Tag Archives: UAE

June 29, 2025 · 05:22

Honestly, I have a question

It doesn’t happen that often, but the Middle East Eye left me with a question this morning. The headline ‘UAE ambassador’s firm linked to Bangladesh airports data deal’ was nothing strange. These things happen and if it helps Bangladesh, why worry? It was the setting of “Top diplomat’s business links to Emirati-backed project to upgrade passenger information systems prompt conflict of interest concerns”, it was the setting of “prompt conflict of interest concerns” made me wonder why there were conflicts of interests? Perhaps I am seeing the role of Ambassador incorrectly, perhaps I am simply thrown for a loop (I get an abundance of data every 24 hours), so it might be me. Yet when I see “An Emirati state-owned business appointed to set up a new passenger information system at Bangladeshi airports sub-contracted part of the project to a company co-owned by the UAE’s own ambassador to the country. Documents seen by Middle East Eye appear to raise questions about whether the arrangement delivers value for money for the Bangladeshi government or travelers facing higher prices as a consequence of inflated costs linked to the new system.” The first question that comes to mind is “Does the press get to see it all?” I reckon that perhaps the Bangladeshi media sees more (or perhaps a lot more) and as such, is there even an issue? You see, the term “value for money” tends to have ramifications, like how was this amount arrived at? Then we do get the goods in “Iftekhar Zaman, the executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, called for an investigation into the deal, which he said appeared to amount to “a clear case of conflict of interests and an abuse of power”. Zaman told MEE: “As a public servant, an ambassador cannot be involved in any business activity without specific approval of the government.” OK, I can get along with this. The two settings that Iftekhar Zaman gives us are “an ambassador cannot be involved in any business activity without specific approval of the government” and “an abuse of power”. So first the abuse of power. The question becomes does any foreign ambassador have the ability to abuse power in any foreign country? I would state that this ambassador paints a rather nasty large target on his or her own back. An ambassador (as I see it) promotes his own country and offers stronger ties with that country (as an ambassador paints the picture why its own country is the best option). That is how I see it. As I personally see it, the ambassador is merely a pass through option for any Emirate business and as I am personally considering, the only stated ‘abuse’ would be to the business that Iftekhar Zaman prefers. As such that is the second setting. The first setting of “an ambassador cannot be involved in any business activity without specific approval of the government” this is a larger issue. In the first it is his involvement with the company he owns 34% of. As I see it the only issue is that other Emirati corporations might optionally be taken off the table. This is not on Bangladesh, but this might be on the table in the UAE (if this situation exists) and how many contenders were there for that position? American firms need to ‘scold’ their ambassador for letting this opportunity slip by as do the British, French and German corporations. So how many contenders were there? Aside from this setting was the Bangladeshi government involved? Did it need to be involved? If this is a logistic setting for a private airport, the government might not even be involved. All questions that the Middle East Eye had to lay out in this article. As for the “They also raise questions about a potential conflict of interest on the part of the UAE’s ambassador in Bangladesh, Abdulla Ali Alhmoudi, who has promoted closer ties between the aviation sectors in the two countries.” As such the job of an Ambassador is to promote its countries options and considerations that his (or her) nation has. As such Abdulla Ali Alhmoudi seems to be doing his job, that he owns 34% of that company is merely icing on the cake. And as the airport is concerned he brought a yummy cake to the attention of the airport. As such a “an investigation into the deal” seems one, but I ask you. Shouldn’t the executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh be involved? That is if this setting had to be on his desk to decide on. The fact that the airport hadn’t ‘involved’ him might require an answer, yet if the answer is that this was not his responsibility, is this case not merely a setting that gets limelight, the limelight that Iftekhar Zaman wants more spotlight? I am asking this as MEE didn’t give you “Iftekhar Zaman, the executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, the organisation that is responsible for all information system at Bangladeshi airports” and MEE didn’t give anything on the vetting process, or who else was involved. I see a lot of questions and not much answers. And wouldn’t it be fun if the honorable Abdulla Ali Alhmoudi makes a claim for damages because of this article? There is no issue on freedom of the press. The article missed a few balls and ignored other balls and that has consequences in a lot of settings. You see, the setting of “The new passenger information system is being implemented in order to bring Bangladeshi airports in line with international standards requiring the collection of Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR) data.” The question is what was the competition? I don’t know but airports all have systems and several are national based, some have IBM systems and others have other systems. So what was the pool of contenders? Then we get “Alhmoudi was serving as the UAE’s charge d’affaires in Dhaka – the second-highest diplomatic post in the country – raising questions about whether he was already using his position to advance business interests.” Ehh, small question. Isn’t that his job as Ambassador? The setting of “advance business interests” should be seen as “advance Emirati business interests” and that is seemingly what he is doing. The only setting that could evolve is the setting that he didn’t advance business interests of OTHER Emirati corporations to promote the setting of Emirates Technology Solutions (Etek) based in Fujairah, a company that is Emirati state-owned. As such it seems like he was doing his job. As such there are questions but they would be pointed at MEE and optionally Iftekhar Zaman. Then we do get some other players, but there are also issues, but as I see it MEE is off the hook (as the expression goes) and we are left with “A CAAB official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper that the aviation authority planned to implement SITA through a company charging a “comparatively higher cost” than the ICAO recommendation of $3.50 per passenger, and raised concerns that the additional burden would fall on passengers, namely Bangladeshi labourers working abroad.” And there we have the setting “A CAAB official, speaking on condition of anonymity” yes, I have seen that setting before (in other   cases) and that tends to be someone who wants fame, or wants to promotes a third person, or that person wants to be seen as ‘in the know’, which gives us all matters of issues. There is another setting. You see “comparatively higher cost” is a loaded case. You see, when we have this setting we have two issues, the initial cost let’s say a initial million setting and a pass through cost. So if corporation one charges $125,000,000 and $4 per passenger and corporation two charges $15,000,000 and $5.50 per passenger the setting goes to how many passengers pass through this setting (these are fictive numbers) only if the airport has more than 110,000,000 passengers it becomes an actual issue, and that is a whole truckload of passengers. Then there are the service fees and maintenance costs of an IT system and we see none of that here. 

As such, why are these facts missing? Did the anonymous person not have this data? As such my question to MEE is” ‘Where are these missing facts?’ And that is the question I am confronted with. 

So do with this what you want and have a great day, my Sunday breakfast is now a mere 215 minutes away.

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June 28, 2025 · 06:42

The bird is the word

Yup, at times we get to be not so nice. A mere 30 minutes ago the BBC ‘alerted’ me to the news that ‘Trump says he is cutting off trade talks with Canada’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg629n7wzvo), now I do not know what actually started this wave of intense silliness, but there you have it. And the text behind this is “US President Donald Trump has said he is cutting off trade talks with Canada “immediately” as the country looks to start enforcing a tax policy targeting big tech companies.” I reckon that after his bash into Iran and the ‘big win’ (not sure if that is the right title for it, but the media runs with it) he thought that revisiting Canada was the way to go (that is his decision). Yet after the insults and the threats there is a real cause for Canada to enforce the setting of following through on ‘threats’ and Canada has had enough. There is the underlying thought of not waking up sleeping dogs, but there you have it. And for the record Prime Minister Mark Carney has a lot more economic insight than I do. Considering that my abacus actions saw the American economy collapse even before President Trump acted in the not so intelligent way he did, but as Tourism collapse in America will be down an estimated $12 – $21 billion this year and even as they are ‘focussing’ on America 250 (OK, that is a landslide number) the fact is that as tourism, which includes business travel, bed and breakfast, hotels, theme parks (even Disney states: ‘Epic Universe is Dead’) the impact of that much losses will drive small businesses out of commerce, as such America has nothing to be proud of. And as we see YouTubers giving a similar message there is a lot of concern. Even in America. As such I am predicting that the damage is larger than we see. So as the media is happy to split hairs (all for the benefit of digital dollars) we get to see ‘prompts’ that America cannot go bankrupt. In theory they are right, but when America has to forfeit on its loans, the effect nowhere near as dramatic as is given by the media. You see, This is where the vulture funds come in. Milking a nation for everything it has. American Wall Street did it to Argentina in 2005 (it might have been 2010), now Wall Street will do it to America because business is business and at that point Canada will get waves of Americans trying to get away from it all. I reckon that Canada can keep the shortages they have (doctors, nurses and such) but the rest is stuck in America. So how does that feel when immigration turns on the Americans? 

Elon Musk was seemingly on that page months ago, but now as the gloves come off, America will feel the pinch of all that interest that comes with the USCCD (US Credit Card Debt) of it states $36,210,000,000,000, which should be over 4.06% an expected interest now. As the US bonds are said to be about 6% consider who will take the risk of investing any amount where the return on investment to be well over 16 years. As I personally see it, this becomes an increasingly risky investment as some see the end of America in less than 5 years. So as Saudi Arabia is celebrating its 2030 point, America is decently heading for doom in less than a week, because the people will talk on this America 250 party. A quarter of a millennia and it mined itself out of existence and into the abyss they dug for themselves. Is this doom speak? 

It is fair to see it that way, but consider that America bombed Iran out of the nuclear age and USA Today gives us ‘Key parts of Iran’s nuclear program still intact, says Pentagon report disputed by Trump’ As such I do not know where I stand, but if the media has ‘valid’ views by the Pentagon (not some intern who works there) President Trump might be merely relying on the court win of ‘Trump handed ‘giant win’ as Supreme Court curbs judges’ power to block his orders’, as such it is my personal view that President Trump needs all the friends he can get, but as it stands, he is burning the bridges behind him and now as Canada is showing some teeth, the game gets nasty and PM Mark Carney also has European friends now (beside the Commonwealth, who he already had) and as this ‘fight’ intensifies, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom will side with their bigger brother as no one wants to side with a potential loser. That is what America has become ‘a loser’. Do you remember the old saying that America gave us all? It was “money talks, bullshit walks”. A setting that America will soon be embracing against their will as they will claim that they armor than ample to ‘turn it around’ and that is where it gets less outspoken for America as it stands as we are given that “The UAE maintains its position as the world’s biggest wealth magnet, with a record net influx of 9,800 millionaires predicted this year”, oh wait, didn’t I say that before? Yes, I did. I made mention of it with “You see if America cannot pay its debts, America becomes the third world country no one wants to visit and that makes it a nasty place within months. America has around 22 million millionaires. I recon that at least 15 million will get out in time, the rest is not ‘rich’ enough and those with a jet (around 15,000 of them) will go to any country that will take them and they will move fast.” I stated this in ‘All dressed up’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/05/31/all-dressed-up/). I did this on the last day in may 2025. So merely a month ago, I made mention earlier, but not is such a strong way because I thought that this day was way off, but the American administration has created a negative economic wave of such magnitude that it makes a tsunami a mere pebble splash. 

That is, what you think is (utter) BS, but we now see “The UAE maintains its position as the world’s biggest wealth magnet, with a record net influx of 9,800 millionaires predicted this year.” As such this year 9,800 millionaires are vacating to the UAE. Wanna guess how many are Americans? So whilst America is still believing that America is doing great. As I see the old expression of rats leaving a sinking ship (no negativity towards these millionaires who sought better places to be). We need to see the reality of the setting and here they also pissed off Canada. As such President Trump might  seek to ‘a second chance’ the question becomes, why does Canada want to do that? In that same air, so will the other Commonwealth nations reconsider why America is a good deal. 

And those who are insisting it is, it is fine, but some media spokespeople have a lot to lose and they need to cash in before it is too late for them. As such the media is really not the trustworthy player you want to bet on.

So as we take notice of “the US president said he was ending talks due to what he called an “egregious tax” on tech companies and added he would announce new tariffs on goods crossing the border within the next week.” Everyone needs to remember that this tax setting is the one president Trump orchestrated (together with the 51st stated mentions) as such he might be feeling a rather large pinch from Wall Street soon enough. So whilst some might focus on “Canada’s 3% digital services tax has been a sticking point in its relationship with the US since the law was enacted last year. The first payments are due on Monday.” A setting I understand is badly received a year ago and that is fine, but they had a year and now as payment is due, those who are unwilling to pay will lose ‘advertisement population’ and that is the crux in a lot of digital settings. As I see it, they all want to make advertisement money and it is why I created an alternative two years ago. Not absent of advertising, but the cut of advertising on every page. That kind of advertising was done as I saw it. It is like a union of a crack whore with Direct Marketing, which much to vile to my taste and the people around me are starting to see this setting and that is the second phase of my ultimate win (I am still a little delusional on this). As I see it Amazon could gain a new niche income there, although I feel better about it if they had made the jump earlier. Now it becomes a race (of sorts) between Amazon and Tencent. The hungry one wins was my initial setting, but it also requires insight and that tends to be lacking in Americans (a personal view).

You might think that I am anti-American, but I am not. Merely a person grabbing for the supposed facts and I am pro-Canadian, I am a Commonwealthian after all. So feel free to disagree, but get the facts out. As far as I know, I have been doing that.

Have a great day and for the Americans here, lets be fair. A small sign to show you what I think of the American administration at present.

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June 20, 2025 · 10:25

No war, no politics

That is a mouthful and optionally a wrong frame of mind. Yet I have always been a massive supporter of keeping politics out of sports. I don’t mind that this stage could be used for politicians to meet ‘outside’ of the normal playing field but that is a side gig that does not need to involve sports. As such when I saw (in the wee hours of this morning) the CBC article ‘60% of Canadians say perception of women’s sport has improved over 3 years’ (at https://www.cbc.ca/sports/womens-sport-perception-improvement-report-1.7564670), my mind went slightly into overdrive. You see, as America is getting worse and worse. There is a rather large reason to get some of the sports out of America. And here I see the option of what could be the WGHL (Women’s Global Hockey League) to get set in (for example) Canada. It is be far the best solution. And in that trend consider the WGHL setting new stations in the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand for starters. These countries revere sports and women are a massive part of that. It could grow support in Germany, France, Sweden and Norway. In that trend as it grows, the United Kingdom (that is Albion for the really old people here) and from there it can grow in many directions, Including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

So as we see “New data on the explosive growth of women’s sport in Canada underscores its rising popularity, but also reveals that its structural supports still lag behind. Jessica Doherty, vice-president of strategy and growth at Torque Strategies, presented findings from a new national survey on Wednesday morning at the espnW Summit Canada at Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works. One of the study’s main findings is that 60 per cent of Canadians believe perceptions of women’s sport have improved over the past three years.” Personally it is my believe that nothing gets the blood flowing than finding out that you are becoming part of something bigger, and as such I reckon that the ‘structural supports still lag behind’ is merely a temporary setting, but as such countries need to fuel this fire. And in this (as the viewing of America is seen) getting Canada to start driving this horse might be the better solution, the fact that Canada has a rising reputation among Female hockey players tends to make matters easier for some. And in this setting Saudi Arabia could be a larger setter. The stage of NEOM Trojena is supposed to be completed by 2026, so wouldn’t it be great is the first set of the WGHL is played there in 2031? 

Now consider that we already have the Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge,Toronto Sceptres, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, New York Sirens and in 2025 the teams from Vancouver and Seattle are being added. Now consider that Sweden has Brynäs IF, Djurgårdens IF, Frölunda HC, HV71, Leksands IF, Linköping HC, Luleå HF/MSSK, MoDo Hockey, Skellefteå AIK and SDE Hockey. Considering the number of teams there are as well in Norway and the Netherlands, uniting them in a global banner could drive the acceptance levels to an all time high. As there are teams in Australia and New Zealand as well, the mix to get acceptance levels to much higher settings is almost a given. If only Australian media would do something about them seemingly ignoring that branch of sports, would be nationally well received. And don’t forget Saudi Arabia. It apparently has the The Riyadh Wings, as such there is a start to giving women a global visibility stage and as plenty of Canadians can be seen all over the world, it makes sense for Canada to take the baton to give the world a larger view of Canada. So as the UAE and Saudi Arabia joins  this band of athletes, there will be global visibility and when you consider if a place like Trojena would be the global setting of women’s Hockey, I reckon that the even Canada will go nuts for these global plays. There is every indication that with Europe a critical mass will be achieved in gaming a better view for all Women Hockey players. As I see it, Europe might have a larger lead at this point, but as some see, teams from Saudi Arabia might grow close to faster. This is seen with “The hockey team includes all ages and the youngest member is a 10-year-old, Tolay Ahmad, who has been skating for two years” this was in 2018, implying that she might be seen as a seasoned veteran equal to any player in Sweden, Canada, or America. As such this might be an interesting match to say the least. Some of these players have been driven to such a chance for close to a decade and when you are driven to that degree, the outcome tends to be uncertain for anyone crossing them in a match.

As such have a great day and consider that some sports just fall in our viewport and it doesn’t need to be tracking or football games. 

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June 17, 2025 · 22:10

SYSMIS(plenty)

Yes, this is sort of a hidden setting, but if you know the program you will be ahead of the rest (for now). Less then an hour ago I saw a picture with Larry Ellison (must be an intelligent person as we have the same first two letters in our first name). But the story is not really that, perhaps it is, but i’ll get to that later.

I will agree with the generic setting that most of the most valuable data will be seen in Oracle. It is the second part I have an issue with (even though it sounds correct), yes AI demands is skyrocketing. But as I personally see it AI does not exist. There is Generic AI, there are AI agents and there are a dozen settings under the sun advocating a non existing realm of existence. I am not going into this, as I have done that several times before. You see, what is called AI is as I see it mere NIP (Near Intelligent Parsing) and that does need a little explaining. 

You see, like the old chess computers (90’s) they weren’t intelligent, they merely had in memory every chess game ever played above a certain level. And all these moves were in these computers. As such there was every chance that the chess computer came into a setting where that board was encountered before and as such it tried to play from that point onwards. It is a little more advanced than that, but that was the setting we faced. And would you have it, some greed driven salesperson will push the boundary towards that setting where he (or she) will claim that the data you have will result in better sales. But (a massive ‘but’ comes along) that is assuming all data is there and mostly that is never the case. So if we see the next image

You see that some cells are red, there we have no data and data that isn’t there cannot be created (sort of). In Market Research it is called System Missing data. They know what to do in those case, but the bulk of all the people trying to run and hide behind there data will be in the knowing nothing pool of people. And this data set has a few hidden issues. Response 6 and 7 are missing. So were they never there? Is there another reason? All things that these AI systems are unaware of and until they are taught what to do your data will create a mess you never saw before. Sales people (for the most) do not see it that way, because they were sold an AI system. Yet until someone teaches them what to do they aren’t anything of the sort and even after they are taught there are still gaps in their knowledge because these systems will not assume until told so. They will not even know what to do when it goes wring until someone tells them that and the salespeople using these systems will revert to ‘easy’ fixes, which are not fixes at all, they merely see the larger setting that becomes less and less accurate in record time. They will rely on predictive analytics, but that solution can only work with data that is there and when there is no data, there is merely no data to rely on. And that is the trap I foresaw in the case of [a censored software company] and the UAE and oil. There is too much unknowns and I reckon that the oil industry will have a lot more data and bigger data, but with human elements in play, we will see missing data. And the better the data is, the more accurate the results. But as I saw it, errors start creeping in and more and more inaccuracies are set to the predictive data set and that is where the problems start. It is not speculative, it is a dead certainty. This will happen. No matter how good you are, these systems are build too fast with too little training and too little error seeking. This will go wrong. Still Larry is right “Most Of The World’s Valuable Data Is in some system”

The problem is that no dataset is 100% complete, it never was and that is the miscalculations to CEO’s of tomorrow are making. And the assumption mode of the sales person selling and the sales person buying are in a dwindling setting as they are all on the AI mountain whilst there is every chance that several people will use AI as a gimmick sale and they don’t have a clue what they are buying, all whilst these people sign a ‘as is’ software solution. So when this comes to blows, the impact will be massive. We recently saw Microsoft standing behind builder.ai and it went broke. It seems that no one saw the 700 engineers programming it all (in this case I am not blaming Microsoft) but it leaves me with questions. And the setting of “Stargate is a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and investment firm MGX to build a massive AI infrastructure in the United States. The project, announced by Donald Trump, aims to establish the US as a leader in AI by constructing large-scale data centers and advancing AI research. Initial construction is underway in Texas, with plans for 20 data centers, each 500,000 square feet, within the next five years” leaves me with more questions. I do not doubt that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle all have the best intentions. But I have two questions on this. The first is how to align and verify the data, because that will be an adamant and also a essential step in this. Then we get to the larger setting that the dat needs to align within itself. Are all the phrases exact? I don’t know this is why I ask and before you say that it makes sense that they do but reality gives us ‘SQUARE-WINDOWED AIRPLANES’ 1954 when two planes broke apart in mid-flight because metal fatigue was causing small cracks to form at the edges of the windows, and the pressurized cabins exploded. Then we have the ‘MARS ORBITER’ where two sets of engineers, one working in metric and the other working in the U.S. imperial system, failed to communicate at crucial moments in constructing the $125 million spacecraft. We tend to learn when we stumble that is a given, so what happens when issues are found in the 11th hour in a 500 billion dollar setting? It is not unheard of and as I saw one particular speculative setting. How is this powered? A system on 500,000 square feet needs power and 20 of them a hell of a lot more. So how many nuclear reactors are planned? I actually have an interesting idea (keeping this to me for now). But any computer that leaks power will go down immediately and all those training time is lost. How often does that need to happen for it to go wrong? You can train and test systems individually but 20 data centers need power, even one needs power and how certain is that power grid? I actually saw nothing of that in any literature (might be that only a few have seen that), but the drastic setting from sales people tends to be, lets put in more power. But where from? Power is finite until created in advance and that is something I haven’t seen. And then the time setting ‘within the next 5 years’ As I see it, this is a disaster waiting to happen. And as this starts in Texas, we have the quote “According to Texas native, Co-Founder and CFO of Atma Energy, Jaro Nummikoski, one of the main reasons Texas struggles with chronic power outages is the way our grid was originally designed—centralized power plants feeding energy over long distances through aging infrastructure.” Now I am certain that the power-grid of a data centre will be top notch, but where does that power come from? And 500,000 sqft needs a lot of power, I honestly do not know how much One source gave me “The facilities need at least 50 Megawatts (MW) of power supply, but some installations surpass this capacity. The energy requirements of the project will increase to 15 Gigawatts (GW) because of the ten data centers currently under construction, which equals the electricity usage of a small nation.” As such the call for a nuclear reactor comes to mind, yet the call for 15 GW is insane, and no reactor at present exists to handle that. 50MW per data center implies that where there is a data centre a reactor will be needed (OK, this is an exaggeration) but where there are more than one (up to 4) a reactor will be needed. So who was aware of this? I reckon that the first centre in Texas will get a reactor as Texas has plenty of power shortages and the increase in people and systems warrant such a move. But as far as I know those things will require a little more than 5 years and depending on the provider there are different timelines. As such I have reasons to doubt the 5 year setting (even more when we consider data). 

As such I wonder when the media will actually look at the settings and what will be achievable as well as being implemented and that is before we get to the training of data of these capers. As I personally (and speculatively) see it, will these data centers come with a warning light telling us SYSMIS(plenty), or a ‘too many holes in data error’ just a thought to have this Tuesday. 

Have a great day and when your chest glows in the dark you might be close to one of those nuclear reactors. 

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June 9, 2025 · 20:23

At the right time

That is what we all seek (if we can afford it), that golden ticket that is out in the open and we are in time to grab it. I get it, it is not easy and you need to have feelers out, but that is at time the setting we face. For example, Disney Golden Oaks has had his new park settings with residences and houses out there for almost a year. This is nothing bad. The places look amazing and when you are approaching retirement, or a life setting where you get to enjoy life at least three months a year (basically before the Trump era) nearly everyone who has the money would grab something like that. They are still taking orders, so there is space. I am not criticizing the setting. Disney has made enormous strides with their Golden Oaks and these places are top notch. The setting that the Four Seasons is there as well, merely adds charisma and flavor to that place. So what gives? 

You see, the Emirati News Agency WAM, gives us (at https://www.wam.ae/en/article/15l6shd-aldar-announces-launch-day-sell-out-all-133-homes) a simple setting. They give us ‘Aldar announces launch day sell-out of all 133 homes at Waldorf Astoria Residences’ a setting where we see a launch day sell out? Don’t get me wrong, I cannot afford living there, so I don’t feel sad. I had my eyes set on Sama Yas (which I cannot afford either) but at least it is more affordable than either two. And lets be clear onboard this, as America slides down to a near third world stage, would you want to live in Orlando? Yas Island will be the new Saint Tropez. With its 4 theme parks (soon to be 5) and Warner Brothers being busy to add the world of Harry Potter to their Arsenal, that place will be da bomb (as the expression goes). Ferrari World, The Yas Mall (not as big as the Dubai Mall), but a cracker of a mall. WaterWorld with slides, lazy river and all, SeaWorld which might be the most impressive water zoo you have ever soon and the Warner Brothers Theme park, soon to include these rascals from Hogwarts. And in (an expected) 2027 Disney will grace that place too. So what is there to hesitate over? Well the 133 new owners of their Waldorf Astoria Residences had that same idea and on launch day it all sold out. The first ever branded residential development on Yas Island generating AED 850 million in sales. That almost a billion amounts to $232 million, which amounts to a little under $2 million per unit, there are different sizes, so the small ones are cheaper, the big ones larger and Golden Oaks gave us the setting that they started at 5 million. So it is a win in several ways. And it gets better if you get the Yas Annual Diamond pass, which gives you unlimited Quick Pass Access at all Yas Theme Parks and offers unmatched benefits, such as 25% off dining, shopping, and more. Plus, you’ll receive early park entry, special events, and exclusive member-only experiences. And the price (at present) is $900 a year, with all these benefits you would be crazy not to get it, especially as it gives 25% on loads of stuff, even in the Yass Mall. For an entire year? That pass will earn itself back in less than a month. As such, I reckon that the price goes up when Disney is added to the flavour. And as there are free busses all over Yas Island, the need for a car becomes debatable. 

So in that world where does Orlando stand? Nowhere as I see it and Abu Dhabi has a lot more to offer. As I personally see it theme parks in America are soon done and when the economy collapses (which is likely to be this year) there will not be any reason to go to America. So when you consider these news clippings that America is crawling up from the mud, consider that the Economic times gave us 4 hours ago ‘Adrian Mowat on why non-US assets are becoming more appealing than US equities & bonds’ you’re seeing merely a first and as the pressures on Yas Island to expand is clearly seen in many ways, we will need to consider that America is close to done for. 17 hours ago we were given ‘Half of the bond market is US Treasuries. Why it’s ‘not healthy.’’ Remember that I talked about the dangers of Japan or China dumping the bonds they have and the other one following suit as not too be left with (what I personally speculative see) as toilet paper. Well this is a first sign. The entire Waldorf Astoria setting was out in the open and it is gone on launch day. Orlando never pulled that off, not even when they were the luxury height of the residence markets. As such the oligarchs, the billionaires and others will soon get their own place there and perhaps several already have their place. In addition, the UAE is a zero tax nation, well not exactly, but you do not pay income tax, so the money you get is the money you get to spend and with a Diamond card it gets to be even cheaper. Don’t think you are stuck there. The high speed train ride takes you to either place in 30 minutes, so breakfast in Dubai and Dinner in Abu Dhabi (or the other way round) becomes a reality, although I was unable to find prices, but a normal train going at half the speed is also an option, as such you would be in a train for an hour. 

As I see it the UAE is not merely making waves, they are an economic tsunami about to unleash their good times and as I see it America (Europe too) will face the economic onslaught it makes on both of them and as I see it, with the F1 also on Yas island, the setting gets to me almost embarrassing for America. And feel free to look at the Abu Dhabi videos on YouTube done by hundreds of visitors. A city that is clean, safe and spacious. What more do you need? The article ends with “Commenting on the sales performance, Jonathan Emery, Chief Executive Officer at Aldar Development said: “The sell-out of Waldorf Astoria Residences Yas marks a significant milestone for Aldar and highlights the attractiveness of Yas Island both as an investment destination and prime residential address. As the island’s first branded residential offering, its overwhelming success is a strong indicator of the rising demand for luxury, hospitality-led living in Abu Dhabi and the universal appeal of the Waldorf Astoria brand.”” As such I wonder what will come next, because the intake of wealthy residents is merely at a start this implies that Abu Dhabi is looking at 3-5 new settings and as the Satellite photos show, between Zayed International Airport and Yas Island are several large ‘plots’ that might be the setting of more. The influx of wealth and economic good times are setting a new era for the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi. Did anyone consider that when billionaires see new grounds, they tend to go from other places? Where does that leave America? You see, you can spin all you like, but when the wealth walks away they might be left with merely a dozen wealthy people and President Trump is not that rich, so when Elon Musk leaves, the expression about rats leaving the sinking ship comes to mind. Oh, by the way, I am not calling Elon Much a rat, or implying that he is leaving. But I think the setting comes across to all my readers (and its not my mum, cause she is dead).

A larger setting is coming to the shores of America and I have stated that as warnings for over the last 2 years at least, so whilst we now get “‘‘Death spiral’ nears as US debt service costs reach ‘unsustainable’ levels’” (source: Sky News) consider that I stated this danger es early as October 4th 2021 in ‘Utter insanity’ referring back to an article I wrote in 2013, it has been this long that the media could have informed you. Did they? Oh and the fact that October 4th is also World Animal Day is merely icing on the cake. I like my irony with a sweet tooth. I am a victim of circumstance. Still, the setting was clear years ago, you merely needed to learn to use an abacus, something that has been around for over 3000 years, no super computer needed.

So have a great day and enjoy your morning coffee in Toronto this morning (it is 06:00 there). 

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June 8, 2025 · 13:27

Delusional fictive imagination

Yup, I am going there. It is all me, or as the story goes MPI (Me Personification Individual) giving myself a fictive consideration is the next best thing. You see, as the setting of America goes on and on towards a drain that ens up in the sewer, I decided to let my conspiracy self roam free. In this setting I am due a nice retirement sum and as a bonus I get to see the people who merely promised me bad to become the corporate bitches which I always thought they would end up being. As such there is no reality in this story, it is merely the work of a B-level movie (unlike the awesome script I finished and the three that follow it, more delusion on your plate).

Anyway the story starts with me having a coffee at the Soul Origin in Burwood. I was just about to take another sip when I a man introduces to me as Dr. Mulla, Consul General for the United Arab Emirates. I was not aware that the UAE had a consulate in Sydney, but there you have it and he starts of with giving me a business card stating he is indeed the Consul General, but the address gives me Melbourne. I gave the man a courteous nod and say to him a “Allahu Akbar” and point at the chair on the other side of the small round table. He states something softly (I am in a mall, so I didn’t hear that latter part) and he makes his case. He asks if I am the person that worked in a statistics company during the 90’s and two thousands and I nod in agreement, I was indeed. As such he offered me a short term job which will give me 250 bitcoin, post taxation and my curiosity was piqued. It is a lot of money for any person to be given of nearly any kind in the west, perhaps an exception could be made for all who have over 50 million dollars and I am not one of these people, so I agree to do that. I did mention that my passport had expired. He mentioned that it would not be a problem. The need for ADNOC is high and I am one of the first they approached and if I am willing we would leave today. The job will be to inspect syntax and statistical files, aiding the people there in cleaning them up and making sense of them. Well, I have been paid a mere 1% in the past for doing a lot more, so I am massively agreeable in this. A chauffeur will collect me in 90 minutes if that was agreeable, it was. So I head home to get my stuff ready, including my extremely expired passport.

It was brought 87.254 minutes later when a black Mercedes is in front of my apartment and the chauffeur identifies himself with what I reckon is some embassy card and drives me to the jet airport. He drops me off where a female executive introduces herself as Aisha, personal secretary to the Emirati Consul. She also hands me a card. She stated that it held $2,000 for anything I might need at this time. The consul will be at the place in 45 minutes. She would escort me wherever I needed to go. I decided that the only thing worthy of my needs at this time was a DJI Osmo pocket 3 and a memory stick. If I am going to a place I never seen before, I might as well record it for prosperity. I was given a great deal for the DJI with ‘creator accessories’ and a 128GB card for $749. I am happy as nothing I have been for the better part of a decade. I ask if there is a lounge where I can have a coffee and a sandwich (my blood when there is too little caffeine in it tends to get jumpy). She takes me to the Qantas First class lounge. She waves her consular credentials and we are in. Two minutes later with a large coffee in a takeaway cup and two chicken wraps I am seated in a small glass room with Aisha and we both sit in amazing comfortable lounge seats while I sip a coffee. I take a moment to eat the first wrap and it was amazing. I look at Aisha and she tells me that the consul is around 30 minutes out. We will depart in about 15 minutes so that we are there at the same time. I nod in acceptance. I playfully look at my mobile B250 comes down to almost 41 million dollars. So where do I sign for my soul? This is more money that all my ancestors combined earned in a lifetime. As such I wonder what the snag is, but if there is one, this setting alone is making me beyond happy. I never imagined that I would even own a DJI and now I am almost playing with one. So, whatever bad news comes next. I am less concerned with the badf news that I am with this feeling of amazement. 

It is about 17 minutes later when Aisha nods that we had to go. I end up leaving half a wrap, but the coffee was good, as was the wrap. I just didn’t feel like having to rush to the toilet until we are well underway. It takes 5 minutes to get to the plane. We were met with a Qantas golf cart to take us where we had to go and as the cart sped up and down ramps we get to the plane in record time. I never knew that these carts could go that fast. We stop right next to the boarding steps of a Learjet 85. It was an amazing looking jet, the inside was beyond what I had ever seen (I don’t fly too much) and as I was beckoned to my seat(s) I chose to hav e the seat facing the cockpit. I was never one for traveling backwards, not in a train and not taking my chances now.

A minute later Dr. Mulla joined us and its across from his secretary and speaks to me. We have an 11 hour flight ahead of us. Is it OK if I complete a few tasks? I nod in agreement. A little eager to see this plane in action and taking a selfie on my Google Pixel 9. There is not one picture in existence showing me in a Learjet, so that fable has now been put to rest. As the plane takes off, the pressure of me being pushed in my seat is close to heavenly.

As I look outside of the window, seeing Sydney fade into a small nothing and the plane turning left. I am offered Champagne, but I preferred a coffee with cream a sugar. We all have our little needs. I sip the coffee in a porcelain cup, not the plastic cups we are normally given on flights and I feel a little special. The coffee comes after I am given a hot towel which felt good, I feel a little cleaner. And before I know it almost an hour has passed. The consul addresses me. ADNOC has a challenge. It actually has two challenges. The job would take a maximum of a week. Do you have a preference of Hotel? I immediately consider the Warner Bothers hotel on Yas Island. I saw a YouTube video and it looked like a heavenly place (with food, coffee and all). And he nods at Aisha who starts typing on her laptop in a composed manner (and a lot faster than I can type). “So let me explain to some extent, they have two challenges. The first is a Dutch translator, they just lost their translator in an accident and the new one will not come until later next month. They will need to be able to look at some Dutch documents in the meantime. The second setting is a program called IBM Statistics. They have been trying to replace the team they had. The person in charge invited less than qualified people in the past and as he has now left, the entire department is a little up in the air. Can you cell data files?” I nodded in agreement. “Yes I can, I am not a statistician, but I can clean files, read and write syntax files and help creating and validating omni-books. I can also teach your teams to be more privy to IBM statistics files and help them into increasing their knowledge of IBM Statistics.” The consul had an immediate more brightened look and he stated “Splendid” with a big smile. 

I considered asking a few questions regarding this, but I thought that he might not have the answers. Whatever answers there were, I would get them in Abu Dhabi. And after a nice meal which included a large cheese pizza (with added oregano) I partially dozed off. I felt a nod on my right shoulder. I looked confused. Did I sleep through part of the flight? I looked around and I was told that we would arrive in about 50 minutes. I was offered coffee which felt good to accept and I waled to the bag where the bathrooms were. And would you believe it, these bathrooms had showers and all. I didn’t take the shower as I thought that a long hot shower would make my day complete in the Warner Brothers hotel. We arrived at Zayed International Airport a little over 55 minutes later and as I got off the place, the hot air caressed my face. It was 33 degrees, a blissful heat with a minor breeze. Outside the plane was a car waiting, it was a black Bentley New Flying Spur. It was more than comfortable, it was amazing and I apart from a London taxi, I had never sat in a Bentley. I took a quick selfie as I walked towards the car. They would never believe me, not my friends, not anyone I reckon. And I would not even believe myself, the selfie was to remind myself I wasn’t making this up (as this is a story, I am, but that is for another time).

We got to the hotel in what I believe to be in under 30 minutes. It was merely me and Aisha, the consul had taken his leave at the plane. Aisha would take care of the rest. And as it was already 19:00, I was given the key to my room with complete all expenses paid access to the minibar and kitchens. I wasn’t hungry, a pizza and 1,5 wraps does that to me, the hotel room had a Nespresso machine and the mini bar had fruit juices. So I was happy. I was told that a car would come for me  at 9:00 next morning. I rejoiced at the overlook bar at the top floor, where there was an amazing collection of drinks and I enjoyed my iced Canadian (I refuse to call it an Americano), 51st state? Screw that.

I had a lovely breakfast with two waffles, hot cherry sauce and whipped cream. Another delusional thought I had on Ghent and an abbey in 1102 (a much larger story for another time). I had this as a breakfast and whilst I was contemplating to eat more, I thought it might not be the best introduction to my temporary new employer. I was sitting in the ground floor lobby where I was sipping a nice large coffee (we all have weaknesses) and a man approached me and help up a sign with my name, I nodded and he indicated that I move to the side entree with a “this way please”, his voice could not be seen as anything but warm polite and courteous. I moved to the side where a nice black Mercedes was waiting for me. He opened the rear passenger door and pointed to the water in the back. I nodded and thanked him. It was half an hour later when we arrived by a skyscraper on Corniche road. A man was waiting for me and as we shook hands be gestured the direction is was requested to walk. Th skyscraper stood alone, so that wasn’t a leap of faith to make. I was shown the way to the 76th floor. I had only been this high once. It was in the Sears Tower in Chicago which was (I think) the 98th floor. As we went into a room there were three man all standing up and bowing to me, I bowed back and stated “Alahu Akbar”, I was greeted back and now I got what I was offered in return in Sydney. 

I sat down and I was given the highlights of the deal, the translator setting was merely a side setting that might be required. They had the Dikke van Dale Dutch books, which is pretty much the Rolls Royce of Dutch dictionaries, or as I preferred to call them, the Fat Valley dictionaries, which was a loosely translated name. It was the IBM statistics they needed. And I would be shown a desk and the files would be shown to me. They were happy that I would be able to train the staff there was. As was given, the head honcho (El Jefe) in Arabic terms had kept all the work to himself, only letting the others do some of the ground work and as those people were elevated to much better positions, they went along with the setting. At my desk I saw that there were inconsistencies, not bad ones, no errors, but the syntaxes was written by someone not used to daily data process points. There was an EXECUTE after nearly every command, there was a setting that there were several aggregates when one could do and there was a setting where were at least 8 ADD FILES commands when 2 could have sufficed. This was a data noob, a person thinking he knew something, all whilst he was setting the stage to be ‘the specialist that is the coming of the whatever person he thought he was’ I went a little wild on the syntax. And at first I tested every part separate which took almost 3600 seconds. Then I ran it all and a mere 2500 seconds remained. This was as expected. I took the file renamed it with _EDIT at the end and re-ran the whole file, it came down to 1216 seconds. I reran the file and reduced the time by over 60% less time was required. 

It was time to set the larger setting of damaged files and what was done was that the output file was given the EXACT same name as the data file. So he had the results, but the data would have to be reread from scratch. The messiest way to set the premise for people to not get ahead without him. And that was the setting I discovered in half a day. 

Well, I want to go on and introduce a conspiracy setting where Brent Oil was slicing the dice of ADNOC (and in my delusion ARAMCO as well), but it is time to take a breather and enjoy the delusion of being $41,000,000 richer, or perhaps AU$20,000,000 and AED48,500,000 richer. You can’t enjoy money when you have no dreams for them and having a property on Sama Yas enjoying 4 (soon 5) theme parks in an age of retirement is a pretty good way to delusional dream.

And consider a theme park, absent of stupid people (people living between Canada and Mexico), isn’t that a dream worth pursuing? Consider that soon (2027) Disney will be here too and all on the island where you retire. Oh, and they have a Carrefour Hypermarket (UAE Supermarket, based on a French supermarket) and I reckon a few other places. I call that a win in every scenario imaginable. So have a great day. My Sunday today is delusional day and I have earned the sweet scent of delusion. And think of it, the setting might be delusional. But would you think that this stage is outside of American ‘tactics’? The entire American Administration is running itself into the ground (slowly but surely).  So have a great day and enjoy the spiciness of whatever you face today.

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June 2, 2025 · 16:59

The obvious under attack

I have my own views on settings. In the first I am certain that Hamas needs to be eradicated. It is not for Israel, although they benefit massively. It is the fact that Hamas is the nameless animal that Iran uses to inflict pressured on parts of The Arabian peninsula that do not go their way. And I see that certain Hamas leaders are getting funds from other parties as well. In short, they will attack Saudi Arabia and the UAE at some point as they gain more and more certainty in the world. This does not sit well with Iran. I voiced their eradication as they are likely have ‘tools’ to influence the structural integrity of several parts of NEOM. It won’t be big, just a concrete ‘anomaly’ but one that will cost the KSA millions to fix and it will make them look bad. That is my personal believe and it might or might not happen. But as I see it, under Qasem Soleimani it would have definitely happened. Yet now, Israel is shooting themselves in the foot by setting the premise (according to Al Jazeera, at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/1/saudi-arabia-calls-israel-barring-arab-ministers-west-bank-trip-extremism) ‘Saudi Arabia calls Israel barring Arab ministers West Bank trip ‘extremism’’ It leaves me with several questions. So according to the byline we are given “Foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE had planned the visit to discuss Palestinian statehood and end to war on Gaza.” As we take a look at the second article giving us (at https://arab.news/bm5bm) ‘Arab ministers denounce Israeli ‘arrogance’ over blocking West Bank visit’ where we are given “Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the Israeli government’s refusal to allow Arab ministers to the occupied West Bank showed its “extremism and rejection of peace.” His statements came during a joint press conference with counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain in Amman.” The question I have is why Israel is involved, they could enter the West Bank from Jordan. The ‘legalized’ setting is that “As of June 2024, 146 (75.6%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations have recognised the State of Palestine within the Palestinian territories, which are recognized by Israel to constitute a single territorial unit, and of which the West Bank is the core of the would-be state.” I actually get that Israel has to be involved, but this setting shows that there is a much larger stage where Israel is getting kicked around and the has to stop and Hamas made this impossible with their hostage situation. Even as they should not be part of this, the shouts of ‘Palestine should be free’ by radicals who have no idea what is happening and this is where they can rely on a million plus anti-Semites, and as their troops are dwindling, they use whatever they can. As such I see that there are issues, but Israels setting to block this visit isn’t helping anyone, not even the state of Israel (as I personally see it). 

Yet the larger setting was opened in 2002 where we were given “However, the “Road Map” states that in the first phase, Palestinians must end all attacks on Israel, whereas Israel must dismantle all outposts.” I personally see that the attacks need to end is essential, the dismantling of the outposts is not. I get that Israel needs to keep its outposts (on Israeli soil), so why is this so hard? They should have seen that 23 years could have been much more constructive if these two parts were kept in the first place. As I see it, in the last 20 years several Americans had ‘their’ view on matters, solving nothing. So why not give this Arabian party of ministers a try in getting things resolved? If Hamas strikes now, they will be building their own coffin and their end is pretty much assured. The second setting is that there are two areas, Area A and B. They are themselves divided among 227 separate areas (199 of which are smaller than 2 km2), this is almost insane. At some point someone needs to back off (implying that this is Israel). These 199 areas makes for an impossible setting and simplifying that might be a first step in resolving issues. So when we see that 11 governorates used as administrative divisions by the Palestinian National Authority, Israel, and the IDF and named after major cities. This setting is shouting ‘disaster is imminent’ and if I get called that I am dead wrong. I will agree, I know too little of this setting to call this, but at times a fresh set of eyes are needed (I am not claiming that I am that view), but I am willing to bet that Egypt (Badr Abdelatty), Jordan (Ayman Safadi), Qatar (Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani), Saudi Arabia (Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud), and the UAE (Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed), they might see solutions that break through some concepts and if it gives the area peace, why block it? 

I personally think that Israel made a bad call in this instance, but then, what do I know?

Have a great Monday, time for me to hit the pasta preparation shelf.

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May 31, 2025 · 12:46

All dressed up

Yup, that is an old expression, I heard it somewhere in the 80’s and if you know, you know. If not, you might figure it out during this article. The setting has been revised before, but now (at https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/north-carolina-and-oregon-unite-with-florida-new-york-nevada-arizona-california-alaska-as-canadian-travel-to-the-us-plunges-this-april-amid-political-backlash-and-tourism-boycott/) we get a more direct setting. We are told ‘North Carolina and Oregon Unite with Florida, New York, Nevada, Arizona, California, Alaska as Canadian Travel to the US Plunges This April Amid Political Backlash and Tourism Boycott’ it seems trivial and that site is, but it is merely one side of this. We are given “Canadian travel to the United States has plunged this April as North Carolina and Oregon unite with Florida, New York, Nevada, Arizona, California, and Alaska in reporting steep declines in visitor numbers from their northern neighbor—an alarming shift fueled by mounting political backlash, a growing tourism boycott movement, and rising disillusionment among Canadian travelers over the current state of U.S. affairs”, as well as “Canadians are now increasingly choosing alternative destinations, citing concerns over the political climate, cultural discomfort, safety perceptions, and dissatisfaction with immigration experiences.” And this is merely the start. Travel Tour World gives assisting data. We are given “According to official data, land travel from Canada to the U.S. dropped by 35.2% in April 2025 compared to the same time last year, while air travel declined 19.9%, marking one of the most significant cross-border travel retreats in recent memory” And it gets to be worse, for that we look towards the story (at https://www.cubaenmiami.com/en/expertos-temen-por-las-perdidas-economicas-que-pueden-traer-la-reciente-disminucion-del-numero-de-turistas-internacionales-en-estados-unidos/) there we get “According to a report by Oxford Economics, unfavorable perceptions regarding trade and immigration policies are causing international tourists to choose other destinations, which could result in an $8.5 billion drop in foreign visitor spending in the United States this year. The decline in travel, which represents a roughly 5% drop compared to the previous year, is due to a decrease in foot traffic. According to Aran Ryan, head of industry research at Tourism Economics, an affiliate of Oxford Economics, international visits to the United States are expected to decline by nearly 9% this year, according to a report released last week.” This is not all, in addition we see “The United States could experience a loss of $21 billion in tourism-related revenue this year if current trends continue, according to estimates by the U.S. Travel Association. According to the trade group, every 1% reduction in international tourist spending represents an annual loss of $1.8 billion for the U.S. economy. Furthermore, experts indicated that a strong U.S. dollar could be driving away international visitors.” Even though only Canada is ‘sifted’ out, the European losses could be close to equally large. I saw this yesterday in a YouTube video on the Epic Universe. The literal quote was “There is no-one here” and this is in the opening month of one of the most desirable theme parks I have ever seen. The damage could be a little bigger than the news we are getting. I saw two restaurants where little to no people are seen and in one case they were the only customer. This is a sight I have never have seen before in any theme parks and this one looks a lot better then most I ever saw with my own eyes. I don’t wish this on anyone and where are the people going? Well, my bet is that Abu Dhabi in the UAE on Yas Island will be raking in the cash. The people decided on another place and as Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand decide to seek greener grounds the sands of the United Arab Emirates might be the greenest grass of all. Even as we get one source giving us that “Walt Disney secures future of Euro Disney with €1bn refinancing”, I am drawn to the setting that this is not the destination of many who abandoned the idea of getting theme park rushes in America. I guessed that these people might be going towards Tokyo and its Universal, but the drop of 4% gives me pause to dig deeper there and I am considering that most went to the UAE and the numbers from Gulf Business (kinda) prove me correctly with “International visits to the theme parks also saw significant growth, with a 40 per cent, rise, led by a substantial increase from key markets, including India, China, the UK and Russia” and there I wonder if they investigated the stream of Canadian and European visitors. Yet 40% increase is not nothing, it is huge, especially as America is looking to a drop of well over $21,000,000,000 in business and that is not including all the bed and breakfast and fast food locations that usually see a much larger interest during these days. The tariff and 51st state mentions will be taking its toll on America a lot sooner than they think. I reckon that European (Australians too) will decide that Canada is a much better place to be than America, as such this coming winter Aspen will dealing with a zero minutes queue time at the slopes. This means that America is looking towards a two dreadful seasons, summer and winter. We can speculate how large this becomes, but there is no real data on this and the bulk of the people will not see these results until springtime 2026. Anything earlier is loaded with inaccuracies as the data they have been training on was never captured to the degree it needed and some form of forecasting analysis (the process of using historical data, trends, and statistical methods to predict future outcomes) as it is based on achieved data and this has never happened before in America going back to the before the 80’s, as such there is no forecasting settings and it needs to be done on actual data captured now, and these results are not looking good. Even if it is a ‘mere’ 21 billion, over 8-9 states the impact is nothing short of disastrous and America was never in that great a shape anyway. This is propagated by the real time risk of two nations dumping their bonds before they have the value of toilet paper (yes, China and Japan) and even whilst Japan has the largest amount and they are hanging on, they do know that if China is pushed to dumping their bonds, Japan will be racing to get there as son as possible, merely to safe some of their value. Considering the escalations that the BBC reported on a mere 10 hours ago, there is a chance (a small one) that China will respond by dumping the US Treasury bonds they have and that is pretty much a sequential set in ending the American economy. This America Administration will not be able to recover from that and whilst the Chinese portfolio is set to US$765.4 billion, which is 20 billion than a month ago. They might be gambling that Japan tries to drop their $1.13 trillion ($1,300,000,000,000) bond, especially as their own debt is now a debt-to-GDP at 260% and the Bank of Japan already owning more than half of outstanding Japanese government bonds, as it seems (according to people with the economic knowledge and foresight) that Japan is boxed in. Should China dump their bonds they could gain America and Japan at the same time. A sight never seen before in our history. So what does this have to do with tourism? Everything. You see if America cannot pay its debts, America becomes the third world country no one wants to visit and that makes it a nasty place within months. America has around 22 million millionaires. I recon that at least 15 million will get out in time, the rest is not ‘rich’ enough and those with a jet (around 15,000 of them) will go to any country that will take them and they will move fast. The rest? That is anyones guess. It reminds me of that B-movie where the wealthy and refuge in a theme park as it is the only one with enough food and security to make it last. But that is an overly dark (and unrealistic) setting. What is a given that these people will seek a safer haven, because America won’t be one for decades to come. 

Still, the first setting is tourism and that setting is under increasing pressures. And as I personally see it, it wasn’t President Trump who set this of, it was the short sighted views (my personal take on this) of Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis who chased away $1,000,000,000 in investment settings in Florida, that was the start. We saw a whole lot of anti woke and anti LGTBQ settings making Europeans (and likely Canadians) weary of safety issues in Florida, which would have impacted both Disney, Universal and Warner Brothers. That was as I saw it the start and the tariffs merely escalated that setting. The damage would have been horrific if Warner Brothers Abu Dhabi had started their Harry Potter park expansion a year earlier, yet as it stands it is now kinda set for a late 2026 opening. And as Disney is coming there too the bad news for Florida keeps on adding to the larger picture. That and as the UAE is one of the safest places in the world, the appeal of the UAE is easily spotted. That is besides the fact that Abu Dhabi has 4 theme parts and one of the largest luxurious malls in the world (right behind the Dubai Mall). The additional setting that you can travel from Abu Dhabi to Dubai in a mere 30 minutes by train, the appeal is close to complete. The zero tax setting that the UAE offers is a mere cherry on their yummy pie.

That is what American tourism was facing all along and now with the tariff wars the escalations are debilitating whatever was left of American tourism future, because if you are willing to fly to Florida, the idea that flying to the UAE for close to the same amount would be a desiring call for any tourist that wants something new.  So if you want to dress up, you might as well try an Emirati Kandura, looking good and looking different, having that real vacation feeling that you might never have had before.

Have a great day and consider where you might want to go and where you could go, especially for those who are sick of Americans referring to Canada as the 51st state and the Europeans who are not too happy on America annexing 2.166 million km².

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May 28, 2025 · 02:15

The call for investors

That is at present the larger setting, everyone wants investors and they all tend to promise the calf with golden horns. As I see it, investing in gold mining, Oil mining and a few others are near dead certain return on investments. The larger group that will seemingly want to invest in AI, the new hype word. Still, considering that Builder.ai went from a billion plus to zilch is a nice example what  Microsoft backed solutions tend to give. You see, the larger picture that everyone is ignoring is that it was baked by Microsoft. Now, this might be OK, because Microsoft is a tech company. But consider that Builder.ai (previous known as Engineer.ai) was supposed to be all ‘good’, yet the media now reports ‘Builder.ai Collapsed After Finding Sales ‘Inflated By 300 Percent’’ This leads me to believe that there was  larger problem with this DML/LLM solution. Another source gives us ‘Builder.ai’s Collapse Exposes Deceptive AI Claims, Shocking Major Investors’ and another source gives us ‘Builder.ai collapse exposes dangers of ‘FOMO investing’ in AI’ yet that is nothing compared to what I said on November 16th 2024 in ‘Is it a public service’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/11/16/is-it-a-public-service/) where I stated ““a US strategy to prevent a Chinese military tech grab in the Gulf region” and it is my insight that this is a clicking clock. One tick, one tock leading to one mishap and Microsoft pretty much gives the store to China. And with that Aramco laughingly watches from the sidelines. There is no if in question. This becomes a mere shifting timeline and with every day that timeline becomes a lot more worrying.” With the added “But several sources state “There are several reasons why General AI is not yet a reality. However, there are various theories as to what why: The required processing power doesn’t exist yet. As soon as we have more powerful machines (or quantum computing), our current algorithms will help us create a General AI” or to some extent. Marketing the spin of AI does not make it so.” You see, the entire DML/LLM is not AI, as we can see from the builder.ai setting (a little presumptuous) of me, but the setting that we get inflated sales and then the Register ended their article with “The fact that it wasn’t able to convince enough customers to pay it enough money to stay solvent should give pause to those who see generative AI as a replacement for junior developers. As the experience of the unfortunate Microsoft staffers having to deal with the GitHub Copilot Agent shows, the technology still has some way to go. One day it might surpass a mediocre intern able to work a search engine, but that day is not today.” Is perhaps merely part of the problem the “the technology still has some way to go” is astute and to the point, but it is not the larger problem. It reminded me of the old market research setting, take a bucket of data and let MANOVA sort it out. The idea that a layman can sort it out is hilarious. I have met over the last half a century less than a dozen people who know that they were doing. These people are extremely rare. So whenever I hear a student tell me that they had a good solution with MANOVA, my eyes were tearing with howls of deriving laughter. And now we see a similar setting. But the larger setting is not merely the coded setting of DML and LLM. It is the stage where data is either not verified or verified in the most shallow of situations. And now consider that stage with a 500 billion solution. Data is everything there and verification is one part of that key, a key too many are seeing aside because it is not sexy enough. 

And now we get to the investors who are in “Fear Of Missing Out”, for them I have a consolation price. You see, RigZone gave me (at https://www.rigzone.com/news/adnoc_suppliers_pledge_817mm_investment_for_uae_manufacturing-27-may-2025-180646-article/) hours ago ‘ADNOC Suppliers Pledge $817MM Investment for UAE Manufacturing’, and as I see it Oil is a near certainty of achieving ROI, and as everyone is chasing the AI dream (which of course does not exist yet) those greedy hungry money people are looking away from the certainty piggybank (as I personally see it) and that kind of investment for manufacturing will bring products, sellable products and in the petrochemical industry that is like butter with the fish. A near certainty on investment. I prefer the expression ‘near certainty’ as there is always some risk, yet as I see it, ARAMCO and ADNOC are setting the bar of achievement high enough to get that done and as I see it “ADNOC said the facilities are situated throughout the Industrial City of Abu Dhabi (ICAD), Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi (KEZAD), Dubai Industrial Park, Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA), Sharjah Airport International Free Zone (SAIF Zone), and Umm Al Quwain. They will generate over 3,500 high-skilled jobs in the private sector and produce a diverse array of industrial goods such as pressure vessels, pipe coatings, and fasteners.” As such the only danger is that ADNOC will not be able to fill the positions and that is at present the easiest score to settle. 

So as we see the call for investors coming from the sound of a dozen bugles, remember that the old premise that getting the call from a setting that works beats the golden horns that some promise and the investors will need another setting (or so I figure). And in the end, the larger question is why builder.ai was backed inn the first place. Microsoft has a setting with OpenAI and as one source gives me “Microsoft and OpenAI have a significant partnership, where Microsoft is a major investor and supports OpenAI’s advancements, and OpenAI provides access to powerful language models through Microsoft’s Azure platform. This partnership enables Azure OpenAI Service, which provides access to OpenAI’s models for businesses, and it also includes a revenue-sharing agreement.” I cannot vouch for the source, but the idea is when this is going on, why go to it with builder.ai? And was builder.ai vetted? The entire setting is raising more questions than I normally would have (sellers have their own agenda and including Microsoft in this is ‘to them’ a normal setting) I do not oppose that, but when we see this interaction, I wonder how dangerous that Stargate will be and $500,000,000,000 ain’t hay. 

And going back to ADNOC we see “ADNOC’s commercial agreements under the In-Country Value (ICV) program have enabled facilities that allow businesses to benefit from diverse commercial opportunities, the company said. The ICV program aims to manufacture AED90 billion ($24.5 billion) worth of products locally in its procurement pipeline by 2030.” More impressive is the quote “ADNOC’s ICV program has contributed AED242 billion ($65.8 million) to the UAE economy and created 17,000 jobs for UAE nationals since 2018, according to the company.” You see, such a move makes sense as the UAE produces 3.22 million barrels per day, that has been achieved from 2024 onward and some say that they exceeded their quota (by how much is unknown to me). But that makes sense as an investment, the entire fictive AI setting does not and ever since the builder.ai setting it makes a lot less sense, if not for the simple reason that no one can clearly state where that billion plus went, oh and how many investments collapsed and who were those investors. Simple questions really.

Have a great day and try not to chase too many Edsel’s with your investment portfolio.

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May 21, 2025 · 19:28

What’s in a brand?

That is at times the question. Most of the world was to sink their claws into Saudi Arabia and we see all kinds of settings, some speculative, some going for the worst. The truth is that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on the rise. Not merely because they are doing well (they really are), but the massive secondary reason is that they are a no-debt zone, just as the UAE is. So as we se that America is $46 trillion in debt, the EU has a debt of 14 trillion euro and Japan has a $9 trillion debt. Yet as the Telegraph a mere three hours ago gave us all ‘‘Worse than Greece’: The debt crisis threatening to blow up the global economy’ (at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/21/trump-sparked-debt-crisis-could-blow-up-global-economy/) the truth is (speculative) that I personal believe that America is in a worse state, even as the America administration is in denial and the media is massively avoiding reporting on it. I personally think that the network of Stake holders is con spiritually involved as well. As I see it (based on the work of Cathryn van Kessel) that ‘(Con)spirituality as a curriculum of immortality’ is set to “If we are listening to marketing hype, it seems that—with enough money—we can live longer, healthier lives. These products, however, are often no more than consumerist swindling steeped in pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality. When viewed through the lens of terror management theory (TMT), mitigating the harms of (con)spiritual grifts is more than a problem of a lack of scientific literacy, anti-consumer education, and media literacy.” My personal view is set to the premise of “mitigating the harms of (con)spiritual grifts is more than a problem of a lack of scientific literacy, anti-consumer education, and media literacy, it is a (sort of) given setting that the stakeholders are dwindling the settings of parameters and changing the premise of given values, creating confusing hype settings” This is merely a personal view, but it seemingly fits the patterns we see, or tend to recognise.

So as such we see “Because the assets that the country holds are still far more valuable than the debts. All the land, mineral rights, water, etc.” and this shows the pressures to add Greenland and Canada to America, as such they wouldn’t be considered bankrupt. Another version is “Because debt payments are still manageable” but here time is running out, as such the Trump administration is playing the bully card on Canada and Greenland. But here the dance becomes a problem as Canada is not giving in as it is part of the Commonwealth. And that is why Keir Starmer as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is being catered to by the EU as the WU is in a similar predicament and the UK ‘re-joining’ the EU, the EU ends up with a credit card that gets renewed value. But the larger truth is that time for these three are running out and as such they are courtesan themselves to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And now we see the larger setting that the article ‘Saudi brands reach $116.8 billion in value fueled by energy, banking, and telecoms sectors’ (at https://brandfinance.com/press-releases/saudi-brands-reach-116-8-billion-in-value-fuelled-by-energy-banking-and-telecoms-sectors) gives us, and the values we see are “STC (brand value up 16% to USD16.1 billion)”, it is number two. Number one is Aramco (of course) and that is oil and I didn’t want to ‘taint’ the setting. After that we get “Almarai (brand value up 20% to USD4.7 billion)” but the third one is the kicker “Saudia (brand value up 34% to USD1.1 billion)” and here is the setting of three out of the ten that these are brands that have a 16%, 20% and 34% growth, totally unheard of in western settings and as such everyone wants in. Wall Street pretty much demand these new settings, but this is not on Wall Street, as such several brands (including me) are pretty desperate to get in. And I have made a few unsuccessful moves and I will totally try to do so again and again. I told a previous boss a few years ago that they had to get there now, now the going is good. But alas, it fell on deaf ears and now as brands in the EU, US and Japan are getting desperate we will see a total new stage of in-fighting and spading their opponents. But as they diminish one another, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will get the cream of the crop at a mere 65% of the total value, because the desperate will sucker themselves to get into the game as early as possible, hoping that the going is good early in the game. I get that, I would feel the same way (as a non-captain of industry that I merely my view) and now that China is entering these fields as well, the west is desperate to get in.

And at present we see little to no evidence how three players can have a cumulative debt of $70 trillion dollars. This is $70,000,000,000,000. Did you ever consider that the debt of these three is more than all the gold in the world? How is that possible? Is it because these three have the assets, because the debt is manageable? We think that we can all be a millionaire as long as we can couch up $55,000 in interest every year, but that is a debt without an end date, you pay as long as you live and that is not a realistic setting but these governments are telling you that story with the assistance of stakeholders (who get their own revenue out of that), yet at that point we ned to consider that you are a millionaire at $55,000 plus whatever the stakeholder charges and now it get to be a little iffy (aka yucky). It is a setting that is delusional, as such they all (desperately) need to be part of the Saudi branding, yet as I see it the Saudi’s have another view, you see STC gave us in 2024 “In 2023, we expanded our global footprint even further by acquiring a 9.9% interest in Telefonica and launching TAWAL operations in three European countries. Over the past year, STC Group has focused on diversifying our global offer to connect people across countries and continents.” They gave us that in March 2024, and the sphere of influence of Saudi Arabia is expanding. So whilst by an expected 2029 we might see brand X, but it is fueling STC for a larger and larger slice of the pie. As such it will all be co-owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and this is not white washing. It is merely business and these stakeholders will turn to the needs of their own paychecks more and more. 

And this is not a dream story, it is not a nightmare story. It is about to become the reality of things and as such our paychecks go in part not to Telefonica, it will go to Tawal and through that to the STC. A simple business setting and for the most the media is will not inform you, it adheres to the needs of shareholders, stake holder and advertisers. 

This is the power of branding and whilst we think that Nike, Lululemon and Jaguar are great brands, there is an underlying setting that the cool car is owned by Natarajan Chandrasekaran (chairman and Managing Director) and Saurabh Agrawal (CFO) (to some degree). And now we see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expanding in all kinds of directions. In this I kinda set that stage in ‘An altering stage’ which I wrote on October 2nd 2023. I used the word ‘kinda’ as the focus was China and I wrote “It is a summary and you should read it. It shows several elements that are taking the world by storm. It is not “As shown in the latest IMF annual review of the country’s economy, progress has been most notably reflected in non-oil growth, which has accelerated since 2021, averaging 4.8 percent in 2022. Despite lower overall growth reflecting additional oil production cuts, non-oil growth will remain close to 5 percent in 2023, spurred by strong domestic demand.” We get the goods here, but it is “The economy’s non-oil growth has been spurred by strong domestic demand, particularly private non-oil investment. Sustaining this performance requires pursuing sound macroeconomic policies and maintaining the reform momentum, irrespective of developments in oil markets.” Even if the stage is not revealed, when combined with other views we see that ‘strong domestic demand’ is merely one string from the harp of economy, the harp of Saudi economy. What matters is that larger streams involving defence, technology, construction, tourism and services are ALL moving towards Chinese shores. We see some of it now, but that list is rapidly expanding and the next US vote is 45 days away with them having to brood on a loss of billions and it will be a lot more than 1 billion.” Which was a slightly different setting than the IMF reported on and I saw that two years ago. It is the story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/10/02/an-altering-stage/) which gives the goods, so consider that I had this at that point, so why didn’t the media see this over the last 17 months? Consider that before you lash out and wonder who you should blame. 

Too many of us are kept in the dark and you should wonder why. You see I am not an economist or some savant. Yet I know data and I have parsed data for decades, and I saw a long time ago that the numbers didn’t add up. So wonder how the media could have missed it all. You were merely given slithers of data and until you consider the larger picture (which the bulk of the media will not give you) wonder why and it is not that it was to complex. As I personally consider the setting is that stake holders are part of the deception. Their cheques are too fat, so they like this game how it is played and they have been playing it for years. 

Have a great day and remember, don’t trust all you read, verify the data you are given, even my data. I am not telling you to trust my data. If anything I am a little like Fox Mulder (from the X-Files) and trust no one, not even me. 

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