I woke up from something and it nagged me a bit. It started last week when two idiots decided to treat a masterpiece of Van Gogh to tomato soup and yesterday I saw the wax museum where two royals were treated to pie slaps. The second was not as bad as the first, but it still nagged me. So lets give them what they want in a way they never wanted it. You see they import around 3310 GBP Million in oil per month. The bulk of it comes from Norway and the US. There is some from the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia as well and in previous years from Russia as well. So lets set them all to zero. And there is a small addendum. As long as at least one member of ‘Just stop Oil’ is still, alive the agreement cannot be stopped. I wonder how long it takes for them to realise that they are the cause of hardship? You see petrol in the UK is about 175p per litre (a small deviation between unleaded, leaded and diesel, but not much). I reckon within two weeks that price will go up to 355p or even 455p. Consider that there are 2,500 per million tradies and most of them rely on their vans to get around. This implies that their prices go up by a lot and that will have several negative impacts for some work will fall away.
So how long until one of them will realise that a British wrench is also known as a murder wrench? And as long as even one is alive the agreement holds, no import of oil. You really think that they stand much of a chance with well over 150000 tradies wanting their skin? I think not and the larger problem is that these people are not that intelligent, they were coached by others. But that is not my problem, it will be theirs soon enough. So why don’t we give them what they want? We might be able to stop two problems all at once. Just a thought mind you.
I will let you decide if there was no sense to my idea, or was it all nonsense? Yet consider that these idiots will hurt a piece of art we all feel strongly about. At that point what chance to they have when we all lose our patience?
That is the thought I was confronted with when I saw an article this morning. It linked to an article to the beginning of the year and it was about stamps, and I initially ignored it (there is only so much I can read), but today I saw the article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63367733) giving me ‘Royal Mail: 100 days left to use stamps without a barcode’ and this time it held my attention. In the article we see “Royal Mail introduced barcoded stamps in February, saying they would open up possibilities for “new innovative services.” The long-term plan is that people will be able to watch videos, find out information and send birthday messages to each other through the barcodes which can be scanned with the Royal Mail app”, but the implications are a lot larger.
There are all kinds of intelligence implications not short term, but long term. If it can be paired to this setting, it could also be paired to where that stamp was bought, over time we can connect it to who bought it and that list extents almost indefinitely. QR codes are that solution too and let no lulling of some innocent setting tell you otherwise. It makes sense, the UK has billions of pounds getting shipped through royal mail under the eyes of the police, under the eyes of intelligence and something had to give. There was no other way, and frankly it is kind of ingenious, it seems no one else had the idea and that gives the UK an edge for a much longer time.
And as I look at the solution, I wonder why no one else hd the idea, I certainly did not. I still mail things at time, but it is rare that I do so and we accepted a stamp as the most mundane of solutions and someone (a Brit no less) decided to evolve the stamp and how it is used. I reckon that someone in GCHQ will also be bucking for a promotion, because if I see this right, the criminals who rely on the mail solution will soon be out of business and that is a victory that should not now or ever be underestimated.
Yes, that is quite the difference from the original ‘silence is golden’ isn’t it? But that thought started recently when I was given ‘UN, international community condemn Houthi drone attack on Yemeni oil terminal’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2186011/middle-east). The idea started when I had a look and not entirely to my surprise I could not find anything from the BBC, the Guardian, the NOS, and that list goes on. Houthi terrorist actions continue, using Iranian materials and the west ignores it, how quaint. They did mention that Iran is delivering its drones to Russia, but the political parties are all about a hands off regarding Iran. I did make mention of an optional solution to take care of Iranian and Russian nuclear plants, perhaps I need to make that public domain. Perhaps they will wake up then. But back to the events at hand. The Arab News gives us “The UN on Saturday condemned an armed drone attack launched By Yemen’s Houthi militia on a southern oil terminal in Hadramout province a day earlier, saying it was a “deeply worrying” military escalation”, well it isn’t in most newspaper, so I reckon it is not that Important or that critical. And we also get a name with “I condemn the aerial attack claimed by Ansar Allah yesterday”, we also see very little regarding that terrorist and the BBC or the Guardian. One could speculate that the Iranian stakeholders in the UK have a lot more sway than anyone is willing to acknowledge, yet that is mere speculation from me. In addition we are given “Bin Mubarak said he also held a call with the US ambassador to Yemen, Steven Fagin, to discuss the consequences of the attacks on civilian facilities and commercial ports, and how it would worsen the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, adding he “demanded strong measures to put an end to Houthi terrorism.”” It sounds nice, but if the media shuns it to this degree, there is every chance that the Americans will not do too much in the end. They have so far not done anything successful in reigning in Iranian events, so I would not hold my breath on this either.
The larger problem is not the these events are happening, it is that the powerful voices are lulling the people to sleep, ignoring what Houthi terrorists are up to in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia, all funded by Iran and we need to wake up, we need to see that Iran is becoming a much larger danger than we could ever be comfortable with. For China it is yet another option to spread its influence in the middle east. Consider cardinal Richelieu (Alexander Dumas, the 4 musketeers) stating “who will do something about these blasphemers?” The informative path is open, and those doing something will end with a lot more than the silent ones, but the US and UK could enjoy a further restriction of a million barrels a day. Do you think they will not buy them? The US has had an option to do something for well over 2 years and they did not. It was all about the pariah Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, but what happened when the US needed cheap oil (for whatever reason, they sell most of theirs). Yes, and now the ante is upped because no one is doing anything about Iran, no one is acting when inaction is no longer acceptable.
When the Yemeni port is hit, when that port becomes inoperable, we will see some tea granny (CAAT) make claims that this was all the fault of Saudi Arabia, all whilst it is the western world that is in part to blame as they are hiding behind ‘Silence is sewage’ and they are fine with that, t least their stakeholders are, are you? This war has been going on for well over 8 years. Not in any point in time did terrorists have such a hold in disturbing a population and several nations.
The fun part (for me) is that if China makes a stand, when it actually does something about the terrorists by supplying the Yemeni and Saudi governments what they need, what will the west do? For them it will then be too late. There is now a larger area that is in the mix and it could cost the EU and the US a lot more than they ever imagined and the papers will prove me right. Which paper had anything on the attack on the harbour in Hadramout province? So far I found France24 with a decent piece, the rest? As far as I can tell, not a word. Why is that?
The age of Silence is golden is over, it was never a real golden era to begin with, it only supported greed driven entities and it supported them well. We need to change the book of tactics before it is too late for too many, but that is merely my view on the matter.
It all starts with a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63207771) where we are given ‘Chinese technology poses major risk – GCHQ Chief’, there are two settings here. The first one was the BS approach by the Yanks (that place between the Pacific and the Atlantic river, South of Canada) and the UK issues. The Americans basically called Huawei (China) evil and refused to hand over any evidence. The UK stated that no foreign nation should be in charge to a major infrastructure. The UK is setting the centre stage to policy and that is fair and decent. In the Netherlands that same policy was used by founders Rob Romein and Franz Hetzenauer to create Tulip computers and they got rich real quick. You say Potato, I say Tomato. But policy is a real issue and that is fair in any government. So today I get to see “China has deliberately and patiently set out to gain “strategic advantage by shaping the world’s technology ecosystem”, the head of the intelligence agency told an audience at the Royal United Service Institute for its annual security lecture. Sir Jeremy argued the Chinese Communist Party was aiming to manipulate the technology that underpins people’s lives to embed its influence at home and abroad and provide opportunities for surveillance”, OK that is a decent accusation and it will not be easy to prove that, or basically it will be a stretch to prove it. We then get “China’s development of the BeiDou satellite system – a rival to the established GPS network which he said had been built into exports to more than 120 countries. He claimed it could be used to track individuals or combined with plans to knock out other countries’ satellites in the event of a conflict”, which is one approach, but could the Chinese government not claim that GPS could do exactly the same thing? In addition we get “the intelligence chief said he would not stop children using TikTok – which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance – although he said young people should be more aware of their personal data and how it could be shared”, OK fair point and awareness of personal data is a good thing, but doesn’t Facebook (and Meta) do he same things? I have seen advertisements on Facebook that should never have appeared, as such too many players are doing exactly the same thing, but for us China is red and evil, would they not claim the same thing regarding Facebook and YouTube? We are then given “He said the UK should continue to welcome students from China but “be really clear on the areas of technology where we will require additional safeguards”. Areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing were particularly important, he told the audience”, which is a fair point. Although it is not out of the question that this should be a marker between commonwealth countries and any other country. In that regard places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have to agree on similar settings. In this Sir Jeremy Fleming (a more dashing lookalike of Michael Andrew Gove) has a few issues on the table that make sense and although we wonder why the Americans are so easily accepted, they issues all make sense. It reflected for me how I am happy that I offered my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and not to China, although the new partnership between China (Tencent Technologies) and Microsoft is not making any waves at all, funny ain’t it? I wonder if we are hitting a critical point of nationalism at this point, and where should the inventors sit? The fact that Google and Amazon are decently clueless on where I found the grounds of 50 million subscriptions will also hit Facebook at some point and I accidentally stumbled on this, the invention had a different foundation and direction, but as I aw where it could take me, I left it to these two titans to slug it out and Google dropping the Google Stadia implies that they are losing more than they reckoned on and that leaves Amazon (who is seemingly still in the dark), so now my hopes are that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accepts my offer. But the underlying stage also exists. I still have my 5G hardware, a stage I saw two years ago and no one else is seeing this, they are all hoping that Facebook makes good on their Meta and they are all in some wait state that it comes for them, I designed my hardware with the view on Neom, as well as the changing stage of marketing, a stage that ill be very different from 2024 onwards (OK, it might be 2025). But those in a “wait-state” will lose out if they cannot adjust their course and I will (extremely hopefully) retire with a nicely filled bank account to sing out my retirement with good food and seeing nice places, I worked 40 years, so I feel entitled to my decently whistling wish. Yet between the lines there are battlefronts. The issue for the Commonwealth to find the right allies, to align with the proper parties and be decently neutral against the others. Yes, we all oppose Russia in the Ukraine stage and that is fine, but do not for one second believe that America is our ally, our friend. Their friendship changes election after election and in the end they are merely their own ally, so when America implodes, and it will, we should be aware and we should be willing to continue with true allies, one that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be, if we could for one minute stop listening to stakeholders, whose alliance is their wallets and their wallets alone. I tried to warn people for 3-5 years that stakeholders are corporate tools that releases the media as their goals see fit, I showed years of data in that direction and soon there will be no choice, if they get their wish, they fill their wallets, they say ‘Oops!’ And they walk away, and where we will we all be at that point? The larger issue is not why we were unaware, but where the media was when the elements were in view. The missing Iran reports regarding Yemen, the list of Pi Phone articles that are only now showing up, the serious questions that the media should have lobbed at Jack Dorsey and Twitter over the last few months and the list goes on, filtered information is not news, it is news founded on discrimination and that is the stage we face, but what else are we not given? Who knew on the partnerships between Chinese Tencent and Microsoft? Who asked the serious questions? I will let you seek and search that part yourself.
So many question and no one wonders how a simple guy like me has the inside track on 50 million optional customers, you think Google would have dropped their Stadia if they could gain 50,000,000 optional customers? Figure it out and yes, some will consider the main point that I might be spreading that stuff that grows the grass in Texas, but I asked myself questions and also doubted myself. Stakeholders will not do that, they will merely proclaim that the other side does not exist (or is irrelevant).
It is time for you to wonder what else they are missing and that is aimed at my 5G IP. A side of 5G none of them have.
Enjoy the day, you should, preferably before the Russian decide to make all the Ukrainians glow in the dark.
Yes, it is the most uncanny of statements and there is al kinds of opposition to it. For me this started yesterday when I saw the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-63157632) titled ‘Molly Russell: Dad wants no further delay to online harm bill’ and I get it, he wants to do something and it all makes sense. But then we get “He also said online platforms must stop self-regulating their content” and there the trouble starts. In the first we have the UK, Canada, the US all having their version of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And it get to be worse. The UK (like a well trained group of pussies) decided to largely ignore the Leveson report. The media CANNOT regulate themselves and even after Leveson we have seen several examples where the media is unable to police and regulate themselves, as such why hold tech players and online media to those standards? The second setting is that these players can move from place to place. It is too large a sewer to see any clear management done on any level. And I feel for Ian Russell, I really do. Yet when we see “The current government has said that they want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online and yet we’re still here and we’re not regulating the platforms. I think it’s really important, firstly, that something that is illegal in the offline world must be illegal and we must be better protected when it’s found on the online world” we see the dream state, it is the best description. The man is not wrong, but with the cloud there is even less oversight. And it is a multi tiered prong we see. We go after regulating platforms but we do not go after the POSTERS. State per nations that any poster of social media is held responsible and make sure that the penalties are harsh. It will be a first hurdle and there are over a dozen to go. You see, when that hurdle is fixed, others will offer services on an international foundation and the problem starts again. His only real option is to make sure that EVERY poster of certain materials are published with their real name and real address. That is when the game changes. Some will stop and hide under a rock, others will get more clever about matters and we are back at square one. For one Facebook adds “more than 300 million photos get uploaded per day. Every minute there are 510,000 comments posted and 293,000 statuses updated” Facebook tories are worse they are only there for 24 hours and can only be watched by a person twice. There is no policing or managing that. It is a life of its own and that is merely one source. Add Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and half a dozen more and you see the scale of the matter. YouTube is the centre of 720,000 hours of material EVERY DAY. The scale cannot be managed and anyone who says different is lying to you. And that is only in places where some have oversight. With TikTok it becomes a much larger mess. So we might trust in doubt, but that doubt needs a formidable bat. Making the poster responsible and these media outlets reporting and having some grasp of the posters is essential and that is a first. It will not make a huge dent, but it could give governments and people a handle of the poster of the harmful content and there is the first setting. These people want the limelight, but when their faces are on the news and they are being asked the hard questions, they will hide behind the freedom of speech and there is the real problem. The laws are centuries old and they never considered mass media and mass slander. These concepts did not even exist in those years. It is not bout regulation, it is about the laws being adjusted and there is also the problem, when that person places it on a server in Russia, India or China, can that person be prosecuted?
It is a rather large mess and the law followed decades behind, so I reckon that a first solution will come to shine by 2035, which might make it no longer valid.
It is merely my view and plenty will disagree, but look at what is now and how much could be regulated and do not rely on AI, it does not yet exist. In the mean time, I need to find a contact in Riyadh, the one in the Saudi Consulate seems to be non functioning (with the option of $500 million a month for their government), the levels of inaction are weird to say the least, but that is my problem, not yours.
Yup that is the setting and it will be clear soon enough. It was a day in July when I wrote (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/07/18/for-those-not-seeing-the-oil-field/) titled ‘For those not seeing the oil field’, there I wrote “What happens when they sell 2.5 million barrels a day less and let that go to the US shortage?” So this was three months ago and now we see at NPR (at https://www.npr.org/2022/10/05/1126754169/opec-oil-production-cut) “The OPEC+ alliance announced a 2 million barrels a day cut in oil production Wednesday”, so I was off by only 500,000 barrels a day. I mentioned on a few occasions ‘I told you so’ and this time around it ill cost you, it will cost you a lot, because 2 million barrels less implies a fuel price rise of 10%-20% from the start and still in that time no one asked Brent oil any heavy questions. It is a commercial enterprise and as such it does not care about Americans and their cheap fuel needs. So whilst we all stare at “President Biden has been trying to rein in prices at the gas pump ahead of the midterm elections” all whilst he did close to nothing to rein in Brent and their selling of well over 75% of their stock abroad. You just cannot have it both ways. If you wanted cheap oil, they needed to treat Saudi Arabia as a real ally to a much better degree than they did. Consider going to the pastry shop asking: “Yo fat fuck, gimme a pastry for 10 cents” what are the chances that will work? Even if you make it “Sir can you please sell me a pastry for 10 cents” there will not be too many shops who will do that. A friend might, but America did whatever they could to make the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a pariah whilst embracing the delay tactics of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s proxy enemy. This was all going to happen one way or another and the fake claims on Russia and Saudi Arabia are a joke. This all plays straight into the hands of China who optionally might end up with that extra oil. All settings that were out in the open from the beginning. On the other hand if oil prices go up, Saudi Arabia might be more interested in my IT solution that gives them at least $500 million a month extra. Time will tell (the commercial manager in the Saudi Consulate in Sydney is seemingly too busy to see me). Well time will tell what comes next but for now Americans will see fuel prices jump, they will see their wages go towards arming thanksgiving and Christmas households and all whilst they are all ‘enjoying’ dinner wearing thicker pants and an extra jumper. As such fashion houses take notice of those needs.
The writing was on the walls and I saw that danger happen 3 months ago. So whilst the US and UK went to Riyadh to ‘kindly please send more cheap oil our ways’ they forgot the first rule of diplomacy (politics too), you cannot make that effort empty handed and then let other organisations slap Saudi Arabia around, it never ever works that way. So when we consider “Yasser Elguindi, the head of macro research at Energy Aspects, says there’s a perception that the Saudis are trying to push prices back to or above $100 per barrel by cutting production and tightening the market. He says the magnitude of the proposed cut has caught people by surprise”, take time to notice that I saw that danger three months ago, so the ‘by surprise’ part is either hollow or a clear first show of reduced levels of competency. Yes the latter part is pure speculation, but feel free to check my earlier article, and consider what is up.
No matter how you slice it, the timing of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is pretty good, winter is coming. Where did I hear that before? No matter what, it will be a cold Christmas this year for a lot of Americans. I wonder what the impact will be in the states like New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, not to mention Washington DC. But the media might continue to avoid the Brent Crude Oil settings and for President Biden and the current PM of the United Kingdom I suggest that they take time and get the Master of Arts in International Relations and Diplomacy or brush up on what you learned there. It might help matters a little. Just some food for thought.
This is not really a reference to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. You see, we have that setting, the Crime and punishment, sometimes it is a setting of Crime through punishment (the scapegoat setting) but the larger stage of Law or punishment is not really looked at. It is a setting that if there is not law, there can be no punishment, if there is punishment (the legal kind) there needs to be law and we are getting more and more that the bullies are given a free pass. This has been a central for too long a setting, decades even. So when the BBC gives us ‘Bradford City: Racist fans should be jailed for abuse – footballer’, the story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-63115998) gives us “Timi Odusina, who plays for Bradford City, said he had been subjected to “degrading” abuse during his career. He hoped harsher punishments, such as prison sentences to those convicted of racial abuse, would act as a deterrent to others”, this sounds nice, but the law is clear. The UK passed the Race Relations Act 1965 and there we see “The Act banned racial discrimination in public places and made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of ‘colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’ an offence”. As such I am posting the idea that politicians and lawmakers take their heads out of their asses and set in motion a new decree. No person is given access to ANY sport event without the option to show their personal ID, any person found guilty of racism is given a bad mark, and that means no attending sport events for 2 years. They can watch it on TV and shout whatever they like in their own homestead. I have ben seeing the racism, monkey references for years now and it is time that these two parties start a clear new change, ending this BS. I do not know Timi Odusina, I also do not care about him (as I do not like football), but this is the same in EVERY sport. Abuse and discrimination are wrong and it is time that we do something about it, regardless of age. You can be stupid on someone else’s time.
Is my solution great? No it is not, I see that but something has to change and at some point enough is enough. There I no ‘it was a bad setting of events’, we see excuse after excuse. We see racial discrimination, we see gender discrimination, religious discrimination and we shrug. Nothing is done and I believe that there is now a larger need to change this. Are there better solutions? Perhaps but no one is doing anything and it is time to make changes. I reckon that the racist when he has to sit out sport events for 2 years it might change him. Why 2 years? One year is just not good enough, it does not stop a person like that and two years might. It remain speculation whether this really works but a clear signal needs to be given and that signal is “Enough is enough”. There will be voices making opposite claims, but when all the discriminated against speak out, I reckon that the voices will request my view on the matter. With racial, gender and religious issues all over the field there is a large enough quorum to finally do something about discrimination.
The BBC alerted me to something an hour ago. This happens and I initially read the article with a shrug like ‘who cares?’ But few moments later the coin dropped and I was all about the WTF setting. You see, the article ‘Mortgage deals withdrawn in record numbers over rate rise fears’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63061534), as said, I initially shrugged when I saw “Lenders withdrew a record number of mortgage products overnight, according to analysts, as they grappled with the prospect of rising interest rates”, it was always going to happen, but the awakening happened shortly thereafter when I saw “Moneyfacts, a financial information service, said that 935 mortgage products, around a quarter of the total, were taken off the shelf.” Are you effing kidding me? 935 mortgage products? How can anyone get a clear view on that many products? How can anyone see the forest through the trees in that setting? And with “lenders are withdrawing mortgage deals in order to re-price them” chaos gets a free rein. Is anyone clearly investigating these products? And that is before we get to the repricing issue. Now, I get it, things get repriced, events make that essential, but when was a mortgage holder EVER contacted because his product has been lowered in price, and there would be a windfall that would be shown in a lower monthly rate, when did that EVER happen? My guess is never. And we haven’t even touched on the crazy part. This is seen with “A total of 2,661 mortgage products are still available – but that is half the number that were on sale at the start of December last year when interest rates started to rise” this means that the people are confronted with 3600 mortgage products, this sounds way too fishy to me and no one is asking questions. I get that there are elements that make it essential to have a few products, but this is enabling a wild west of mortgage consultants and that ain’t right. So when I see “Brokers are reassuring those who already have a mortgage, or an agreement for a new mortgage, that they will be unaffected for the time being. However, when they come to remortgage, they are likely to find monthly repayments have become a lot more expensive” There is a clear setting here, mortgages are frozen for a time and this time tends to be 3-5 years, so after that time remortgage will have an impact and with the housing market reducing in price by a speculated 10% that will be a very costly event for a lot of people. And that setting is made with “When the family bought their house in Manchester in 2018, they fixed the mortgage at 2.05% for five years with monthly payments of £927, Mr Ahmad said.
Usman, a 33-year-old self-employed courier, said if he took out a fixed rate mortgage today he would be facing monthly payments of more than £1,250 a month” Yes there are a few sides here and that is not all on the people. The first is what property did they buy? Did they leave space for situations that they could not foresee? The second part is the 2.05%, that is below currency valuation, a larger setting that influences everything and that is before you realise that all these events are setting their mortgage at almost 30% higher and optionally even more in 2023 and 2024. That whilst they lose 10% of their value makes it a rather large issue. And in this I have little faith in the ‘calming’ voice of Rachel Springall from Moneyfacts. We might be given “Various lenders have been very vocal that their decision to withdraw products is a temporary measure, amid the uncertainty over interest rates” but one persons temporary setting is speculation, we just do not know what will happen and the fact that there were over 3500 mortgage products was a idiotic setting to say the least. Yes, it is personal ad there might be all kind of reasons but go to ANY bank, how many mortgage products do they have? They will not give you that 3500 list, will they and banks are still the centre piece in any mortgage and that is now becoming a much larger play. Andrew Wishart, senior property economist at Capital Economics gives us “The rise in market interest rates that has already happened will push up mortgage rates to at least 6% and reduce the size of loans that lenders can offer” if that is true, Usman Ahmad’s house is a cooked setting, from 2.05% to 6% implies a cost rise of almost 300%, he might want to get out whilst he has a chance because this is about to get really ugly in the UK. And whatever short term someone hands them is a loaded cannon, it’s like walking backwards in a minefield thinking that you are more safe that way, I never saw that reality and you should neither. I reckon that a larger investigation is needed the fact that the BBC does not think this to be important is their loss, but here do you see the stage where there are over 3500 game consoles, no business can set that stage and survive, the fact that mortgages got away with it makes me wonder if any of them had the welfare of house buyers in mind. I have my doubts here.
I am not one to speak out against Islam, I am not islamic and I do not know the Quran, as such I tend to avoid Islamic issues. I also never read Salman Rushdie’s Satanic verses for the same reason. If it was an attack on the Bible, I might have picked it up, but it was an attack on Islam and without knowledge of the Quran and Islam it is a waste of my time. So I never read the book, even though many (with the same lack of knowledge) picked up the book and use it as gospel. Well the devil can recite the bible too, so I will not play that game. Today I am not attacking Islam, I am not speaking out against Islam. The Guardian and a few other papers made me aware of an issue. The Guardian gave me ‘Saudi Arabia: man arrested after Mecca pilgrimage for Queen’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/13/saudia-arabia-yemeni-man-arrested-mecca-pilgrimage-the-queen). There we see “Saudi authorities have arrested a man who claimed to have travelled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca to perform an umrah pilgrimage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II” here I was initially wondering what this was about, but then we learn “Saudi Arabia forbids pilgrims to Mecca from carrying banners or chanting slogans. While it is acceptable to perform umrah on behalf on deceased Muslims, this does not apply to non-Muslims like the Queen, who was supreme governor of the Church of England, the mother church of the worldwide Anglican communion.”
OK, I get that, and I will not oppose that rule of law, which is islamic in nature (all Saudi law is Islamic in nature as far as I can tell). But then I thought it through. You see, we all abide by law, whatever law it is and Islamic law is no less than any other law, but in this (towards any law) I believe that there will alway be an exception. In my lifetime I have known two exceptions. The first was Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), the man was one truly amazing exception and probably the primary reason why the Germans never got to England. He was given a 19-gun salute, by The Honourable Artillery Company, a unique event to say the lease, he was voted the greatest Briton of all time in 2002. The man was that unique.
Now there is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary (21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) who was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, the second exception and in my lifetime I was aware of both. In every generation a truly exceptional person is born. OK, there was also the Mahatma Gandhi, so now we have three. But I challenge anyone who proclaims that these three were not unique and exceptional in almost every way.
Now we get back to the article. There we see that a Yemeni national transgressed those laws. I cannot vouch for the actions of this Yemeni national who is stated to have held a banner saying: “Umrah for the soul of Queen Elizabeth II, we ask God to accept her in heaven and among the righteous.” And now we have the issue, or perhaps the situation. What little I know I would state that God should accept her in heaven. I merely hope that the prosecution and the Islamic scholars see the event as a truly exceptional one. Queen Elisabeth II reigned for 70 years and 214 days. the longest of any British monarch, the longest recorded of any female head of state in history. And her reign was even as head of the church of England to be a reign of inclusion of any religion. Whomever this Yemeni national is, I hope that Islamic law recognises the exceptional person for whom the transgression was done and that leniency will be found.
I also recognise that there is a need to avoid this situation and that in any generation an exception can be found, In my generation this is the one exception. Perhaps in the dusk of my life I see it differently and I might have reacted differently when I was young, but I lived through the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and the twenty two years after those and Queen Elisabeth II was a true exception and revered by a lot more than the British. So I personally hope that this Yemeni citizen, hopefully knowing Islamic law would have seen this as this one exception as well. There is a point when any law can be intentionally broken, not for ones self, but to remind us all that there is a greater good, a greater need to recognise that there is an exception to a law, any law and for many that will be the recognition of Queen Elisabeth II and the exceptional life driven to follow the duties that were bestowed on her, she kept that oath and followed her path of duties for over 70 years, a task that well over 99.999% of all people would be unable to keep, that is true exceptional and that makes her the one exception and I reckon that millions will hope that she will be welcomed into heaven, any heaven. Whether it is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism or any other religion. Less then 5 in anyones lifetime ever make it to such a list, I truly believe that Queen Elisabeth II is one of those people. I truly believe that if she enters Islamic heaven, she will be enjoying tea with Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi – Ras Al Khaimah, Hussein bin Talal, Fahd bin Abdelaziz Al Saud, and Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud discussing whatever rulers talk about. I have no way of knowing that. I feel certain that they will welcome her in their midst as an equal in many ways.
The one exception is not merely recognising that person, it will be the feeling of loss when that person is gone and it will be a rare moment when that feeling hits us when it is another nations ruler. It is a different person for most people, In case of Sir Winston Churchill, in 2002 456,498 voted him as the greatest Briton who ever lived, he won by getting 28.1% of the votes. If that same vote happens in 2030, there is no doubt that it will be Queen Elisabeth II who graces the number one spot and I predict that the vote count for her to win will be a lot higher, she might just get nearly all the votes there are and as the UK now has 67,508,936 people, I reckon she might end will well over 50 million votes.
That is merely my point of view, and again I state that this is an Islamic stage on Islamic law and I accept that, but I also see that there will be that one exception and that is my point of view. So I can only hope that there will be leniency for this Yemeni man who intentional or not broke the law.
Yes, we do love our acronyms. There was SPQR (Senātus Populusque Rōmānus), there is RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging), there is FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) and my favourite SPID (Stupid people in defence). The last one gets a new level of non-intelligence when we see the BBC article ‘Nato investigates hacker sale of missile firm data’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-62672184). The article alerts us to “Nato is assessing the impact of a data breach of classified military documents being sold by a hacker group online. The data includes blueprints of weapons being used by Nato allies in the Ukraine conflict.” And to show you just how stupid this is, lets take a look at ‘What did they not see?’, which I wrote on May 1st 2021. There I wrote “Ransomware gangs are now routinely targeting schools and hospitals. Hackers use malicious software to scramble and steal an organisation’s computer data”, in addition to this we have ‘Exposing lies?’ Which I wrote on July 23rd 2019. There I gave the readers “The FBI send their cyber experts and behold, they too agreed that it was North Korea. Even as we were extremely aware that they had no way of doing it, the FBI stood firm on their findings.” These elements matter. They matter because on July 30th 2021 I wrote ‘In retrospect’ where I gave the readers “It goes back when I designed an intrusion system that stayed one hop away from a router table between two points and to infect one of the routers to duplicate packages from that router on that path, one infection tended to not be enough, 2-3 infections needed to be made so that the traffic on that route between two points could be intercepted, I called it the Hop+1 solution, I came up with it whilst considering the non-Korean Sony hack. That thought drove me to think of an approach to find the links.”
So when we see ‘now’ (8 hours ago) that “The pan-European company, which is headquartered in France, said its information was hacked from a compromised external hard drive, adding that it was cooperating with authorities in Italy, where the data breach took place. It is understood investigations are centred around one of MBDA’s suppliers.” This is important because I learned basic issues like data at rest and data in movement A DECADE AGO, as such, how stupid were these people? And that is before we start digging into the ‘compromised external hard drive’ part, who got it compromised, where was IT, how did SE-Unix fail, or are these people even more stupid and they relied on Microsoft? So whilst we understand “a Nato spokesperson said: “We are assessing claims relating to data allegedly stolen from MBDA. We have no indication that any Nato network has been compromised.”” Yes, because admitting to a faulty network is a bad gig for all around. I reckon that this gets shovelled under any carpet as soon as possible, and the criminals? They get to fill their pockets. A stage that has a few issues from the get go and that is before we start digging into “Cyber criminals, operating on Russian and English forums, are selling 80GB of the stolen data for 15 Bitcoins (approximately £273,000) and claimed to have sold the stash to at least one unknown buyer so far.” There is still the issue whether the claim is true, who was the culprit and where did it all go? There are all kind of questions and that is not on the BBC or their fault. What one person claims is another person’s believe and yet another man’s doubt. But there is a rather large problem, the fact that there was an external hard drive, the fact that it allegedly was compromised implies that there are failing policies in place, there are failing IT divisions in play and there is a large amount of military IP in the open. There is a lack of questions and the fact that it is not front page news in EVERY paper is yet another matter. So when we take notice of “A former Nato official said: “There’s a lot of over-classification in Nato but these labels matter. They are applied by the originator of the information and NATO SECRET is not applied lightly.
“This really is the kind of information Nato doesn’t want out there in the public.”” We seem to see the change of a dance, what direction and which tempo is unknown to me. It gives a speculated view that there might be additional damage, but that is speculated and in light of one compromised device the question becomes how was this one undetected for so long and whatever more could be compromised? So when you take a dab at my hop+1 solution, consider that a compromised device indicates that some people of rank in that place were especially stupid. But that could just be me and I merely wonder how the relationship of mundane workers at place X versus the amount of SPID’s in that place becomes an interesting investigation. Merely because there are a whole range of players who would want that data and they are all willing to pay, so these hackers could end up with 10-50 times what they have now.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 