Tag Archives: Techcrunch

August 1, 2025 · 04:58

The accusers

I saw a message fly past and it took me by surprise. It was CNBC (aka Capitalistically Nothing but Crap) and the accusation was ‘Microsoft and Amazon are hurting cloud competition, UK regulator finds’ (at https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/31/uk-cma-cloud-ruling-microsoft-amazon.html) with “The regulator is concerned that certain cloud market practices are creating a “lock-in” effect where businesses are trapped into unfavorable contractual agreements.” So, that’s a thing now? The operative word is concerned. So, is this the way former Amazon UK boss, Doug Gurr, on an interim basis is showing the world that he released the chain and necktie from Amazon?

There is ‘some’ clustering and as the setting is advocated by some the score at present is “AWS holds approximately 29-31% market share, while Microsoft Azure has around 22-24%, and Google Cloud holds about 11.5-12%” The only surprising thing here is that Google is remarkably behind Microsoft by a little over 10%. Nothing to be worried about, but still the numbers set this out. The infuriating setting by the the CMA giving us “The CMA recommended a further investigation into Microsoft and Amazon under a strict new U.K. competition law to determine whether they have “strategic market status.” I am not ‘attacking’ the CMA, but as the old credence goes “Innovators create corporations, losers create hindrance for others” I suggest you take that as it goes. 

Yet there is more behind this all. Forbes gave us last week ‘Microsoft Can’t Keep EU Data Safe From US Authorities’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/) where we see “Microsoft has admitted that it can’t protect EU data from U.S. snooping. In sworn testimony before a French Senate inquiry into the role of public procurement in promoting digital sovereignty, Anton Carniaux, Microsoft France’s director of public and legal affairs, was asked whether he could guarantee that French citizen data would never be transmitted to U.S. authorities without explicit French authorization. And, he replied, “No, I cannot guarantee it.”” And this is how Microsoft faces a near death sentence by the American administration. So much so that Microsoft seemingly is creating a data centre solely for the EU. Julia Rone gave us last year (late 2024) “It has been well acknowledged that the European Union is falling behind the US and China when it comes to cloud computing because of its lack of technological capabilities. In a recently published article, however, I argue that there is another important and often overlooked reason for EU’s laggard status: the persistent disagreement between different EU member states, which have very different visions of EU cloud policy.” I take that at face value, as I am considering (through mere speculation) that these member states are connected to American stake holders in media trying to hinder the process, but that is another matter.

So as we see ““Microsoft has openly admitted what many have long known: under laws like the Cloud Act, US authorities can compel access to data held by American cloud providers, regardless of where that data physically resides. UK or EU servers make no difference when jurisdiction lies elsewhere, and local subsidiaries or ‘trusted’ partnerships don’t change that reality,” commented Mark Boost, CEO of cloud provider Civo.” It makes me wonder how America is different from the accusations that America threw in the face of Huawei. It is like the pot calling the kettle black. And this also gives wonder where the accusation against Amazon and Microsoft ends, because the cloud field is seemingly loaded with political players. They all see that data is the ultimate currency and America (as it is near broke) needs a lot of it to pay for the lifestyle they can no longer afford. In Europe the one that stands out (at least to me) is a firm I looked at in 2023 and it is growing rapidly. It is Swedish and not connected to any of the three and could become the largest in Europe. Its long-term vision involves operating eight hyper-scale data centers and three software development hubs across Europe by 2028, employing over 3,000 people. By 2030, the company aims to operate 10 hyper-scale data centers and employ over 10,000 people. There is too much focus on 2030, as I see it the American economy collapses on itself no later than 2028 and as I speculatively see it, it will drag Japan down with itself. That setting required a larger acceleration in both Europe and Asia as America will not play nice as per late 2026. At that point too many people will see where showboat America is heading too and the reefs in that area will be phenomenal. So, as I see it, the entire political swarm behind data centers and fictive AI will require a whole new range of management and I reckon that players like Amazon and Microsoft have never been dealt these cards before, so I shudder to think what will happen when it faces accusations from the EU, the CMA and others. This aligns with the accusation (from one source) giving us “An antitrust complaint filed by Google to the European Commission in September 2024, alleging that Microsoft’s licensing terms unfairly favor its own Azure cloud platform, making it difficult and expensive to use Microsoft software like Windows Server and Office on competing clouds.” I wonder, didn’t Microsoft played a similar game with gaming?

So whilst the infighting is going on on a continued setting, I wonder where Oracle will end up being? As I see it this is rather nice, but I am accusing myself at this point that we aren’t face with a tidal wave, but merely with 5 cups of tea all stating there is a storm happening and whilst the teacups are talking to each other and showing how bad the storm is, the reality is that it is not smooth sailing, but seemingly as close to it as possible. For that you need to see where Evroc is standing, where it is going and how fast it is achieving this. The second market is Oracle, how it is progressing and who it is partnered with (pretty much everyone) and these two elements show us that there are governmental captains stating that their pond is in a dreadful state (whilst presenting their cup of tea as a much larger pool then it is) the corporate captain stating there is a storm brewing, but absent of evidence and the media is flaming every storm it can so that they can get their digital dollars. But consider that Oracle is presenting good weathers and there are alternatives whilst the media actively avoid illuminating Evroc, with only TechCrunch giving us in March “Amid calls for sovereign EU tech stack, Evroc raises $55M to build a hyper-scale cloud in Europe” there were a few more and they are all technical places. The western media is largely absent as there are no digital dollars to be made here.

So consider what you see and try to see the larger picture, because there is a lot more, but some players don’t want you to see the whole image, it distorts their profit prediction. So did you see the little hidden snag? Where is Huawei cloud? Whilst this is going on ‘Huawei hosts conference on cloud technology in Egypt’ where we see that “the event drew more than 600 government officials, business leaders, and ecosystem partners from over 10 countries and regions”, as I see it, this is a classic approach to the “While two dogs are fighting for a bone, a third runs away with it” expression. So consider that part too please.

Have a great day.

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July 25, 2025 · 14:19

Where should we look?

That is at times the issue, I would add to this “especially when we consider corporations the size of Microsoft” but this is nothing directly on Microsoft (I emphasize this as I have been dead set against some ‘issues’ Microsoft dealt us to). This is different and I have two articles that (to some aspect) overlap, but they are not the same and overlap should be subjectively seen.

The first one is BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdnz1nlgyo) where we see ‘Microsoft servers hacked by Chinese groups, says tech giant’ where the first thought that overwhelmed me was “Didn’t you get Azure support arranged through China?” But that is in the back of my mind. We are given “Chinese “threat actors” have hacked some Microsoft SharePoint servers and targeted the data of the businesses using them, the firm has said. China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.” I am wondering about the quote “not in its cloud-based service” I have questions, but I am not doubting the quote. To doubt it, one needs to have in-depth knowledge and be deeply versed in Azure and I am not one of these people. As I personally see it, if one is transgressed upon, the opportunity rises to ‘infect’ both, but that might be my wrong look on this. So as we are given ““China firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks and cyber crime,” China’s US embassy spokesman said in a statement. “At the same time, we also firmly oppose smearing others without solid evidence,” continued Liu Pengyu in the statement posted on X. Microsoft said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.” This makes me think about the UN/USA attack on Saudi Arabia regarding that columnist no one cares about, giving us the ‘high confidence’ from the CIA. It sounds like the start of a smear campaign. If you have evidence, present the evidence. If not, be quiet (to some extent). 

We then get someone who knows what he in talking about “Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told BBC News it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”. Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.” This is where I got to thinking, what is the problem with Sharepoint? And when we consider  the quote “Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years. It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.”

It sounds ‘nice’ but it flows towards the thoughts like “related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years”, so were was the diligence to preventing issues with Sharepoint and cyber crime prevention? So consider that we are given “SharePoint hosts OneDrive for Business, which allows storage and synchronization of an individual’s personal work documents, as well as public/private file sharing of those documents.” That quote alone should have driven the need for much higher Cyberchecks. And perhaps they were done, but as I see it, it has been an unsuccessful result. It made me (perhaps incorrectly) think so many programs covering Desktops, Laptops, tablets and mobiles over different systems a lot more cyber requirements should have been in place and perhaps they are, but it is not working and as I see, it as this solution has been in place for close to 2 decades, the stage of 13 years of attempted transgression, the solution does not seem to be safe. 

And the end quote “Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor””, as such, we stopped away from ‘high confidence’ making this setting a larger issue. And my largest issue is when you look to find “Linen Typhoon” you get loads of links, most of them no older than 5 days. If they have been active for 13 years. I should have found a collection of articles close to a decade old, but I never found them. Not in over a dozen of pages of links. Weird, isn’t it? 

The next part is one that comes from TechCrunch (at https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/22/google-microsoft-say-chinese-hackers-are-exploiting-sharepoint-zero-day/) where we are given ‘Google, Microsoft say Chinese hackers are exploiting SharePoint zero-day’ and this is important as a zero-day, which means “The term “zero-day” originally referred to the number of days since a new piece of software was released to the public, so “zero-day software” was obtained by hacking into a developer’s computer before release. Eventually the term was applied to the vulnerabilities that allowed this hacking, and to the number of days that the vendor has had to fix them.” This implies that this issue has been in circulation for 23 years. And as this implies that there is a much larger issue as the software solution os set over iOS, Android and Windows Server. Microsoft was eager to divulge that this solution is ‘available’ to over 200 million users as of December 2020. As I see it, the danger and damage might be spread by a much larger population. 

Part of the issues is that there is no clear path of the vulnerability. When you consider the image below (based on a few speculations on how the interactions go) 

I get at least 5 danger points and if there a multiple servers involved, there will be more and as we are given “According to Microsoft, the three hacking groups were observed exploiting the zero-day vulnerability to break into vulnerable SharePoint servers as far back as July 7. Charles Carmakal, the chief technology officer at Google’s incident response unit Mandiant, told TechCrunch in an email that “at least one of the actors responsible” was a China-nexus hacking group, but noted that “multiple actors are now actively exploiting this vulnerability.”” I am left with questions. You see, when was this ‘zero day’ exploit introduced? If it was ‘seen’ as per July 7, when was the danger in this system solution? There is also a lack in the BBC article as to properly informing people. You cannot hit Microsoft with a limited information setting when the stakes are this high. Then there is the setting of what makes Typhoon sheets (linen) and the purple storm (Violet Typhoon) guilty as charged (charged might be the wrong word) and what makes the March 26th heavy weather guilty? 

I am not saying they cannot be guilty, I am seeing a lack of evidence. I am not saying that the people connecting should ‘divulge’ all, but more details might not be the worst idea. And I am not blaming Microsoft here. I get that there is (a lot) more than meets the eye (making Microsoft a Constructicon) But the lack of information makes the setting one of misinformation and that needs to be said. The optional zero day bug is one that is riddles of missing information. 

So then we get to the second article which also comes from the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdv68gejm7o) given us ‘OpenAI and UK sign deal to use AI in public services’ where we get “OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, has signed a deal to use artificial intelligence (AI) to increase productivity in the UK’s public services, the government has announced. The agreement signed by the firm and the science department could give OpenAI access to government data and see its software used in education, defence, security, and the justice system.”  Microsoft put billions into this and this is a connected setting. How long until the personal data of millions of people will be out in the open for all kinds of settings? 

So as we are given “But digital privacy campaigners said the partnership showed “this government’s credulous approach to big tech’s increasingly dodgy sales pitch”. The agreement says the UK and OpenAI may develop an “information sharing programme” and will “develop safeguards that protect the public and uphold democratic values”.” So, data sharing? Why not get another sever setting and the software solution is also set to the government server? When you see some sales person give you that there will be ‘additional safeties installed’ know that you are getting bullshitted. Microsoft made similar promises in 2001 (code red) and even today the systems are still getting traversed on and those are merely the hackers. The NSA and other America governments get near clean access to all of it and that is a problem with American based servers and still here, there is only so much that the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) allows for and I reckon that there are loopholes for training data and as such I reckon that the people in the UK will have to set a name and shame setting with mandatory prosecution for anyone involved with this caper going all the way up to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. So when you see mentions like ““treasure trove of public data” the government holds “would be of enormous commercial value to OpenAI in helping to train the next incarnation of ChatGPT”” I would be mindful to hand or give access to this data and not let it out of your hands. 

This link between the two is now clear. Data and transgressions have been going on since before 2001 and the two settings when data gets ‘trained’ we are likely to see more issues and when Prime Minister Keir Starmer goes “were sorry”, you better believe that the time has come to close the tap and throw Microsoft out of the windows in every governmental building in the Commonwealth. I doubt this will be done as some sales person will heel over like a little bitch and your personal data will become the data of everyone who is mentionable and they will then select the population that has value for commercial corporations and the rest? The rest will become redundant by natural selection according to value base of corporations. 

I get that you think this is now becoming ‘conspiracy based’ settings and you resent them. I get that, I honestly do. But do you really trust UK Labor after they wasted 23 billion pounds on an NHS system that went awry (several years ago). I have a lot of problems showing trust in any of this. I do not blame Microsoft, but the overlap is concerning, because at some point it will involve servers and transfers of data. And it is clear there are conflicting settings and when some one learns to aggregate data and connect it to a mobile number, your value will be determined. And as these systems interconnect more and more, you will find out that you face identity threat not in amount of times, but in identity theft and value assessment in once per X amount of days and as X decreases, you pretty much can rely on the fact that your value becomes debatable and I reckon this setting is showing the larger danger, where one sees your data as a treasure trove and the other claims “deliver prosperity for all”. That and the diminished setting of “really be done transparently and ethically, with minimal data drawn from the public” is the setting that is a foundation of nightmares mainly as the setting of “minimal data drawn from the public” tends to have a larger stage. It is set to what is needed to aggregate to other sources which lacks protection of the larger and and when we consider that any actor could get these two connected (and sell on) should be considered a new kind of national security risk. America (and UK) are already facing this as these people left for the Emirates with their billions. Do you really think that this was the setting? It will get worse as America needs to hang on to any capital leaving America, do you think that this is different for the UK? Now, you need to consider what makes a person wealthy. This is not a simple question as it is not the bank balance, but it is an overlap of factors. Consider that you have 2000 people who enjoy life and 2000 who are health nuts. Who do you think is set to a higher value? The Insurance person states the health nut (insurance without claims) or the retailer the people who spend and life live. And the (so called) AI system has to filter in 3000 people. So, who gets to be disregarded from the equation? And this cannot be done until you have more data and that is the issue. And the quotation is never this simple, it will be set to thousands of elements and these firms should not have access, as such I fear for the data making it to the outer UK grounds. 

A setting coming from overlaps and none of this is the fault of Microsoft but they will be connected (and optionally) blamed for all this, but as I personally see it the two elements that matter in this case are “Digital rights campaign group Foxglove called the agreement “hopelessly vague”” and “Co-executive Director Martha Dark said the “treasure trove of public data” the government holds” will be of significance danger to public data, because greed driven people tend to lose their heads over words like ‘treasure trove’ and that is where ‘errors are made’ and I reckon it will not take long before the BBC or other media station will trip up over the settings making the optional claim that ‘glitches were found in the current system’ and no one was to blame. Yet that will not be the whole truth will it?

So have a great day and consider the porky pies you are told and who is telling them to you, should you consider that it is me. Make sure that you realise that I am merely telling you what is out in the open and what you need to consider. Have a great day.

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May 24, 2025 · 00:09

A swing and a miss

It is no secret that I hold the ‘possessors’ of AI at a distance. AI doesn’t exist (not yet at least) and now I got ‘informed’ through Twitter (still refusing to call it X) the following:

So after ‘Microsoft-backed Builder.ai collapsed after finding potentially bogus sales’ we get that the company is entering insolvency proceedings. Yet a mere three days ago TechCrunch gave us “Once worth over $1B, Microsoft-backed Builder.ai is running out of money”, so as such with a giggle on my mind I give you “Can’t have been a very good AI, can it?” So from +$1,000,000,000 to zilch (aka insolvency), how long did that take and where did the money go? So consider this, TechCrunch also gives us “The Microsoft-backed unicorn, which has raised more than $450 million in funding, rose to prominence for its AI-based platform that aimed to simplify the process of building apps and websites. According to the spokesperson, Builder.ai, also known as Engineer.ai Corporation, is appointing an administrator to “manage the company’s affairs.”” Now, I am going on a limb here. Consider that a billion will enable 1,000 programmers to work a year for a million dollars each. So where did the money go? I know that this doesn’t make sense (the 1000 programmers) but to consider that they might accept a deal for $200,000 each, there would be 5 years of designing and programming. Does that make sense? The website Builder.AI (my assumption that this is where they went gives us merely one line “For customer enquiries, please contact customers@builder.ai. For capacity partner enquiries, please contact capacitynetwork@builder.ai.” This is not good as I see it. The Register (at https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/21/builderai_insolvency/) gives us “The collapse of Builder.ai has cast fresh light on AI coding practices, despite the software company blaming its fall from grace on poor historical decision-making. Backed by Microsoft, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and a host of venture capitalists, Britain-based Builder.ai rose rapidly to near-unicorn status as the startup’s valuation approached $1 billion (£740 million). The London company’s business model was to leverage AI tools to allow customers to design and create applications, although the Builder.ai team actually built the apps.”

As such the headline of the Register is pretty much spot on “Builder.ai coded itself into a corner – now it’s bankrupt” You see coding yourself into a corner is not AI, it is people. People code and when you code yourself into a corner the gig is quite literally up. And I can go on all day as there is not AI. There is deeper Machine Language and there are LLM (Large Language Model) and the combination can be awesome and it is part of an actual AI, but it is not AI. As such as Microsoft is believing its own spin (yet again) we can confuse that there is now a setting that Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and a host of venture capitalists have pretty much lost their faith in Microsoft and that will have repercussions. It is basically that simple. The first part of resolving this is to acknowledge that there is no AI, there is a clear setting that the power of DML and LLM should not be dismissed as it is really powerful but it is not AI. 

As I personally see it, the LLM is setting a stage that the chess computers had in the late 80’s and early 90’s. They basically had every chess game ever played in their memory and that is how the chess computer could foresee what was possible thrown against it. And until 2002 when Chessmaster 9000 was released by Ubisoft, that was what it was and for that time it was awesome. I would never have been able to get as far as I did in chess without that program and I am speculatively seeing that unfold. A setting holding a billion parameters? So I ,might be wrong on this part, but that is what I see and we need to realise that the entire AI setting is spin from greedy salespeople that cannot explain what they are selling (thank god I am not a salesperson). I am technical support and I am customer care and what we see as ‘the hand of a clever person’ is not that, not even close. 

So as we are also given “Blue-chip investors poured in cash to the tune of more than $500 million. However, all was not well at the startup. The company was previously known as Engineer.ai, and attracted criticism after The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2019 that the startup used human engineers rather than AI for most of its coding work”, as such (again speculation) a simple trick to replay a mere 1800 days later. And this is what a lot are (plenty of them in a more clever way) but the show is now on Microsoft. They cracked this, so when they come with a “we were lured” or “it is more complex and the concept was looking really good” we should ask them a few hard questions. So whilst we are given “While the failure of startups, even one as high profile as Builder.ai, is not uncommon, the company’s reliance on AI tools to speed coding might give some users pause for thought.” And when we consider “might give some users pause for thought” is a rather nasty setting as I was there already years ago. So where the others? As such we should grill Satya Nadella on “Last month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella boasted that 30 percent of the code in some of the tech giant’s repositories was written by AI. As such, an observer cannot help but suspect some passive aggression is occurring here, where a developer has been told that the agent must be used, and so they are going to jolly well do it. After all, Nadella is not one to shy from layoffs.” As such I wonder when the stake holders for Microsoft will consider that the ‘USE BY’ date of Satya Nadella was only good until December 2024. But that is me merely speculating. So I wonder when the media and actual clever people in media are considering that this is a game thatch only be postponed and not won. So will the others run when the going gets tough, or will they hide behind “but everyone agrees on this” as such the individual bond will triumph and there is a lot of work out there. The need to explain to people (read: customers) is that there is a lot of good to be found in the DML and LLM combination. It remains a niche market and it will fill the markets when people cannot afford AI, because that setting will be expensive (when it is ready). These computers will be the things that IBM can afford, as can the larger players like an airline, Ford, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) and a few others. But the first 10 years it will remain out of the hands of some, unless they time share (pay per processor second) with anyone who has the option to afford one. That computer will need to work 80%+ of the time to be affordable. 

As such we will see a total amount of spin in the coming months, because Microsoft backed the wrong end of that equation and now the fires are coming to their feet. Less then. Less than an hour ago we were given ‘Microsoft Unveils AI Features for Windows 11 Tools’. I have no idea how they can fit this in, but I reckon that the media will avoid asking the questions that matter. As such we will have to wait the unfolding of the people behind builder.ai. I wonder if anyone will ask the specification off what happened to said billion dollars? Can we get a clear list please and where did the hardware end? Or was a mere server rack leased from Microsoft? This is just me having fun at present. 

So have a great day and I will sleep like a baby knowing that Microsoft swung and missed the ball by a fair bit. I reckon that this is…. Let’s see there was the Tablet, which they lost against Apple and now Huawei as well. There was the Gaming station, which was totally inferior against Sony. there was Azure (OK, it didn’t fail but a book vendor called Amazon has a much better product, there was the Browser, which is nowhere near as good as Google. And there are a few others, but they slipped my mind. So this is at least number 5, 6 if you count Huawei as a player as well. Not really that good for a company that is valued at 3.34 trillion. So how many failures will we witness until that is gone too? 

Have fun out there today.

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August 12, 2022 · 19:38

Slappers only?

It is a term from games, it means empty hands only. In gaming it tends to be a pugilist arena. I heard it first with Golden Eye, which is remarkably interesting as the HK model 23 with a silencer is more effective, we add the silencer in case the target is in a library 

We would not want to disturb the readers.

And this all related to? Yes, it started with Al Jazeera who gave us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/9/doj-preparing-to-sue-google-over-ad-market-as-soon-as-next-month) where we see ‘DOJ preparing to sue Google over ad market as soon as next month’. There we are given “The US Justice Department is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter, capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet Inc. unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market” I have issues with this, especially the ‘illegally dominates the digital advertising market’, you see Google INVENTED fair advertisement. The others all made sure that the people, the business and others paid TOP DOLLAR. Take the consideration we see next (I mentioned it before in previous blogs).

Placement, bid and Google price
1 $25 $0.54
2 $20 $0.53
3 $10 $0.52
4 $5 $0.51
5 $0.50 $0.50

So as they would charge the number one bidder $25, that same bidder merely pays $0.54 cents with Google Ads. Before Google Ads this was not an option and there we see the larger stages of Yellow pages, advertisements in newspapers and magazines. These places were racking up massive profits and Google undermined it, giving the people a better deal, as such 99% ran to Google and it caught on, Bing (Microsoft) tried to make it work, they could not, the metrics of Google were vastly superior. So there is no illegal domination, it is domination through superior systems, Amazon had its own system that was on Amazon, yet With Google Ads and Google YouTube, the advertisement world had dug its OWN grave. They slapped the people with bills that were beyond obscene and Hollywood gives us a (highly exaggerated) taste of that in Mad Men and the people are becoming increasingly angry, they are paying for the ego of a few men and when Google Ads becomes the adult player the people switch and the switch en mass. A group of people are now in massive trouble and they cry to every politician they ever gave a nice deal to. The DOJ is involved and we are in this mess now. And we see not one clear explanation of ‘illegally dominates the digital advertising market’, we are merely given a story.

This gets me to the article (at https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/09/the-doj-is-reportedly-prepping-an-antitrust-suit-against-google-over-its-ad-business/) there we see Ted Crunch giving us ‘The DOJ is reportedly prepping an antitrust suit against Google over its ad business’, here we are given “the new lawsuit would focus on the company’s command of the digital ad market. Bloomberg reports that DOJ antitrust lawyers are in the process of wrapping up interviews with publishers after “years of work” that will ultimately culminate in the coming lawsuit” as well as “In 2020, the DOJ sued the tech titan over its dominance in the online search market, accusing the company of “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.”” This is a lot more to the point and I still have issues. You see we see “its dominance in the online search market” we are not given “Google set out a new look on searching information, they had it made, they patented it and as such they had the new solution for the next generation of computer users”, we are also not given the simple setting that when Google realised a shift, they acted, all whilst IBM and Microsoft ere playing with their dinkey winkey’s pretending to be master of the universe. OK, IBM was going in different directions, but they were still there as well. So these so called captains of industry were asleep at the wheel, but we are not given that, are we? I remember that I voiced the setting of sound-cards in PC’s in 1992. I voiced it to an executive on the IBM trade show stand he merely stated ‘Sir, we are IBM’ and had security escort me off the IBM stand, so where is that wanker now? I reckon making statements that IBM always viewed the multi media market as important. Him and a few others never had a bloody clue. It was merely pretentious ego and it was ‘fake it till you make it’ and now I am here with a dozen of IP solutions, and they? They have little more than their supply of Viagra and stories about their great achievements. I know and should still have emails on the solution now known as Facebook, and I had it 4 years before Facebook. I have seen the folly of these executives and I trust none of them. In the mean time there is Amazon, Google and Elon Musk taking larger strides in the unknown and seeking the new frontiers and those wannabe’s are setting sights on that what is not theirs. And my evidence?

It is seen in “wrapping up interviews with publishers after “years of work”” it took the DOJ years of work, this is not a court-case, I personally believe it to be orchestration for the benefit of losers not unlike Microsoft. To give them a slice of a cake they do not deserve. And that is the problem with America, it only works when a machine driven by the corruptible get their cake too. Even though they are not entitled to it. I saw the daily changes in Google Ads, I saw what was achieved whilst the ones who should be working, were merely leeching. So how is that progress? I run circles around those wannabe’s and I have three systems ready to go (one too depending on Meta, so there are risks) in a world where I should not matter, I am the one with the IP, and that is the station where Google has to go to court. I wonder if it ever amounts to anything. The media wants their slice of beef and as they are hurting to become irrelevant, they are happy to see Google bite the dust, but why are they biting the dust? Because they never understood what was coming and when they woke up the train was already a station further. That is the actual setting, but I reckon that we never get to see that part of the equation. I wonder what happens when 4Chen shows my IP and these wannabe’s they are now seeing billions in IP become public domain, I would really like to see the faces of those wannabe’s who realise that it is becoming public domain and most of it in China. How many years of interviews will that take? They set the stage of slappers only, but the orchestration implies that it is anything but slappers only, that view is reserved for the people they are trying to fool. I am not buying it.

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November 15, 2020 · 22:29

I see dead people

There is a stage we all see and we all think we seem to know, I am very set on the ‘seem to’ part. I stumbled upon a 5 years old article by TechCrunch, it is about Peter Molyneux, a person I personally know, so I was curious. It was the beginning that got to me. With “the British game development hero that spearheaded famous studios Bullfrog and Lionhead, but who also always had a reputation of being fluid with the truth. Molyneux was the guy who made Populous and led the studios that created Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Syndicate, The Movies, Fable, Black and White, Magic Carpet and many others. But Molyneux was also a teller of tall tales, a maker of wild promises in interviews that had little chance of being realised” the game is on, you see it is about the games, and Bullfrog let by Peter delivered again and again on CBM64, Atari ST, Amiga and PC. I still miss some of these games. They opened the mind, the made us creative and it pushed us to think different. So when we get to ‘a teller of tall tales, a maker of wild promises in interviews that had little chance of being realised’, we are b being misled on two fronts. The first is that (as far as I know) Peter has always been in the business of pushing gaming boundaries. It is hard to prove this, but I have an example, in those days I had a mouthwatering PC, it had all the bells and whistles and it would make coffee for me if it had hands, so here I am with a high end graphics card that can do anything with was, so even as Black and White is fun and amazing, it was that merely fun and amazing, about three months after the game releases there is a new graphics card and I install it, I had nothing real to do and I restart Black and White, so when the temple is built and I walk inside my mouth drops, it blew me away. Black and White was the first game that was ready for the nextgen graphics, it was the first time this would happen to me. Even now I still hope for a remaster of Magic Carpet on the new consoles, a rerelease of dungeon keeper, and only team bullfrog can deliver on that.

The second part is the one TechCrunch does not mention, in the early 90’s, the media was on gaming like nothing you ever saw, the journo’s at the ECTS were renowned, worse than paparazzi and always looking for a sound-byte, an exploit and that part is not mentioned, also the words of Molyneux have been pulled out of context more than once, he did something other gamer makers did not achieve, he surpassed the boundaries of systems. That can be seen if you compare the reboot of Syndicate with the original, the original remains vastly superior 20 years later. The reboot got a mere 66%, it is vision that get us games and Peter Molyneux had just that. Then we get a part the is hard to dispute and most likely correct “The other reason Molyneux thrived was that his team delivered. There are, and will forever remain, disputes over exactly how much he was involved with some of the titles to his name (Glenn Corpes, Sean Cooper, Demis Hassabis and a variety of others deserve their credit) but what was inarguable was that Molyneux had managed to create an environment in which great games happened”, yes Peter was not alone and we all get that, but Peter made it happen and it is undeniable, great games happened at Bullfrog and Lionhead. The titles are still revered and people still yearn for another fable, another dungeon keeper and another theme park, even now, even 20 years later, that is gaming at the edge!

Then we get a gem “He would combine those ideals to form an exciting story for what a game might be, often road testing a certain phrase or image with you before using it with the press. This, I gather, is not unlike the way Steve Jobs seems to have been”, the man was part visionary and could recognise visionaries in coders, that is part why his games were so great (the original concept is part of that), until Bullfrog, who had considered being the bad guy in Hero quest would be entertaining? And that is the foundation of great gaming, bel to turn the equation upside down and get another nugget of gold, he had this. I particularly like the end of the article “Ambitious design, big ideas and bold visions are what propel the games industry forward. When all is said and done, create-a-cash-engine mentalities are only ever temporary, but it’s the ambition that makes video games forever. I for one hope that Molyneux rises from the ashes one last time to teach us this lesson again”, it is all the parts Ubisoft forgot to be, it is all the sides the spreadsheet driven BI executives at EA and likeminded companies are dumbstruck on. I hope that he gets a few more notches on his 6 shooter with new titles on nextgen, optionally Google Stadia too. Consider the titles we saw at the beginning and consider that those who knew the games still remember them and love them 20+ years later, that is an achievement only Nintendo has been able to equal. 

So when it comes to Bullfrog, its staff and the man behind it, I tend to see dead people, it is the press behind it, not the makers of games, they have proven their grit, they did it several times. 

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October 22, 2020 · 18:00

What ya gonna do?

It started two days ago, actually it started a lot earlier, but I basically had enough of the BS stage that we are given. Just to be sure, this is for the largest station not a media thing, so even as the BBC flamed my mood, the BBC is not responsible. As such before I go into ‘Google hit by landmark competition lawsuit in US over search’, I need to set the record straight according to the view I have and you might decide that I am wrong, which is perfectly fair. 

History gives us that Larry Page (aka Clever Smurf) and Sergey Brin (aka Papa Smurf) developed PageRank at Stanford University in 1996 as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. It was not the first attempt, or perhaps ‘version’ is a better setting, there were earlier versions that go all the way back to the eigenvalue challenge by Gabriel Pinski and Francis Narin. So two bright surfs came up with the setting that big people players like Microsoft and IBM ignored for the longest time, and as such Google had the patents. The idea of link based popularity had not syphoned through because a lot of these wannabe bullet point managers basically did not understand the internet, they merely understood the options of selling concepts, yet in that age of selling concepts Google had the inside track to sell a setting that was ready and able as early as 1998. As such I have watched with my eyes desperately focussed on the heavens, asking our heavenly father to smite some of these stupid people, we now see “The charges, filed in federal court, were brought by the US Department of Justice and 11 other states. The lawsuit focuses on the billions of dollars Google pays each year to ensure its search engine is installed as the default option on browsers and devices such as mobile phones”, the same organisation that ignored Netscape and gave free reign to Microsoft is now seeing the government data lights? So when we see ‘the billions of dollars Google pays each year to ensure its search engine is installed as the default option on browsers and devices such as mobile phones’, all whilst it truthfully should say ‘Google installs its search engine on its mobile operating system Android, an alternative to the largely unaffordable iOS iPhones’, consider that the three generations of mobiles I have bought containing Android in times when the Apple alternative was close to 250% more expensive each and every time. The last time around the iPhone was $1999, whilst my Android phone (with almost the same storage) was $499, I will let you work out the setting. So when I see “Officials said those deals have helped secure Google’s place as the “gatekeeper” to the internet, allowing it to own or control the distribution channels for about 80% of search queries in the US”, I merely see (with my focal points partially towards the history of things) “Google was active and affordable in an age when Apple was not, Apple was unaffordable as they set themselves up as the larger elite provider, Android had affordable models by Motorola, Huawei, Google Nexus, Google Pixar, Oppo, HTC, Samsung, Oneplus. A setting that was open and affordable. And the officials that are raving on ‘allowing it to own or control the distribution channels for about 80% of search queries in the US’, these (as I personally see it) so called idiots, optionally way too deep in funky mushrooms are ignorant of the stage that Google catered to the user, Apple (the alternative) catered to its own bottom dollar way too often. In that same trend we need to see that “Apple’s iOS operating system has a share of 50 percent of the mobile operating system market in the United States”, so how come that Google has 80%? They thought things through, the BI management idiots with their bullet point presentations never thought things through. I have at least two examples that predate Facebook and well over half a dozen examples of 5G IP that is beyond the comprehension of mot of them (with the exception of Google and Huawei), these two UNDERSTAND systems, the others merely use and use to their nature towards limited comprehension, or at least that is how I see it. And in this ZDNet was a happy supplier in January of ‘Microsoft is about to force Bing onto Office 365 Plus users. But does even Bing think it’s better than Google?’, which is a nice setting, because I can ask bing on my Android, yet it seems that Microsoft forces Bing on its system, but it allegedly seems that they get way with that. The article has a few nice tidbits, but I particularly liked “Why Hasn’t Bing Improved To Become Better Than Google?”, an 2016 article by Forbes. With the article (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-google-better-than-bing-i-asked-google-and-bing-and-got-surprising-results/) giving us the added “and why Bing has a bit of a reputation as ‘the porn search engine’”, it seems that 18 years later bing is still sliding very much behind Google, Google had a few things better and better set. It is the final two parts that matter, the first one is “Both companies might try to offer something authoritative, but you should always use your own judgment and realise the vast limitations and algorithmic biases of all search engines. If Bing works for you, be happy. If Google does, be happy too. In both cases, though, be wary. Can you cope with the responsibility?” Yet in all this Bing never shows up in any official part does it? The second part gives the larger stage “in Bing searches, the entries under the News tab were far, far more dated than those in Google”, consider the need of us, the users, when do we accept dated information? It seems that any competitor of Google is vastly behind, even the rich bitch Microsoft. When we see that part of the equation, we need to wonder what is the play that these officials are making? What is it actually about? The BBC article also gives us “Google called the case “deeply flawed”” and that is the larger truth, the Bing setting proves that side of it, and more important, Microsoft who pushed Netscape out of the market is not being asked any questions in this regard, or is used to show the inferiority of what they have countering the vastly superior solutions by Google. As such, when we see “Politicians in Congress have also called for action against Google and fellow tech firms Amazon, Facebook and Apple in an effort that has united Democrats and Republicans”, no one seems to be wondering what Russia and China have on the market, because the advantage Google has now could become the stage of a fight against whatever Russia and China offer, in this data is the catalyst in these systems and before anyone starts trivialising that, consider that TikTok is Chinese, when we consider that over 2 billion people have downloaded it and it nw has a value between 110 and 180 billion, in a stage that only had Google before (YouTube), yet even in that setting the larger US tech giants set on their hands and they never came up with it, a Chinese entrepreneur did, so what else can they come up with? In a stage with non comprehending officials on just how cut throat this market is, they are weighting down on the tech giants all whilst Chinese innovators are going to town. And none of them have my IP yet. Another stage they ALL overlooked. What else do you think they will miss, because I do not think of everything (I just cannot be bothered thinking of everything), so what else is not seen? 

Consider that when you look at these so called ‘lets kick the tech-giants’ because at this speed the US will only have these four tech-giants left, the rest is most likely Indian or Chinese, the hungry tend to be innovative and in America these so called innovators haven’t been hungry for the longest time, so their track record wanes more and more. That is partially seen with ‘Quibli is the Anti-TikTok’ (at https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/quibi-vs-tiktok). Here we see the article from April where we are given “Rather than iterating toward product-market fit, it spent a fortune developing its slick app and buying fancy content in secret so it could launch with a bang.Yet Quibi’s bold business strategy is muted by a misguided allegiance to the golden age of television before the internet permeated every entertainment medium. It’s unsharable, prescriptive, sluggish, cumbersome and unfriendly. Quibi’s unwillingness to borrow anything from social networks makes the app feel cold and isolated, like watching reality shows in the vacuum of space”, with that consider that Quibli was founded 2 years AFTER TikTok, as such the stage for a better product was there to a much larger extent, and as Tech Crunch states “It takes either audacious self-confidence or reckless hubris to build a completely asocial video app in 2020”, and when we consider the fact that TikTok was created earlier by 2 years, the lack of innovation in Quibli is easily seen and as such after 6 months it shut down. These officials need to wake up and smell the coffee, the race is on and even as scare tactics towards anti-China might work to some degree in the US, the EU with 700 million consumers have little faith in US Hubris and that is where the stage changes, especially now with data laws in place. If Chinese and Indian innovators get the name and therefor the people and consumers, the marketshare of US companies will collapse more and more, as I see it 2022-2025 will not be a pretty picture for the US, the 5G backlog is starting to show and it will show more and more soon enough. 

As I see it, Google has two wars to fight, one with its own political administration, one with the true innovators out there. The second war they can win as they have true innovators themselves, but the one with the US political administration is a larger issue, because that war will also hinder the second war, which would be a bad situation for Google to be in.

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November 12, 2019 · 13:57

The art of marketing

The art of marketing is not new, it is often not understood (even I doubt whetheer I know what they talk about), even more often the people who do the marketing are clueless on what exactly they are doing but they are doing something and that counts according to their needs.

It all started as I made a stop at ‘SuperYachtWorld’ what they would call the ‘the global magazine for superyacht owners’, Now I am not one of them, I do not even own a tinny, Yet I was on that site for a reason, Lurssen and Damen were producing new ships, I was curious as I used to have Damen as a neighbour (of sorts) and I was curious about his second SeaXplorer sale, a 75 meter yacht. I was curious about his dinky toy. Anyway, the article was nice and ended with “You can read more about EYOS Expeditions in the forthcoming issue of SuperYacht World, which publishes tomorrow“, I do not know whether I will buy it, I was just curious, so I decided to click the link ‘subscribe now’ I was curious on how much such a magazine costed. The next is much funnier in graphic form, as you see, I am showing you the first two pages (of the buy a subscription), and explain to me how I can ‘subscribe’ to ‘SuperYachtWorld’? Now, the subscriptions was not really sincere, I merely wanted to find out how much a magazine would cost. Yet the foundation of digital marketing is seen right here. No matter what you can sell, sell it as soon as possible, they merely forgot to give ‘SuperYachtWorld’ the benefit of whatever they wanted to sell.

Or perhaps something else went wrong, but that is the foundation of digital marketing. I even tried the search option, but alas ‘SuperYachtWorld’ was not recognised by Magazinesdirect.com. There are at least 4 flaws in the digital marketing at this point, lets numbers them

  1. Magazine link did not work
  2. Alternate link should mention ‘SuperYachtWorld’ first, or start with a link to that magazine
  3. TI Media Limited (the people behind MagazinesDirect.com) should have spacing before they start their marketing of their magazines.
  4. After the MD dot com element there was a whole part of empty white, after which we got the magazine issues, there too was a ‘subscribe to the magazine’ but that gave a 404 error which is error number 5.

I can go on for a little while longer, but I would think that a magazine who deals with customers dealing with items worth millions of dollars would be a little more finicky, it is the consequence of digital marketing, it’s a cavalier attitude to ‘We will fix it on the flip side‘, I was just so surprised to see it in this area. Ships captains are at times as anal as it needs to be and on the ocean there tends to be no time for ‘Oops, will fix that on the flip side‘, at that point it tends to be too late for that. Feel free to ask the Captain of the Herald of Free Enterprise, which was Captain David Lewry, there were apparently three warnings, the third warning was covered with a (according to magazines “they were busy, go away“, as such 193 lives were sacrificed to the Channel where temperatures of the water were -3C, so there. The entire event took less than 4 minutes. Yes, on Friday 6th March 1987 we learned how disastrous ‘We will fix it on the flip side‘ can be when it involves boating. Digital marketeers will go with the assumption, ‘When we make mistakes it does not cost lives‘, yet is that true? Now consider me a winner of the lotto (I am not, do not worry) and I wanted to read that specific article because I had money for a Damen Ship of 95 meters (again, I do not, so do not worry), now we get into murky waters, the short-sighted view of one limits the access of many, that is actually why I designed the 5G changes as I did them, that is why I came up with a different distribution system, one that is for the small businesses, that is why I came up with the Stupid Smart Device, it fit the needs we will see in 5G because as speeds go up, time becomes more and more a straight pass through of ‘Time is Money‘, who was up to speed? The person selling his wares will be up to speed more and more and that is why changes will push through faster and faster, Places like Google Ads, will require a stranger selling point and when the changes can be made immediate, the term of time is money will be a stronger stage in all this and that is why I decided to go after the 400 million small business owners, they all want to be on the 5G horse as fast as possible, they will drive the next changes even more than those people in telecom will. They are still twisting their thumbs on what to do next and soon enough that system will change, but not today, Places like Google and Huawei will need tome to set a new stage where the Telecom operators are the followers, no longer the deciders. As they are all in the hurry to make deals as far as they can they are 4-7 iterations behind, my IP will optionally change that.

Because by the time you check, ‘SuperYachtWorld’ are most likely, not updating their website, so more likely than not you and Damen miss out on changes, I designed my system to be depended on the two elements that drive marketing needs, the person selling and the person buying. Too many digital marketeers are about ‘I am in the middle, I know when it is right‘ Yet a decade in software sales told me that the Marketing person is the person inhibiting supports (hence diminished sales) because they want to sell it ‘Now!’, they give some response on how it is all with the ‘shareholder’ yet the shareholder does not realise what they are in for by selling a solution that is only 80% complete, the maker knows when it is ready and that is the moment that the buyer wants it. Should you doubt this, look at places like Ubisoft (Breakpoint) to see that part! TechCrunch had a good article on that (at https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/14/the-3-biggest-sales-mistakes-enterprise-software-companies-make/)

  1. Good product-market fit is not good enough

Yes that is true and we see a good explanation on that, I fought a few iterations of that battle with my bosses, because I was always service minded. Yet they were all sales people, they never got it. The article givers an example of ‘are still challenged with sales cycles longer than ideal‘ OK, that is fair enough, yet I countered it in my solution to be able to set the force of changes when the salesperson thinks it is ready. In addition, a sales cycle should be zero, when the person comes into the shop that is when he/she wants to buy. Yet I know that this is retail thinking, but is enterprise thinking not merely a large customer that comes in now? I get it there are other options and this person wants to buy the best solution, so he is seeking, but that is marketing, not sales. Marketing makes sure that they sell on paper what the salesperson can sell for a price (OK, I get it, it is a self-denying truth) but that is how I roll. We need a solution taking marketing out of the loop, if time is money, marketing is the delay in this, and optionally it needs to be sales driven, when YOU can sell.

  1. Are you competitively disadvantaged?

Nope, my solution came up with the standard you sell when you are ready to sell, and you are not disadvantaged, you merely focus on those who want your product in your neighbourhood. We also get “80% of on-premise software vendors operate a channel program to enable other companies to sell their products, while only 20% of SaaS vendors operate similar programs“, it is all about the stage of selling, and tho whom you sell, a lot of the sales systems in place are marketing driven, so when we change the view of marketing we tend to change the view of sales. It is hard to explain, so let’s get back to boats.

When you see the image below, we see a solution of where the other ships need to be, but we forget that the setting is that we are losing 2 out of 4 sales options, if marketing was on the bow of the ship, he could have guided those two additional sales towards THEIR solution, and in the 5G world that solution starts taking shape, software vendors go from tall order to tall order and at that point forget the 4-9 customers they could have gotten by adding their solution to the front of their convoy, looking for the small enterprises. I decided to change the wheel and the steering of such solutions. There is no competitive disadvantage; there is merely your own advantage and how quickly you can turn around sales.

  1. Bad timing — outta sync, outta luck

I never got that part, ‘sales cycles’ are basically whenever the customer comes to shake your hand and you get to explain on what solution you sell, or basically the customer wants to buy and you either have what they want or you do not. And in a marketing solution where YOU are the solution applicant, it is easy, you have what they want or you do not. At the very end of that setting we see: “and most important deals, people skills are ultimately at the top of that list” is the part where we need to focus on, because only you can sell what you sell. In the end that is YOUR power and there are 400 million small business owners that relay on that believe I merely gave them a clear solution to talk into. The rest is up to them, at their speed with their options at their fingertips.

It was that simple!

The art of marketing is not some solution that one person, or one through gives out, we see too many times that the small business units feel that they are told that they are competitively disadvantaged and they took that as some truth whilst they merely wanted to sell, I am setting the stage where they get to prove it, they get to prove it the moment they get to 5G, the game gets to change, let’s see who is ready for that. Now I need to add a part, I am not taking marketing out of the equation, I merely placing it where it needs to be, before the sales cycle, not part of the sales cycle. For the small business owner that is the game that counts, IT forgot about that part and it is time that we recognise that, and fix it, because in 5G Time will truly be money and every delay is a sales opportunity missed.

 

 

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January 25, 2019 · 11:54

The Iranian escalation

We know that their nuclear accord is not worth the paper it got printed on. We also know that the involvement in Yemen is a lot larger than anyone has been able to illuminate on (especially the media). Yet the cupcake of the day goes to the Times of Israel (not the most neutral party in all this). they gave us mere hours ago ‘We bought spares for nuke equipment we agreed to destroy‘ (at https://www.timesofisrael.com/irans-nuclear-chief-we-bought-spares-for-nuke-equipment-we-agreed-to-destroy/). It is ‘supported’ with the by-line ‘Ali Akbar Salehi says supreme leader was convinced West would renege on 2015 pact, so replacement tubes for nuclear reactor were secretly purchased‘. We get this part, whilst a mere 4 days ago the Financial Times give us: ‘EU seeks to keep Iran nuclear deal alive despite US pressure‘, a policy state of mind that I called reckless and not too bright close to 5 months ago. So now we see that not only did Iran have no intention to keep its word, it is actively setting the stage of being a danger to a lot more than merely Israel. Has anyone considered the dangers when one of the warheads goes missing, gets an added dirty load and both elements miraculously in the hands of Hezbollah?

This is not a fictive danger!

Consider the following ‘facts’:

  • Article 151 of the Constitution obliges the government to “provide a program of military training, with all requisite facilities, for all its citizens, in accordance with the Islamic criteria, in such a way that all citizens will always be able to engage in the armed defense of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
  • General Qasem Soleimani is in charge of the IRGC army, his direct inner core has direct control of the Basij and they protect and reinforce several locations where nuclear materials can be found. In addition there have been several pieces of evidence that the support of Hezbollah by the IRGC goes beyond simple funds and hardware, hence the danger I am illuminating is not the weirdest one, or the least likely one.

So when the Financial Times gives us: “We need to accept that the [nuclear deal] is important and it has been a signal achievement“, we also need to consider that this is merely what Iran wants you to think. It is a stage that is too dangerous for some ‘peace for our time‘ moment as the UK thought to have in 1939, it did not end well then and it will equally not end well this time either. The trouble here is not merely what is in store for Israel, the defeat that they currently face opposing Saudi Arabia in Yemen (via Hezbollah), it also implies that there is every indication that proxy strikes against Saudi Arabia are not out of the question. I am not talking about the two fired on Saudi Arabia 4 days ago (source: Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi). The quote “According to the official media wing of the Houthi forces, their rocket battalion fired two Badr-1 ballistic missiles towards the Asir and Jizan provinces of southern Saudi Arabia. The Houthi forces said that one of their ballistic missiles managed to hit a Saudi military gathering near the Yemeni border with the Jizan province.” gives is that Houthi forces are upping the game. Whether Hezbollah is directly involved is unknown at present, yet the danger is that Hezbollah makes for a decent Iranian mule and as such a dirty payload is not out of the question at present. The part that none are giving is that both the Asir and Jizan areas are predominantly civilian and that with the lousy aiming abilities of both Houthi and Hezbollah forces we can speculate that the only way for these two to hit a military target was done by aiming for civilian targets. No matter how it turns out, Houthi (and optionally Hezbollah) forces are waging war on Saudi civilians which is a big no-no and as the Western media stays out of it (to a larger degree) the Saudi coalition will be forced to strike hard and harsh against the enemies of Saudi Arabia. The important part here is that this is no longer merely Yemen, at some point in the near future a meeting and decision will be made to actively engage Iran and that is when all bets are off for Tehran. the evidence shown in regards to the Nuclear deal as well as their involvement in Yemen, we see that both the EU and the US have no other option but to stand by Saudi Arabia in all this, decency would demand it from them and by not doing so, we will see a very different stage and Russia is only one step away from enabling themselves into a political stage of becoming best friends with Saudi Arabia. So as we saw three days ago the statement “Iran has not been invited to a global conference on the Middle East in Warsaw next month and Russia has declined the invitation“. The question in my mind becomes, is that truly the reason for declining, or is Russia playing a larger game? I will emphasize at this point that this is pure speculation from my side, yet if there is chance to get a much closer relationship with Saudi Arabia and get that achieved by ‘seemingly remaining friendly with Iran‘, we see a Russia that has plenty to win with this path. Unlocking the ties between Saudi Arabia and the USA would be one of the greatest wins of the decade for Russia and that danger should not be underestimated.

In the end Saudi Arabia and the Saudi coalition needs to do what is best for them and the events of the last two years give rise to the stage that America has merely been thinking of their own needs in the last 3 years and most allies have had enough of that.

What will happen in the end is not to clear, not whilst there are gaps in either path of allies and whilst Russia is playing its own cards close to their chest, the Americans have been too clumsy for close to two years. The Khashoggi and Yemeni events have clearly shown that part. The media gives us even more when we consider Al Arabiya. There we see: ‘Orchestrated media, political campaign to damage Saudi-US ties, says analyst‘. The quote “I strongly believe that Qatar, Turkey, and certain Muslim Brotherhood proxies in the West are involved in funding a media campaign and political operations to discredit Saudi reforms and the government in general” by Irina Tsukerman (at http://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2019/01/10/Orchestrated-media-political-campaign-to-damage-Saudi-US-ties-says-analyst.html) is as I personally see it incomplete. She is looking at one part, but there is a second stage. Not unlike the UK actions in the 70’s against the Cairo-Tel Aviv attempts for a peace, we see another stage here too. You see, the events from Saudi Arabia regarding Neom City have been so overwhelmingly progressive that larger US industrials are now worried, they cannot live with the fact that they are soon to be less impressive than the Saudi advances in 5G, it goes further, large players like AT&T are now openly deceiving the people with their 5G Evolution, a product that has been heralded all over the media as a fake product. The Register, USA Today, Android Police, TechCrunch and many others are seeing this as deception. The idea that Saudi Arabia beat them to the punch was too unacceptable to these people. They are increasingly worried that every win towards Neom City will be regarded as a loss towards their own economy, which is the America the allies of America face. It also fuels the entire recession mess that is upcoming, merely because corporations can fund one place and whatever goes towards Saudi Arabia is not going towards other places and in all this, the UAE will benefit to some degree as well. As Saudi Arabia is facing down it’s not so hidden enemy Iran, Saudi Arabia will face opportunities as well as challenges and its allied neighbours will have positive waves of economy going their ways too.

Yet before there can be a positive outlook on it all, the global players will have little choice but to put down Hezbollah as soon as possible. No matter how they try to commit to peace, there is enough evidence that Hezbollah is still committed in wars against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Even as we see “Tens of millions of Iranian dollars have gone to Yemen“, we see that this image is also incomplete. That part is seen when we consider the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46958455). When we consider the fact that ‘Pro-government forces removed 300,000 landmines laid by the Houthis between 2016 and 2018‘, the numbers do not add up. the value of the mines, the time required to place them as well as the manpower required to place them we get the clearer picture that the entire funding goes well beyond ‘Tens of millions of Iranian dollars‘. That part as well as the missile costs, the Hezbollah support and other goods imply a financial support that implies close to 1000% of the support that is claimed by some. The found number of mines implies that Yemen required placing 200+ mines a day every day. That require a much larger workforce and support engine (including some form of logistics and communication) than anyone could possible consider. That requires no less than two regiments placing mines 24:7. That is the number that does not make sense in all this and Yemen is not known for soft sands, there are plenty of rocky surfaces to content with. The numbers do not add up and it seems to me that the media has been ignoring those facts to a larger degree, making the Iranian involvement a lot larger than anyone expected, which also implies that the commitment by Hezbollah was a lot larger making them a more essential enemy to get rid of and that part is not limited to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Europe and America have every interest in dealing with Hezbollah with extreme prejudice. Well, that is if they ever want to see true peaceful balance in the Middle East, because with Hezbollah (and Hamas) that will never happen.

In all this Iran has been the catalyst to escalation and it is high time that the global media is taking a very serious look and openly reports on the actions that Iran has been an active participant in, do you not think so?

 

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