy. Saudi Arabia has called the allegations “baseless lies” and it is still unclear how Turkey would have obtained the audio evidence“, I personally believe that Al Jazeera is wrong here. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45857777) debunks that story via Rory Cellan-Jones, the Technology correspondent. He does it point by point and does it with clarity, so in all this, why would the pro-Turkish government media blatantly lie about this? that and the other elements give doubt to all this and when we consider that it was optionally not a Saudi operation at all, we might be treated to a setting where the Turkish government is optionally involved in making the trade waters murky, optionally merely as a tool for Iran. What do you think is more likely and when we look at the photographs and the choices made, it is not merely contemplation for dinner, the entire setting of doing what is correct sheds a light on the media that is not as great as we hoped it would be.

Yet the BBC also gave us: “it seems far more likely that they have other means of detecting what foreign diplomats are up to and the Apple Watch story is just useful cover“, that we can agree on, both Iran and Turkey have every interest in keeping ears on every room in the Saudi Consulate and there we agree is the option that technical solutions are in abundance but without the proper vetting of sources, it remains speculation to some degree.

Still the actions in the consulate are a question mark, a person that is watched to this degree, acting in the consulate only seems to be the safer option, ‘seems’ being the operative word.

We need to take all these elements into consideration, whenever we ‘actively engage’ in settings of consideration, the larger picture matters, it matters a lot and even as I spoke out against the guilt of Russia as a state operator in Salisbury, the Bellingcat part is seemingly more persuasive in voicing that there is an issue, yet what I personally perceive to be the stupidity levels of the Skripal operation (for lack of a better description) is one that we should also consider in the Khashoggi events in Istanbul. So until the Turkish government gives public access to their audio files I remain in doubt. Clearly something happened, but what exactly and by whom are still elements that cannot be answered for now, and when we contemplate things that needs to be on the forefront of our minds.

When confirmed the implied image of Khalid Masood in the grand mosque of Mecca is merely the fact that he is Muslim, we already knew that, yet the Guardian also gave us the goods that he converted no earlier than 13 years before the attack, so after his prison sentence in 2000, so he was optionally a Christian for the longest time of his life, another part that few news media looked at to a better degree, the Guardian fortunately did. We are also given that around 12% of home grown terrorists were converts, considering that there are billions of Muslims, that number is interesting. It might not merely be about the conversion; it could be that those doing the conversion might have optionally left converts at the mercy of extreme imams, which is a debate for another day. It merely shows that there is a larger issue I all this and before we contemplate what is the right course of action, we need to realise that certain acts to stop intelligence gathering has been the shackles that prevent the intelligence community and the police to effectively act against lone wolves, moreover, there is less evidence that it can be stopped, for that you merely have to look at the picture of Masood in his football team when he was young, even as the one non-white individual he does not stand out, giving MI-5 a much larger headache then they needed in the first place.

Yes we need to be sensitive about photographs at times, yet when they also reveal that they basically reveal nothing, how would their use have value in the first place? Setting a stage, setting an emotional bias, or merely an illustration to make the article readable?

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Tagged as ABC, Al Jazeera, Anatoliy Chepiga, Assadollah Assadi, BBC, bellingcat, Chechen War, Council of Senior Scholars, Cricklewood mosque, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, Fontanka, Fulcrum-F, Grand Mosque, GRU, Houthi, Igor Valentinovich Korobov, Iran, Iranian diplomat, Istanbul, Jamal Khashoggi, Khabarovsk, Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan, Larry Kudlow, Liam Fox, Lt. Gen. Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan, Mikoyan MiG-35, National Council of Resistance of Iran, NCRI, NEOM, New York Times, Novichok, Paul Chadwick, Quran, Riyadh, Rory Cellan-Jones, Russia, Salisbury, Saudi Arabia, Sergey Fedotov, Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, Sheikh Saleh Al-Lohaidan, Sir Craig Mackey, Skripal, Steve Mnuchin, the Express, the Guardian, the Prophet Muhammad, Turkey, UK International Trade Secretary, Ulema, US Treasury Secretary, Washington Post, White House aide, Yemen

October 12, 2018 · 13:08

Clueless to the end

That is quite the statement is it not? The question that follows is is the writer clueless (aka me) or the presenter of certain statements (aka Peter Dutton, current Home Affairs Minister). I will leave that to you as I am merely presenting the facts as I see them.

It all started on a simple Wednesday (2 days ago) when I was confronted with the statement ‘Coalition calls on Google and Facebook to get on side with encryption bill‘, just another political yada yada moment and I was about to ignore it and more to the next page when I noticed ‘the internet giants have a responsibility to help combat organised crime‘, which woke me up nice and widely. So the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/10/coalition-calls-on-google-and-facebook-to-get-on-side-with-encryption-bill) gives us: “Australia’s law enforcement agencies have been prevented from infiltrating paedophile networks and other organised crime groups because the messages they send over encrypted electronic messaging services, such as Wickr and Whatsapp, cannot be intercepted by authorities“, in light of Australia being America’s minion in the anti-Huawei activities is admitting that mere app decryption is beyond their ability? And they have the loudly shouted notion that Huawei is a 5G risk whilst ‘basic’ skills are not in their arsenal? Apart from making a case that Huawei is now basically a political fuelled exploitation game and a setting of bias (and optionally nepotism), we are interested in learning that certain skills are beyond Australian Intelligence. I am certain that Paul Symon, Mike Burgess and Duncan Lewis would have been delighted to learn of this revelation via the Guardian, but that was merely comical relief anecdote, let’s get down to the brass of it all.

We get to see the first part in “He said a new report from the Australian Institute of Criminology, released on Wednesday, estimated the cost of serious and organised crime in Australia in 2016–17 was between $23.8bn and $47.4bn, and showed how sophisticated internet-based crimes can be“. So as we take a look at that report (attached), we take a first look at the end (just like any detective story, starting at the end we see the revelations we needed to see if the story adds up). So there we see: “This paper sought to estimate the cost of serious and organised crime in Australia for the 2016–17 financial year. It was not possible to undertake new empirical research to provide more accurate baseline data to support the estimated costs, so in most cases uprating using the RBA (2018) inflation calculator was used in conjunction with the most recent reported crime statistics to assess the prevalence of the various crime types examined“, which gives us another part. The first is on page 3 where we clearly see (in bold) ‘$31.5 BILLION for the cost of serious and organised criminal activity as well as the serious and organised component of conventional crimes‘, so now we see in opposition an amount against ‘between $23.8bn and $47.4bn‘, which I admit remains a truth, yet when we do the math, we see $15.9B for prevention and $31.5B for the so called organised and serious criminal activity, which gets us to $47.4B. At this point we could surmise that Peter Dutton passed his basic math test, was it not that the same page 3 (just like in the Sun, for the longest of times) gives us an additional $8.6 on organised Fraud (debatable), and $6.5B, $9.6B, $4.1B and others adding up to almost $2.7B, so in total we have the $31.7B, yet here is the problem, the individuals cannot clearly represent 100% of organised crime. We are now getting to the miscategorised and the miss set properties of certain players, which also deflates the issue. It becomes a larger setting when we consider the ABC, who reported in May 2017: “the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, and the reported losses from online scams across the nation come in at around $300 million“. So here we get the second part. We see ‘online scams‘ and I am willing to accept that, yet against ‘PURE CYBER CRIME‘ the question becomes what is what and where are the definitions and this gets us to page 18 where we see: “It extends the conventional understanding of organised crime groups by adding all serious crime of an entrepreneurial nature or committed to support a criminal enterprise, whether by a group or an individual“, now the entire setting changes. It optionally includes all the entrepreneurial naughty people in places like Wall Street does it not? Good luck getting anything done at that point!

Then we get to the illicit drug activity. Now, I am not debating the number overall. I do not have the data to do so, yet consider the part on page 10 where the three costs are included namely Medical costs, Lost Output and Expenditure on drugs. The items are fine, it is how you set your filter, I get that, yet in all this when we consider the numbers and the setting whilst we also have been treated to the longest time to those individuals in caravans in the middle of nowhere making their acid/ecstasy junk. So when we look at Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), we can see that it is a serious crime and that we are given a dangerous setting, no one denies that, yet in all this, those singular people who do something with gallons of cough syrup (as It was presented at one point) we should also see that at this point that Peter Dutton had all the elements added together and presents it like a Ponzi scheme, or should I say that it looks like an Amway sales presentation (the one I saw at least)? You know, the one where someone states ‘replicate, don’t reinvent‘ it is a good sales pitch, no one denies that, and it is here that we see the flaw and failing of Peter Dutton.

You see his presentation adds up ‘perfect’, these numbers add up, whilst a millennia of history shows us that numbers never add up, not in any criminal enterprise; to do that I have to teach you a little data basic. The best comparison is the use of a cross tabulation. Let’s take gender and shoes. For example we see 6 men and 14 women bought shoes. We also see that 24 women and 25 men did not buy shoes. So far we get the table on the left, yet now we also get the setting that a cross tabulation will not deal with.

For example the fact where we know that shoes were bought, yet the gender is unknown or we see a gender reference and that something was bought, but we cannot see if they were shoes. These are called missing values and they will not show up in that cross tabulation and there we see the first part. It gives us the setting of crimes but not by whom, they are serious in setting but that is not enough is it? You see Peter Dutton gave us ‘help combat organised crime‘, yet not all serious crime is done by organised crime and now we have a $47 billion dollar question and in addition the failing that we are now introduced to is a much larger failing. In this we now see that we saw in the beginning when we went to the end of the story. It is seen with: ‘estimated the cost of serious and organised crime‘ and that is not enough. We could argue that it should be, we can argue that (the amount involved) is way too big, but the setting is not merely that Tech companies should ‘help’, it is the prosecution setting. The setting that there is too much junk attached and the prosecution will fail in the bulk of all those cases because the evidence relies on loaded and unproven data. It is the part that we have faced for well over 7 years. The court barristers will give every jury the speech of authentication versus non-repudiation and the second one cannot be proven (in most cases), so we end up not merely not having ‘beyond all reasonable doubt‘, there will be a high and likely chance that the courts will not even be able to prove ‘on the balance of probabilities‘ or ‘is it more likely than not‘ and it is here where we see that Peter Dutton could be optionally wasting millions upon millions of costs to set the stage of presentation that will have little to no results and that is a much larger problem. The additional play is that any smudging of any presented evidence will give us the stage that a case will be thrown out of court, how is that helping anyone?

So whilst we ponder this, we need to review the statement “And it should be noted the same companies who protest about having to help police with the encryption problem, operate their business in less democratic countries and accept a compromise on privacy to allow their presence in those growth markets“. We are not those countries are we? so at this point, we get the impression that Peter Dutton is merely a minion for the intelligence services who according to him were unable to ge to places in the first place, which implies that certain players have much larger problems and the serious cirme part, which is not on their plate is already beyond them, so there!

At this point we get to the final part where we see: “It is important that tech firms understand and embrace their responsibilities to the community that has helped enrich them“, I actually do agree with that part, yet that should be set in taxation law. A flaw that I reported on yesterday (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/10/11/taxation-solved-the-old-way/) which I charmingly called ‘Taxation solved the old way‘ (pun intended). So when we now consider the biggest organised crime master in Common Law (Al Capone), who funny enough got scuttled not by crime fighters but by tax laws. How we get to relearn the lessons of old, do we not?

It gets us to the quote: “Currently our police and intelligence officers who have a warrant may be able to covertly recover an email or a photo or other evidence of a crime from someone’s computer, but they can’t crack encryption, which is why it is now being exploited by criminals“, so these are criminals and not organised crime. Or in a simplistic setting that every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. It is at that point that I will teach Peter Dutton the one lesson he never learned (optionally he merely forgot the lesson).

Consider: “When sarcasm bounces it is merely irony“, a lesson that has a much wider application that the honourable youthful young Dutton might not have contemplated yet. However, we have to consider he was only reappointed his seat on August 24^th, so he has time to settle in. And the lesson does not end, the second part of the lesson is not from me, it comes from Lizzie O’Shea who gives us: “they were united for the first time in their opposition to the government’s encryption bill“, when we see united tech giants, how short sighted was this encryption bill in the first place? It gets to be a larger issue when we add the setting from World Animal Day (pun intended) when we see the two parts “Telstra has won a $8.2 million contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for the landing of the Coral Sea Cable System” and “Chinese technology giant Huawei was originally set to build the 2.5TB-cable linking Australia to the Pacific island nation back in July 2017. However, following concerns that Huawei’s involvement posed a security risk, the Australian government stepped in to fund the multi-million-dollar project from its foreign aid budget“, whilst clear evidence has never been presented and in that stage we see optional nepotism and ego and not fact and science based solutions. We are supposed to trust any of the reporting parties on any of this? The articles are different on different settings, yet the entire mess as it is now shows a much larger failing and a setting of doubt, not one of justified confidence and in that we see the second part of the reason why the tech giants are uniting. A certain play performed by adjusting to the notion of stupid and short sighted whilst the captains of industry have been getting their A-game in gear and others never did. It is merely another stage of the impact of iterative exploitation and profit founding, that whilst Huawei, Google, Apple and Samsung are no longer going iterative, they are now making larger leaps over the next 5 years as they want the largest slice of 5G pie possible and in an iterative setting the others can catch up and that is where we see the clash, because these hardware jumps will also prevail in software and data jumps and some players are in no way ready to play that game. That is where this so called balanced report strikes out as well. this is seen on page 21, where we see: “Because information and communications technologies are used widely throughout society and are instrumental to government, business and consumer activities, there is considerable overlap between the estimated costs of cybercrime and the costs of other crime types— particularly economic crimes, banking and financial crimes, transnational crime, online commerce and internet-facilitated crime such as consumer fraud, online dissemination of child exploitation material and intellectual property infringement“. You see in that stage we see the mention of ‘economic crimes, banking and financial crimes‘. Here we see that Financial institutions and Wall Street come into play (perhaps ‘entrepreneurial bankers’ is a much better term). This is not organised crime because Wall Street never committed any crimes did they, yet they are at the centre of a group of people in that classification are they not? And there we see not merely the adaptations of block chains, we see that organised crime will go there (as soon as they possibly can) whilst the bulk of all the players will not be ready and any encryption bill will hinder the progress of new technology as other players are not anchors of stability, they are concrete blocks of deceleration, another part not considered in any of this.

So yet, the tech companies are uniting and there is a second part in all that. When they strike a deal with Saudi Arabia and set a large part in the city of Neom; when Saudi Arabia accepts certain concessions towards the FAANG group? I personally believe that as soon as the benefit is clearly shown to the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the headway that they could make, they will adjust whatever they can according to Islamic Law, and at what point will governments realise that their only option of control will be isolation and a loss of economy? We are not that far away from that point. Even as we were told yesterday “A senior executive who works for Google’s parent company and a former US secretary of energy have dropped out of a Saudi Arabia tech and business advisory board following international outcry over the disappearance and alleged murder of a dissident Saudi journalist“, yet as Google cloud picks up more and more banks, how long until they reverse the setting? In this the Financial Times also gave us (a day earlier): “A radical blueprint to transform Saudi Arabia through socio-economic reform and ambitious development projects is persuading banks to return to Riyadh“, so at what point will we realise that Saudi Banking is growing and that all players want them as customers? It all boils to dollars and crime is merely a cost of doing business. It is that side that shows the missing data part (going back to the cross tabulation comparison). Corporations have always been about the privileges that come with a certain network and the most facilitating one is the one they will choose, that is in the heart of the flaw that I saw regarding Peter Dutton’s claims here. A bill that stops facilitation and stops optional business on much more levels, as banks need to show more and more profit. The greed driven business model will always be destructive in nature, learning that lesson 10 years ago would have made a difference, now it no longer will.

That is part of the heart of the “$40bn of foreign money is expected to flow into the stock market as a result of Saudi Arabia gaining MSCI emerging markets index status next year“, that against a flawed encryption bill, it was a bad play, played even worse on the surface of all the facts shown and I did not even bother going all the way when it comes to the initial ‘sought to estimate the cost‘, it almost reads like ‘the lady gains weight and we are trying to determine whether she is pregnant, or if she really likes pizza‘, how was that ever going to go? Perhaps asking her: ‘Have you been screwed (over) lately?‘ It could give you a truth and a lot more non-truths. That is the problem with data, whilst moulding data in one direction, you tend to open a door in another direction too, I learned to see and seek those doors, oh and that is before we consider the estimates and the application of weights to a data file, which I do not know whether it happened. this we should have consider with the statement on page 2 ‘Where data were not available for this period, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) (2018) inflation calculator was used to uprate estimated costs from earlier periods‘, the part ‘uprate estimated costs‘ would have gotten us that part, also the fact that it is not data merely a ballpark idea on what the data could be, it is not the same, is it?

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Tagged as 5G, Al Capone, Apple, Australia, Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, authentication, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, DFAT, Duncan Lewis, FAANG group, Facebook, Financial institutions, Financial Times, google, Home Affairs Minister, Huawei, Lizzie O’Shea, MDMA, Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, Mike Burgess, non-repudiation, organised crime, Paul Symon, Peter Dutton, Ponzi scheme, Samsung, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Banking, serious crime, Wall Street, WhatsApp, Wickr

October 4, 2018 · 13:11

One economy crises a day

Yes, it is the Guardian that alerts us to: ‘World economy at risk of another financial crash, says IMF‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/03/world-economy-at-risk-of-another-financial-crash-says-imf). So as we see: “Debt is above 2008 level and failure to reform banking system could trigger crisis“, we think that this is a small issue, but it is not, it is however not the real dangers, merely a larger factor. The quote “With global debt levels well above those at the time of the last crash in 2008, the risk remains that unregulated parts of the financial system could trigger a global panic, the Washington-based lender of last resort said” gets us a little closer to it all, yet it is the phrase ‘Washington-based lender of last resort’ that is a little more at the core of it all. This, or in a roundabout mention towards the US federal reserve is not the only part in this. It is the ECB with its quantative easing setting, now at 3.7 trillion, which in light of the Bloomberg article in 2017 (a year ago now) mentioning ‘Some ECB Members Identify 2.5 Trillion-Euro QE Limit‘ becomes a larger issue. With the US national debt at $21.5 trillion the ECB at an estimated €2.4 trillion bonds as per June ($2.7 trillion), we are going off the deep end soon enough. So as people were all in such a state that I was wrong, it would not happen again and that the economy is great. Consider that I warned about this danger several times between 2016 and the latest in May 2018 with ‘Milestones‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/05/05/milestones/). Yet all the parties are stating that I was wrong, and several hours ago, the Guardian treats us to: “The growth of global banks such as JP Morgan and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to a scale beyond that seen in 2008, leading to fears that they remain “too big to fail”, also registers on the IMF’s radar“. Yes, ‘too big to fail’, or should that be ‘to big too fail‘?

So when we see Gordon Brown getting quoted with: “former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said last month that the world economy was “sleepwalking into a future crisis,” and risks were not being tackled now “we are in a leaderless world”“. I found his response slightly moronic as there is no leaderless world, there are merely elected officials who know that they are merely in temp positions and they are paving the way for really nice paid futures. There is a distinct difference there. And in that I am still modestly awaiting my honour degree from the London School of Economics, in a pinch one from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will do too.

So when we see both “Christine Lagarde was concerned that the total value of global debt, in both the public and private sectors, has rocketed by 60% in the decade since the financial crisis to reach an all-time high of $182tn“, as well as “the build-up made developing world governments and companies more vulnerable to higher US interest rates, which could trigger a flight of funds and destabilise their economies. “This should serve as a wake-up call,” she said“. My response will be: “No Christine, you are wrong! The entire setting of a wake-up call is already 3-4 years too late. You have been unable to nurture the ECB, keep governments awake to get spending under control and the fallout will be huge and the people get to pay for it all“. The one benefit is that too large a population will be going through two depressions wiping out all their savings soon enough and in that there is an actual chance of a new civil war that would spread all over Europe. At that point the life of any politician will be £0.02 at best, once that starts, there will be not merely a Brexit, it will herald the end of the EU and it will impact the US in a most disastrous path, not merely wiping economies out, there will be a lack of trust between the US and the EU that will surpass the distrust levels between the USA and CCCP at the height of the cold war. It will redraw global economic maps to the larger degree. That is also seen in the part when we recollect the June 23rd article called ‘They are still lying to us‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/23/they-are-still-lying-to-us/). There we were treated to “Greece is once again becoming a normal country, regaining its political and financial independence“, remember that part? So how normal is that country as we are treated to ‘Greek Bank Stocks Tumble Amid Concerns Over Capital, Bad Loans’ by the Wall Street Journal a mere 8 hours ago? So when we see “Investors appear to have completely lost confidence in Greek banks,” economists at HSBC said in a research note. The four main banks— National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank, Eurobank Ergasias and Piraeus Bank—recently submitted ambitious plans to rid themselves of more than half of their soured loans by 2021 to the banking-supervision unit of the European Central Bank, several bank officials said. Under the new plans, which the ECB is considering, the banks would commit themselves to reduce their nonperforming loans to 15%-21% of their total loans, compared with today’s levels of 40.7%-54.7%“. the article (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/greek-bank-stocks-tumble-amid-concerns-over-capital-bad-loans-1538584978) gives us a lot more, but it shows that the banks are trying to shed the bad loans in as creative ways as possible and in this the governments are as I personally see it part of the problem, they were never part of any solution and the people will get to pay for it all as they were treated last quarter to: “as elderly Greeks face losing up to €350 ($416) per month when new pension cuts are implemented as of Jan. 1, 2019“, I believe that as the Greek banks collapse to the larger degree, as the Greek banks are shedding over 50% of outstanding loans, their value would also collapse as will their prospects and the loss of confidence will only increase the pressures. All whilst payments will still be due and cannot be met as it is staged to be at present. So there is a chance that Greeks will lose 50% more than they are currently losing at present in the next quarter, so we will see that the Greeks will start the year in utter poverty and the rest of Europe is not far behind. The ECB with its badly conceived QE plan has achieved that, so when the people are given that danger and handed the loss of retirement funds, utter rage will not be far away after that.

It was one of the reasons why I kept close eyes on Salini Impregilo. Even as Europe is going proverbially down the drain Salini Impregilo has been making headway on a global scale, foremost in Saudi Arabia and as their projects are kicking off, the infrastructure needs for Saudi Arabia grow. Their needs for dash boarding, reporting and data analytics will rise over the next two years and will require more and more knowledge and infrastructure with any additional building they are assigned. The entire project of the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) drew it even further to the foreground, merely because the required concrete levels that can be delivered seem to be at 30%-40% of what is required soon enough. It is an opportunity for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also optionally for Egypt. All these shortages ignored for now, yet when we see the image from 2012 and what was required then, and we consider that Neom will require close to 15 times that, where will the concrete come from? And it is not merely the availability; it will be about the proper planning of resources. Even as Salini Impregilo is merely a larger player of several projects, they in the end all need their concrete and where will that come from? So at this rate I expect to see the delays making the forefront news from 2020 onwards. Even as some places are increasing as much as they can afford. I expect it to fall short by a larger degree soon enough and when we are introduced to the heart of the matter. Smart cities will need smart infrastructure and the wiring will be well over 20 times what the entire Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet required and that is a lot. the skills, the training to get the amount of people fuelling this is short on every level as I see it, so as Europe collapses with the debt, Saudi Arabia gets the option to buy staff cheaply soon enough. No merely getting the knowledge they need. Yet the brain drain to that extent has never been seen before anywhere in the world and that is where the ECB will suddenly realise that the fuel required to fix any acts of stupidity in the last 10 years will no longer be available and at that point Wall Street will wake up getting to live the perfect nightmare. It is not merely that there will suddenly be a boost of economy because there is no unemployment, getting the people trained up will take decades, stopping economic growth right quick and for much too long.

And as other players open up the doors for a guaranteed decent lifestyle, the setting is changing. We see that in the European Pensions last July, a mere 2 months ago when we were given: “European pension schemes are becoming increasingly attracted to the high returns and diversification benefits offered by frontier markets” This is the setting of: ‘more developed than the least developing countries, but too small to be generally considered an emerging market‘, yet as the high returns are estimated, the risks are also higher and there seems to be the risk ‘risk premiums are more greatly affected by political, economic, and financial factors‘ that is seemingly ignored to a larger extent. We see that part when we consider both “MSCI Frontier Market Index is the most widely used benchmark for equities. However, even this is highly concentrated in certain markets and sectors – financial stocks make up 46 per cent and the top three countries make up 53 per cent“, as well as “Argentina, which makes up around 22 per cent of the index, and Vietnam, 15 per cent“. So, now consider that the very same Christine Lagarde treats us to: “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to increase a lending package with Argentina by 7.1 billion US dollars (£5.3 billion), seeking to calm markets over the country’s ability to meet its debt amid growing economic turmoil” a mere week ago. Do you still think that I was kidding or merely trying to kick the dead donkey? I am not stating that this is the fault of Argentina. I am speculating that too many parts of Wall Street are banking on the failure of others and it opposes the setting of returns on those seeking success, in this setting the pensions will lose, optionally they will lose every time without fail and the people are left with an empty bag not worth the price of that empty bag. Do you think that people will sit down and accept that? No, they will be beyond furious and the setting of Johan de Witt and Cornelis de Witt blamed and lynched in The Hague, the rioters were never prosecuted. So, there will be enough motivation on more than one level. It is something for the current European politicians to keep in mind, because this could happen again and the setting that the people face over the next 10 years is a lot worse than the ones that the population faced then. At that point, when this starts, I truly hope that those politicians will have the option of a quick getaway out of Europe, because they will not know safety ever again in that place.

So whilst we see the distancing of politicians on all fields whilst trying to drench themselves in non-accountability, whilst they will try the path of ‘It was a miscommunication and we were given the wrong advice‘, the people will no longer accept that as the evening news. They will want their pound of flesh and a bucket of blood and the regard of the value of politicians at that point will have been degraded to zero, and their ‘post life’ Facebook profile image might optionally look similar to the painting of the brothers De Witt as it was in 1672. You might think that it is mere speculation and it is, yet the trigger is not my speculation, it is the message of economic crises after economic crises as the governments are not acting against the banks and the exploiters that hide behind ‘too big to fail‘. The people all over Europe, if not on a global setting as they are mistreated to overly optimistic futures that cannot be met and have not been met for over a decade, you see, if that was actually true debts would have been receding, would they not? The only ones that did that harshly were the Germans and they are indeed in a much better place. It is the difference between being popular and doing what needs to be done and in that Angela Merkel was not about being popular, yet now those Germans are in a much better place than most other nations. It is something for you to consider as you notice your pension is gone and you want to take it out on someone.

so whilst we consider the final line in the Guardian, which was: “Without a rise in investment economies remain vulnerable to financial stress“, we need to consider that the setting is not merely about ‘investment economies‘, it is about the setting where large corporations come in and use that setting to ‘invest’ whilst draining away the gained momentum, so the economy that once was in that stage has been drained and those momentum profits are relocated to other places where ever those boards of directors are fuelling their personal wealth accounts, leaving those nations in a post investment era that is now merely regarded as a consumer fuelled economy whilst those people never gained the better economic standing to spend the money fuelling it further.

A setting where the equilibrium of economics fails as there was never a state of balance, merely a stage of relocating available wealth and the frontier markets are no help, they are merely an optional stage not unlike the CDO issues of 2008, in my view a way to avoid taxation and move whatever they could to a non-reporting nation. Or as one source stated: “the smarter operators no longer use filthy lucre but instead employ modern financial devices such as Interest Rate Swaps (IRS) and Total Return Swaps (TRS) to evade tax“, a setting where some take a 4% loss to avoid 26% taxation, it still wins them 22% and many had to live of a bonus a lot more shallow then that and from a base amount massively smaller than the one moved away.

One crises a day, I wonder what the bad news we will get treated to next week.

#HappyWorldAnimalDay

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Tagged as Alpha Bank, Angela Merkel, Argentina, Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Brexit, Christine Lagarde, Cornelis de Witt, ECB, Eu, Eurobank Ergasias, Greece, IMF, International Monetary Fund, Johan de Witt, KAFD, King Abdullah Financial District, London School of Economics, MSCI Frontier Market Index, National Bank of Greece, Piraeus Bank, Russia, Salini Impregilo, Saudi Arabia, the Guardian, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA, Vietnam, Wall Street Journal

September 26, 2018 · 14:40

One thousand solutions

Yes, it has been 5 years in the making, or was that six? But the day is here, today is my 1000^th article. So in light of some of the slamming that I have done against Microsoft (which they deserved and it was highly entertaining for me as well), it is also just to give recognition where it is due.

To see that in its proper light, we need to take a jump towards Sony, the very first PlayStation and a game called Gran Turismo. The first having the highest rating was one that stood out. You see, Kazunori Yamauchi gave us with Gran Turismo something that we had not seen before. Oh, we had seen racing games going all the way back to the CBM-64 with pole position. Yet Gran Turismo was something new, something unheard of and the screenshot that you see here might seem laughable to you now, but this was 4 console generations before now and then this was amazing. It was new it was fresh and it gave the players something that they had not had before and we all loved it!

These elements are important when we realise the article on Forza Horizons 4 for Xbox One (X) when we read “There’s almost been a sense of rediscovering what Britain is. I don’t think we’ll ever make a game quite like this again“, they were the words of Ralph Fulton. I personally believe he got it right, but he was not correct. I believe that this game added heart to Britain, which is a lot more then you bargained for. If there was one game that gives light to the consideration to buying a model X console then this game is it. The images are not merely about the cars, the views of wherever you drive, whenever and in what weather just jumps at you; it surpasses almost everything you will have played in racing games, and in this, even me, who is not a racing fan at all, I got blown away. They did not merely add some tracks to race, they gave us the UK to race in, and everyone, not merely those in the UK seems to be loving it.

I have written this before, so why repeat it?

Well, in my view Microsoft did something that Ubisoft should have done. You see, if you plan to make a game that is designed not to be a failure, you’ll never create a true winner. To do this, you need to jump out of the box and optionally burn it. This is seen on a much wider scale. We get part of this with ‘Instagram co-founders resign to explore ‘creativity again’‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/25/instagram-co-founders-resign-to-explore-creativity-again). Here we see that “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have announced their resignation from the company, which is owned by Facebook Inc, saying that they are leaving to “explore our curiosity and creativity again”“. We can speculate on whether this is the full truth, or whether there is the setting that Mark Zuckerberg has made some colossal errors and these errors are not done yet, they are still to some degree escalating and as the wild wild west of the internet is now in a stage where governments are starting to ‘cooperate’ on setting rules and regulations in place. We see the Independent giving us last year: ‘Government outlines plans to ‘regulate the internet’ and get rid of problem content‘, which is hilarious for all the usual reasons.

So, as we see how government is introducing rephrased ways to set censorship, instigate discrimination and avoid issues of accountability, we are left to our own devices and there are more and more devices arriving, all remaining in some set league to avoid setting the stage where data is the most eagerly desired currency, because some people are not willing to go there just now. the one element avoided is that whilst we see in paces everywhere that porn is a problem, we see that it is so widely available that the internet is not the problem and that identification is at the heart of the matter, because America is not the solution, America has for the longest time been part of the problem. It has been for quite a while. It wants to police the internet, it wants to have freedom and set boundaries, but only as long as it does not hinder American business and that was the problem all along. Even as the numbers are not up to date, when you consider that “When faster internet led to a boom in video pornography in the mid-2000s, worldwide industry revenue skyrocketed to an estimated $40-$50 billion” is set on taxable dollars, do you think that America wants to do anything that is realistically achievable? I remember the short discussion that was going on somewhere around 1993-1996. I forgot the actual date, but there was a discussion that was started by the adult entertainment industry. They were the adults staging the setting that by having an .XXX domain (or something similar), there would be a place for adults and children could more easily be kept away. It did not go far and it was not successful as some religiously pushed people wanted all the porn from the internet. So tell me, after 20 years, how did that go? American bias, ego and greed stopped a whole range of solutions getting through and some could have made a decent impact. All stopped by ego and greed. It gets to be worse, because as the US is now trying to arm wrestle IP powers away from the people and making it government goods. To see this, we need to take a look at the IP Watchdog (at http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/03/01/u-s-patent-system-americas-decline-competitiveness/id=94249/), and we get treated to: “To find out who is responsible for the demise of American competitiveness you only reflect a mirror against U.S. innovation policy“. We see additional parts with: “China has established courts that specialize in intellectual property litigation so litigants have an experienced, fast and cost-effective forum to resolve patent disputes. These specialist courts take about 10 months to resolve patent infringement lawsuits with litigation costs running at approximately $200,000. In contrast, patent litigation in the U.S. often takes five or more years to resolve with litigation costs running in the many millions of dollars. A fairly ordinary dispute when litigated in the U.S. can easily surge past $3,000,000 when you factor in the inevitable post grant challenges (each of which will run $500,000 to defend, sometimes more) and the federal court litigation after that“, Yet another source (the Diplomat) gives us: “The United States government believes that IP protection is critical to both the physical and economic security of the country. IP protection ensures that American businesses, which produce a disproportionate percentage of their value in IP, will remain competitive on the international market. The U.S. government also believes that advanced technology is critical to U.S. military superiority, and that protecting this technology (through IP law and other means) will keep the United States ahead”, the setting of security and the stage of innovation have been opposing one another almost forever, so how does that help innovation? And when we consider ‘IP protection is critical to both the physical and economic security of the country’, how long until some level of ‘national security’ stops the IP from remaining with the actual owner that filed the IP?

It gets to be shown as worse off, when we consider both: “patents challenged in federal district court as claiming unpatentable subject matter were invalidated 67% of the time. The vast majority of these invalidated U.S. patents would have been deemed valid under current Chinese patent law, and some of these invalidated patents do actually remain valid and enforceable in China, Europe and elsewhere throughout the world“, as well as the economic setting which we got last March with “a whopping $215 billion in sales for medications could be lost from patent expirations between 2015-2020 and $31 billion are at risk in 2018 alone“. How do you think the US economy will get hit when certain nations start their generic solutions, lowering medication costs by optionally thousands or dollars per patient for both hospitals and patients?

As the patent holders are now also realising that there are added benefits to be part of the Chinese IP system and due to a lack of enforcement, the US market is no longer of decent value, we see that they are confronted with global benefits against much larger local setbacks and limitations.

How does one relate to the other?

There is a correlation between video games and patents (yes there really is). The correlation is seen in creativity and out of the box thinking. The conservative path of: ‘make sure it is not a failure‘ stops innovation. You see, we have been treated to so many resources that some people cannot fathom how some solutions were designed on a 2 MB RAM, 1 MB VRAM system, with a disc that had a maximum of 650MB (the original PlayStation). The makers avoided all kinds of traps and found new innovative solutions to make the game work. Gran Turismo is one of those jewels that show what a system when properly used to the max could achieve. As we went to iterative solution thinking, we lost the ability to become truly innovative and that is where we see that innovative patents no longer are, merely in the presentation are they optionally regarded as innovative, and that is where we see the next wave of technology.

Even as we are still confronted with the allegations against Huawei, we got shown 6 months ago: “Huawei filed 2,398 patent applications with the European Patent Office in 2017 out of a total of 166,000 for the year“, basically 1.44% of ALL files European patents were from that one company. And when it comes to innovation, we were treated to: “In our first [5G] smartphone we’re going to introduce a foldable screen“, and if you think towards the old flip phones think again, you merely have to consider the concept image to see that actual innovation in not merely a jump from iPhone 6, to iPhone 7. When we start seeing Huawei optional speculated settings, we see an actual jump and we can agree that to some extent 2398 patents do make for an interesting push towards the future.

This all takes another leap forward when we consider that if we want to be players, the iterative model no longer works. We need to be first and we need to be better than everyone else and iterative thinking is what merely gets them second place. It is not merely brand marketing, it is becoming a new level of marketing all together. We merely have to see the settings and changes we see towards Neom in Saudi Arabia to see the potential there. It is Ericsson that has already set the stage where the UAE has the potential to gain business benefits of $3.3B over the next 7 years, that is an additional $500 million, nothing to sneer at and when we consider the opportunities we see when we add the stages and places that Salini Impregilo is already working on, we see the growth of a long term stage with dozens of golden parachutes for those who have the financial backers to get it up and running. Take information to a new level, not merely showing up on a display, but for you to tune in with your phone or tablet and select what you want to see, with the optional setting of “Line 3, also known as the Orange line, is 41.5km long with an 11km underground section. It will have 22 stations“, two 5G stations on the line and repeaters at every station will suddenly give you thousands of users, getting informed by you, giving them choice of what they want to be informed about and with the smart dumb devices I mentioned a month ago, you get the setting of any train with up to 250 people getting informed. It is not merely marketing at this stage; it becomes entertainment facilitation with personalised advertisements. Creating branding and loyalty at the same time, because it is the first trip, that moment when you are going to work, or going home when consistency tends to be a need for so many travelers, that is where the next stage is and that is in Riyadh, expose that to the Neom stage where the city is 32 times the size of New York, it is no longer merely on how fast people get from one place to the other, it is the setting that people will want and need information at this moment, the one giving what they need is the one with the information required. It is no longer mass media; it becomes what I would call ‘Legion media‘, a facilitated one to one media solution for all. Not one stream all watch, but hundreds of media streams interacting seamlessly on the needs of the user giving them one seamless stream of information. A fluidic setting of interactions as configured/disseminated for the viewer, all personalised and automated; a situation that requires 5G to work and a solution that remains fluidic for the changing need of the user. We know the reality of Neom being years away (apart from the act that building will take quite a while), it will be now that we see the need to prototype and pilot those new projects to get the flaws out and stage the setting for large deployment, for the mere reason that new solutions are nice to have, but when your new idea fails on day one, that entire city will switch to the next solution on day two and never consider you again, because that too is the stage of 5G. It will be more and more about getting it right the first time. I wonder how many developers have realised this and most of them will trivialise that of course, and it makes sense that they do. Yet when the backers learn that the 5G community will be a lot more critical than ever before, will they still continue backing, or will they hide behind alternative wealth bringing solutions?

You see the apps that will be the most valued and priced ones are not the ones that look cool. In 5G it will more and more about enhanced pragmatism and managing of your personal infrastructure. Did you not figure that out? When we see the options that Saudi Arabia brings, we need to also see the limitations that it has. So the right ability to manage that through domotics and smart solutions will be close to everything, pre heating, pre cooling, adjusting, shopping and groceries, all done on the fly when you have time.

Even when we see the opposition (always important) giving us: “King Abdullah Financial District north of Riyadh, meant to rival Dubai as an economic hub, is still incomplete after more than a decade. As of last April, nary a financial institution had agreed to occupy any of the district’s 73 buildings“. I think that this is important too. Is it merely the language? You see, when we see: ‘Financial District‘, we think Wall Street and consider that area. Yet when we see: “Designed by architecture firm Henning Larsen, the 17.2 million-square-foot master plan calls for over 60 residential, office, and retail towers, several schools and parking garages, a medical clinic, civic buildings, and three hotels“, we see a lot more than merely a financial district, we see an almost self-contained city. You see when we see the larger scale I see an optional obstacle, not a negative one, but one none the less. To give comparison, I need to take you back to an original game. It was called ‘Sim City’ and it was a game, but gave the player an insight into designing his city of the future. Zoning was important at this point, so it required gradual growth. By going too large in one area, you would be broke and could not gain momentum in other ways. Even as it looks amazingly beautiful, how will you get people there fast? How can you vacate 2 million people (most likely from Riyadh and other larger cities) and set them in the new stage? There are two ways. You either create a need in the new place, or you create opportunity in that place. The first requires essential growth; the second requires a staging investment drive.

In the first example, we need ‘a pressing need’, when there is an infrastructure or a structural need, you create jobs and people will move there for the new job, which is fine, but requires vast amounts of money and large players getting there. The second one is great, but is initially also costly. For the second example I will use a solution that was in South Australia some time ago. To get people there, they gave away land. They still need to build the house, but in this setting he people had 50% additional money, or lessened costs, yet to break even the government stated that the land was given, but represented value X, and when they sold the house, they would have to pay the invoice for the land first. Now consider this in the setting of the King Abdullah Financial District. And there we set the stage of ‘selling’ houses/apartments at a mere 10% of the price, yet cannot be sold until the 100% price is satisfied first. So you now have a setting where the next 10,000 apartments only seem really cheap, yet in that setting you also create need, because these 10,000 households will need infrastructure like food, water, clothing, transportation, entertainment, schooling and so on; with that we see the investors come. build their shops and grow their business, as a result housing value rises fast and creates not merely a need, but also creates additional growth, so as these houses exchange hands and new occupation, the government gets the outstanding 90% back and a thriving place. It is not a short term, or a fast solution, but it is one that brings growth, and creating larger infrastructure solutions, because at that point with the additional 10,000 people or more we see the growing need in every direction. As these elements grow other needs can grow too, when there are 10,000 potential candidates in the financial industry and a clear path of growth exists, only then would there be interest into growing the stock exchange in a new place. Yet in that setting we need to realise that for many industries the capital remains alluring. So when we are confronted with “potential tenants and investors are less optimistic than the district’s planners about its future success“, as well as “The potential is amazing. The inside is impressive,’ one Dubai-based expat, who toured the site and preferred to remain anonymous, told Reuters. But he added, ‘It will not be finished. Decision-making is very slow (on the project, and) people don’t have cash“, we see the clarity of what I described. The ‘not having cash’ can be alleviated in one way, creating additional needs. It is the ‘decision making’ part that now requires to be decided on (yes I see the trap here) and there too is a solution. If we consider the statement that Business Insider mentioned: “Some of the kingdom’s strict social codes, including one requiring women to wear dark robes, will be relaxed“, we see the option of creating an opportunity for the foreign players in Qatar to become a larger mesmerising target for ‘poaching’. When we consider the Bloomberg message earlier in May this year giving us: ‘Qatar to Allow 100% Foreign Ownership of Firms in All Sectors‘, we see the setting that there is interest, especially in the financial sector to grow options on a global scale and there too Saudi Arabia would be able to set the stage for the future. More important, once these investors see the benefit in one place, there will be an added stage towards growth towards Neom for them too. This could have additional benefits as a much larger stage between Saudi Arabia and places like Egypt could become a much more interesting choice for the future. that part is not merely seen in one way, it becomes an entirely different stage when we consider yesterday’s news with ‘Award-winning Dubbo solar home uses Tesla Powerwall 2 battery‘, you might think that this is a ‘So What?‘ stage, but it is more than you think. That part is seen with: “A building company in Dubbo says the Tesla Powerwall 2 battery in its new display home means the Dubbo solar home could potentially go off-grid. Award-winning Greenmark Homes installed a Tesla Powerwall 2 battery to boost the display home’s energy efficiency“, it becomes even more impressive when you consider the added: “Tesla big battery wins awards, prevents blackouts“, you see, even as Saudi Arabia has plenty of sunshine, at some point the sun goes down and that is where the usage changes and whilst we know that air-conditioning takes the bulk of the energy, we see that the overall need could be filled in more efficient ways and that too needs time to evolve and refine. It is taking solutions out of the box where we see the beginning of true innovation and there are plenty of places that can benefit, but we need to open the door to creativity to make it thrive and set the next stage of innovation. We can make fun of some situations as we are offered (a very old joke): ‘a new powder for hydration, to make it, merely adds water‘. It is the innovative person that uses the solution and creates a powder to capture the moist in the air and end up with water. That same application is seen when we see applications on energy and hydro needs and creates another solution, the one we forgot about. That is the nice part about these stages and on why we need to keep our focus on Neom, you see it is not about the size of the city, it will be about how certain situations get solved and how innovative those solutions are. That is where we will be able to test our creativity and optionally become an actual innovative player ourselves, driving solutions and new technologies forward, not iterative over time, but by leaps, which is how you end up with one thousand new solutions not a thousand versions of one solution.

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Tagged as 5G, bloomberg, Business Insider, domotics, Dubbo solar home, Egypt, European Patent Office, Gran Turismo, Greenmark Homes, Henning Larsen, Huawei, Kevin Systrom, King Abdullah Financial District, Legion media, Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft, Mike Krieger, NEOM, Playstation, Qatar, Riyadh, Salini Impregilo, Saudi Arabia, smart solutions, Tesla Powerwall 2 battery, the Guardian, UAE, Ubisoft, Xbox One

September 25, 2018 · 12:47

Groping in the dark

Yup it happens, we are sometimes caught without a clue and at that point some of us enter the blame game, some of us get emotional and shout at everyone who dislikes us and some try something else, like investigate for example. So even as we should feel sorry for Iran, we definitely feel sorry for all the innocent people in the crossfires, as well as the children caught in the event. We need to critically look at Iran and the choices that they are making.

You see, the attack did not wake me up to the event, I reckon that all the events by Iran in the dar in Yemen gave light that this event was always going to happen, how was of course not known. What woke me up was not on their professionalism, it was the lack of professionalism that got my attention.

Even as Al Jazeera gave us a lot of information, we see the headlines all over the media:

UAE official denies Iranian allegations of links to military parade
UAE dismisses Iran’s allegations on terror attack
Iran’s Khamenei says the attackers were paid by Saudis and UAE
Iran warns U.S, Israel to expect a ‘devastating’ revenge: state TV
Iran blames the US and Saudi Arabia for Ahvaz military parade attack
Iran blames US and Gulf allies for Ahvaz parade attack

All different headlines appearing within hours from one another giving us the insight that not only is stability absent in Iran, it might be missing a lot more then we bargained for. Even as we realise the setting of ‘Ahvaz military parade attack‘ as well as the statement given “Ahvaz National Resistance claimed responsibility for the 2018 Ahvaz military parade attack without providing evidence, the Ahvaz National Resistance is an ethnic Arab opposition movement in Iran which seeks a separate state in oil-rich Khuzestan Province” it is seemingly cast aside by the Iranian National guard (who seems to be missing a few members as per last Sunday).

Consider the smallest optional truth, the fact that there is an ‘Ahvaz National Resistance‘, as well as the part where we see ‘seeks a separate state in oil-rich Khuzestan Province‘, would that be the perfect place for a ‘show’ of strength? Even as Al-Jazeera gives us the voice of Yacoub Hor Al-Tostari claiming it was them and them alone, it seems interesting that Iranian officials are claiming that this is all due to financial support from the ‘outside’.

As we should argue whether any of it is true, we cannot deny the impact that a reported amount of 4 gunmen had on the entire event. The France24 English gives us a little more (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agwNNpiU-uo), there is an additional part. The Claim by Islamic State, and as given from this source is the part that two of the gunmen resembles and that is optionally a setting, with the inclusion of the channel was an Islamic State channel, yet they do not speak about Islamic State, two were speaking Arabic and one Farsi, none of them refer to Islamic State by name, giving us not intelligence, but merely question marks. That is the setting that you need to consider. Even as they speak ‘Jihadi’, the language is oppositional, merely oppositional to Iran. Yet when I consider the facts, I see an optional new danger. With the separatism in Ahvaz, there is every chance that Islamic State will use this staging area to propel their needs. As there has been clear mention of support to Islamic state in Ahvaz, we see not merely an Iran that is in a state of lessened stability, it is in a state of internal turmoil. I would think that Iran would have been less likely to get hit by Islamic State ever, yet the attack on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard implies the weakness and the attacker, whether it was Islamic state or not have exploited that weakness and it is unlikely going to stop at that part.

And for these attackers, there is a benefit, as Iran is not merely accusing, but also setting cogs in motion to optionally stage settings against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US and Israel, they will open themselves to additional attacks as the IRGC will be looking and focusing in the wrong direction. Even as I have some issues not merely on the Abadan training base, but also its location, as well as its function. It seems to me that if the images were of an actual trainings base, it seems to be the weakest of stages and the easiest one to take on if they can get the timing right. Any successful attack would have a much larger impact as any successful event against 2 bases in Khuzestan could also start a level of demoralisation that the IRGC has not had before. A similar issue exists for the Semnan base. Even as we realise where the helicopter landing pad is, I see the setting where 2 sets of two jihadi teams could bring a level of devastation to the base, a level that Iran had never faced before giving more and more rise to more than mere destabilisation. And that is where this all starts, not with the accusations from Iran, but the active level of the accusations form Iran that gave rise not on who was guilty, but on the setting that Iran is weaker then it pretends to be. We can accept that any government will boast strengths they do not have, that is mere ego. The fact that the reported 4 gunmen did this attack and Iran decides to look into other directions is where we see their weakness, as well as the consideration that they are in denial on who could have attacked them, that was the element of the war that they just lost. You see, the Art of War (Sun Tsu) gave us: ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles‘ and that is the first part of the stage that they lost, not merely do the not know their enemy, they seem to be in a stage where they no longer really know themselves and that leads to ‘If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle‘. The revelation surprised me, because before last weekend I considered that they were still a force to be reckoned with. Even as they hid behind Houthi’s and Hezbollah, using them as told to do their bidding, there is now a much more realistic view that they are at present limited to proxy wars. Yet it is not enough to merely look at Sun Tsu. Carl von Clausewitz in his work On War gives us “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will“, a path we can accept, yet it also shows the wisdom of Sun Tsu more clearly. To compel your will on your enemy is one path that requires clarity of vision. If you yourself cannot focus that vision the result is not merely chaos, it is as I see it the limitation that chaotic and non-engagement will be the result of both a lack of vision and a lack of will, so why Carl von Clausewitz? Well, he does give us a more modern part and one that is highly essential here. When he gave us: “No one starts a war — or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so — without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective“. So as we consider the response on the attack, we see the following elements. The first is ‘being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve‘, even if this is a war in defence against the attackers, there is no clarity of mind. The senseless accusations are clear evidence of that reflection. The promise of retaliation might be the political purpose in all this, yet it is not aimed at its attacker, merely at those not friendly to Iran (for whichever reason), basically it could end up being senseless accusations against most nations except Pakistan and Turkey. Oh what a ‘bad web’ some people weave, right? The operational objective is not merely acting against the actual attackers, but properly preparing for these attacks and now we see the larger flaw. As I saw the staged weakness in two IRGC facilities, it is my personal belief that there are a lot more (I never saw all the data on all bases), but the optional of hitting half a dozen infrastructure points in several bases means that 4 facilities could optionally end up in lock-down, draining not merely resources, but in addition draining operational staging options for a much longer time. Consider that part. In any base, when you need to keep an additional 20% ready to actively defend a stronghold, how much operational activities will be available? when that sets in and local uprising start the IRGC will have a lot less abilities at their disposal as it requires to increase its foundational defences to be up and running around the clock. I think that Islamic State is starting to figure out that weakness (OK, that last part was highly speculative). When you consider that part, can you now also see on how Abadan is a much more appealing target in the near future?

Even as we accept that there is no evidence truly supporting Islamic State claims, we need to consider the Iranian News from August 29^th (at https://en.mehrnews.com/news/137230/One-ISIL-member-arrested-in-S-Iran-intelligence-min). It is not the news reported that interested me, it is on what was missing that was of value. When we see: ‘One ISIL member arrested in S Iran: intelligence min.‘ (at https://en.mehrnews.com/news/137230/One-ISIL-member-arrested-in-S-Iran-intelligence-min), it gives us not merely that one member was arrested; it gives us not where it was. You see Southern Iran is not a small place. So when we see Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi giving us that this one person was arrested and that “Around 32 terrorist groups and 100 grouplets in various sizes which are supported by foreigners to create insecurity in the country“, as well as “In the past year we have delivered blows to 269 groups, squads, and networks which were supported by terrorist groups like Kurdish Democrats, Komala Party and other similar groups“. So we see all these ‘successes’ and we see that they got one person. The imbalance in it all is just too hilarious. Now also consider that we see: “This shows the intelligence dominance of the intelligence ministry which does not allow the enemies to create insecurity in Iran“. He might claim that, yet the 25 dead and 70 wounded gives he shining light that not only does Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi not have a handle on things. The fact that the attack was ‘successful’ implies that he has less then he thinks he does and that is where the teachings on Sun Tsu and Carl von Clausewitz come into play giving us a much larger stage of limitations on the side of Iran.

Yet there is also additional victory for the enemies of Iran in all this. The NY Times gave us that (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/world/middleeast/iran-attack-military-parade.html). If we accept the used quote from Al ahed News (Hezbollah, Lebanon), we see: “In a speech on Monday at a funeral ceremony for the victims of the attack, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, said: “You have seen our revenge before, you will see that our response will be crushing and devastating, and you will regret what you have done”” Yet the actions of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei. Brigadier General Hossein Salami accuses US, Saudi Arabia and Israel, which in light of decently reliable intelligence and evidence is now more in doubt and there we get back to the words of Sun Tsu: ‘If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle‘. That is now partially the staging area that the enemies of Iran are given with the damage of 4 shooters against a military parade. If we optionally add the lack of results by Hezbollah/Houthi with at present 198 rockets fired implies not merely that the proxy war was an extremely bad (read: expensive) idea, when we consider the thought that Iran is limited to these actions because of the brewing instability, we see another stage, a stage where Iran either changes their direction by a lot, or we might witness the beginning of an essential regime change as the current one has little left to work with, either way, the issues involving the Ahvaz attack will worsen before the entire stage could optionally get better.

It is not the attack; it is the ‘groping in the dark’ hoping to get a bite that showed their weakness. And when we consider ‘If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned‘. That wisdom could have been available to both Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei and Brigadier General Hossein Salami, it did not come from either The Art of War, or On War. It is evidence in both books, but the clearest wisdom that the aftermath of the attack brought was neither of these books, it came from the Art of Fishing, a wisdom that every fishermen in Iran could have told them, if only they could have separated the noise from within and the wisdom on the outside could they have figured that part out, especially when you consider that Iran exported almost 250,000 tonnes of fish in 2014, we see that the Iranian hierarchy has stopped listening to the right people, who those right people are is a puzzle they get to figure out themselves. Watching their failures is just too entertaining to me to see that stop any day soon, I can’t wait to see the media conversations when they get to report on the intelligence that the commander of the Bandar-e Jask naval base had been missing out on for quite some time.

#ReturnOfThePranker

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Tagged as Abadan, Abu Dhabi, Ahvaz, Ahvaz attack, Ahvaz National Resistance, Al ahed News, Al Jazeera, Bandar-e Jask, Brigadier General, Carl von Clausewitz, France24, Grand Ayatollah, Hezbollah, Hossein Salami, Iran, Iranian Intelligence Minister, Iraq, IRGC, Islamic State, Israel, Khuzestan, Komala Party, Kurdish Democrats, Lebanon, naval base, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Seyed Mahmoud Alavi, Sun Tsu, UAE, USA, Yacoub Hor Al-Tostari, Yemen

September 21, 2018 · 11:41

When math is no solace

There are times when facts and logic prevails; in most cases math and logic tend to be the cornerstone of our decision making. Even if the calculation is horrible, even when sheer numbers dull us from the contemplation of what we see, the math and numbers becomes a shield, a level of protection against the sheer insult of the moment. We might realise that, we might not. Yet that is the setting we all face.

So when sources gave me ‘Hezbollah to Israel: ‘Precision’ missiles now obtained‘, I was merely curious. It was the quote “The Israeli military has said Hezbollah has between 100,000 and 120,000 short-range missiles and rockets, as well as several hundred longer-range missiles” that started it all. You see, when we consider that a short range missile costs somewhere between $25K and $40K, we see that the lowest ballpark in one setting is already $2.5B, and the value is up to an estimated maximum of $4.8B. In that sense, can anyone explain to me the sanctity of the UN when it receives $100m in new funds for Palestinian aid? This is not some charity thing. Even Iran is not merely giving away $2.5 billion like that, this comes at a price and why should any UN funds, given or not, be handed to Palestine in this setting? As we were given merely last December: ‘Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah vows to focus on Palestine‘, whilst we were treated to ‘Taunting Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasts about armed group’s upgraded military capabilities‘? You do realise that short range missiles have no defence foundation, the use of short range missiles in for offensive actions only, and even when we accept that missiles can be used to destroy a tank, which is a valid defence. There is no need to have 75 missiles for every tank; 2-3 usually can do the trick. the matter complicates even further when we realise that clear evidence was shown (multiple sources) that Hezbollah is directly involved in Yemen, the place where 5 million children face starvation, we see prolongation of a proxy war and Hezbollah is very willing to be the tool in that case, so why are they given any consideration when they have a direct involvement in prolonging the biggest humanitarian disaster in history? A setting where 5 million children are now in a direct setting of death by famine and/or disease, even the Nazi Germans never went THAT far.

It is in this setting that I have to raise an article that is about 3 hours old. It was available at Arutz Sheva 7 (at https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22760). I think this is the first time I go there and therefor I cannot comment on the channel, but the article came from Prof. Louis René Beres. He is Swiss, graduated at Princeton (which I will not hold against him), with an additional truckload of publications in some of the most prestigious places. He gives us: “While the jihadist terrorist courageously claims to “love death,” this necrophilious announcement is an evident lie. Paradoxically, the self-proclaimed “freedom fighter” actually kills himself (or herself), always together with certain innocent others, to ensure that he or she will not die, that there will take place a sacralized transcendence of personal death“, the additional part I needed here was “Whether we are willing to accept it or not, these corrosive wars are usually focused upon mere symptoms of enemy pathology and not at the underlying disease itself. Regrettably, these “wars of defense” are unlikely to make any substantial dent in jihadist thinking; hence, they can be expected to exert only minimal interference with any derivative jihadist harms“. You see, the statement in the article ‘For them, the obvious oxymoron is a simple example of deductive “logic.” Ultimately, this sort of “sacrifice” is their immutably overriding objective‘. This now relates directly to Yemen, with the food, water and medication shortage. Mothers can be offered a life time of all three for their children, if only they would….. (You can fill in the rest). This is exactly why a decisive victory in the Battle of Al Hudaydah is so essential. When these mothers realise that there is a place where there is medication, food and drink, the setting shifts away from terrorist consideration. And whilst humanitarian solutions are implemented, the so called big boys of Intelligence can start tweaking their Palantir Gotham and start figuring out, where 100,000 missiles are, because there is absolutely zero chance that a chunk of that is not on route to Yemen. Even 10,000 of them, that is still a truckload of containers and they need to be found and destroyed now, because once these missiles are placed in Yemen, the setting of a prolonged war is not merely a certainty, it will be a certainty for several years. The chance of these children surviving that timeframe is close to nil. And even as the Iranian PressTV is now flaunting ‘Yemeni ballistic missile hits military base in Saudi Arabia‘ (they were the only ones giving us that), we know that it will be a problem, one of many. So even if we consider that part, it is Asharq Al-Awsat who gives us (at https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1401871/150-turbaned-houthis-schools-recruit-students) the issue on recruiting children, the exact issue that I gave in ‘Lying through truth‘ a month ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/08/24/when-drought-sets-in/). Here I emphasized “The clothes are too clean, the weapons too shiny and there is a cameraman on the car. I have an issue with the picture. Yet the article is all about ‘Houthis Exploit Poverty-Struck Children as Cannon Fodder‘, an accusation that has been seen in more than one place“, it was the setting of a recruitment drive. The headline shown earlier, and even the Iranian news seems to be offended on this when we see: “Hezbollah was found to be recruiting children as young as 12 into their armed units in the Syrian Civil War just last year, according to Human Rights Watch“. The question is no longer merely on how fast we can act. There is now a growing concern that it might already too late for too many children.

Where is the math? You see, if we are confronted with 5 million children, the math tells us that that there are no less than one million mothers involved (if they are still alive), that means when we ‘aggregate’ the settings shown so far and if we are to accept the scenario presented by Prof. Louis René Beres with: “This still-expanding network of orchestrated homicides now generally represents an au courant form of religious sacrifice, a long-standing practice that stems from distinctly pre-modern customs (not necessarily Islamic) and that links each applicable suicide’s “martyrdom” with a “properly” designated victim“, then we need to consider that if the stage of Battle of Al Hudaydah needs to be completed fast, because the unthinkable setting of math the setting that is an insult on life where the Saudi coalition could be facing up to one million martyrs. This now takes me back to the initial part. When we consider the statement of 100,000 and 120,000 short-range missiles and rockets, we tend to think in one direction. Yet, when you remove the casing and the propellant, you end up with something mobile that can explode easily enough and cause a lot of damage. The issue is not that this is done, the case becomes that you suddenly have 10,000 (or more) suicide vests, a setting that is emotionally a nightmare, because the timeline between creating one and retrofitting the other is quite the leap.

It is my unfounded and speculative (extremely speculative) part where there is an optional setting that Hezbollah (optionally via Iran) is setting the stage that the Japanese Imperial army had in 1944 when it created the Kamikaze (Tokubetsu Kōgekitai), a stage that is optionally the stuff that nightmares are made of. So what if I am wrong? That is the whole part that matters to merely some degree. If the story that Hassan Nasrallah told us was a lie, we win. If the Battle of Al Hudaydah is settled, fired up because of the lie by Hassan Nasrallah, we win. If we strike a definite blow against Hezbollah, we really win and if we can set the stage for true humanitarian aid to start in Yemen, we also win. We only lose if Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthi’s are successful in prolonging the Yemen war. I see no downside in any of the scenario’s on our side in all this. I think that we need to realise that cutting all aid to some of the players hiding behind hardship and then casually informing us that they now have an additional $2.5 billion plus in missiles and rockets, they would not really have any need for aid in food, clothing and medicine, would you not agree?

When the people have to choose between firing offensive missiles against a non-enemy, or choose for food, water and medication (optional clothing too), what would you choose?

It seems easy enough to me and it was merely the use of common sense, without the required need of math (in the final decision).

The entire Yemen is about numbers, yet any math involving this is unlikely to bring solace to anyone hoping to find a shield in that math.

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Tagged as Arutz Sheva 7, Asharq Al-Awsat, Battle of Al Hudaydah, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah, Human Rights watch, Iran, Israel, Israel International News, Japan, Kamikaze, Louis René Beres, Palantir Gotham, Palestine, PressTV, Princeton, Prof. Louis René Beres, Saudi Arabia, Tokubetsu Kōgekitai, UN, United Nations, Yemen

September 20, 2018 · 12:21

Borderlines are not borders

Yes, that is the setting we seem to forget at times. You look at google Maps, look at the country/location and at times you forget that one country is not limited to the borderline you witnessed. Some will Google ‘boobies’ and ‘bikini’ and look in amazement on how good thing seem to be North of the border. Yet, we forgot that there is still a trap. That it is for the most an imaginary line. Birds never seem to see one and diseases notice it even less, so as we got exposed to Cholera this week, we see “RIYADH: Saudi Arabia confirmed one cholera case and said three others were suspected in an area bordering Yemen, where an epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people, Saudi state TV said, citing a health ministry official” (at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/health/saudi-arabia-reports-cholera-infection-in-southern-province-10727266), yet do we comprehend the danger that is evolving? You see, we can rely on numerous sources and accept: “Cholera is an infectious disease that causes severe watery diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and even death if untreated. It is caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae“, we seem to forget too often that ‘infectious disease‘, ‘leads to dehydration and even death if untreated‘. The treatment is actually simple. We are also given: “you can protect yourself and your family by using only water that has been boiled, water that has been chemically disinfected, or bottled water“, that part is important right now. You see, antibiotics ‘reduce the duration of diarrhoea by half and also reduce the excretion of the bacteria, thus helping to prevent the spread of the disease‘, yet the true treatment is Hydration and that is where the problem starts. Yemen is in a state of famine and shortage, so not only is there almost no water, there is in addition no way to boil that water, continuing a cycle of symptoms and a spread of the bacteria (and so the disease). At that point, dehydration becomes the killer leaving death in its wake and in Yemen that is unlikely to be mere dozens or hundreds; it will be killing thousands of people. So they are not too fearful of bombs and war slaughter, cholera is much more certain to kill them and do it at a slower pace, ensuring that suffering is maximised. So even as one case is found in Saudi Arabia, it is in my personal view running rampant in Yemen where more than 2,000 people have died of cholera at present and the estimated 5.2 million children that are in danger of dying of hunger, measles, or diphtheria are at present more than likely on the death list of cholera. Making the Battle of Al Hudaydah not merely an essential one, but making it imperative that it is won by the Saudi-coalition as soon as possible.

As we see the outspoken lies of the Houthi’s claiming that they are defending Yemen from a ‘US backed invasion’. That whilst they are knowingly, willingly and intentionally letting the Yemeni population die in the most horrible way imaginable, we need to wonder how much humanity we need to show the Houthi’s in all this. You see, the alleged Houthi in the image, an image merely 16 hours old (if the source it to be believed) does not seem to look that hungry, making the issue of who gets fed more important, and beyond that, if the Cholera treatment (hydration) is not made openly available Yemen could become the biggest graveyard in history. It is there that the setting of the Battle of Al Hudaydah is clearly shown and it is about to get worse. You see, as more and more refugees flee Yemen into Saudi Arabia with their malnourished and dehydrated children and babies, they will also push Cholera into Saudi Arabia. Even as we know that Antibiotic treatments for one to three days shorten the course of the disease and reduce the severity of the symptoms, and therefor lessen the dehydration, the setting is now also that there are sources that have given view that resistance against antibiotics have been reported, making matters less easy to resolve and therefor more water is needed to remain hydrated, and that is not even including of the backlash of other diseases in younger children because of the Cholera impact. DA Sack, RB Sack, GB Nair, and AK Siddique in their January 2004 paper in The Lancet “Cholera” give us the frightening part: “If people with cholera are treated quickly and properly, the mortality rate is less than 1%; however, with untreated cholera, the mortality rate rises to 50–60%“. Here we have the larger setting, you see cholera does not give a hoot about borders and now that the first cases have been reported, we see not merely the danger of the disease, we see the dangers that if any of these refugees would make it to a city like Khamis Mushait they would have passed half a dozen smaller places like Al Masgi, that is if they even maker it that far. For me 80 Km is a stroll, for a lot of others it is a mountain and refugees, even if given assistance, caring Muslims, giving them a ride on their trucks towards a decent hospital, or even trying to treat these people (especially when it was not clear that it is Cholera) might see a larger problem evolve. Even as we accept that Cholera is rarely spread directly from person to person, which is a good thing. I wonder how dangerous the disease is when we accept that bodies are working in a state of lowered hydration. You see the Arabian continent has dealt with water shortages for the longest of times. Over generations these people learned to deal with less hydration (personal assumption), yet in that light does cholera not become a lot more dangerous and could that optionally make these people more susceptible to cholera? I am not stating that this is so, I a merely asking (as I never qualified for a medical degree).

It also gives us the setting that as cholera cases grow, the issue around the Battle of Al Hudaydah will show to have a nasty aftershock. it will no longer be a mere case of humanitarian aid and treatment, there will be a much larger need to set up emergency treatment posts, especially North of Saada. In my personal view, a place like Baqim is directly connected to Saudi highway 15 after you pass the Saudi port of Warcraft, going directly to both Al Hayat National Hospital as well as AlKhamis Maternity and Children Hospital giving Baqim a possible lifeline for treatment, medication and most important clean water (food too). Even as we accept that antibiotics are essential for the younger children, the reported resistance against antibiotics might become a much larger complication down the line and realising that danger now is important too.

We need to see on how we can stop all the diseases but Cholera is now the most impactful. That is shown when we realise that the WHO reported in 2016 a total of 132 121 cases, with 2420 fatalities. We now see that with the Yemen fatalities, we get to report that close to 50% of all cholera fatalities were in Yemen, how does that go over with you all? That is besides the setting that Yemen alone will be likely the reason that cholera cases will more than double and if something is not done soon, with well over 200% additional fatalities, which is not a good statistic to work with. We can argue on where the treatment needs to be and i merely took a look at the map, yet the idea of getting as many children as far away from Sanaa and Sadah seems to make perfect sense. I am also very accepting of the statement “The WHO said on Monday the origin of the current cases was not yet known but the outbreak was not expected to spread given Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure“. I get that, Saudi Arabia has a good infrastructure and is equipped for matters like these, especially when you consider the Hajj and the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is always prepared for that. Yet, when it is not a mere handful, when the sick refugees are not merely a few, but a few hundred, we will see more complications and moreover an increasing amount of people hiding in fear, fear of disease, fear for their families and fear of others after they witnessed nears of Houthi brutality. Setting up something sooner rather than later on the Yemen side of the border is becoming increasingly pressing as I see it and not merely for the cholera risks. Diphtheria is a much larger problem if it gets a foothold, not merely from the infectious of the disease, the fact that Diphtheria grows its population through coughing, sneezing and sharing water bottles makes it a much nastier issue. It is fatal in 20% of cases in certain age groups, and guess what, children up to 5 are definitely in that risk group making the issue bigger and even as it can be treated with antibiotics, the reports of resistance become a much larger issue at this point. In addition its symptoms are easily mistaken by non-medical professionals as merely a sore throat for too long making matters worse faster than anticipated. with the fact that it spreads easily we get the state where every day not acted is one that is basically too late and we have seen the inactions in this regard for months now making matters not merely worse, it sets the stage where famine is merely the final straw that could get the largest child population in history killed. So at what point did we think that indifferent from the 22^nd March 2015 was a good idea?

It makes for the saddest epilogue of the modern era: ‘We merely did not care enough to achieve something in Yemen‘.

So when you see the news and you feel that the EU is doing OK as it talks with Iran via: “Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has urged European countries to take practical steps to keep Tehran in the nuclear deal“, consider that Iran is directly involved and responsible for this by making Yemen a proxy player, arming them and supplying them, prolonging this war, the last missile Iranian sponsored missile was fired by Houthi’s at Jizan city almost 6 hours ago.

You should wonder on how the EU could even contemplate continued talks with Iran under these conditions. Where was the borderline there?

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Tagged as AK Siddique, Al Hayat National Hospital, Al Masgi, AlKhamis Maternity and Children Hospital, Baqim, Battle of Al Hudaydah, Channel News Asia, cholera, DA Sack, Diphtheria, GB Nair, Hajj, Houthi, Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister, Jizan city, Khamis Mushait, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Javad Zarif, RB Sack, Riyadh, Sadah, Sanaa, Saudi Arabia, Tehran, The Lancet, Vibrio cholerae, WHO, World Health Organisation, Yemen

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