Tag Archives: UAE

Mining Rites

We all have these moments that we think we know, we are certain to know what we face, yet the truth is we do not. It happens to us all, you, me and those around us. This is not a new thing, this has been happening for the better part of 30 years. Most Americans ignore it and hide behind the ‘Fake it till you make it’ slogan, whilst they jump left, right and backwards to give the imaginative view that they know what they are doing. The setting is merely hilarious when we look at the events knowing that they do not know anything at all. That is the moment you can watch the train wreck move forwards whilst you relax and watch the collateral damage unfold. Weirdly enough it is not unlike Super 8 (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL_6gA_BVtA, from 04:00), one scene that sets the stage for the entire movie. I think it is the greatest train wreck ever produced and we are viewing what happens, knowing what happens, yet until the end, the actual reason why we faced it in the first place remains a question mark.

This all shows the stage that we have faced in the last 10 years in IT, as well as what the car makers face now in the stage of ‘Stricken car makers stall at the crossroads of a radical future‘. It is not merely the stage of cars, there is (what I personally would call) some case of delusion that people are actually waiting for 27 models. I agree that there are some who feel that way, but the bulk of people are clueless of what makes a good car, they merely want a car that looks really nice (and is safe, and is regarded as cool). Yes, most of us all want the Jaguar XF or the Maserati Gran Turismo, but it is not financially feasible. So some go the route of the Japanese model, some seek American and some go in another direction (there are so many), and still we see the fight by offering dozens of models, most will never ever be the great model we were all seeking. It does open doors and at times we do see a niche, like the Abarth, a modernised Fiat 500 (personal opinion) and for functional reasons it is a great choice to get quickly in the city and find a place to park, which is still the number one villain in the life of a car.

But it is not about cars, the jump will make sense a little later. You see last week we saw the escalations of some Saudi Teenager and the news was all over it, The Washington Post gives us the new life of escaped ‘Rahaf Mohammed’, with ‘For teen who fled Saudi Arabia, a new life in Canada starts with a new name‘, oh it is all over the news on how evil Saudi Arabia has lost a victim to freedom. We see the news with papers in nearly every country giving light to the plight of this poor young lady. She escaped! So, when the dust settles and we realise that she got on a plane to somewhere else, whilst I was not able to afford a plane ride until I was close to 23, in a place where I was never in danger, when you realise that and you also realise that the news is steering clear of Yemen, where we learned in the last week that “Houthi rebel and Yemeni government representatives did not meet face-to-face in the port city of Hodeidah over the past week“, and that the simplest part where we are notified of: “Since MASAM was launched in June, 2018, a total of 26,609 mines planted by the Iranian-backed Houthi militias in the territories, schools, and homes across Yemen were removed“, in addition sources inform us of: “the project – launched with an initial budget of $40 million with an aim to achieve a landmine-free Yemen – still has to tackle a total of 600,000 mines planted in liberated areas by the Houthi militias. This includes 130,000 internationally banned sea mines, 40,000 mines in Marib and 16,000 mines on the island of Mayon alone“. This is what we get from Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, the Supervisor General of KS Relief. So as we are seemingly all about bashing Saudi Arabia through misrepresentation, we seem to also bash people, without actual evidence mind you, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia regarding the events surrounding Jamal Khashoggi, even as no evidence has been presented to the people. The media has been hiding behind ‘seemingly‘, ‘inside sources told us‘ and ‘according to the latest information‘, the bulk of the matter does not hold up to scrutiny in any court of law, our laws mind you!

The media whoring like second hand car salesman (and sales woman) all voicing the news according to populist belief. It seems that the world is now afraid of Saudi Arabia. Not because of their might, or military options, but because in the first, Saudi Arabia is making moves to technological advances that is leaving the United Stated behind, and as US players are hiding behind fake 5G options (AT&T) as Forbes gives us: ‘CES 2019: AT&T CEO Hypes ‘Fake’ 5G Evolution Network Causing Confusion Among Consumers‘ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/01/15/ces-2019-att-ceo-hypes-fake-5g-evolution-network-creating-confusion-among-consumers), where we are treated to more and more deception, Even as the article gives us “To make matters worse, AT&T is currently in the process of deploying two real 5G networks, branded “5G” and “5G+”, the latter being faster than 5G. Confused? Wait, there’s more. A little known regional wireless carrier, Redzone Wireless launched over a year ago “5Gx” (no, it’s not 5G, just branding like AT&T), a fixed wireless service in Maine” at the end, we need to realise that some parties are done for, stupidity got them there and that is where we see a different setting in Saudi Arabia (as well as the UAE). We see that the auctions of true 5G are in place, the market is growing and now we see that true 5G, not the AT&T or the Redzone version are set to technologically boom the stage in the Middle East, the nations that the Western European nations have been looking down on for generations, is now equaling and surpassing that so called free western world. This also is the fear of Iran, who seemingly has a deal with the western world to not be mentioned, to be given a clear pass, the entire landmine debacle and how the western media is avoiding covering it is clear evidence of that. Consider that Yemen is roughly the same size as Germany, when we are told that there are still ‘600,000 mines to tackle‘, when we see that, every newspaper in the world would be all over it, but no, it is Yemen, no one actually cares, especially now that Lady Diana Spencer is dead. The media cannot get a nice image of that, can they?

so now see the ‘plight’ of a Saudi Teenager versus the plight of King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre, via the services of Doctor Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah who is truly trying to make life in Yemen better by trying to remove another 600,000 mines, after they had already removed thousands of mines, making Yemen at least safe to walk in, mines planted by Iranian supported Houthi’s. Because the clear message is not that the Houthi forces planted the mines, the fact that they never had the resources or funds to get them in the first place, the Iranians were part of that entire mess, but the media is not asking those questions either, how is that acceptable? Has the world gone Anti-Saudi Arabia? What right do we have to be Anti-Saudi? So far they are proving to be more innovative, better prepared and more eager to be the main player in a technological world that is now based on deception and marketing in America. How should we accept a sliding scale of value of this size and nature? And should you doubt my news (always an option) then please Google ‘King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre’ and see how many western publications have given any notion of the trucks filled with relief goods for the people of Yemen, aid to Jordanian refugee centres and heating fuel and gas cylinders for cooking distributed to ten thousand refugees, as well as 2100 tonnes of food for displaced Nigerian refugees. It seems to me that the western world as well as the Christian world is lagging in many places, on many levels, all this whilst the transgressors are not held to any account. So when was the last time that you considered the death of Jamal Khashoggi in a nation where that nation leads the world list in jailed journalists in the first place and let’s not forget that this is the nation that jailed Pelin Ünker for well over a year for looking into the Panama Papers, she was found guilty of ‘defamation and insult’ for writing about companies owned by former PM. Is that it? Were the allegations true, were the Panama Papers correct? Was Tax evasion proven, or was it merely illuminated tax avoidance?

We seem to give a clear path to the wrong people, the wrong ideals (like Tax Avoidance) and we see to be painting the wrong parties all whilst the western world is desperate to make a deal with Iran, a deal that could optionally be proven to be the worst investment in the history of the world soon thereafter.

A place that is making future history by building a city 32 times the size of New York, a feat never attempted before in history. So how do we react? Do we cheer these people for trying the impossible? No, we try to burn whatever relations Saudi Arabia has, so that it could never ever surpass the achievements of America, a place in lockdown over a bloody wall between America and Mexico, give me a break please!

Yet the EU still tries to keep some EU ties with Turkey, the EU still wants some nuclear deal with Iran, two bad ideas in a place where the evidence is showing us that these two are never to be trusted, that these two are all about breaking deals, and in all this the EU also slams Saudi Arabia every chance it gets whilst keeping Iran and Houthi connection under illuminated, just like they keep silent on Iranian and Hezbollah connections, Perhaps you have heard about Hezbollah, the terrorist organisation. So why keep that out of the news whenever they can? In that Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, a teenager who apparently still had the money to fly to Sydney Australia via Bangkok. Yes that news did reach the press in every newspaper. I do not judge Rahaf for her actions, I merely show you all that the media is using whatever they can to fill the space of media so that they can misrepresent the world for the needs of the large corporate needs, like bad second hand car salesman, they are voicing merely what they think that we want to hear and the actual news? That is a fairy tale for those who seemingly do not matter.

Also consider the final part of Ernest Moniz, who in October 2018 was quoted with: “Former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said on Wednesday he has suspended his role on the board of Saudi Arabia’s planned mega city NEOM until more is known about the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared on Oct. 2 after visiting a Saudi consulate in Turkey“, an action that seemingly made sense at the time, whilst a mere three days ago we see: “Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization on Sunday highlighted his country had started taking initial measures to develop a 20%-enriched fuel for use in nuclear reactors, Tansim reported“, Ernest Moniz is happy to be part of a mining community like Iran who provided the 600,000+ mines that Saudi Arabia is trying to clear is evidence of that. Now also consider that ‘all HEU can be used to make nuclear weapons‘, and the threshold between LEU (Low enriched) and weapons grade starts at 20%, so in this we see a (what I would personally regard) as a hypocrite like Ernest Moniz (my personal view on the matter) who is willing to stand in Iran stating (in posture and theory) that there is no danger with 20% enriched Uranium, making him the new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who in 1933 came back from a meeting with Adolf Hitler stating: ‘Peace for our time‘, do you remember how that ended?

We are focussing on fictive dangers and the real ones are at all of our doors, we need to consider the actions that we allow our politicians to make in our names, in an age of unemployment, in an age of technological impasse, we are listening to greed inclines car salesman who have no clue, merely the knowledge that they need their bonus, their bonus shares and personal profit and we all forget that there are real dangers and real people like Doctor Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah trying to deal with those dangers, but the media won’t allow us to find out those truths to a larger degree.

You tell me who is right, you merely have to properly Google these searches and they are out in the open for anyone curious enough to learn more.

 

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Nationalisation, the second tier

The news is fresh, it is new news, yet it was foreseen, it wasn’t really news, but the drive has come visible, much more visible than most expected. As some might focus on the Guardian and the image of a beautiful young lady as she is afraid for her life, as she seeks refugee status in Australia, we see all the men and many women feeling sorry for Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun. It might be correct, it might not. I do not know, yet what the Guardian is not telling you is seen in the Arab News (at http://www.arabnews.com/node/1431206/saudi-arabia), there the news is: ‘Saudi Arabia goes full steam with Saudisation of sales jobs‘. I think it is good that any nation pushes for national held jobs, no matter what country it is happening in. So as we read: “Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Labor and Social Development announced on Sunday that it would be providing citizens with job opportunities in an attempt to reduce unemployment. The job opportunities will be in sales roles, including medical equipment stores, construction and building materials shops, car spare parts shops, carpet shops and sweets shops, according to Saudi state news agency, SPA.” I think it is good that the news is seen, yet what about the impact? It is not a national thing, it is regional, Oman is doing the same, Qatar has been doing it for a while and the UAE is on a similar trend. If it works it is great, yet what everyone forgets is the announcements of 6 months ago, this basically impacts Google, Apple and a few other players (the FAANG group as a whole) as they were opening their offices in Saudi Arabia as well, so from the Saudi view it is great to be Saudi. Many people all over the world dream of a Google job and now we see that Saudi’s are added to that knowledge pool. And that is what it is a knowledge pool that can drive Arabian IP to a much larger extent. In light of Neom City, in light of new Financial Districts in Riyadh, we see the opportunity for growth, yet do these events constitute actual growth as that question is equally important.

If we accept the same news two days ago (at http://www.arabnews.com/node/1430961/business-economy), we see that the headlines might give us ‘CEO of Saudi Arabia’s newest technology investment fund STV shoots for the moon‘, we might giggle, yet perhaps that same feeling came upon us when in 2001 a man named Mark Zuckerberg had an idea, how did that end? We can also consider that as Abdulrahman Tarabzouni is a MIT graduate, so he optionally has a better education than Mark Zuckerberg had (Harvard), which is me, myself and I starting a competitive flame between those two schools. The nice part here is that the STV (the investment fund) has half a billion to start with, so they can cream the best start-ups to truly grow their perspective and turn it into billions of wealth, if properly set their idea of a hundred times over might be conservative. We tend to not look into those directions, yet the ownership of IP is not merely an essential it is a wealth maker and a wealth breaker and as an MIT graduate he would (read: should) be able to see the difference between the wheat and chaff, it makes for all the difference.

Even as the Arab News introduces in opposition: “Some analysts point to two difficulties in the STV strategy: The high valuations of the global technology sector, and the comparatively high levels of geopolitical risk associated with the region, and the Kingdom, in the minds of some foreign investors.” We need to recognise that being first implies the avoidance of ‘high valuations of the global technology sector‘, the second part is ‘geopolitical risk associated with the region‘; that second part might not be zero, yet there is no clear danger to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in addition as the footing of Iran diminishes the growth of Saudi Arabia will flourish, as well as the fact that the involvement and connections of Abdulrahman Tarabzouni with Saudi Aramco, Careem, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Microsoft, Syphir tech company, Google, Member of investment committee, Middle East Venture Partners, as well as advisory roles at public and technology institutions in KSA, it would be my personal believe that if this person cannot navigate the rivers of political risk, no one would ever be safe to invest in Saudi Arabia and as we see billions from the FAANG group go that way soon enough, we can pretty much consider the second risk a dud in all that (for now).

The progress that Saudi Arabia is showing in 5G, now equalling the largest players on the western hemisphere shows not only the commitment for the Middle East, it shows that Saudi Arabia is taking the non-petroleum options extremely serious. It goes even further when we consider the news a mere 4 hours ago: “T-Mobile CEO to regulators: China is beating US on fast 5G wireless but our Sprint deal can change that“, how exactly will that happen? Merging Sprint and T-Mobile sounds nice, but they still lack higher technology equipment, Huawei beat them and the longer these players remain in denial, the larger the damage and that is where the STV can cash in. Any Huawei linked technology start-up has close to a 20% advantage over anything else. Let’s not forget that players like Verizon are not really using 5G, or as they say 5G Evolution, which I discussed in ‘Tic Toc Ruination‘, where we see: “We are given “Verizon’s network is not yet 3GPP compliant. It uses Verizon’s own 5G specification, but will be upgraded to be 3GPP compliant in the future“, so does that mean that it is merely a Verizon issue opening the market for Sprint, or are they both involved in that same pool of marketed pool to some form of ‘5G’ branding, and not the standard?” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/06/tic-toc-ruination/), something clearly seen from various sources a month ago, so how was their technology backdrop solved? It was not! I made additional observations in ‘That did not take long‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/22/that-did-not-take-long-2/) where we see: “we are (again) confronted with what Neville Ray CTO of T-Mobile calls: ‘duping customers into thinking they’re getting something they’re not‘, America will not end dead last here, but they will be trailing (as currently is implied) behind more than one Middle East Arabic nation“, an observation I made on December 22nd last year, so not only am I proven right a few times over, the fact that for what I observe to be high paid people hiding behind presentations and wording whilst not having the actual goods is merely the facade of defeat presenting itself as ‘innovative opportunity‘, so we are watching these people heralding their Edsel whilst it is about to go up against the Maserati Gran Turismo and optionally the Mercedes-Maybach S 650 Sedan as well, and in what Universe does the Edsel have any kind of a chance? Parking perhaps (it is not that big) but how can you see innovative technology as innovation when parking is your only way to shine?

the sad part is that I have been talking to stone walls for 2 years now, the upside is that when they fail I have the documentation showing just how stupid they have been, and the end is nowhere in sight. I prepared issues on optional 5G tourism, cyber protection and a few other places that will really open up the valves of disgust from consumers when they are confronted with the impact on their daily lives. Even outside of governmental infrastructures Huawei is set in a stage where they have billions in optional business in both information and SME environment. The large presentation based players (like 5G Evolution) were so intent on pushing the large infrastructure that they forgot that actual business comes from other area’s and when the first sale is done, they are merely left with the stage where they wait for consumers to catch up, that part is no longer a given. We see part of that (at https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Trends/CES-2019-to-offer-glimpse-of-future-for-5G-AI-and-Huawei), where we are treated to: “About 4,500 companies are set to take part in this year’s CES, which continues to expand beyond consumer electronics as tech pervades once-mechanical industries like automotives. China now stands out in developing and applying both 5G and AI technologies. A decade ago, Japanese home electronics makers had a substantial presence in the Central Hall, an area packed with big-name companies. But as they have lost prominence, Chinese companies have emerged to fill the gap. Huawei Technologies, Alibaba Group Holding and Haier Group will all have exhibits in the Central Hall.” This matters as it is direct visibility; this is the direct stage in Las Vegas and its CES2019, people will get to see 4500 companies and some there proclaiming to equal Huawei, yet less than 5 will optionally have something to show the people on that level and I am speculating that they merely equal Huawei at best and this is one month before the Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona where Huawei is set to take the centre stage and most of the attention. We cannot speculate what we will see exactly, but we will know on Sunday 24th February, and we will then optionally see the Samsung 5G router (not Mobile) and optionally several 5G mobiles, yet at that point we can use the dictionary torpedoes to sink that hype seeking content, contant that we have been exposed to from several sources. That part is not only visible, the results as shown by one source, gives us that AT&T is just not up to scrap at present.

Even as I have no real confirmation on how accurate the results are (so be aware of that), we are shown what PC Mag gave the people earlier and with the cautionary footnote (as would be appropriate): “remember that these are just test speeds ant that they will most likely improve with time. More importantly, there are still no 5G smartphones available yet, so these tests in the AT&T 5G network are just part of a process“, the fact that we see the results as in the image are bad, really really bad for a 5G environment!

From my point of view, test or not, their 5G should have knocked it out of the park leaving us with the entire 5G Evolution bit as what I personally would see as a sham, not a champ.

Nationalisation is only as good as the goods you have and in this the partnership with Huawei was essential and at present more and more technologists are stating the same thing. So those with a Huawei partnership will leave the others behind them on a larger scale in several layers and structural foundational flaws, the impact when the others cannot deliver will be fun to see, especially to mock on a daily foundation. I reckon that we have that right when we are treated to bloated presentations where we are left in the dust with the message: ‘It is great to be a consumer, in this age‘. Do not worry, we have his number and will point out that flaw soon enough several times.

We are finally seeing the impact of iterative technology versus frog leaping ahead. The iterative players will soon diminish, so from the Saudi point of view, they did bet on the right horse and that impact will give them multiple victories soon enough. You see, do you still think that the larger players will stay in a place with inferior abilities? When exactly was that ever an option for those who wanted to stay in the major leagues of technology?

 

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Diànhuà X2 (Xīnchē xíng)

This is not a name, it is not a brand and it is not a weapon system, Diànhuà is Chinese for ‘telephone’ plain and simple. The issue is that we need to start learning words that we normally never would have learned. Anyone who has spent time in a dojo in Eastern China (aka Japan) or perhaps in Thailand or in Indonesia knows this. You see when you start your path in Karate you learn the word ‘構え’, and you think, ‘I am learning the secrets of the universe‘ and that is how it feels, yet in Japanese it merely means ‘stance’ and that is what you did. In Pencak Silat, we learn the word ‘Pukul’, which translated Indonesian comes over as ‘Hit it’, which is exactly what you did; you punched it/him/her.

Simplicity is key here and what we might consider to be gibberish actually makes sense soon after we take more than 10 minutes of effort to see what information we are confronted with. When we start looking closer at the Huawei issues we see a lot to be concerned about. Not unlike Jeffrey Sachs, I had my issues with the Huaweian executive arrested in Canada. Apart from the fact that the United States does not get to set policy for other nations, the fact that China has economic ties to some degree with Iran also implies that Huawei would have had optional business with Iran.

Oh, and before you think that the US has its ducks in a row, you might want to look at the business partners (read: personal friends) of Vagit Alekperov (LUKoil) and look at their whereabouts in the last 5 months. Also wonder on how many were not arrested whilst in the US (or Canada for that matter), so whilst we all consider on how the US is doing business, we need to consider that more than one of them was roughly 13270 metres from a local FBI office there, we could ask the FBI, but they are currently closed, they will open at 08:15 with a fresh smile and optional free coffee, the coffee is there is apparently quite decent.

Yet back to what matters, you see, Huawei is not merely in the race, it is showing to make headway making 5G locations a lot better. We see the news in Poland, Spain and Italy, all this whilst surpassing the impressive achievement that Ericsson had. It surpassed the annual $100 billion revenue and as it stands, there is every indication that with certain projects in an ongoing state in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and optionally Egypt, Huawei could move towards 30% growth from the $100 billion last year. To a much larger extent it is also due to their mobiles Nova 3i, Mate 20 and the upcoming Nova 4i and Mate 30, it is not merely the excellence of their mobile; it is the sharp and competitive prices that will optionally allow Huawei to chip away the market share that Apple falsely believes to have secured. I believe that certain quotes, like: “Apple’s World Smartphone Market Share Above 50% For the first time ever Apple Inc. (AAPL) has garnered more than 50% of the global smartphone market during the fourth quarter, thanks to its high-end iPhone X“, in light of certain production places shutting down and earlier agreement with other providers should be considered as debatable, there is a definite drop in Apple choice. From my point of view, the people wanted a Golden delicious and they ended up with a Granny Smith. I personally love the sour taste of the Granny Smith, other do not. They objected to the iPad Pro ‘Bendy’, massive quality control problems, and not to forget the Extreme Tech quote: “Apple decided to actually make people’s products slower without telling them it had done so. It took this step after failures in its own manufacturing process caused damage to its batteries“. I am willing to go with the alternative path that the BS sold by Tim Cook where we see “but Cook states that all of the decline is attributable to Apple iPhone sales and that most of those sales (didn’t) occur in China“, all this whilst some sources still hang onto that 50% market share, a stage that is incorrect on more than one level, especially when we consider that the bulk of the people on this planet (roughly 80% plus) cannot afford some bloated new phone model that was close to 40% more expensive than a decent alternative, in this age the difference between $2369 and $1299 is too much for many households, it was the clear shot across the bow we all saw coming, but many remain in denial. In addition, the lawsuit files last month where we see: “plaintiffs Christian Sponchiado and Courtney Davis, alleges that Apple’s marketing claims about the iPhone X, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max are misleading“. If that case is ruled against Apple the impact will be massive. On the upside, Apple can buy into my IP with the entry price of $25 million upfront and get the optional 90% share of the patents linked to those (in case Google turns me down of course, they get first dibs (they have the reliability and credibility that I prefer).

In addition, as Apple lost $106 billion in value (almost 10%) a few hours ago, shows that the trillion dollar mark was merely a first step to become critically ill, optionally dead on arrival at the Wall Street hospital, more precisely the NYU Langone Health on Wall Street, Tim Cook might take a look at https://nyulangone.org/conditions, where he will learn that Bad Management choices is not a treatable ailment, yet Mental and behavioural Health is actually taken care of, although I am not certain that there is a cure for embossed ego and blindly following greed is not really a diagnosed behavioural health condition, he might be better off looking at Traditional Chinese medicine at that point, there he has an option to get advice from his friend Ren Zhengfei, if Tim forgot the number, Ren Zhengfei can be reached at +86-755-2878-0808.

What was THAT about?

When you consider the sidestep, it was not really a sidestep, when we see the European standards accepted in three countries and four optional additions, whilst the stage is now moving forward faster and faster in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, in a stage where 25 commercial contracts have been signed and all of them are moving forward, we see the initial failing in the US, Apple is a clear visibility, the lacking evidence of national security risks is out there louder and louder and now we see increased volumed voices in Commonwealth nations to reverse on the Huawei 5G ban. The fact that too many of the opposition have been in a stage of pussyfooting, micro stepping and calling these actions innovation and leaping ahead is where we see the failing of a larger group of Telecom players, at any stage, when (not if) those 5G standards are not met, it merely makes the case for other governments to either side towards a Huawei driven solution or fail in their 5G needs completely, and at this point, those who are not there at the beginning will merely lose millions of business opportunities every day. That is the clear setting and that is what we will see unfold. Players like AT&T might be the most visible ones, but they are not the only ones. Even when we look at current 4G abilities of Vodafone in France, good luck on finding ‘national coverage’ at that point, I have heard from more than one source that the map looks nice, but reality is nothing like their so called coverage map. And in the stage of once bitten twice shy, these players are putting it all one the table, betting everything they have to make a 5G turnaround whilst there is more than one indicating chance that this will falter. That is the gambling stage and all this is done without realising that Huawei does not need to bet, they merely have to deliver what they are promising making the others fold, losing it all over hardware that they cannot provide, or even better are already failing to manufacture. you see, the Wall Street Journal gave us a mere 4 days ago: “Major European wireless providers—big customers of all three—say Nokia and Ericsson have been slow to release equipment that is as advanced as Huawei’s“, the article (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-rivals-nokia-and-ericsson-struggle-to-capitalize-on-u-s-scrutiny-11546252247) gives us the parts that I mentioned weeks ago, I saw this coming a mile away and now that this is showing to be just as I said it would be, we now see the upcoming failures in a few countries, all of them ‘eager to be the number one‘, now soon to be trailing BEHIND what they call is a technological third world nation (Saudi Arabia), whilst Saudi Arabia is seemingly still speeding ahead and Huawei wants to be completely successful there as it almost guarantees them Middle Eastern 5G Supremacy.

The other players are in a deeper pool of trouble when we consider: “Both Nokia and Ericsson fear that if they are seen trying to take advantage, Beijing could retaliate by cutting off access to the massive Chinese market, people familiar with the matter said“, this is not news, this was always going to happen, you might want to pick up a decent history book and reread the British Telecom phase in the UK around 3 decades ago, it is not as comfortable to face these scrutinies when you are receiving the damage, not dishing it out, is it?

As I personally see it the US is due a few setbacks, these setbacks could cost Wall Street, the DJI and the NASDAQ in larger ways than I can foresee at present. What will happen to claimants when the delivery is not met and those 5G wannabe’s all make legal claims on goods and speeds not delivered? I do not need to remind the readers of the Trumped ego of nations when promises are not kept, do I?

These are not merely obstacles or pitfalls; the entire setting was bogus on a few levels. Whenever I see the Huawei ban mention on TV, my mind races back and remembers the US Secretary of State Colin Powell in clownish fashion running around with a silver briefcase showing it off at closed sessions with WMD events, you do remember how that ended, do you not? As I personally see it, the entire 5G debacle will be the same, but now the nations adhering to that alliance will face a lot more backwash from their own local political parties when it all falls down, and I feel 80% certain that this is exactly what will happen down the road. As I stated more than once, in the UK Alex Younger was at least in the proper stage where he did not claim National security risk, he merely stated that such infrastructure must be held national, not international hands. It is not a great decision, but at least it made sense, yet there too Huawei has economic options by investing in training the Bright Cambridge, London Poly tech and Oxford people in creating excellent 5G devices, optionally merely funding it and gaining huge windfalls over the upcoming decade. It would be a so called scenario of all the gains without the optional pains.

Interesting that we see nothing on such an optional solution in the media, do we? So as the new modelled 5G pushes forward there is no doubt that in the immediate time it will be ruled by Huawei, the others were (as I personally see it) too short-sighted for too long and that is the Tim Cookie we all forgot about, so whilst we see new Cookie policies, we merely see a collection of cyber analysts all gathered around some jar and not around the place of true innovation, the memo they received was in the end not that clear on the matter (Go Figure).

If you were up to speed to certain events and got the previous reference, my congratulations to you; if you missed it, no worries. Merely look (at http://scientists4wiredtech.com/2018/03/4g-5g-wireless-is-the-new-bait-and-switch-scandal/) and do not go on faith with: “4G/5G Wireless antennas require a fiber optic wire to be attached to each cell site, every block or two. No private company is going to roll out fiber to lots of new areas. The FCC rarely, if ever, mentions that 4G/5G densification requires fiber optic wires. Commissioner Carr’s 5G statement never mentions the terms “fiber” or “state utility”“, and when you add: “AT&T just changed its mind about deploying fixed wireless. The operator has been touting its plans to deploy a mobile 5G network in 12 markets in the United States this year using millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands. And while it still plans to move forward with those deployment plans, it announced today that it will deploy fixed wireless in late 2019 using the unlicensed Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum. It will initially deploy LTE but then migrate to 5G. The company did not say how many markets it would deploy” (from another source) and consider the two statements we see an optional shift in a few direction, more important all the places where AT&T will not reach (beside the difference in range that the two very different standards have), so at that point, how much subsidy will never ever be in favour of the American people and in addition to that, their created ALEC group (American Legislative Exchange Council), at that point when these documents and legislative agreement are scanned and we end up seeing some version of: “grants LICENSEE and its AFFILIATES, a nonexclusive right to USE the 5G hardware provided with these license terms (hereinafter the “HARDWARE”) for its intended purpose, as defined below. USE means the right to enable the HARDWARE in the manner and for the purpose for which it was intended by the manufacturer“, at what point will the people realise that ‘intended by the manufacturer‘ will end up being massively ambiguous and that in the end no rights will remain with the user when it end up not being up to the expected scrap? It is not even a slippery slope; it is a slippery slope not being able to support part of the weight it was supposed to support.

The worst part of it all is that it was not even a surprise to me that this was going to happen, so as others claim to be so much more intelligent to me, is that true intelligence, or is that intelligence that enabled them to fill their pockets? You tell me, I am not presuming any answers here, I am merely pointing out the facts that are actually available in a whole range of sources, several of them respectable; they merely did not bother to connect the highlighted dots, which is also a matter of concern at some point soon enough.

 

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That did not take long

I made predictions a little over 2 weeks ago, I have also made mention of the actions that similar events happened in Australia in 2011. And as I made mention on December 6th with the article ‘Tic Toc Ruination‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/06/tic-toc-ruination/), I introduced the issue with: “We are given “Verizon’s network is not yet 3GPP compliant. It uses Verizon’s own 5G specification, but will be upgraded to be 3GPP compliant in the future“, so does that mean that it is merely a Verizon issue opening the market for Sprint, or are they both involved in that same pool of marketed pool to some form of ‘5G’ branding, and not the standard?” The Verge a mere 5 hours ago gives us (at https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/21/18151764/att-5g-evolution-logo-rollout-fake-network) where we are given: “AT&T customers will start to see a 5G logo appear in the corner of their smartphone next year — not because they’re using a 5G phone connected to a 5G network, but because AT&T is going to start pretending its most advanced 4G LTE tech is 5G“. We can argue if this is deceptive conduct and if the customers will be deceived and have a case to claim, yet we are given: “The “E,” displayed smaller than the rest of the logo, refers to “5G Evolution,” the carrier’s term for networks that aren’t quite 5G but are still faster than traditional LTE“, a similar action that the Australian telecom provider Telstra had with its ‘4G’ in 2011.

I predicted this to some extent. Even as the players are no all the same, we see that there is a fear of missing out now, so as they cannot deliver, these telecom corporations are hiding behind the cloak of marketing to instill a level of legalised deceptive conduct and no one is asking the questions (well, actually the Verge is doing just that).

So as the article continues with: “If this sounds sadly familiar, it’s because AT&T pulled this exact same stunt during the transition to LTE. The company rolled out a speed-boosting 3G tech called HSPA+, then got all of its phone partners — even Apple! — to show a “4G” logo when on that kind of connection“, we see the bigger picture of pretenders, all willing to do what it takes to get people to sing on, almost in harmony with the salespeople of bad mortgages. The government will not do anything, not only because in the core of the matter no laws are broken, but because the fear of Huawei is too big, I personally see the matter as that simple. SO as the article ends with: “FierceWireless guesses that “potentially millions” of people could see the new logo, with AT&T’s 5G Evolution network available in over 400 markets by the end of 2018. Given that real 5G will be rare and limited for the next year or more, this tiny little branding change could lead to a great deal of misunderstanding around the state of the next-generation wireless technology“, we also see an optional stage that there will be no real 5G before deep into 2019, more likely early 2020. We get that from ‘real 5G will be rare and limited for the next year or more‘. It is the ‘or more‘ part that treats us to that train of thought. It also stamps out a much more clear setting that not only is Huawei the most likely provider for true 5G options for a much longer time, we see that the entire deception is increasingly worrying as it takes the peppers out of a seating arrangement allowing these players more time, optionally delaying all kinds of corporate implementations. The Verge gives us more. With: “T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray wrote that AT&T was “duping customers into thinking they’re getting something they’re not.” The “E” is easy to miss, too, judging by a mockup AT&T sent out” we are given a much larger concern, I agree, the ‘E’ in that logo looks ridiculously small, I am willing to speculate that with any screen under 6″ only those with eagle eyes might be able to distinguish the ‘E’ from a ‘£’ sign, giving optional additional confusion to the users.

The Agence France Presse (AFP) gave us a little more 2 days ago (at https://www.afp.com/en/news/1315/arab-nations-make-right-moves-5g-leadership-says-gsma-201812200052411), and with “The GSMA today welcomed the decision by the Arab Spectrum Management Group (ASMG) to release the use of the 3.3 to 3.8 GHz spectrum range to mobile broadband. This important step will increase the availability of the right type of harmonised spectrum for 5G deployment across the Arab world and help accelerate ultra-fast 5G network rollouts in the region” we see an early speculation that I made months ago take a very nasty turn. With: “The group has approved the use of the 3.4 to 3.8 GHz range for mobile broadband use across the entire Arab region, while the 3.3 to 3.4 GHz range is available for partial use as some countries continue to reserve this band for other services“, we see an optional change. There is consensus in the 22 Arabic countries represented by the ASMG. Not only is there now an optional setting that the middle East will have operational 5G before America, they will have true 5G before America and not merely Saudi Arabia, as indicated, there is a chance that the UAE and Dubai will be there too. We are given: “the GCC Arab States are expected to launch 5G networks commercially from 2019, driving innovative new services across the region and spurring future growth. By 2025, 5G will account for 16 per cent of total connections in these markets alone” this is now a first indication that America will be trailing the 5G field and as Huawei shows its powerful devices, it will gain traction in several ways, whilst we are (again) confronted with what Neville Ray CTO of T-Mobile calls: ‘duping customers into thinking they’re getting something they’re not‘, America will not end dead last here, but they will be trailing (as currently is implied) behind more than one Middle East Arabic nation, I wonder how ashamed these high, mighty and rich telecom players should be in the face of such defeat. If India challenges this and joins the Arab nations in quick activation, the humiliation for some of these American telecom companies will be complete. They will be talking to the Verge, Wired and similar magazines on how complicated the journey was, to give the audience something affordable and long lasting whilst those editors already knew that these providers started that race close to 2 years too late.

And when we start seeing media on ‘5G active’ and we see those phones giving us ‘5GE’ and other marketed versions of some edited (read: adjusted, altered) 5G logo, what excuse will they allow these technologist to get away with?

All this is gaining speed due to events as given by TechDirt. Now, we need to be considerate of the source, yet so far a lot of it has not been incorrect. The quotes: “the mystery group is piggybacking on the recent hysteria surrounding Huawei to try and scuttle the merger, which is certainly a problematic merger, but largely for employment and competition reasons” and “recent allegations that Huawei may have tap-danced around Iranian sanctions may or may not be true, the claims that the company routinely spies on Americans for the Chinese government has never been publicly proven. In fact, an 18 month study by the White House in 2012 (the last time this hysteria crested) found no evidence supporting such allegations. Germany just this week stated it wouldn’t join the Huawei vilification party until somebody provides, you know, actual evidence.” It enables two additional paths, the first is Germany as it clearly stated that evidence is required, Huawei actually has a few options of growing the commercial path for retail and vendors, there are a few IP’s out there ( half a dozen will be mine) that enables 5G in a new path for facilitate and propagate the needs of retailers without pressuring the community, part of them will pressure themselves to be part of the beginning and as Germany shows that impact, the UK, France, Spain and Italy will open their doors close to overnight to become part of this. That was the option that Huawei had all along. So as one government shows the delays and the inability to keep up with retails as the government themselves becomes the weak link, some will have to discuss and debate internal changes to policy. Add to that the pressure that the Arab nations will be heading this technological advantage, we see a changed form of pressure and just like Colin Powell and his silver briefcase doing the European tour on WMD, we see a new stage where the facts are not and now the USA will be trailing the Arab nations, not the other way round. It is that realisation that Huawei will be giving a much larger advantage to players and when the US enters the lag, a they remain trailing into an optional second year, at that point will we see a new pressure point against them, one they themselves created.

It will be at that point that everyone should ask the question, where is Google at, because they will be the next player on a stage that is openly discriminating towards some of the providers (at least one). I cannot tell at present, but the fact that Huawei would lead this convoy was never in questions making the changes to it all stranger and stranger.

I myself wonder how many media outlets will ‘forget’ to mention that these American providers are not giving actual 5G, merely their limited version of it.

 

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Fight the Future

Mark Bergen gives us a Bloomberg article. The Sydney Morning Herald took it on (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/inside-huawei-s-secret-hq-china-is-shaping-the-future-20181213-p50m0o.html). Of course the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies is the introduction here. We then get the staging of: “inside Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters, a secretive group of engineers toil away heedless to such risks. They are working on what’s next – a raft of artificial intelligence, cloud-computing and chip technology crucial to China’s national priorities and Huawei’s future” with a much larger emphasis on “China’s government has pushed to create an industry that is less dependent on cutting-edge US semiconductors and software“, the matters are not wrong, yet they are debatable. When I see ‘China’s national priorities‘ and ‘Huawei’s future‘ we must ask ourselves, are they the same? They might be on the same course and trajectory, but they are not the same. In the end Huawei needs to show commercial power and growth, adhering to China’s national needs are not completely in line with that, merely largely so.

Then we something that is a lot more debatable, when we get: “That means the business would lap $US100 billion in 2025, the year China’s government has set to reach independence in technological production” and by my reckoning, China could optionally reach that in 2021-2022, these three years are important, more important than you realise. Neom in Saudi Arabia, optionally three projects in London, two in Paris, two in Amsterdam and optionally projects in Singapore, Dubai and Bangkok. Tokyo would be perfect, yet they are fiercely competitive and the Japanese feel nationalistic on Japanese and at times more important, driven towards non-Chinese goods. In the end, Huawei would need to give in too much per inch of market share, not worth it I reckon, yet the options that Huawei has available might also include growing the tourist fields where they can grow market share through data service options, especially if the can Google to become part of this (in some places). In the end, the stage is still valid to see Huawei become the biggest 5G player in the field.

Then we get the first part of the main event. With: “It started working on customised chips to handle complex algorithms on hardware before the cloud companies did. Research firm Alliance Bernstein estimates that HiSilicon is on pace for $US7.6 billion in sales this year, more than doubling its size since 2015. “Huawei was way ahead of the curve,” said Richard, the analyst.” we see something that I have tried to make clear to the audience for some time.

June 2018: ‘Telstra, NATO and the USA‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/20/telstra-nato-and-the-usa/) with: “A failing on more than one level and by the time we are all up to speed, the others (read: Huawei) passed us by because they remained on the ball towards the required goal.

September 2018: ‘One thousand solutions‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/09/26/one-thousand-solutions/) with: “we got shown 6 months ago: “Huawei filed 2,398 patent applications with the European Patent Office in 2017 out of a total of 166,000 for the year“, basically 1.44% of ALL files European patents were from that one company.

Merely two of several articles that show us the momentum that Huawei has been creating by stepping away from the iterative mobile business model and leaping technologically ahead one model after the other. If you look at the history of the last few years, Huawei went from P7, Mate 10, Nova 3i and Mate 20 Pro. These 4 models in a lifecycle timeline have been instrumental for them and showing the others that there is fierce competition. The P7, a mere equal to the Samsung Galaxy 4 in its day, yet 43% cheaper for the consumer, and now they are at the Mate 20 Pro, which is 20% cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Note9 and regarded as better in a few ways. In 4 cycles Huawei moved from optionally a choice to best in the field and still cheaper than most. That is the effect of leaping forward and they are in a place where they can do the same in the 5G field.

We are confronted with the drive with the statement: “Huawei is throwing everything into its cloud package. It recently debuted a set of AI software tools and in October released a new specialised chip, called the Ascend. “No other chip set has this kind of capability of processing,” Qiu said.” This viewed advantage is still a loaded part because there is the fact that China is driven towards growing the AI field, where they, for now have a temporary disadvantage. We might see this as a hindrance, yet that field is only visible in the governmental high end usage that there is and consumers like you and me will not notice this, those who claim it and create some elaborate ‘presentation’ into making the water look muddy. When your life is about Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, you will never notice it. In the high end usage, where AI is an issue, they are given the cloud advantage that others cannot offer to the degree that is available to non-governmental players (well, that is what it looks like and that is technologically under consideration, yet it does look really nice).

When we look towards the future of Huawei we clearly see the advantages of the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, UAE and optionally Qatar if they play their cards right. Latin America is an option, especially if they start in Argentina, where they could optionally add Uruguay overnight, branching out towards Chile and Paraguay will be next leaving the growth towards Brazil. Yet in that same strategy add Venezuela and Colombia first would enable several paths. The business issue remains, yet being the first to have an additional appeal and if it pisses off the Americans Venezuela gets on board fast often enough. The issue is more than technological. The US still has to prove to the audience that there is a 5G place for them all and the infrastructure does not really allow for it at present, merely the metropolitan areas where the money is, driving inequality in the USA even further.

If visibility is the drive than Huawei is very much on the right track and they are speeding that digital super highway along nicely. Yet in opposition to all this is the final paragraph in the SMH. When we see: ““As long as they stick to the game plan, they still have a lot of room to grow,” he said. “Unless the US manages to get their allies to stop buying them.”” This is a truth and also a reassurance. You see the claim ‘Unless the US manages to get their allies to stop buying them‘, gets us to an American standard. It was given to us by the X-Files in the movie with the same name, or perhaps better stated Chris Carter gave it to us all. The end he gives us: “He is but one man. One man alone cannot fight the future“, it equally applies to governments too, they might try to fight the future, yet in the end, any nation is built from the foundation of people, stupid or not, bright or less so, the larger group can do arithmetic and when we are confronted with a Huawei at $450, or an Apple iPhone at $2350, how many of you are desperately rich enough to waste $1900 more on the same functionality? Even when we add games to the larger three (Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter), most phones will merely have an optional edge and at $1900? Would you pay for the small 10% difference that 1-3 games optionally offer? And let’s not forget that you will have to add that difference again in 2 years when you think that you need a new phone. The mere contemplation of optimised playing free games at $77 a month makes total sense doesn’t it? So there we see the growth plan of Huawei, offering the top of the mountain at the base price and those in denial making these unsubstantiated ‘security risk’ claims will at some point need to see the issue as Verizon is the most expensive provider in the US, So when I see $110 per month for 24 GB of shared data, whilst I am getting 200GB for $50, I really have to take an effort not to laugh out loud. That is the 5G world, the US faces and whilst there was an option for competitive players in the US, the Huawei block is making sure that some players will rake in the large cash mountain for much longer and there others are making fun of my predictions, and now that I am proven to be correct, they are suddenly incommunicado and extremely silent.

As such, when I predicted that the US is now entering a setting where they end up trailing a field that they once led, we will see a lot of growth of Chinese interests. In all this, do you really think that it will stop at a mere 5G walkie talkie? No, with 5G automation and deeper learning, we will see a larger field of dash boarding, information and facilitation to the people and Huawei will optionally rule that field soon enough, with a few non Americans nipping at their heels for dominance because that is the nature of the beast as well. Progress is a game for the hungry and some players (specifically the US) have forgotten what it was like to be hungry. Australian Telstra made similar mistakes and moved their Share price of $6.49 to $3.08 in the stage of 3 years, a 52% loss of value, and when (not if) Huawei pushed the borders all over the place, those people with a Verizon Protective State of Mind will end up seeing Verizon going in a similar setting, because that is also the consequence of adhering to what I would consider to be a form of nationalistic nepotism. The UK already had its ducks in a row for the longest of times (and that island has less ground to cover, which is a distinct advantage), so there BT has options for now and over time they might adhere to some of their policies as is required, the US is not in that good a position and Huawei merely needs to flash a medium purse of cash to show the people in the US that a place like Buenos Aires can offer the masses more and faster than those on better incomes in the US, because the pricing model allows for such a shift.

In this the problem is not a short term one, even as US giants are supposed to have the advantage, we also see that the workforce is not properly adhered to, the US (and the UK) have a massive, not a large, but a massive disadvantage when it comes to STEM students, a disadvantage that China does not have. The AI field is not something that is solved over the next 3 years, so as those with educations in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics is dwindling to some degree in commonwealth nations and America, China can move full steam as the next generation is pushed into high end ambition and careers. As such the entire AI shortfall against America can be overcome much easier by places like China and India at present. It is not merely the stage of more graduated students; it is about groups of graduated students agreeing on paths towards breakthrough solutions. No matter how savant one student is, a group is always more likely to see the threat and weakness of a certain path and that is where the best solution is found faster.

Will we ‘Fight the Future’?

The issue is not the American polarised view, it is the correctly filtered view that Alex Younger gave us initially, it is not incorrect to have a nationalistic protective view and Alex gave the correct stage on having a national product to use, which is different from the Canadian and Australian path proclaimed. We agree that it is in a national required state to have something this critical solved in a national way (when possible that is), in this the path to have a Huawei 5G stage and then reengineer what is required is not wrong, yet it is optionally with a certain risk and when that path is small enough, it is a solution. The UK is largely absolved as it had BT with the foundations of the paths required, just as Australia has Telstra, yet some countries (like Australia) become too complacent, BT was less complacent and they have knowledge, yet is it advanced enough? We agree that they can get up to speed faster, yet will it be fast enough? I actually do not know, I have no data proving the path in one direction or the other. What is clear is that a race with equal horses provides the best growth against one another, the competitiveness and technological breakthroughs that we have seen for the longest time. That path has largely been made redundant in the US and Australia (I cannot say for certain how that is in Canada).

Even as Huawei is gaining speed and being ahead of it all is still a race by one player, the drive to stay ahead is only visible on the global field, and it is an uncertain path, even if they have all the elements in their favour, what is clear is that this advantage will remain so for the next 5 years and unless certain nations make way for budgets growing the STEM pool by well over 200% their long term disadvantage remains in place.

The versusians

In this stage we need to look in the pro and con Huawei field. In the pro field, as Huawei set the stage for global user growth, which they are seemingly doing, they have the upper hand and they will grow to a user base that grows from servicing a third of the internet users to close to 50%, that path is set with some certainty and as such their advantage grows. In the opposition of that, players like need to step away from the political empty headed failure of enabling the one champion stage of Verizon and Telstra, diversity would give the competitive drive and now it is merely Telstra versus Vodafone/TPG, is means that there will be a technological compromise stage where none of the two surges ahead giving players like Huawei a much larger advantage to fuel growth,

How wrong am I likely to be?

So far I have been close to the mark months in advance compared to the big newspapers only giving partial facts long after I saw it coming, so I feel that I remain on the right track here. The question is not merely who has the 5G stage first, it will be who will facilitate 5G usage more complete and earlier than the others, because that is where the big number of switchers will be found and players like TPG and Vodafone have seen the impact of switchers more than once, so they know that they must be better and more complete than the other brand. Huawei knows it too, they saw that part and are still seeing the impact that goes all the way back to the P7, and that is where Apple also sees more losses, We were informed a mere 9 hours ago: “Piper Jaffray cuts its Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) price target from $250 to $222 saying that recent supplier guidance cuts suggest “global unit uptake has not met expectations.”” another hit of a loss to face, optionally a mere 11.2% yet in light of the recent losses, they faced, we see what I personally feel was the impact of the ridiculous stage of handing the audience a phone of $2369, optionally 30% more expensive than the choice after that one, even if the number two is not that much less in its ability. The stage where marketeers decide on what the people need, when they all need something affordable. It personally feels like the iMac Pro move, a $20K solution that less than 0.3% of the desktop users would ever need, and most cannot even afford. That is driving the value of Apple down and Huawei knows that this egocentric stage is one that Apple et al will lose, making Huawei the optional winner in many more places after the first 5G hurdles are faced by all.

Do you still think that Apple is doing great? A company that went from a trillion to 700 billion in less than 10 weeks, which is an opportunity for the IOS doubters to now consider Huawei and Samsung, even as Huawei will statistically never get them all, they will get a chunk and the first move is that these users moved away from IOS, and as Android users they are more easily captured towards user hungry players like Huawei by its marketing, that is the field that has changed in the first degree and as people feel comfortable with Huawei, they will not consider getting more Huawei parts (like routers for the internet at home) and that continues as people start moving into the 5G field. You see, we can agree that it is mere marketing (for now), yet Huawei already has its 5G Customer-premises Equipment (as per March 2018). this implies that with: “compatible with 4G and 5G networks, and has proven measured download speeds of up to 2Gbps – 20 times that of 100 Mbps fiber“, that they can buy their router now, remain on 4G and when their local telecom is finally ready, 5G will kick in when the subscription is correct. It is as far as I can tell the first time that government telecom procedures are vastly behind the availability to the consumer (an alleged speculation from my side).

Do you think that gamers and Netflix people will not select this option if made available? That is what is ahead of the coming options and that is the Future that some are fighting. It is like watching a government on a mule trying to do battle with a windmill, the stage seems that ridiculous and as we move along, we will soon see the stage being ‘represented’ by some to state on the dangers that cannot (or are ignored) to be proven.

The moment other devices are set towards the 5G stage, that is when more and more people will demand answers from industrial politicians making certain claims and that is when we see the roller-coaster of clowns and jesters get the full spotlight. This is already happening in Canada (at https://www.citynews1130.com/2018/12/13/huawei-and-5g-experts-clash-on-the-risk-to-canadas-national-security/), where City News (Ottawa) gives us: “I can’t see many circumstances, other than very extreme ones, in which the Chinese government would actually risk Huawei’s standing globally as a company in order to conduct some kind of surveillance campaign“, something I claimed weeks ago, so nice for the Canadian press to catch up here, in addition when we are given: ““This can be used for a lot of things, for manipulation of businesses to harvesting of intellectual property,” Tobok said. “On a national security level, they can know who is where at any given time. They can use that as leverage to jump into other operations of the government.” those people knowingly, willingly and intentionally ignore the fact that Apps can do that and some are doing it already. The iPhone in 2011 did this already. We were given: “Privacy fears raised as researchers reveal file on iPhone that stores location coordinates and timestamps of owner’s movements“, so when exactly was the iPhone banned as a national security hazard? Or does that not apply to any Commonwealth nation when it is America doing it? Or perhaps more recent (January 2018), when Wired gave us: “the San Francisco-based Strava announced a huge update to its global heat map of user activity that displays 1 billion activities—including running and cycling routes—undertaken by exercise enthusiasts wearing Fitbits or other wearable fitness trackers. Some Strava users appear to work for certain militaries or various intelligence agencies, given that knowledgeable security experts quickly connected the dots between user activity and the known bases or locations of US military or intelligence operations.” So when Lt. Walksalot was mapping out that secret black site whilst his Fitbit was mapping that base location every morning job, was the Fitbit banned? Already proven incursions on National security mind you, yet Huawei with no shown transgressions is the bad one. Yes, that all made perfect sense. I will give Wesley Wark, a security and intelligence specialist who teaches at the University of Ottawa a pass when he gives us: “Still, Canada can’t afford to be shut out of the Five Eyes or play a diminished role in the alliance, and if Britain decides to forbid Huawei from taking part in its 5G networks, Canada could not be the lone member to embrace the company“, OK that is about governmental policy, not unlike Alex Younger there is a claim to be made in that case, not for the risk that they are or might be, but the setting that no government should have a foreign risk in place. This is all fine and good, but so far the most transgressions were American ones and that part is kept between the sheets (like catering to IBM for decades), or leaving the matter largely trivialised.

It is pointless to fight the future, you can merely adhere to swaying the direction it optionally faces and the sad part is that this sway has forever been with those needing to remain in power, or to remain in the false serenity that status quo brings (or better stated never brings). True innovation is prevented from taking grasp and giving directional drive and much better speeds and that too is something to consider, merely because innovation drives IP, the true currency of the future and when we deny ourselves that currency we merely devaluate ourselves as a whole. In this we should agree that denying innovation has never ever resulted in a positive direction, history cannot give us one example when this worked out for the best of all.

 

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We are merely Tools

This is not a nice piece; this is not even a kind piece. It is a piece on reality, a reality that most people embrace. Yes, you, my readers and even more those who do not read this blog, they are all part on the setting of tools. In this case a tool named Jamal Khashoggi, a person who ended up being more useful after life then whilst he was still alive.

If we were to ask anyone on October 1st and before: ‘Do you know Jamal Khashoggi?‘ The response in 99.6% would have been a clear No! Even among the Washington Post readers, many will not have known him. Yet now, the numbers are reversed 0.4% will not know him, a number that is actually a lot lower lower than the world percentage of dyslexic people on the internet. So as a tool he has been useful.

Even now, when looking at the last few days of news we see:

  • Findings point to Jamal Khashoggi’s ‘body parts being melted’ in acid – News.com.au
  • Jamal Khashoggi killing: Turkish President claims ‘highest level of Saudi government’ behind murder – Nine.com.au
  • Who ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? – Al Jazeera
  • One month after Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, these key questions remain unanswered – Washington Post
  • Khashoggi’s fiancée vows ‘there’ll be no cover up’ as claims emerge his body was ‘dissolved’ – SBS News
  • Khashoggi murder: Turkish leader blames Saudi state directly – BBC

And an overwhelming amount of articles are laced with ‘inside sources‘ and people like Yasin Aktay stating: “he believes it was dissolved in acid after being cut up“, yet these articles and the statements are absent of evidence, absent of clear documented and collected evidence giving rise to the quote made, merely people hiding behind ‘inside sources’ and ‘innuendo’, Nine News and others add a picture of the smiling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whilst there is no evidence of any kind that he was involved. So again we see “A Turkish official said he believes after Khashoggi was killed while in the consulate to pick up marriage documents, his body was dissolved in acid or other chemicals“, whilst three weeks ago, the Turkish government claimed to have audio tapes with evidence that he was cut up into pieces. So which version is true and why is the Turkish government not giving out all the evidence to show that they have it? Because the Turkish government does not really care, does it?

We see: “Turkey’s close ties to Saudi Arabia“, yet no one gives light to the fact that Turkey is for the most merely a puppet for Iran (my personal view in all this), that part is left out of the equation, the fact that Iran is in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia could pop up and that diminishes the use of this tool called Jamal Khashoggi.

Even as Nine News does give us at the very end: “Netanyahu said at a news conference that Iran is a bigger threat than Saudi Arabia and those who want to punish the Middle East kingdom need to bear that in mind. “A way must be found to achieve both goals, because I think that the larger problem is Iran,” said the Israeli leader, who attended a meeting of the prime ministers of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania and the president of Serbia at a Black Sea resort.”“. I believe that the statement at the end is pro forma only. All the networks want to use the emotional barrage of Jamal Khashoggi as much as they can. Most of the articles are absent of critical questions that for now, for the most have never been answered. The failing here is actually larger when you consider that for the most the failing is even increasing. Yes, that is actually possible at present, even a month after the event.

It is now Monday morning and the news that we see next was already out but I decided to let it simmer.

The headline giving us: Gates Foundation ends $5 Million Pledge Partnership with Saudi Crown Prince’s Charity over Khashoggi Killing. So in all this, Bill Gates walks away from business, now that is his right and his purse would not even feel the impact of those 5 million, but in all is this a wise thing? I mean when we look at it, the man (Gates) optionally deserves the death penalty for what he made his users go through. The Daily Mail claim “Microsoft claims Windows 10 deletion bug is FIXED but won’t release it” should have long lasting repercussions should it not? One life versus the long-time torture of millions, how does that relate? Or perhaps the report from last week: ‘Another Windows 10 bug lets UWP apps have access to all your files‘. So as it comes down to standards Bill Gates really does not have the best track record does he?

No one denies that something went bad and there are government officials involved, but who, or whom? We have yet to be presented with any evidence. The known factor that Turkey is appeasing Iran is left out of the media for 99%, the issue that the Saudi Consul general left for Saudi Arabia and no one is asking questions there is also a factor. I am not proclaiming that this man is guilty of anything. Yet there were two versions; one of them the media informing us that he ‘fled’, the other one is the Turkish President, giving us in regards to Mohammed Al-Otaibi: “a phone call he had with King Salman Bin Abdulaziz a few days after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside his country’s consulate in Istanbul. “The Consul is not efficient and I have told King Salman of this” and he is suddenly relieved from his position. The issue is that he media is not giving us anything, they are making it worse. The less than a dozen true journalistic sources are overwhelmingly repeating things like they are all copy/pasting Reuters and other vanilla sources.

The final straw in all this is actually his fiancée, who I will give a pass in all this. Yet the Independent gives us the headline ‘Khashoggi murder: Trump administration ‘devoid of moral foundation’, killed journalist’s fiance says‘ and the quote: “‘Some in Washington are hoping this matter will be forgotten with simple delaying tactics,’ Hatice Cengiz writes“. Both are optional truths, they are emotional ones and she might be the only person allowed to do that (apart from some co-workers at the Washington Post perhaps). There needs to be no moral foundation in America, the man is a Saudi Citizen. The second part in all this is that the optional crime was never done on American soil, or within American territory. This gives us that America is not even a factor here apart from the fact that Jamal Khashoggi worked for an American company. So do millions of others and I do not see that government speak out for them, or there neglected rights, do we? Why do we care about this journalist?

Several sources give us that 14,000 people died in armed conflict in Yemen, in addition over 50,000 died of disease and famine, where is your outrage against Iran and Hezbollah there? I agree that Saudi Arabia is part of it, yet that coalition was there on request of the duly elected government, the Houthi rebels have received ‘assistance’ from a terrorist organisation and a terrorist supporting nation and the lack of outrage here is disgusting!

And even as we see America taking charge, the news we saw hours ago (Source: GulfNews) when they gave us the quote: “Iran enters a challenging new phase in its economic activity and international relations, with the imposition of a series of tough sanctions on the regime for its failure to fully satisfy Washington and its allies over the intentions of its nuclear programme. But the sanctions too are being imposed on the Tehran regime that continues to flout international norms by arming, aiding and abetting the militias and armed groups from the Bab Al Mandab to the Mediterranean who further its sectarian and seditious agenda“. I cannot vouch for Gulf News merely because I do not know them that well, yet the absence is other news cycles to a much larger case makes it a worry. In addition, we saw the inclusion of Bab Al Mandab. The point becomes is this merely Yemen, or is there more to the story that involves an (extremely unconfirmed) setting of Moulhoule, Djibouti. And if that is so, one of the most prominent targets there is Oilibya, are they at risk? It is also a stage for moving both towards Eritrea and Somalia. Eritrea is less likely between the two, but a terrorist with options is never a good thing. We also see UAE tycoon Al-Habtoor stating that Hezbollah needs to be a prominent target. He voiced it as: ‘Hezbollah needs to be eliminated‘, which might be actually a little too diplomatic, but the story is clear there are two players in all this, who have been waving the Khashoggi flag, yet no one is really asking questions, questions that matter, are they?

There is more to this, there is a side that I have mentioned several times before, and here we see it clearly in ‘print’. The quote: “Frankly, I am worried! ‘America First’ is a slogan that inspires patriotism. Every nation has to put the interests of its people first. That is normal. However, actions taken by this administration under that slogan are alienating America’s friends. No country is an island by itself. We share one planet. We are all responsible for finding solutions to common threats. We need to be partners in the decision-making.” I am not against nationalism; it is a statement of pride (for the most). In France there is Marine Le Pen and there is no doubt, she cares about France and France alone, it is not a bad thing. The Trump administration is doing the same in the US, the problem is that in the EU, those commissionaires are mostly in it for themselves, and their cause. That is how I personally see it. Not some nationalistic pride, but the cohesion of continuing something that profits them and not the European civilians as a larger whole, that is one of the stages and it is an important one. You see the press in Europe has been going soft on Turkey, on Iran and on Hezbollah and that is impacting all other avenues. Yet they have slammed Saudi Arabia at every turn and a lot of it through innuendo and ‘unnamed sources’.

And in part Al-Habtoor is right, the problem is that Iran gets to continue to play their game through proxy and the payoff for Hezbollah is nice as it gets missiles to fire into Israel giving a rise of escalations is several places. Taking Hezbollah out of the equation makes sense on several levels. The world is a better place without Hezbollah and in addition as Iran cannot continue to act in proxy they must either enter a full-fledged war or back down and hope that Turkey will do their bidding. It is my personal believe that Turkey is not willing to get the limelight there either, not in that way.

The press is massively void of those elements that have been proven on several levels by a few sources, so tell me how weird is that?

Even now, in the last hour we see the Australian, the Business Times (41 minutes ago) and Haaretz (32 minutes ago), so in this Jamal Khashoggi is still a media bankable currency. Yet those sources have remained quiet on the Hezbollah activities in the last 24 hours, so you tell me on how Jamal Khashoggi has not been devaluated to a mere media tool, all having their own goal, yet I personally believe that the critical truth is not on their mind at this point, that story was old the day after he passed away.

And there are still people confused on why we stopped trusting the bulk of online news and the media as a larger whole. I believe that to a much larger degree we can no longer see the difference between fake news and the overwhelming amount media (and their) presentations that also print a newspaper.

 

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A promised correction delivered

Yes, I have made statements, conclusions I truly believed to be the case. Not because I am smarter (I am actually that), but the fact that everyone started to shout on innuendo and unproven statements by boastful people. I was determined to call their bluff. That is how I am, yet I am also the person that once evidence is given, that I will adjust the views and the position that I have taken before.

So as the Guardian treats us to: ‘Khashoggi’s son leaves Saudi Arabia as prosecutor says killing was planned‘, so as we are now given “Saudi prosecutor’s statement contradicts previous claims that journalist was killed accidentally“, I do remain in the setting that those high and mighty bitches of industry (like JP Morgan Chase and a few others), who were all in some uppity state, are now shown to have walked away prematurely, I reckon that they did many things premature in the bedroom, but to see those same people doing it in the hard cutthroat industry where they are supposed to be the sharks of the 7 giant oceanic corporations was new to many. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/25/jamal-khashoggi-killing-premeditated-says-saudi-prosecutor) gives us a lot of goods that are important to take in.

You see, I believe that I was never wrong, I merely wanted to see actual evidence, which is a different setting, the bitches of industry merely relied on innuendo. So when we see: “the Saudi public prosecutor’s office for the first time suggested the writer’s killing was premeditated“, a setting where we see ‘suggested‘ as the operative word, but from a legal source that gives the mere word ‘suggested’ at a much higher weight then the journalistic unnamed source could ever be. In addition to the previous we also see: “Prosecutors were interrogating suspects on the basis of information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish taskforce, a statement from the official Saudi Press Agency said on Thursday“, which also makes me step back on the entire Turkey-Iran parts, there was actual evidence, it was merely presented by the media in a way that I would never have accepted until I watched it with my own eyes. So even as we are presented with: “Riyadh has taken great pains to distance the powerful crown prince from any responsibility for Khashoggi’s murder after it emerged several members of his personal guard and other trusted officials were involved“, we also see that the Crown Prince was true to his word. He stated: “justice will prevail in the Khashoggi case” and that is what seems to be happening. What I had reported on earlier seems to be confirmed now on a few levels. With: “The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Gina Haspel, the CIA director, had requested and been played the tapes during a brief visit to Ankara this week – the first indication Turkey has shared the sensitive evidence with foreign parties“. It is the ‘the first indication Turkey has shared the sensitive evidence‘, it is part of the whole and must be acknowledged, especially by me, if I want to live with myself. You see, I was partially protective of the ‘players’ from team KSA, merely because the journalistic sources have lost too much credibility in the last few years alone. That was the largest setting of my choices and none of the evidence was acceptable by me, especially in the entire Turkey-Iran setting that most media is still not acknowledging at present.

So there it is, I am not sorry on the path I took earlier, I gave my reasoning here and I feel that I remained correct, yet I also disputed evidence on facts and as the disputed evidence is now shown to be actual, I feel that I had a responsibility to bear (or was it to bare) that out.

I also remain in the belief that I had from the very beginning, We need to rely on papers like the Guardian, the Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the BBC and a few others to give us the good stuff. There are those papers that rely on emotion to overbear us in any direction that they can push us, which was also the reason of opposing larger players of the press in all this.

You see, we seem to focus on all kinds of matters, except for the location and the entire events that surrounded Mohammed Al-Otaibi, we have not seen a lot there, did we? It goes a little further than that. One source (the Middle East monitor) gives us: “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said yesterday that Saudi Arabia has dismissed its Consul General to Istanbul Mohammed Al-Otaibi following a phone call he had with King Salman Bin Abdulaziz a few days after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside his country’s consulate in Istanbul. “The Consul is not efficient and I have told King Salman of this. A day later, the Consul General was relieved of his duties and returned to his country,” the Turkish president told the parliament in Ankara“, now we get the ‘good’ stuff. The parts that are important are easily seen. The article is two days old, yet the parts in this are ‘a few days after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside his country’s consulate in Istanbul‘. You see, if that was true, then the entire matter of the audio tapes take on a very different stage and value. If the evidence was there and it gives evidence of transgressions, then President Erdogan was giving Saudi Arabia heads up on certain events, in addition, when we contemplate the audio evidence that is part of all that, the statement that we see with ‘The Consul is not efficient and I have told King Salman of this‘, if these parts are correct, than we see that the Turkish government is optionally directly involved with the cover-up itself! I am also considering that one source is not good enough, yet the connections seen, gives a much larger light to the setting.

In the end, I need to keep the faith I have, I need to remain in the light of not what I think happened (many are doing that), it needs to be ‘what happened that can be proven’, too few players have been doing that. It was also important to raise the Mohammed Al-Otaibi issue as some papers stated that ‘he fled the country’, yet here we see the stage: ‘the Consul General was relieved of his duties and returned to his country‘, or as I initially stated it, he had been recalled; I seem to have been correct on that part too. The question remains important if we are to believe USA Today. There we saw almost a week ago: “Those fired included: one of the prince’s closest advisers Saud al-Qahtani; deputy intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri; Maj. Gen. Mohammed bin Saleh al-Rumaih, assistant head of the General Intelligence Directorate; Maj. Gen. Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Shaya, head of General Intelligence for Human Resources; and Gen. Rashad bin Hamed al-Mohammad, director of the General Directorate of Security and Protection“, no mention of consul general Mohammed Al-Otaibi, perhaps he is one of the 18 arrested, yet we do not have any names from that group, so for now there is no way to know.

In Other News

The Financial Post reported that ‘Google corporate parent’s third quarter disappoints jittery investors‘, which is always nice to see (even if no one really cares). Yet the stage that we saw two days ago in ‘The ethical threshold‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/10/24/the-ethical-threshold/) where I made mention of “when we consider that “Diane Green, the chief executive of Google Cloud, also pulled out on Monday, according to the company” and gave that ‘Davos in the Desert’ a miss”, which in light of the shown evidence by some could have been the emotional short sighted part to do. Now, we know that Google will need loads of effort to mend the fences, yet souring the seating between themselves and the investors might not have been the best way to go about that. So as I made mention earlier of “those high and mighty bitches of industry (like JP Morgan Chase and a few others)“, especially when we regard that business solutions like Sharpcloud, a solution that relies on Azure AD, now will seemingly get a few additional options in their park, especially as Microsoft apparently opened a few doors. In light of what is going on and what is about to happen, certain dash boarding and investigative tools will have their work cut out for them. If they can please the initial players (like Salini Impregilo), the opportunities will become much larger and will entice a much needed audience to a much larger degree. So in this, Google did not merely disappoint the investors, there is now some indication that they handed market share to their opponents, all because of overreaction? Well that is for them to figure out, I remain a faithful believer of the Robocop phrase ‘Good business is where you find it‘ and any player that is staging the investment setting of a trillion dollars on a 12 year scale is someone you need to look at in different ways, if you do not, which would be your own choice, you end up merely cutting yourself. Everyone so up in arms over a journalist whilst Wall Street, Apple and a few others are quite literally walking away with murder on a much larger scale. You can blame the governmental and legal machines of all the folly that they represent, but as a corporation you still need to get from A to B and that is where it is my personal belief that some people overreacted (to a certain degree).

Yet the entire Google issue is also a stab in another direction. You see, when we are treated to “But Alphabet’s revenue fell shy of analyst projections. The company’s revenue, after ad commissions, totalled US$27.16 billion, more than US$150 million below analysts’ predictions“, the stage here is not merely that the analyst could have gotten it wrong, the loss in all this is roughly 0.552282%, under what amount is the optional miscalculation of something less than a percent the stage of such a reaction? If you need three tubes of Valium just to get back to hysterics whilst the optional loss is merely 0.55% less of an absurd amount of profit, we need to reengage into the folly of maximised profit, in a stage where they grasped at emotional levels of a moral high ground that they should not even be allowed to have in the first place and if my expectation comes through and some Microsoft Azure players do get to give pilots to certain players set to a growing awareness in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Google will lose a hell of a lot more than a mere 0.552282% shortfall, they might actually lose market share, how much value will that be representative of?

the deeper you dig, the more we see that the statement in several newspapers made by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman giving us: “The Middle East can be the “new Europe”” might be more correct than some realise at present, especially when 5G starts its roll-out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In case you were not aware of the latter part, the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, SB Energy and Tadano. They are all licensed for KSA endeavours now. So how much business are some players about to lose? So even as some questioned the statement: “Majid Al Qassabi, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Trade and Investment, said the kingdom can be a launchpad for Japanese businesses seeking investment opportunities in the Middle Eastern and African markets“, we have a first indication that it is equally opening a double dipping opportunity for the mentioned bank with ties to both Egypt and the UAE. This is not some get quick rich stage, but the long term play will be extremely profitable for all three involved. All this as we see in opposition that investments in Europe are on the decline. Sources like Politico Europe and S&P global where some fields are losing as much as 19%. A dire stage in light of the 3 trillion euro float of its currency is nothing short of an optional nightmare stage for Europe. The escalating budget crises of Italy is merely one of several factors that will soon force Europe to make much larger changes, the slumping European economy is a close second. There are two other elements that I highlighted a few days ago, but we will see more on that soon enough. It was nice to see one source giving us a clear stage whilst pointing at history. the mere “After all in 2008, on the eve of the world’s worst economic and financial market crisis, Ben Bernanke dismissed the sub-prime crisis as a non-event. Meanwhile Jean Claude Trichet, Mr. Draghi’s predecessor at the helm of the ECB, went one step further by ill-advisedly raising interest rates in the months immediately preceding the September 2008 Lehman bankruptcy” should be one clear indication that there are plenty of optional dark clouds on the European horizon. Let’s not forget that people like Ben Bernanke and Jean Claude Trichet were never held accountable or prosecuted for any of those ignored events, were they?

Have a great day!

 

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The ethical threshold

When is it too much? That is the initial question I had. I am a tweeter, I love my twitter, I will be honest on that. I tend to merely be nice there, with all the negativity in the world thinking only positive there is merely a choice. Also, why would you want to waste time attacking a person there? OK, I have to admit, when Jimmy Kimmel decided to take the mean tweets as a segment, I ended up laughing out loud, especially the Marvel cast ones. Why would anyone do this? Why would Chadwick Boseman (Mr. Black Panther himself) get confronted with: “Okay, how did the coolest blackest dude in the galaxy end up with a whitebread-a– name like Chadwick” It was fun and he laughed too, but why do that? OK, if it was just a little friendly jab, I would get it, but why would you state to Scarlett Johannson: “emotional range of a f–ing celery”? It makes no sense to me. Sometimes we have an aversion to an actor, or perhaps more direct to the role that an actor portrayed, which makes perfect sense, but why vent it? I loved her work in many movies, and if there is one I did not like, then it is ‘The Other Boleyn girl‘, I personally believed it fell flat after the Tudors, which had nothing to do with her, Natalie Portman, or Eric Bana. In the end, it might not be the actors at all, merely the vision and choices of the director. It does not matter, I was no fan of that movie, yet to go out and tweet to her (or any of the other two) on how bad they acted seems like a waste of time and totally uncalled for. Many people feel that way, when we consider she gets hundreds of (optionally mean) tweet, yet each of them has tens of thousands of fans. Is it an ethical choice not to lash out? It might be, or it is merely good manners. Whatever it is does not matter, it is a visible part in all this.

In opposition, when do you professionally make choices based on morality or ethicality? We all do them and even as my threshold there is slightly higher than the Eifel tower, I do have them. I also believe in loyalty (even as some of my bosses have never shown that distinction themselves). There we have another setting do we not? So even as some might rage on how we need to make choices, as some rage against certain settings like playing hide and seek with the corpse of Jamal Khashoggi, whilst some claim to have evidence of recordings, that recording still has not been revealed to the world, these sources have now stopped mentioning that claimed piece of evidence, so when you seek political opportunity over a cadaver, how does that go over with some people? When you are merely an Iranian tool making claims and then leaving the accusation in the dirt, how does one ethically consider that person to have any intrinsic value or reliability?

So as Reuters gives us: “CIA Director Gina Haspel, in Turkey to investigate the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has sought to hear a purported audio recording of his torture and murder, four sources familiar with her mission told Reuters on Tuesday” and now a week after the claims, the evidence is not forthcoming, why consider that government to be any level of ally?

Yet that is another matter, the ethicality of this is part of it all, not the rest of that stage. The entire stage of ethicality is seen in fortune as we are faced with: ‘SoftBank’s CEO Won’t Speak at ‘Davos in the Desert‘ Even Though Saudi Arabia Put $45 Billion Into His Vision Fund‘. There we should have some issue, when you get $45B invested in, should there not be some ‘tit for tat’, or is that what they sometimes call in the UK ‘tits for dad’?

So when we see: “However, according to a Tuesday report, Son has now cancelled his speaking appearance, though he may still show up at the conference“, how does that go over? I had the idea for an alternate information system that is based on something that does exist, but now on a much larger scale, a new way of driving 5G data forward, a new information system. I even came up with a new 5G device type called the ‘dumb smart device‘, not only did I not get any penny of $45 billion (which would have been way too much), I also did not get an invitation of speaking option at “Davos in the Desert”, which in hindsight makes perfect sense as I never gave my email and phone number to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, so it all partially makes sense. So as we see that list of important people like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone and AOL founder Steve Case had pulled out in protest, we need to also realise that they are part of a setting where the pot is calling the kettle black. Remember JPMorgan’s and their $12 Billion Bailout? They want to talk morality? And in the end, we know that Jamal Khashoggi met his death in the consulate, we do not know the details, yet the people claiming to have evidence are not showing it and in addition those people are allied with Iran who is in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia. I know I have said that perhaps a little too often, yet the newspapers and online media REFUSE to add that truth to their articles, is that not strange? Yet this is about certain poor choices, however they were not the poor choices of those behind ‘Davos in the Desert‘. When I see the highlighted Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son and how he is not speaking at a multi-billion dollar event, is he merely proclaiming that he has ethical boundaries? Let’s not forget that apart from the fact that a journalist died under weird conditions, we have seen no actual evidence of ANY kind. We have seen actions that imply a cover-up, yet there is still not one clear piece of evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did any of it, or even order it. That evidence was never shown and the Turkish claims have never been supported by evidence, was it? That part is more important than you know, because when we take ethical and morale based evidence from equity people like Jamie Dimon or Stephen Schwarzman we truly have gone off the deep end. So whilst he might be there, he is now optionally missing out on opportunities that go beyond merely Saudi Arabia, when we see that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of United Arab Emirates, you better believe that you are selling your investors short and how does that usually go over with those ‘return on investment chasing accountants‘?

He is important in more than one way. You see, he has been very active in growing the impact of the UAE on a global scale, the vice president is using LinkedIn at every option there is and his industrious nature gives rise to forwards momentum for the UAE and that means more investments and more optional profits, so why walk away from the opportunity to speak out, whilst the cold light of evidence has shown doubt on events, no evidence is presented, not even claimed evidence; when we abandon innocent until proven guilty in light of business we merely set the stage for bias, discrimination and abandonment of good business. That is the actual reality and the media is steering clear from that one as well. Even as everyone knows that the US is broke, it claims industrial momentum, yet it is not taxed momentum, hence where ever that profit goes is beyond the US government. They are desperate to get the money flowing their way, not the other way and we see now that the demise of the US is closer than we thought it was, as Saudi Arabia and its neighbours are steaming ahead, their footprint is pushing in positive technology ways and the rest is lagging behind. The ethical threshold is not who we do business with, it is becoming, what are we willing to accept as a norm and that is the baseline that follows us to a much larger degree, especially when you realise that the baseline of this norm is slowly moving towards an Islamic one. That part is scaring the people way too much, so even as these same people ignore the fact that the Vatican has no women in places of power and that the Reuters quote “Sister Sally Marie Hodgdon, an American nun who also is not ordained, cannot vote even though she is the superior general of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery” gives clear indications that the Vatican is still as backwards as it was 920 years ago when it decided to take over the Middle East in a setting that we called the Crusades. So how far has our faith taken us? Even as we see that members of the clergy get off on Luke 12, Matthew 10 and John 11 (boys, not passages), we claim to protect children, yet the prosecution of the church members never got there, did it? So as most pushed for agnostic and atheist values, which makes sense to some, there is still a large part that drives their forward momentum through their inner faith and is there any evidence that Islam is evil? We get the ‘terrorist’ claim left, right and centre, yet how many are Muslims are truly evil? Now take the members list of the Ku Klux Klan, the member list of the IRA, White power and Neo-Nazi’s and set that in the scale against the names of terrorists that actually acted, suddenly Islam is not that evil anymore is it?

It is not important that we become Muslim, but would it hurt to learn about Muslim law and customs? If we embrace the next age of technology drive, having that knowledge makes us more and more valuable in places where the next trillions are actually spend, is that anything but our willingness to embrace some cultural change and adapt ourselves to the work sphere that we are ultimately confronted with?

How does our moral and ethical boundaries shift as we accept the religion of others, not to become Muslims, but to merely know enough to not cause offense, is that not a good first step? The BBC gave us less than a week ago the setting that we are now too poor to consider being ethical. They did that whilst posing the question: “Would you quit your job on ethical grounds?“, we are presented with Google employees who did that, yet the jackpot was gained with: “Research by Triplebyte, a start-up which recruits technical talent for technology companies, found 70% of those who get two job offers choose the highest paying one – exactly as our parents’ generation would have done“, if we accept that income is the driver, when we realise that ethics are almost no consideration in a job, would it matter if we embrace an Islamic employer? As we see that the answer is one we can live with a lot more than a job by ethically coloured and filtered Christian employer, can we truly ignore the optional long term life and security that some growing employers are giving us. That will be the driving factors to many and as such we will see that the Middle East influence will grow straight into the Common Law nations. When we realise that last year we were confronted in the UK with the notion that ‘Just one in five Muslims are in work as report finds they are held back by racism‘, what happens when the Muslim corporations see that this could be the driving force to open shop in a much larger audience all over Europe and even in the US. It is merely another facet in ‘the cost of doing business‘ versus ‘the cost of being in business‘. We have forfeited a large option by being choosy on who we choose, often on race, age and looks and that is how the cream evaded the corporations for a much longer time. Now as we see that the momentum is no longer in their corner, the work sphere will change a lot more than we ever could have realised.

A change we started in 1095 when Pope Urban II gave us: “calling all Christians in Europe to war against Muslims in order to reclaim the Holy Land, with a cry of “Deus vult!” or “God wills it!”“, now that we are entering an age where the roles are reversed because we decided to focus on profit and greed, we have no one else to blame but ourselves and the people we ourselves elected. So when we accept the history channel with: “between 60,000 and 100,000 people responded to Urban’s call to march on Jerusalem. Not all who responded did so out of piety: European nobles were tempted by the prospect of increased land holdings and riches to be gained from the conquest. These nobles were responsible for the death of a great many innocents both on the way to and in the Holy Land; absorbing the riches and estates of those they conveniently deemed opponents to their cause. Adding to the death toll was the inexperience and lack of discipline of the Christian peasants against the trained, professional armies of the Muslims. As a result, the Christians were initially beaten back, and only through sheer force of numbers were they eventually able to triumph“. How does our morality fare at this stage? In the end, whether we call them nobility or captains of industry, how many of them walked away with the setting that the benefit of all was merely their bottom line, and after all these years are you still accepting that excuse of as their profit drive?

When we see that a mere 12 hours ago we were given a Microsoft issue through: “But there’s evidence that Windows Insiders knew about and reported this problem, and Microsoft didn’t follow up on it, apparently not realizing the severity of the issue.” (at https://www.extremetech.com/computing/279368-windows-10-1809-may-have-another-file-deleting-bug-problem), another setting of profit and time pressure over quality and reliability, and this is not merely one of a few issues, this have been going on for well over two decades and in the end we end up in the same place, with a more expensive device making no headway. That part alone is part of the success that Google and Huawei gave them the forward push via their vision, driving forward momentum, so why would we want to stay in a place where the ‘status quo’ (not the band) is considered sexy?

So if my views are evil, then I am the Ifrit, the rebellious spirit that yearns for change and momentum, something that has been lacking in technology for too long, as profit boundaries has replaced ethical ones and therefor iteration trumped advancement a race that is now pushing the advantage to the Middle East and let’s not forget that Israel is part of the Middle East and they are also pushing technology boundaries through a whole range of tech start-ups, another reason to accept a much larger range of changes in our lives.
In the end, it is not where we need to go, it is where the opportunities are grown, and when we consider that “Diane Green, the chief executive of Google Cloud, also pulled out on Monday, according to the company” and gave that ‘Davos in the Desert’ a miss, whilst in the end, no evidence was given on several parts of the now accepted act of manslaughter by unknown parties, so not murder as the legal difference is proven intent, we need to ask more questions, not on merely the guilty parties, but those acting on alleged accusations that have not been met with evidence three weeks later is a much larger failure by those same people who kept quiet on years of endangered data safety (The Google+ issue), those needing a dozen billion dollars for bailout (and therefor their poor judgement) all clearly shown and proven, they are claiming some level moral high ground whilst evidence of the other act is still not given, where is our fake sense of ethical borderline now?

I call to some degree that the ethical threshold is one we live by; it is one that others call us on; that distinction is large and ignored by a lot of players. So when Al Jazeera gives us: “Fadi Al-Qadi, a Middle East human rights advocate and commentator, also denounced the photo-op as “ruthless”“, as well as “And here is the video. Salah (#JamalKhashoggi son, banned from travel) had to shake hands with who is believed to be his dad’s killer. Ruthless. Ruthless. Ruthless #Khashoggi pic.twitter.com/EKS9UZQ8Jc” that whilst evidence of ‘his dad’s killer‘ has not been given in any way shape or form, mere accusations from one of the tools that Iran employs, and until the evidence is clearly brought, that is how I will remain to see it. I feel for Salah Khashoggi, I truly do, and the pain of losing his father would be there, but is he merely in pain because of the hundreds of unsubstantiated accusations in almost all the large media? Is that not an important question in all this?

So as we see the impact of the accusations on so many levels, yet all in a setting where no evidence is handed out and whilst the global media is still using the extensive news leaks alleging that Turkey has audio recordings documenting Khashoggi’s demise and even dismemberment, no evidence has been given to the people. Claims of handing out the evidence were knocked back again and again, so how long until we make the ethical demand: “Hand over the evidence now, or be ignored for all time“, that will not happen, will it. The EU is too desperate to keep any talks with Turkey and Iran going and Turkey is taking advantage of that situation, whilst many claims by the Turkish government are a joke on many levels, even legal ones.

When will we learn that ethical, moralistic and emotional considerations are not merely different coins, they tend to be different currencies as well.

We can only choose out own path and make it the best path as we can, we need to realise that the high ethical and moralistic path is not a comfortable one and for the most, we are all about comfort, we have been so for much too long and through that we forgot what true values are, the media merely made it worse.

 

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One thousand solutions

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

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

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

I have written this before, so why repeat it?

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

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

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

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

How does one relate to the other?

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Groping in the dark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#ReturnOfThePranker

 

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