UNCTAD | Lawrence van Rijn

Yup, that happens and I don’t believe it is a worrying issue. You see, it started a little over a year ago and I created my first (sort of) script. It is called ‘How to assassinate a politician’ which I later ‘reset’ to ‘Essay’. MY first script was meant specifically for an islamic audience which could have graced the walls of the UAE or the Saudi media bosses. I saw the story and it was my response to an Islamophobe population. And how to better serve it than to assassinate the biggest European islamophobic of all Geert Wilders (now PM of the Netherlands). I thought it was an excellent idea (a pure personal thought). Yet now I am confronted with ‘How the creative economy drives growth in the Middle East’ (at https://economymiddleeast.com/news/how-creative-economy-drives-growth-middle-east/). Here I see “In the UAE, a global creative hub, Dubai Media City is home to a talent pool of over 40,500 creative professionals”, so what was I thinking? Well, the short of this is that I write to feed the creative beast in me. I was unaware of just how large the Media City population was, and if you go by that setting you will never get anything done.

And whilst you are mulling over “The UN Trade and Development Creative Economy Outlook 2024 highlights the crucial role of creative industries in global trade and economic growth. According to the UNCTAD survey, the creative economy contributes between 0.5 percent and 7.3 percent of GDP and employs 0.5 percent to 12.5 percent of the workforce in various countries. “The creative economy has the right forces pushing its sails. This is not just art. It is an economic powerhouse that we must harness together, leaving no one behind,” stated Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of UNCTAD.”” You see, it is nice to hide behind numbers at one setting, but the source of the numbers matter a well. I find a little worrying setting behind the statement “The creative economy has the right forces pushing its sails. This is not just art. It is an economic powerhouse that we must harness together, leaving no one behind” my issue is in one direction “leaving no one behind”, which is nice, but that is a political statement and Grynspan was in the past Grynspan was a professor and researcher at the Economic Science Research Institute at the University of Costa Rica. This is not some anti statement. I always wonder and become ‘skeptical’ when a politician makes a “leaving no one behind” in their setting. Because that tends to rally towards “We were however forced to make choices” and that always goes at the expense of Art, especially when dollar numbers are involved. That and the setting of “employs 0.5 percent to 12.5 percent of the workforce in various countries”, which is quite the distribution. So where is it 12.5%? Hollywood with its 153,859 villagers? Some other consideration would be ‘the UNCTAD survey’, which I am not attacking now, as I have never read it. But the stage of a survey calls with me the setting of data. What data? What was filtered? How was it collected? What nations participated? Indonesia has around 277.5 million people, how many does its media (online and other) have? Simple questions really.

When we dig into the matter, we see “Middle Eastern countries recognise the potential of the creative economy. In the region, the intersection of the digital and creative industries, in particular — encompassing the use of artificial intelligence (AI), Web3, and virtual reality — is driving innovation and economic diversification.” I still shiver at the notion that AI does not yet exist, no matter how many players boom the bubble of the AI vibe, it does not yet exist and we need to take notice of this. It might be fuelling the desire for it to be here, but it isn’t and when the world starts wondering the simple equation of “LLM’s vs AI” and true data parsing, its verification process and programmers with its algorithms the statement “According to a white paper by Dubai Design District and Dubai Media City, the global digital creative economy could grow by 11 percent annually, reaching a staggering AED27 trillion by 2030.” I fear for the fallout it precedes. And like the other papers the question of population, collection and reading the data will get a much higher priority. I winder how certain power players will address and respond to “a staggering AED27 trillion by 2030”, you see, joy of a revenue is nice, but the fear of it falling short in 5 years will be on the forefront of nearly every mind who depended on this fuelling stage.

There is a side I fully agree with. It is seen in “In November, Dubai Media City underscored the essential role of multicultural creativity at this year’s Global Media Congress held in ADNEC Center Abu Dhabi.” I believe that true creativity can only be seen in a multicultural setting as such the UAE has a jump on all other nations as I personally see it and even as I shiver at the 40,500 setting (I am not debating or attacking it) I understand that my script had very little chance to begin with. I am still proud I wrote it and there are three more coming (not with Islamic values in mind), but that is the state of the world. Creativity is where our thoughts take us. And we respond as we would or as we can. The first one was islamic in nature, but that doesn’t mean all will be and multicultural is the first step of being truly creative. What matters to me are a few things and the stage of the numbers is one, articles rarely spell that out and as such it becomes my setting that I wish I knew more of UNCTAD and their numbers, because it is at the heart of the matter here. And here is the spiller (or killer). You see, the UN Trade and Development has a UNCTADstat Data centre. I took a look (at https://unctadstat.unctad.org/datacentre/) where I found “International trade in creative services: estimates for individual economies” an experimental part that has data from 2010 to 2018 and shows us Saudi Arabia, but not the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as such I wonder where the numbers are coming from. The article does not give us that part. I saw the Creative Economy Outlook 2024. The word ‘Statistics’ is given to us 23 times, and always with references like {Key Statistics and Trends in Trade Policy 2022. UNCTAD/DITC/TAB/2023/2. Geneva.} Yet the report gives us no real numbers (like raw data) or the reference to raw data has exactly 0 hits. As such I tend to have a more skeptical view on such a presentation. As such when ‘confirming’ the survey, I see another ‘hitch’ the fact that the phrase ‘in countries where data is available’ is missing from the article. It happens, but as I see it, it is kinda sloppy. With the rather large setting shown (in the UN pdf) that we see “inputs received through the 2024 UNCTAD Survey on the Creative Economy from the following countries: Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Benin, Cambodia, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Montenegro, Mozambique, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Seychelles, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Uzbekistan and Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” And here we get the other shoe dropped. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are not mentioned at all. This is not on these countries, but as I see it The editorial of the Middle East economy has a little explaining to do (as I personally see it), it might be merely semantics, but that is at times how I roll.

And there is more on the graphics, one pie chart merely shows Saudi Arabia and the UAE as part of the EMEA region, as such I wonder which part of the 21% is Europe, because that sets a much larger premise of advertisement per region and population. There is no real way that Saudi Arabia and the UAE can compete in advertising against a population of 742 million europeans. As such I start to develop questions (as I would).

Well that was it for now, I’ll add the United Nations PDF at the bottom, it took me less than 10 minutes to scope out the questions you see here and if I took a little more time I will find a lot more. But that is the setting of a political brief (as I see it), I also didn’t see (I might have missed that) on the definition of the media and what sources are set to what medium. You see, there is a chart on Global video games revenues, and predictively set (based on data) this is always an upward spiral because there are no sources (or data) available for the Playstation 6, the Nintendo Switch 2, or the Tencent handheld. They are the tomorrow systems and there is no data on any of that a present. But the larger audiences are already looking into these parts. So what gives on the data?

A mere simple question that has no easy answer, I get that, because presumption is always on what is known, but take the simple setting in 2012 the PS4 was released. It got more than 50 million consoles out and obliterated the Microsoft product. In 2016 Microsoft merely gave us all Xbox live numbers. So when we see that, what numbers does UNCTAD have to set the Total video games revenue from 225 to 312 billion and Video games advertising from 75 to 137 billion between 2023 and 2027? A lot higher than Traditional games which went from 55 to 62 billion? The numbers do not reflect each other. As you might guess that sets gaming in a dead drop against advertisement, a bad business practice as I personally see it. And I could go on but when you see it was a forecast based on PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2023-2027 (so based on what numbers?) This is merely what I found in under an hour. As such question all numbers that have no accompanying response setting (aka N).

Also when we get the Countries with the most significant art markets by value of sales in 2023 and we see USA, France, UK, China and other with France at 7% and other at 15%, where do the UAE and Saudi Arabia end up? Consider that a place with 40,500 members do not surpass France and are part of the 15% What is the setting for them? I wonder if the Middle East Economy had those questions in mind when they released that story. As I see it a simple question really.

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Have a great Monday.

We all seem to have views, it is not wrong, it is not bad it is not evil, it merely is. I saw in 1998-2002 how governments sat on their hands, how lawmakers sat on their hands (and optionally on their mistresses) and they all vocally agreed that hackers were nothing more than a nuisance, and as I see it the traitor Bradley Edward Manning (aka Chelsea Elizabeth Manning) gave up secrets that it was not allowed to reveal and gave it to the world. There is no doubt on guilt, there was no doubt on treason, there merely was the act and that was that, it was the first moment where governments got the first clear hint that hackers were a much larger danger. After that came Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Julian might be many things, but technically he was not a traitor. Edward Snowden was one, and the law again disregarded the steps that were taken, he went intentionally to a place where he might get the most value out of his deeds, Russia picked him up, just to piss of the US, which they were speculatively allowed to do, yet the stage is rather large, more hackers, all under the guise that the law saw them as a mere nuisance, we all got introduced to ransomware, now we see governments hacked through a sunny breeze (Solarwinds), and the voyage does not end. Now we see less than a day ago ‘Hackers threaten to leak plastic surgery pictures’, as well as ‘National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information’, now I do not care for the plastic surgery part, but it is another case where personal and person inclined data is no longer free, the two elements also give a rather large stage for us to place a new premise. One could now argue that hackers are the clear and present danger to personal and corporate needs and as such they can be hunted down and put t death. So from nuisance to global danger, as such when all these mommies cry that their little boys did not know what they were doing, I have no issues putting a HK model 23 to their foreheads and executing them (optionally with silencer as to not scare the neighbours).

I think it is time for lawmakers and government administrative types to wake up and smell the situation, and in this, perhaps some remember the words of Martin C. Libicki in Newsweek (2015) where he pushed the view ‘Cyberattacks Are a Nuisance, Not Terrorism’, well that is not really true, is it? When we see the definition of terrorism we see “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”, there we see two parts up for debate, the fist is that ‘mental violence’ is still violence and the setting of intimidation is already achieved, the stage we still need to address ‘the pursuit of political aims’, not all terrorism is set to political aims, unless if you call self-enrichment the pursuit of political aims.

And with ‘National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information’ we see an initial stage where commerce will come to a screeching halt. My IP does not cover for that, darn. But there is the old way (1981-1991), just kill them, be done with it.

Now some (especially in law) will state that I am overreacting, yet am I? It is the lawmakers that could optionally be seen as cowards, hiding behind their golden calf called jurpisprudence. The law, for the most does a good job, it is not perfect, so be it, but for the most, it is OK. This covers the never trespassers and the limited trespassers, they make up for 75% of all people, then there are the criminals, 24.99%, the law takes care of them, they are repeat offenders, career criminals and as such the law was designed to deal with them, then there is the remaining 0.01%, these criminals are in it for the kill, to create a maximum amount of cadavers physically, mentally and financially, to make life for nearly all impossible, and that golden calf, the law cannot deal with them and we accept that, so we remove them in other ways. We hunt them down and put them to death, and when it is some 16 year old claiming he didn’t know what he was doing, we know, he did it to seem cool, he was willing to make all others suffer, just to look cool, to get the tits, to rub the vagina, his friends never could, as such there is a 9mm solution that solves it, if only his parents had raised him right.

You think I am kidding?
You forget the poverty line is shifting massively because of COVID-19 and soon the insurances will not cover the impact, the media will merely snigger and cash in on all those clicks they got from the $x donation to an unnamed source, and it is now time to make the long overdue change, before governments are pushed to take away more and more of our freedoms, which will push us into the dark-web, a situation these criminals would love. And it is close to 15 years too late, but in this case it is better to be late to the party than not get there at all.

Am I overreacting?
That would remain a fair question, I do not believe so as this step is well over a decade overdue, it is not something that was pushed to the top in the last few days, and it is partially due to governments and lawmakers not acting when they could have and especially when they should have, now the dike is levied and people are soon to be drowning and something must be done. From my point of view, to hit terrorists, you hit them harder, so the more extreme you hit these hackers, the clearer the message becomes. And a clear message is years overdue.

In this there is a two step setting, there are the “cool wannabe’s” who are mot likely teenagers, some of them are easy to find and after the first examples a lot of them will hide like cockroaches, but the second tier, the one the media and governments intentionally ignore are those in organised crime, they will be the real challenge and as most governments have nothing on stopping them, at best they can limit the damage, which is basically no solution, that gap will take time, but with ‘hackers are forging cloud authentication information’ less than a week old, there is now a chance that the NSA and other intelligence networks will realise that compromised clouds will have global commercial implications, as such governments must now act, the moment any cloud is openly seen compromised, it will be too late for well over a decade. It becomes a clearer situation when you consider that global e-commerce was set to ‘Global e-Commerce hits $25.6 trillion’, by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), s how much losses must global commerce endure before we act? Oh and if you think that this is the end? How much more powerful will organised crime become if they only get their fingers on 0.1% ($25,600,000,000)? It will become a sliding scale that goes from bad to worse, and governments knew that, they knew for well over a decade, but their delusions saw other non-solution, like perhaps, it will go away on its own, so tell me when was that ever a solution?

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