Tag Archives: The Times

May 2, 2025 · 03:40

Saudi Arabia goes Hiragana

That is the word, as we read Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.jp/en/uncategorized/article_146218/) with the headline ‘The dawning of a new era in Japan-Saudi Arabia relations’, there is no real puzzlement. As America goes on with its “We’re doing great”, often merely repeated in all the media, the reality is different ‘Too many ‘life long allies and great friends’ are seeking greener fields as they are in deep fear of getting scuttled alongside the good ship fairytale (oops America). So this article was not really a surprise. As we are given “Based on the idea of leading the international community from division to cooperation, I have decided to visit Saudi Arabia, which plays a crucial role for peace, stability and prosperity not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. Saudi Arabia has achieved some remarkable developments under Vision 2030, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, through undertaking extensive economic and social reforms, such as the diversification of industries and decarbonization. I believe that it is of great significance that my first visit to the Middle East as foreign minister of Japan is marked by this visit to Saudi Arabia.” This is not a love letter, but a setting of recognizing that Japan requires a more stable friend and optional long standing ally and Saudi Arabia likes the market of 125 million people. Not as much as America or Europe, but nothing to be sneered at and Japan sees the need for this union, if only to do something about the $8.84 trillion debt as of January 2025. They haven’t reached the point of no return yet and whilst everyone merely swallows the “we’re doing great line” Japan knows better and Iwaya Takeshi, Japans current Minister for Foreign Affairs sees opportunity for Japan and as we are given “Japan and Saudi Arabia are strategic partners that are this year celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1955, bilateral relations have developed in various fields. In particular, the friendly relations between the imperial family of Japan and the royal family of Saudi Arabia have been an important pillar.” This is continued with “In February, I signed with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan a memorandum for establishing a strategic partnership council, which will be chaired by the leaders of the two countries. This will be a vital framework to further strengthen our cooperation for the future of our two countries under the guidance of our respective leaders.” You might think this is all simple coating the setting, but it is not. You see Japan imports approximately $84.95 billion a year from America, with as I see it $3 billion in Organic chemicals, half a billion in Articles of iron or steel and $124 billion in Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers. Items they can get from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, optionally without tariff and I reckon that in the setting of Vision 2030 Saudi Arabia will be really happy to supply and the latter part will be discussed below. They will not get it all, but that is a setting where America loses another $20,000,000,000 in revenue and they have such a good economy, they can lose this setting, no worries. Well, can they really? 

You see, the second article (at https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Is-Saudi-Arabia-Preparing-for-Another-Oil-Price-War.html) OilPrice dot com gives us ‘Is Saudi Arabia Preparing for Another Oil Price War?’ The setting deteriorates for America. When we see “US benchmark WTI crude is down nearly 4% as Saudi Arabia reports emerge that not only can the Saudis sustain today’s low oil prices, but output increases are likely to be announced next week, for June output, sources speaking to both Reuters and Bloomberg have indicated. On Wednesday, Reuters cited five unnamed sources as saying that the Saudis have no intention of boosting oil markets with further supply cuts, as Riyadh’s budget can tolerate sustained low prices.” This is bad news for America, you see, they rely on the ‘profits’ and resale from the Brent Oil range of profit making and that is about to come under fire, even if it is only 3%-5%, that is a drain of a lot. As we are given “Oil had dropped over 2% amid demand worries and expectations of increased supply from OPEC+, with Saudi Arabia signaling it can tolerate lower prices and may push for more output at the May 5 meeting. Additional pressure came from growing production in non-OPEC nations like Guyana.” (Source: Trading Economics), we need to realise that another drop in revenue will make people relying on this push the panic button (even as Douglas Adams told them: ‘Don’t Panic’), I reckon that is not a venue that America will follow. And as Japan moves more and more to Saudi Arabia, the chance is that more oil will come from Saudi Arabia, as well as a lot more than the three topics I raised. So how much will America lose from their long standing friend and Ally Japan? Even at 10% the slowdown of the $84.95 billion a year will be close to immeasurable. I reckon that it could go up to an estimate max of 30% (which is a little over 25 billion), but add to that the shift in oil, it becomes serious money. As I see it Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud earned his daily dose of lamb shawarma today. (It might be chicken shawarma). There is a massive shift happening and as I see it, according to Irwin Stelzer of the Times, America is going strong, so how are these simple ‘facts’ overlooked? Too far in the future? The new memorandum was drawn up in February, and as I see it, these two giants (meaning Japan and Saudi Arabia) could set a beginning to scuttle the good ship America. This is not a given, but in a trade war it will be more than about getting more revenue on one side, it is the other side that is overlooked and as I see it, this partnership could definitely set ill winds to the barometer of the America economy. 

So have a great day and enjoy your Sushi with Japanese Sobacha tea today.

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 28, 2025 · 12:09

Is it reality?

That is the question I am faced with as I saw the article at CBC which I cannot continue as CBC screwed up its site giving us advertisements every inch of the article, as such Brodie Fenlon clean up your freaking site, and fire the idiot responsible for this. Yet the BBC came to the rescue and gives us (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v37z333lo) ‘Trump deep sea mining order violates law, China says’ in earnest, that article is three days old and I preferred the CBC article as it shows a little more clearly how desperate America has become for funds. I reckon that the interest on 36 trillion of debt is gnawing on the bones of America, more prevalent that gnawing has gone beyond the bones as it is starting on the bowels of America. The BBC article gives us “Donald Trump has signed a controversial executive order aimed at stepping up deep-sea mining within US and in international waters. The move to allow exploration outside its national waters has been met by condemnation from China which said it “violates” international law.” I tend to agree with China, but merely as it allows a setting where the desperate poor countries who cannot counter America and these nations are left with baubles. A setting they learned from the slave traders around 1768. You have to hand it to trump. He is giving the old scriptures a chance to prove themselves. The issue I partially have a problem with is “The administration estimates that deep-sea mining could boost the country’s GDP by $300bn (£225bn) over 10 years and create 100,000 jobs”, in the first there is no clear setting for the $300,000,000,000 revenue. If they ‘mine’ in a few wrong sports, the price if mining and the revenue of staff will cost them an easy $50,000,000,000 which implies a lost revenue base of 16%, the second part is that these jobs are mostly given to people they just evicted. Only the higher levels will get a nice dime, the rest will be done by Americans who didn’t want the job anyway and that breeds errors and often mistakes. A non-committed employee screws up the daily routine a lot more than you are happy with and that will be dozens of people. The part that I never gave the right attention is seen in ““The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it,” he added in a statement released on Friday.” The he in that quote is Jeff Watters of Ocean Conservancy, a US-based environmental group. The fact that Jeff merely got one quote implies that he has a whole lot more to say and I wonder if we will ever see that part of the equation. The larger setting is that America is now ready to start bullying its way through international waters. So what will they call those who want to intervene on their waters (or too close to it), will they suddenly be branded pirates? A larger setting that America has lost the plot and I warned for this a decade ago. Deal with your debt unless it deals with you and that seemingly seems to be happening now. It also opens a new setting. These little nations will now be ready to side with China, which is another headache for America. And that setting will give China (as a protector or these nations) an options to scuttle these miners. So $300 billion largely lost and American lives lost (at present no one cares about those). Now we get the added cost of these mining platforms and as such America gets into deeper waters. 

So the end of the BBC article gives us “A recent paper published by the Natural History Museum and the National Oceanography Centre looked at the long term impacts of deep sea mining from a test carried out in the 1970s. It concluded that some sediment-dwelling creatures were able to recolonise the site and recover from the test, but larger animals appeared not to have returned.

The scientists concluded this could have been because there were no more nodules for them to live on. The polymetallic nodules where the minerals are found take millions of years to form and therefore cannot easily be replaced.” As such we have a (non proven) stage for the desperation of Americans. This was shown half a century ago. And the fact that America is willing to ignore “larger animals appeared not to have returned” as well as “polymetallic nodules where the minerals are found take millions of years to form and therefore cannot easily be replaced”. As I personally see it, to ignore these two facts implies that America doesn’t care (or cares less) about marine life and that it will act like a carrion eater in regards to the ocean floor and take now what needs millions of years to form whispers (to me) that America is decently beyond broke and it falls to President Trump to default the larger part of 36 trillion of debt. I’m pretty sure that I made mention of that chance in the past and as I am likely proven right yet again, the question becomes why didn’t economics signal clear levels of dangers? The news now, as the Times writer (and American economist) Irwin Stelzer gives us that the economy of America is in rather good shape. So is it really? Please give us the goods on how America is doing well? It might be that the America Economy is seemingly hanging tough, but they lost billions of revenue all over the field from retail to defense contracts. They might be in denial, bit as I see it only two years ago we would never have seen ‘Italian defence and aerospace giant Leonardo has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’ a mere three months old. So how much did America lose here? I cannot set the valuer of that contract, but the quote “multiple areas of collaboration to include space industry, airframe MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul), localisation of electronic warfare systems and radars and assembly of helicopters, a focus on Combat Air and Cross-Domain Integration fields, industrialisation processes and human capital development, national supply chain in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the country’s role for Leonardo in the region as well as the global value chain.” (Source: www.leonardo.com) leaves me to believe that it is a serious amount of money, now add the new European slices and with the tariffs the loss of America is now on a threshold to fuel a larger recession than ever speculated on before, the larger players (read: Bloomberg) set this chance at the moment at 40%, as America scuttled their own retail houses (like Walmart) of cheaper goods, they need to continue without the goods, you might think it is nothing, yet 1% of the American population works there, now take out the thousands of shoppers (read: immigrants) and that 2025 revenue of US$680.99 billion will topple by at least 10%, 30% if they are not careful and what remains of that Net revenue of US$19.436 billion? You see, they either fire a whole lot of them or lose close to 40% of their business. These are personally considered numbers, so I might be wrong here to the amount of loss, but not the intention of loss and this is merely Walmart. There are several other chains facing this setting. So how good is that shape of the economy? 

I wrote a few years ago that we need to see where all these bonds are, no serious journalist ever looked into that matter it was the time around the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. I wondered how the could have happened and it was a much bigger thing. The acquisition of Credit Suisse by UBS gave me pause to ponder, I figured that several banks had over swallowed on bonds which left them not dissolvent, but left their funds largely frozen as such I speculated that Credit Suisse and SVB had too many bonds and at that time the loss of value of these bonds were crippling them. At present no one really looked at this, even to debunk my train of thought and now we also see some are selling their debt of the US. The BBC touched on that on April 10th (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yrr0e7499o), so feel free to think I am crazy (always a decent stance to have) but there is ruffling in the economic oceans and the stage that the economic times are decently horrendous is not a bad thing. 

I just thought of something, did America rename the Gulf of Mexico for mining purposes? Now a bad stance, if it not for the tiny fact that the Bermuda Triangle is there too, as such how many mining platforms will operate in that region and what remains a few weeks later is anyones guess. Just me having fun with the situation. 😛

Have a great day and feel free to enjoy a coffee, it leaves you with a warmer feeling than a US bond at present will. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Law, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 8, 2025 · 10:43

Repetition of a speculated lie

That is the setting that the Guardian is giving us (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/07/saudi-arabia-ukraine-us-talks-analysis) with the underlying text “a country with ambitions to be a major diplomatic player despite its horrific human rights record, including the kidnap and murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018”, so how often does a lie need to be repeated before people might accept it as a truth? 

You see on February 27, 2021 I wrote ‘That was easy!’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/27/that-was-easy/) where I blew the massive disregard for evidence to smithereens, an essay presumably written by UN essay writer Eggy Calamari. The report of a lot of pages and several times I blew their ‘assessment’ apart on simple logic. So, does that make me correct? No, but I firmly believe that a person is innocent until PROVEN guilty and that was not to be seen. Just as an apology is not a valid defense, a ‘highly likely’ from the CIA does not constitute evidence. ‘Highly likely’ is a speculation at best, as such it is not evidence. Moreover no one actually did a forensic analyses on these so called tapes. As such it is a mere document of collected speculations. One source gave me that JK escaped to Tora Tora with a young mistress. I do not believe that, but there are speculations all over the field and now with the Guardian 4 years later I basically had enough. 

The terms “kidnap and murder”and “murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi” connects to other articles, so there is that too. The first one connects to a 5 year old article named ‘‘Mockery of justice’ after Saudis convict eight over Khashoggi killing’ and the other is ‘‘He couldn’t see light at the end of the tunnel’: Jamal Khashoggi’s widow on their life and his death’. All speculative views. So in 5 years no one was able to prove anything, as such his Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud as well as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are innocent. You think I am kidding? No, I am not. Evidence is central here and the media have been using the JK case as a cash cow for digital dollars. 

I think it is high time that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia takes new steps to silence these innuendo’s. If I had anything to say about this, I would give the media a taste of its own medicine. The Guardian (at al) would be banned from covering sport (and other) news in Saudi Arabia. I reckon that The Times, The Express, The Observer and others (the UK has dozens of newspapers) can cover Sport in Saudi Arabia, the Guardian gets banned until 2035 for all these events. When they are on the outside looking in, they will soon start screaming like little tea grannies on how unfair life is for them. 

I personally also think out is time for Saudi Arabia to take a harder stance on who their allies really are. It is nice that President Trump is coming for a investment donation of 1 trillion, however the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been barred from the F35 for a long time now. So if China could arrange for the J20 to be released to Saudi Arabia, they would be a much more worthy ally. So why doesn’t Saudi Arabia invest that money in China? Their might be larger considerations and I would not be privy to them, but an ally that merely claims to be an ally and whilst Saudi Arabia was under attack from Houthi terrorists, The US channels or assistance remains closed, even though several parties (including Colonel Turki bin Saleh Al-Maliki) who had shown several times that the Houthi terrorists were using Iranian drones to attack civilian Saudi targets (King Abdullah Airport in the southwestern Jizan province). The western media overlooked (I my view intentionally) that side of the story. And there is a lot more. As I personally see it intentionally silencing these matters should be seen as worse, but that is merely my point of view.

Oh, and the fact that I saw in hours these facts over 4 years ago and the ‘media’ never corrected their point of view is another matter entirely. They had no problems with replicating that work of fiction ‘Blood and Oil’ who used art of effective or persuasive writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech to make a case that never was. That is how I see it (to be certain I bought the book and I shot it to hell within the hour (I only looked at the Khashoggi mentions)

So how is the Guardian sizing up right now?

I reckon that there is a price to pay for these settings and it is time that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is making these people pay for the intentional distortion of truth, but I am not in command of anything in Saudi Arabia, so my view could be ignored. If it wan’t for that pesky setting that China has another option to put America (and the UK) out of business in certain parts of the world. I wonder if Iran could hand America a trillion dollars (and a lot more for several other parts). 

Did I oversimplify matter for the average reader? Have a great Saturday. I am off to a decent Saturday and Vancouver is still 9 hours away from Saturday.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Law, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 28, 2023 · 02:05

The story not told

This is how it started, but then I realised that there are two stories that are not told. The western media does not want you to know any of it. It makes them simple red light debutantes. Whoring for digital dollars and all at the expense of not informing you. So how are you feeling now?

The story that started this was given to us by Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2258916/saudi-arabia) where we are given ‘Saudi project clears 882 Houthi mines in Yemen’ in addition we are given “Overseen by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, special teams destroyed five anti-personnel, 195 anti-tank mines, 681 unexploded ordinances and one explosive device” as well as “A total of 388,433 mines have been cleared since the start of the project” but in all this did you consider the larger stage of the issue?

(Photo by Saleh Al-OBEIDI / AFP)

There are two sides. The one side is that Iran was instrumental in delivering over a million mines to Houthi terrorists. The second side is that Saudi Arabia is trying to clear Yemen from these horrific devices, there is of course the third side where we see that the large wining media solutions (The Times, The Guardian, NY Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and LA Times) as far as I can tell never makes mention of ANY of it. Not the Iranian side of delivering mines. Not the Saudi side of stopping Yemeni casualties. Why is that? There is even an additional side, you see if these media jokes do not change their way, they will soon be less reliable than Arab News and Al Jazeera. And we can add Fox News to the list of useless sources. There is also an upside, these two sources can already be captured with their apps and give you the ACTUAL news regarding the middle east. The photo placed earlier was intentional. It came from Arab News but the source is the AFP, so why is this photo not all over the western news? Why are we kept in the dark on what Iran has been doing? You see Houthi terrorists do not have the means, the materials or the logistics to create a million mines. In the mean time we are given “In June 2022, the project’s contract was extended for another year at a cost of $33.29 million” whilst everyone is ignoring what Iran has been doing. We failed the Yemeni’s in many fronts. We are only partially able to stop weapon smuggle from Iran, We are unable to stop Houthi terrorists and the people doing something about it and that is merely the top of the list. And there is an overbearing other reason. With the claims out there made by 6,047 journalists in the US and over 320,000 journalists in the EU and I, a non-journalists am informing you? Where are these digital dollar seekers? Why is this Arab News not global news informing you on what Iran is part of? How about Houthi terrorists placing over a million mines? Who informed you? There is a decent chance that the western media did not, as far as I can tell, the only active western (French) player is the AFP at present. 

It is time we ask the hard questions from the media and do it in the limelight, preferably asking the stakeholders for their assistance in all this, but that is my sense of humour in action.

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 30, 2022 · 23:53

Accusatio et testimonio

That is the setting and I waited for a few hours. To be honest I had doubts when the news reached me via Saudi Arabia News. So I checked, Al Jazeera had it, ABC had it and i24 news had it. You know who did not have it? BBC, the Guardian, the Times, even the sanctimonious Washington Post. None of them had it and lets face it, there is nothing news about ‘2,000 children recruited by Yemen’s Houthis died fighting: UN’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/30/2000-children-recruited-by-yemens-houthis-died-fighting-un). Lets be clear this is not some accusation, this is a report by the United Nations which then gives us “A United Nations report found children aged between 10 and 17 years are being lured into fighting Yemen’s internationally recognised government” In this, do you still think I am kidding when I mentioned that stake holders are filtering the news that we are allowed to have? Of all sources, the BBC, the Guardian, the Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the list goes on regarding top tier newspapers who all basically forgot to mention it and we are likely to hear an ‘oops’ by some. This is what Saudi Arabia and the UAE faces an opponent using children and it is not for our eyes. It didn’t even make the Save the Children International news who gave us a week ago that three children were killed. Beat that with a charity fence. 

So this is what Al Jazeera gives us “The children are instructed to shout the Houthi slogan ‘death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam’,” the four-member panel of experts said. “In one camp, children as young as 7 years of age were taught to clean weapons and evade rockets”, that is the reality that Saudi Arabia faces, that is the reality we face and these children will get hardened and more extreme and more militant as they get to 18, they will have more combat training then the average NATO soldier. That is the reality of a war that Houthi forces with Iranian support are bringing to our shores and the stakeholders do not want us informed, perhaps the have some golden joke to serve Iran, perhaps it is about the billions in oil revenue that end up in the hands of some middle man, but there is an agenda, there always is. And we can no longer afford that agenda, we need to pick a side, this war has been going on for almost 7.5 years and there is no end in sight and with the Houthi forces now relying on children there is no future for Yemen either. We could just bomb it into the stone age and be done with it. But that would imply we would have to do the same to Iran and Hezbollah. Iran is fine, we get rid of 85 million people and problems are solved. But what about Hezbollah? What about those 5 million people? When will it end? I tell you, when we give full and complete support to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, that is when we get a first clear victory and the beginning of the end becomes visible. We will also make sure that Iran is no longer welcome there. It was a clear path that has been staring us in the face for well over 4 years, but we took pride in grannies with their CAAT and ‘no weapons to Saudi Arabia’ banners and we thought the problem was gone. No it never was, we merely gave billions in sales to China and Russia and lost out there too. Now we have lost options and listening to media in denial of events does not help, listening to stakeholders does not help. A setting that has been clear for years, yet we were in denial. Why? Houthi drone bombings on Saudi civilian targets never made the news. And now you can see it for yourself, the large papers seem to silence a UN report. All whilst news tends to waste papers on any UN report even when no one cares, but 2000 children? Do you think we will care or will we not? I let you decide and check the time of WHEN these other papers give us the news, because after the fact is nice when it is a hiker getting lost, but a United Nation report on 2000 children being pushed into a war? How does that sit with you?

I will let you figure it out.

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 11, 2021 · 19:16

A two sided sword

It is nice (novel too) when the press does your work. Al Jazeera (at https://aje.io/xvndmj) with the headline ‘Nobel Peace Prize winners warn of growing disinformation threat’, which sounds nice, but the complication is that the press is part of the problem, in the last two years 

I looked at issues with the NSO group, Jamal Khashoggi (the reporter no one cares about), one sided accusations against Saudi Arabia, bungled investigations involving Jeff Bezos (and the UN), Ignoring the events from Iran and Houthi forces and that running joke known as the ICIJ with their papers of hope (Pandora papers). All issues that show the press being part of the problem, not a solution. All vying for digital dollars any way they can. 

So when I see “Maria Ressa of the Philippines said the greatest threat to democracy is “when lies become facts”, while Dmitry Muratov of Russia said society is currently in a dangerous “post-truth period””, I am not opposing Maria Ressa, I am stating that the disinformation problem is a lot larger than what we hear and journalists are part of that problem. 

Journalists have with some regularity placed themselves on the axial of a seesaw and tried to keep a balance between events taking place and Stakeholders that need things go certain ways (my speculation/presumption). It is a setting that have been going on since 2012 (which is when I started to take notice). So when I see “Muratov also told Al Jazeera that disinformation was a significant and growing threat. “Manipulation leads to war,” he said. “We are in the middle of a post-truth period. Now, everyone is concerned about their own ideas and not the facts,” Muratov said” I feel an involuntary giggle coming up. It is correct what he states, but the part of ‘Manipulation leads to war’, was this communicated to the morning breakfast shows? Was this communicated to newspapers who do this way too often? 

Yes there are problems and they are all over the place, yet the press is part of the problem, it stopped being part of the solution when shareholders needed to see more money from news outlets. A plate for pigs and there are too many pigs and the plate is seemingly getting smaller. 

So it needs to be clear, I am not opposing the person who achieved the standing of winning a Nobel price, I am however pointing towards the wannabe’s behind these people maximising digital coins at the expense of clear reporting. In case of the ICIJ, has anyone seen a clear dashboard giving us numbers of people per nation, nations with government people involved and non-government people? No, you haven’t. More importantly when we see the stage of those in zero tax nations (and their right to be there), what is left? In that stage we see the ICIJ speak like parrots, repeating the same thing over and over without any real revelations, any real criminal activities. So when you see “The new data reveals confidential information about the owners of offshore entities mostly registered in the British Virgin Islands, a notoriously secretive jurisdiction, between 1980 and 2018.” You get no real information, merely some silly essay person waving his dick. The problem is that this so called “confidential information about the owners of offshore entities”, is absent of criminal activities. It is about tax laws and these clowns have not achieved anything, merely made you all angry that some people get LEGALLY away with avoiding taxation. So Boo Hoo flipping Hoo. 

So I get it that some journalists should receive protection, but in my personal view, we could do without those 600 at the ICIJ brilliantly. The term of “when lies become facts” sounds really nice, but that means that we hold journalists and what they write accountable, an act that hasn’t been the case for the longest of times, should you doubt that, read the Leveson report. The stage is changing and to some degree journalists and news outlets are responsible for that mess. Consider that the big papers which include the Wall Street Journal, The Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston globe and the NY Times. How many did a real piece on how tax laws have failed a nation? None as fr as I can tell, they are all screaming ‘Tax the Rich’ but it were these tax laws that got them in that setting. The disregarded acts by Iran are visible all over by the bulk of these papers seemingly disregard these parts, just like the assaults by Houthi’s but they are all eager to slam the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one sided reporting is disinformation, I hope that this is clear? Filtered information (like morning shows) is also a form of disinformation and they all serve some stakeholder (as I personally see it).

A stage that has to change and it should start with those calling themselves journalists. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 30, 2021 · 19:28

You call that an army?

I was in disbelieve yesterday, I saw information and memo after memo and I was lost, I really was. The media to a larger extent reported on it, the Times had impressive graphics, the BBC used something similar (or a cut version of it) and others followed on these starts (as far as I could tell), yet the larger stage was left behind the writing and that is not an accusation. They reported on a lot. I liked Forbes most, the cold numbers appealed to me. The article (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/23/staggering-costs–us-military-equipment-left-behind-in-afghanistan) called ‘Staggering Costs – U.S. Military Equipment Left Behind In Afghanistan’ gives us a lot. The stage is that the Afghan army was better equiped that several NATO nations, the total cost as some sources gave me EXCEEDS $84,000,000,000. This path implies that a small group of people received OVER $4,000,000,000 in bonuses and commissions. Afghanistan was big business and several made a bundle. Now consider that the Afghan army was 5 times the size of the Taliban, with all this hardware and the Taliban ran them over in a week. As I personally see it, a core in the Afghan forces and politicians (with optional exclusion of the former and running like a jackrabbit president of that place) wanted the Taliban back. Consider that me, my lonesome self could do well over twice the damage any Afghan pilot did. 

source: Forbes

I would opt for the Huey (with Gatlings), I know the Blackhawk is better but it is less manoeuvrable than a Huey and it has about 200 more options on the instrument panel and with my limited flying skills, less is definitely a lot more. And it gets to be a more questionable setting when you see 

source: Forbes

And you consider how many Taliban would not make it with up to 300,000 rifles and 25,000 grenade launchers as well as 2,000 mortars. And the dent in the Taliban was close to non existent and all these weapons are now in Taliban hands, they can now put a serious dent in their opponents. They are now armed to the teeth and no one is asking the harder questions, where the  Eff You See Kay was the CIA? The Taliban ‘inherited’ over 700,000 pieces of equipment and the Afghan army did close to nothing, even as they outnumbered their ‘enemy’ five to one. 

Forbes also gives us “The U.S. provided an estimated $83 billion worth of training and equipment to Afghan security forces since 2001. This year, alone, the U.S. military aid to Afghan forces was $3 billion” and in all this there is a stage for much harder questions and that falls on the politicians, not the military, they were handed a set of orders that should never have been allowed and the media is not asking those questions, are they? Yet Forbes also gives us “Not helping transparency, the Biden Administration is now hiding key audits on Afghan military equipment. This week, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reposted two key reports on the U.S. war chest of military gear in Afghanistan that had disappeared from federal websites”, I am not willing to push the blame on the Biden administration without knowing all the players. A small group made billions, they have access to lobbyists and there is an unnamed DoD link in all this, hiding information in plain sight is what they are good at and hiding a link (at https://www.gao.gov/) can be done by any number of people, evidence is key and there is none, as such (even as I am Republican in mind) blaming an administration with that lack this early in their administration seems pointless. The GAO-17-667R Afghanistan Security report that Forbes also had gives light to a few items, but there is a lot that is missing and I wonder if the CIA will hide behind national security for handing over 700,000 pieces of military hardware to the Taliban. And make sure that you take notice of a small footnote. We are given “All equipment described in encs. I-VI is fully U.S. funded, with the exception of communications equipment in fiscal years 2003 and 2004”, so I reckon that the Taliban will not be merely killing US forces, it will killing them using US funded hardware. Are you awake now?

It is also worth noting that there is a chart in the report that shows that the Afghan police got well over 50% of most hardware that the Afghan army received. A stage we need to be aware of. A stage where the army was not alone in this failure and it is a massive failure when you have all this hardware and well over 500% the personnel that you get taken over by a group of insurrectionists. The media (not placing blame here) is not asking the right questions, they aren’t asking that much. The few that did (BBC, the Guardian, the Times, Forbes) are not asking on who got commissions and that is the $4 billion question, I also reckon that the CIA in that area, who got a huge increase in funds and budget dropped the ball, I am actually wondering if they know what a ball looks like, so I am including it at the bottom.

1 Comment

Filed under Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

June 14, 2021 · 22:19

Discriminators big and small

It happens, we sometimes discriminate, even if that was not the intent, even if it was just a joke (obviously a bad one), or even if it was an unknown reason, merely because you never knew. The last one is actually a larger slice of the cake and it is not held against anyone. If it was unintended, and we never knew the foundation of that discrimination, we feel a little ashamed when it passes and we make a mental note not to do it again. Should the media be given a pass? Are they allowed to be ‘uninformed’? It is a much larger question than you think and it is brought to the surface today by two events. The first is ‘Saudi-led coalition intercepts Houthi drone, says state TV’ (at https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-led-coalition-intercepts-houthi-drone-says-state-tv-2021-06-14/). Here we see “air defences intercepted and destroyed an armed drone launched by Yemen’s Houthi group towards the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait, state television said on Monday” they are one of THREE non muslim sources that gave me the article. So when we have the BBC, Boston Globe, NY Times, Washington Post, the Times, San Francisco Chronicle and several other large news papers, I found a total of three sources that gave me this article. Saudi Arabian citizens are under terrorist attack by Houthi forces and we see none of that, we will see teabag ladies holding up CAAT signs on arms trade against Saudi Arabia,  that makes all the newspapers, optionally the teabag lady was the human interest side. Some of us will shout all kinds of ‘evil Saudi intent’ yet these people have not been told the whole truth, why is that? Why is the media setting the stage of intentional discrimination? And it is not one nation, this is global, or should I say Christian global? We saw the French examples of pushing a ‘non-religion’ agenda, or is that a christian agenda?

Islam does not allow an image of Mohammed

It took me 3 minutes to come up with an alternative image to make sure that the classroom would understand that an image of Mohammed was taboo in Islam, so instead of the image explaining that is was against Islam to give any image of Mohammed, we see an image causing outrage and they knew it was going to lead to outrage, so why was that?

The second one is more despicable, I saw a few sources give us ‘New Zealand’s Ardern criticises Christchurch attack film amid uproar’, with the added text ““They Are Us” film about PM Jacinda Ardern’s response to 2019 Christchurch terror attacks has been slammed by New Zealand’s Muslims and others for pushing a “white saviour” narrative and “sidelining the victims””, I wonder why the powers are so afraid of Islam and Muslims, when we see “Philippa Campbell, New Zealand producer, on Monday announced that she was resigning, according to The Guardian”, when we realise that the producer is resigning, there is a larger issue in play with the director and the people behind the screens and that too does not yet make it to the forefront, why is that? 

As I see a daily dose of age discrimination and religious discrimination all over the field, do you really think that statements by others in the area of ‘Trust them, it will work out, they know what they do’, do you think there is any trust left? The media is eager to put ‘the people have a right to know’ in the drawer when it suits the needs of their friends, yet they are well versed in staging these friends into the circle of ‘unnamed sources’, so why is that? And more importantly why do we continue to let this happen? Gallup had a nice presentation (at https://news.gallup.com/poll/157082/islamophobia-understanding-anti-muslim-sentiment-west.aspx) for me there were two slides, but I will give one, here we see how massive that problem is and the media is shunning its responsibilities to the largest extent. 

Here we see that Italy seems to be the most accepting nation with 28% not accepting muslims, but with a 15% data gap the message there could be a lot worse, in the US that non acceptance is 52% with only an 8% gap, so at best it is a 50/50 premise there and why is that? Muslims have been part of investigations against extremism. In the FBI, CIA, and other players in town on a global scale all whilst we are shunning our duties as people, as citizens, as concerned people who need to be told the truth and the truth is being skewed and negated n nearly every turn, why is that? I do not expect you to have the answer, but I believe it is more important to be told the truth and the media is not part of that, why are news agencies stacking news to set an anti perception? Consider that today, today is a good day to consider just that. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Religion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 25, 2021 · 03:33

The brain race

I am not sure how familiar you are with the ‘race brain’, yet mine went nuts two hours ago. It was a set of circumstances, the first was Dragon Quest Builders 2, I restarted the game only to fall over on the second island (again). As I learned to ‘follow’ the orders nearly precisely I got a bit further, but I was thwarted by the game makers who got overconfident and that is where the wheels came off the car, or was it the train went of the rails? It is almost a crossing between a close question and an open question. If you confine yourself to closed questions, you tend to miss the desired direction, and when you confide in the response of open questions you go in EVERY direction, except the right one. It is a shame really, because the game (island 1) was heaps fun, you are in a stage where the second island seems fun but frustration sets in too quickly and you go nowhere, a game that relies on fun and delivers, at least the first 2 hours, after that it goes nowhere. But that set my brain in motion, or better stated it went into overdrive. As I was relaxing I looked at the new Hogwart Legacy trailer for PS5, within seconds my mind was devising all kinds of trails to make the game ‘better’, and I could not stop it. 

A game that I have not seen yet, I have not played yet and I am already trying to improve on it, 

In one part with an adaption (or DLC) that gives a setting that a group of four one in each house are linked, an idea that has links to an old WW2 movie, but the stage never left me and now it delivered something different. It seems a silly way to waste time, but my brain would not stop. My mind went on towards the stupidity of EA and their sport games. You see, I do not agree with some voices, Their packs are not gambling and I, for the life of me cannot understand why EA is not on the offensive. 

To understand this, you need to see the stage devised by Julius Caesar, I believe it was in De Bello Gallico, he stated that a soldier is in attack, in defence or awaiting response and each links to the other, as such the attack can move to defence or anticipation, defence can move to anticipation or take the offence and so on, as all three states are covered the soldier that can move between the three without pause and move from any stance to attack, that will be the winner. EA seems to be unaware of this option and seems to be between defence and anticipation only. It is a choice but it will be the stage that always and forever leads to losing. I came up with an idea to take the offence in this. Of course as all marketing costs, it might not be cheap but it beats getting slapped around by those giving voice to idiots spending $12K on packs for a $55 game, that is more than ludicrous and the media is eating it up, something they can flame and no one is asking the questions that matter, not even the legal department of EA, or at least they do it in a way no one can hear.

Even the Times gave us 3 days ago ‘YouTube stars ‘lure Fifa gamers into gambling’’ (at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-stars-lure-fifa-gamers-into-gambling-dwk8tcx3g), a stage that beckons response but it seems that EA remains largely silent. So as we get “The company behind the Fifa football video game has been accused of using “exploitative” marketing techniques to lure children into gambling”, so where is the response and the campaign by EA? I wonder where they are? You see, loot boxes are not gambling.

Why?
To call it gambling you need to consider that you lose your money, this would only happen if you buy a loot pack and the only thing you get one card stating ‘Thank you!’, but that is not the case. In my case (NHL19), I get a free pack every 8 hours, then each pack has also coins and a token, there are each month 3 packs that can be gotten with these tokens and they are three good packs. Beyond that you get non trade-able cards and the coins can be used to buy or bid for items in the auction part. When you hit a milestone (some small achievement, you also get options for packs and in some cases a specific player.

Within a month I had all 30 arena’s, all NHL home and away jerseys and in three months I also had all the NHL goalie masks and a ton of other stuff, I never spend a dollar on this. One site tells me that FIFA21 does not offer this, I am not sure about NFL21, so why not? It would solve all issues for EA. You see, people are staring blindly on the alleged gambling, but the stage of gambling is never truly properly investigated. You see when we gamble we see two options. The first is ‘play games of chance for money’, but that stage has the unwritten law that you can lose and this never happens, you always get cards, common, uncommon and one rare card. The second version of gamble is ‘take risky action in the hope of a desired result’, that part too is not met, because the desired result is always the same, one rare card, several uncommon cards and the rest are all common cards. This stage is not the one we consider because the outcome is always the same. What most people forget is that in FIFA 21 (allegedly) we see “30 official leagues, over 700 clubs, and over 17,000 players”, if that is correct, there is every chance that there are 2,000 rare players, which means that any rare card has a 0.05% chance of coming out, so if you want Messi, Beckham or Ronaldo you need to get really really lucky and lets face it, every club in the world wants these three players. But that part is close to never considered, and when we go back to the adult idiot spending $12,000 on packs, that person need to get his credit score adjusted to -15000. Is there an issue? Perhaps there is and I think that EA made a few blunders on several levels, but that does not make it gambling, and as we never see anyone receiving a pack with only a thank you card, the stage of gambling is, as I personally see it never reached. 

So how did I get there? 
Well my brain will not stop thinking things through in creative ways and it is reason for another case of insomnia. I watched the trailer of the Unholy (which looks awesome) and immediately my brain went towards a remake of Stigmata (a Rupert Wainwright gem), why? I have no clue, when my brain is in this mode it needs to run its course, which is keeping me awake pondering N+1 issues all whilst N was the maximum I could contemplate. So at present I am typing this whilst I am trying to calm down my brain by listening to the Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan). 

The creative brain can be a curse, not an unholy one, but a curse none the less. So whilst we see what is next my brain (overzealously) adapted Hogwarts legacy before seeing the final product, I considered a new version of Stigmata, I am still contemplating a backdrop for ‘How to assassinate a politician’, which at present is set in the Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Then there is the idea I had regarding ‘Keno Diastima’, here I believe they should nearly all be new actors, no famous people there, I will not say to much because the cliffhangers 2-3 and 3-4 will be brutal, which is how it should be. 

An idea came to mind on a prequel to ‘Soylent Green’ with Chris Hemsworth in the lead (almost 2 years ago), yet here I fear that the story is just not good enough, the setting is great but I feel that it would end up being some cult movie and not a real breaking movie, a stage that precedes near perfection is also a dangerous step to make and it could backfire in a horrible way, which is why my mind remains the great dangers. I considered the idea before (2019-2020), but I never figured out the part that matter, no matter how good the prequel is, the stage needs to go beyond something nice, and Richard Fleischer did set the stage in a phenomenal way. One can say it is like buying a raincoat to warn against the rain that has been going on for weeks, the flood will drown you long before the usage of a raincoat is validated. There are other idea’s and I wrote about them before, so I want to avoid repetition, but the stage will soon come that Hollywood will look in other directions for new idea’s. Outside of the Marvel and DC range and there have been so many really good idea’s, I merely wonder why that path was not traversed before by Hollywood, Bollywood or Nollywood. And as my brain is seemingly slowing down, I end today’s article and will try to get some sleep (one can dream, can one not?)

Consider the two sidelines that are hidden between the lines and contemplate why it was done, because there might be madness in my methods, but there is also methodology in my insanity, it is merely what we aim for and whether we realise what we were aiming for in the first place.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 21, 2020 · 01:27

Vote Ogre

Even I, on my best day can get duped, we all have it in ourselves to fall like a little guppie taking in hook line and sinker and then wiggle like today is the last day you ever do the macarena. I will not go to deep into details, for several reasons that have nothing to do with my ego, but I fell like a crackwhore falls for a brick of pure H. There is no denying it and there was no gold at the end of the rainbow. Even I, Mr Doubting Anyone can be gotten to. As such the fake coronavirus details out there, are the worst kind of details to follow and to belief (not that I do). In this there are always exceptions. In the first rely only on a real newspaper for the actual and factual events (like the Times, the Guardian, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe) the list is not super long but it is renowned. In all this the source matters. Yes, even in these forms some will ‘misrepresent’ the cases and elaborate on a percentage whilst the cases are abysmally small, but they will not lie, as such reading the entire article is important. In that same trend The presentation on the Covid virus by Governor Cuomo was exceptionally good. He was clear on issues and explaining the numbers. It is a 50 minute presentation, so it is long, but you see the goods. As such it is a little upsetting to see that it had 950 thumbs up and 1400 thumps down ratings. As such there is a chance that more and more people ignore the well brought news. The press conference was covered by several sources as such searching ‘Cuomo’ on YouTube will get you there. His view is important because New York represents 1/3rd of ALL US corona cases. New York has a massive population packed together and it is only a first indication of the issues that Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston could face and if the mobs are pushing to end lockdown, the worst is yet to come for the US. 

There is no guarantee where it hits, how it hits and how many it hits, but there is every chance that the greater cities will need the NY numbers when their deuce is up. 

We tend to go by the deceitful part of the numbers, on how the US is the largest place to get hit (and that is still true), yet the truth is that the US is half the size of the EU and they are at present in an abysmal place. Like the nations of Europe, the US states will have to stop everything for a much longer time and that realisation needs to set in,and it needs to set in fast. 

I could go into reverse psychology and tell them to continue the current path, because 2 dead full time workers in the US means that optionally one in the EU or Commonwealth is regained. I wonder if they ever saw it that way. They are all booing the 22 million jobs missing, but a lot of them are tems and hospitality. Consider what happens when the dead jobs of IT are replaced by EU jobs. The IT field is much more global, and these bosses mostly consider their bonus check, at present I have received 4 international offers, the move towards Europe is already starting by some. In a more greedy setting, as Google runs dry in the US, Huawei can buy my 5G IP, it is that simple. Big business pushed for mercenary tactics when it suited them, now they are not the choosing side and I go where the money is, they taught me that, and they had no problem with short changing loyalty when it suited them. 

There is a larger issue in play, even for the ‘pros’ like me, it becomes ever easier to mistake news and fake news, the difference is often no longer visible and the media when they hunted clicks and views are in part to blame, so when they cry ‘foul’ over fake news, whilst they opened that stream themselves is a little hypocrite, don’t you think?

And it gets to be a lot worse, the speeches from the White House are giving the indication that one elected official is more interesting in setting his ego to a good place, than consider the health and safety of his fellow Americans, I myself have a Republican side and I have never been so ashamed of anyone doing the acts we see, merely to look good whilst over 40,000 Americans are dead and a lot of them have not been buried yet, in addition, there is every indication that the total of non surviving American will double, optionally even triple. In addition to all this there are all the voices shouting on how we were not ready. It is true to some degree and to some degree governments all over the world will hide from the responsibility that these administrations and the ones before them had, yet what we all forget is that this situation has not happened since WW1. The Spanish flu would kill as some numbers give between 40 and 100 million people and in those days only the rich could afford to travel, nowadays we have been spreading the virus all over the planet, in that regard, the damage could end up being worse. Yes, medicines available are better now, but there is no vaccine, there is no real treatment, the strong will live, others will not, that is the short and sweet of it.

In all this, we need to realise that we either stand together or accept the loss of a neighbour, as such the protests in the US are completely out of whack. Will I be wrong? I truly hope so, but most of the factual information I rely on gives a much darker future. We need to change the mindset we have and tht is shown as we face the setting in India which is currently unknown, the numbers are incorrect and there is a much larger stagewhere we see that the Indian government has no idea what to do. They are smaller than the US having to deal with a population close to 600% of what the US has, consider the entire US packed like Manhattan and you get the idea just how uncontrollable that setting is. The Mumbai region alone is 55 million people and there is no way that this can be contained as soon as cases become visible. One will infect 25-50, as such the 12,000 cases stated cannot be correct, yet the setting is that there is no way to find all the infected, there are not enough resources in the EU to identify the cases that require treatment in India and as such the curve goes from bad to worse. In my mind there is also no way that the US is so far ahead of India in cases. It takes one person to travel from region to region (on a train) to end up infecting most of the train and we are shutting our eyes to that danger.

As such, when you see the optional troll stepping in and telling you that everything is safe, step back and vote Ogre! Do not believe him/her, and in that mindset, do not believe me either, find out what is true from factual sources like renowned newspapers (preferable not one owned by Rupert Murdoch).

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,