Tag Archives: Mohammed bin Salman

Who is Miss Calculation?

There is something happening in the Middle East (there is always something happening in the Middle East mind you), yet the events of last week are seemingly larger and I am not sure in what direction it is heading.

There is a much larger stage and even as the media informed us on ‘Saudi royal arrests: Why top princes have been silenced‘ (source: BBC), we get “Prince Mohammed (commonly known as MBS) has displayed a ruthless ambition to force his way to the very top of the political tree“, as well as “The unfortunate subjects of MBS’s ambition this time were other members of the Saud family – most notably one of his uncles, Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, a former interior minister; and a cousin, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (known as MBN), a former crown prince and interior minister – who were detained for questioning and placed under investigation for treason, although no charges have been made“, this issue is that this does not add up. In the first, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that was never in question and there is no opposition in open play, as such the BBC statement (which is the same as almost every other statement in the media) is seemingly faulty. So why do I believe that I am correct and all the media is wrong? 

It is an important question as it gives rise to something much larger. In all this the intelligent part comes from Al Jazeera who gives us ‘There is a perfect storm brewing in Saudi Arabia‘, with the important byline “But why now?” it is the part that most media circumvented. 

The first we see is “Two separate issues are at play here. First is the sense of a crown prince on a mission to eradicate all forms of dissent and to ensure a smooth transition to becoming king“, I would want to question that, yet I know that I am at a loss in part as I am a non-Muslim, there might be parts of Islamic Law that I am unfamiliar with (as I am completely in the dark on Islamic law), as his father proclaimed him the Crown prince, I am at a loss why anyone would oppose the wishes of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud? As such the ‘why’ part is under scrutiny. 

Yet Al Jazeera has something to tell us, it starts with “Facing a range of parabolic pressures from domestic and international sources, the Saudi state is in a precarious position, with much at stake for MBS, the architect of the kingdom’s future trajectory” and it gives strength to the ‘Why Now’ part. We get a few “That this did not happen has been seen as a sign of weakness on MBS’s part” statements and the entire issue that revolves around Eggy Calamari (aka Agnes Callamard, the UN essay writer) should not be ignored. There are several players on the world stage shouting anti Saudi rhetoric, all whilst these people are not scrutinised on any issues that involves issues like evidence or supporting evidence. Yet the people who get the anti Saudi filtered news accept these accusations like gospel.

As such we see “these questions mean little domestically, outside the kingdom they contribute to perceptions of MBS as a reckless leader, prone to rash moves” and these issues keep on adding up, whilst the media refuses to scrutinise the information handed to them.

As such, as Al Jazaeera is stating the article by Simon Mabon, we get at the final end “The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance“, as a Middle Eastern expert Simon has achieved a lot and knows a lot more than me, yet I have analysed data for over 30 years in all matters of complacency and the data does not add up. In all this we need to see ‘Behind the Russia-Saudi Breakup, Calculations and Miscalculations‘ (at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/world/europe/russia-saudi-oil.html), tere we see “With oil prices plunging and Russian state television blaming Saudi Arabia for the collapse of the ruble, the kingdom on Tuesday signaled what seemed to be an escalation. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, said that on April 1 it would start providing customers with 12.3 million barrels a day. That is a 26 percent increase on its output before the deal with Russia collapsed” yet in all this, we see no reference on Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz (former Interior minister), Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (former Crown Prince) and their Russian Links or any other international links, which in light of everything is equally wrong. Not that it was not reported by the Saudi Government but that the international media failed to investigate it. Even the Guardian revolves around “allegedly aimed to block crown prince’s accession“, all whilst Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been clearly and accepted as Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, in all this the lack of questions is astounding, but I guess that an inflammatory essay by that French girl at the UN will follow shortly. 

All whilst the New York Times is sitting on the one gem that mattered, it is “Russia is now calculating that many companies cannot survive as prices fall below their break-even point“, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Russia have the air to hold out on the events, yet it seems that the lungs of Saudi Arabia are larger and have the stability and long term sitting that Russia has not, in all this the two arrests are optionally the Russian council that cannot be accessed by Russia any more.

Am I correct?

I do not know, but the investigation in his area is not done and that makes for a much larger failing. And whilst the media wakes up and looks into “Russia is also worried that other high-cost producers, among them companies pumping off the coast of Brazil, would cut into European and Asian markets” a much larger stage is overlooked, so whilst too many stare at “State television stations blamed Saudi Arabia for the ruble collapse and offered as solace expert commentary that the United States and Saudi Arabia would ultimately suffer more.“, I merely glance at ‘expert commentary‘ and find it lacking. 

I believe that there needs to be a unified Saudi front against all other players, I believe that there could optionally be more arrests and it has nothing to do with the needs of MBS, and everything to do with those advising others where the goal is to harm the needs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia has to avert that. In addition, the entire NSO matter (now being gagged) is also not a sitting pretty issue, it allows for more and more media attacks on Saudi Arabia, all whilst the media does not scrutinise the materials received. So as the media goes with “A report published by the security forensics firm FTI Consulting concluded with “medium to high confidence” that was the case“, the larger issue that is seen is that the origin of the hack cannot be established and is conveniently left out of the media. No one denies that Jeff Bezos has a phone that was hacked, yet who did it is undetermined and the report that followed is abundant in links to opinion pieces and other non valid urls to sources where the determination is open to all kinds of supposition and indeterminate forms of questions, all whilst the UN uses it like gospel. A report that uses language like “While the possibility exists” we see the media merely publishing and not asking the questions that matter. It is a created stage where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has little choice but to create a unified front. 

In a stage where plenty of Cyber experts have question marks in the report that is ‘exclusively’ given out. It is one of several attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince, it is this stage that matters, as it is a doubling of the Khashoggi stage (a journalist no one cares about) and the linked stage of embargoes against Saudi Arabia, whilst no one is asking the questions that matter “Who gets that income now?” We all ignore that part and so does the media, yet there is every chance that with the Russian links out and the American links in question, there is a larger chance that communications and weapons design will fall towards China more and more. And as we are in doubt of one, we get to see “Saudi Arabian Military Industries is prepared to move forward with product development“, a stage where China is optionally the larger winner in all this and the debts of Germany and the US will get a larger boost in all this, that is the price of removing the freedom of Choice (of Saudi Arabia), the data is simple and readable on that front, even as the media remains in doubt and removes all events of these actions.

Andreas Schwer stated (at the Dubai Airshow) “We have signed more than 25 agreements with foreign partners, so we have multiple opportunities to acquire alternative technologies from other partners where there are no limitations. There is no risk that any limitation of a single country or government can block Saudi Arabia from getting a full localized portfolio of products“, so tell me, how many media outlets had that bit of news? Defence News might be one of the few and that has a limited readership, so how many newspapers had that? 

I personally believe that after the events mounted up towards the Vision 2030 act of Saudi Arabia, there has been an attack after attack on Saudi Arabia, yet the verdict of evidence remained away for the longest time. And as the media looks at the figures for the Miss Calculation votes, we are left in the rear not getting any data that matters. 

It is seen in the 5G spot where Zain KSA gives us “Zain KSA has launched 5G in Saudi Arabia, with the first phase of the rollout being implemented through a network of 2,000 towers that cover an area of more than 20 cities in the Kingdom“, that was last year in October. So how much 5G do we presently see in Europe, Australia or the US? Not that much, I can tell you that, all whilst the US parts have NEVER shown any 5G speed that surpasses the 4G systems. All issues largely unreported on, so as such How happy are we when we see that we are  member of the Miss Information group? 

How correct am I?

That remains to be seen, yet the media gives out close to nothing on the history of actions of Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, we see accusation after accusation on the actions of ‘purge of relatives’ whilst that information remains debatable (when you consider how large that family really is). Even if we would accept that, where is the evidence, it has never been produced, displayed and scrutinised. I could not find more than a thousand links on the first name and well over 50% was about the first name and for the most they are all stating the same thing with references of ‘purge of relatives’ and no evidence to support this. There were a lot more links on Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (over 13,000), yet there too, the links I saw were lacking in evidence. Now we can agree that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia likes to wash its laundry out of sight, but the media is faltering again and again in showing us any acceptable evidence, or showing us supported evidence. In the end, we see a few mentions of “allegedly planning a coup“, which might be enough reason, yet the media shows no evidence of any kind, and this is the media claiming to be on top of matters, as the Khashoggi and Bezos events showed us, the media is merely on top of spreading gossip and showing us debatable documents (one of them with highly debatable links). 

So as we go into a phase where we switch the auction from Miss Information to Miss Calculation, we should wonder why we have to reside our beliefs in either of the two. Al Jazeera states: “Such misjudgements have prompted some in the kingdom to question whether MBS is the right person to rule the Saudi state“, yet at present the pressures are applied from the outside and are seemingly applied as the powers outside have too little impact on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and that worries these people. In a stage where Saudi Arabia is visibly surpassing other nations in 5G, bringing Vision 2030, which is a vision surpassing any vision the US has given us in 50 years and a stage where too many companies have  need to become active in Saudi Arabia and they are limited for what they can do, it seems that the need for Saudi Arabia is greater than most expect and that is what is feared in both the US and Europe. Both players need Saudi Arabia and it seems that Saudi Arabia needs neither, not whilst China is actively seeking expansion of technology and it finds Saudi Arabia wanting. As we now see the impact of all these embargoes against Saudi Arabia, the EU nations are learning the hard way that the deals they had with Saudi Arabia was a good thing and now that Iran is buckling its nuclear pact, the EU is left with nothing and the US with even less. And all this as presentation managers relied on bullet pointed presentations, all whilst Saudi Arabia requested a finished product, the entire slamming Saudi Arabia seems to be founded on the principle that anyone on the defence, staged on a fence is malleable and now as we see that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not playing along with that requirement, we see western desperation set in. As we are given “recent advances in defense equipment have enabled Chinese defense contractors to compete more effectively while retaining lower prices, making Chinese arms an increasingly attractive choice for customers worldwide” (source: National Defense), we need to understand that certain matters are linked. Even as China pursued smaller projects, the option to get the largest arms importer in the world is tempting, a nation that is set to stability and has a need for its growth of SAMI still means that China can gain a decade of important sales. That part is now set in motion and could improve Chinese salespaths by 30%-50% in the years to come, all by gaining one customer. All funds that the west will miss out on and the two players that were optionally internationally a beacon of information, are now arrested. I agree that it relies on the two players to be the ones that have international allure, yet as I stated, the intelligence is lacking on every angle, and what we need to see is where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wants to go and where it needs to go to get to where it wants to go, as I personally see it, the EU and the US are more and more lacking and that will have far reaching repercussions.

So whilst the people are treated to “US lawmakers and tech experts want a strong American competitor“, we see that the essential path is that it is about Anti Huawei, we see that Huawei has little to fear as it now has a much larger grasp on the Middle East and it is removing the options that the US used to have (mainly by US actions), and even as the US still gives us “the U.S. and other countries are concerned that Huawei poses a national security risk due to its reliance on the Chinese government and its leaders’ own ties to the country’s Communist Party“, all whilst Huawei has openly disproven the “reliance on the Chinese government” more than once, it is still phrased. Just as that same media phrases MBS and its connections to Bezos hacking and Khashoggi, all whilst those accusations cannot be backed up by evidence, when we see these elements in actions we see the first line that gives us the larger image.

The first line is that the US 5G plans are still evolving and for now largely failing (source: 5Gradar.com). Here we see “A new Opensignal report shows T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T ranking poorly for 5G across different metrics“, as well as “5G networks in the US are failing due to a lack of mid-band spectrum“, that was last week and the news is not picked up by any of the large media groups, it is n my personal opinion only reporting on what its shareholders and stakeholders want and as they are also (more often than not) advertisers, we get to see almost nothing on this. It is an essential element, they require us to take notice of both Miss Calculation and Miss Information, yet will not support evidence, evidence that holds up in court. In all this a place like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a much larger pool of evidence on all the achievements that Huawei is making and therefore a problem to the United States. As such, I personally expect that the focal point of the attacks are launched against the Crown Prince and against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

Let’s be clear, it is not merely the attacks, it is the lack of acceptable evidence that is part of all this. To a much larger degree the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is surpassing the US in several fields and the US wants that to go away, in addition the EU is pussyfooting to much around Iran and as it is in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia, we see too much that is about filtering out Saudi Arabia whilst we see several key elements of filtering down the danger that Iran poses and it is filtered by people linking their ego’s to the benefit of Iran, a double whammy that will work against them soon enough. As such, how much real information on the acts of Saudi Arabia and specifically Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is out there and actually being scrutinised? The media is not giving us any information on that are they? Even now (7 hours ago) Al Jazeera gives us “The latest arrests within the Saudi royal family show the young crown prince still feels insecure about his position“, yet the ‘evidence’ is limited to “rumours of an alleged coup plot in Riyadh” no reporting or evidence on the acts and actions of Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz or Prince Nawaf bin Nayef are shown, we see “along with a number of high-ranking officials“, I merely wonder if it would help me to walk the streets in Riyadh to find more information than any news agency is giving us. Whilst we are given “another attempt by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to consolidate power” we are not given any evidence one side or the other. We are merely treated to the implied “these developments show that the young royal still does not feel fully secure in his position“, treated with the complete absence of evidence. We also get “he launched a war in neighbouring Yemen without consulting senior royals” without the clear information that is out there “answering a request by Yemen’s internationally recognized government, Saudi Arabia began a military intervention alongside eight other Arab states and with the logistical support of the United States against the Houthis” a part that we had seen again and again from Reuters and Bloomberg, even Al Jazeera made mention of this, as such this article gives a much larger setting in creating emotion whilst the linked evidence is forgotten to get mentioned.

As such, whilst the media is all about the Legitimacy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, we see a lack of evidence, the simple evidence (and outspoken evidence) that the current king, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud made the statement that Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud would become his successor, I fail to see the wisdom in avoiding that part, a nation where the line of succession is determined by the King of its kingdom, can you explain the logic of ignoring that part? 

I doubt it!


Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Military, Politics, Science

The hack game continues

The press continues to assault Mohammad Bin Salman and Saudi Arabia, the same press that has ignored hostile acts by Iran, the same press who have knowingly and from my point of view ignored (read: and downplayed) several issues in Yemen caused by Hezbollah. 

So as I got to see (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2020/jan/22/jeff-bezos-phone-hacked-allegation-saudi-crown-prince-video-explainer) the video that was placed two weeks ago, in light of what I wrote yesterday. I thought that the video gives light to several questions that link to this. It is also important, because it shows a global FAILING of cyber security, not by the hairless man (Jeff Bezos) by the way, who in this is basically a consumer (one with deep pockets that is).

The video starts off with Stephanie Kirchgaessner, where she says (at 00:14) ‘who is somehow personally involved‘ (1). Then we get (at 00:32) ‘according to his own security team victim of some sort of hack by Saudi Arabia‘ (2) we get more accusations, but with the word ‘allegation’, as such she is in the clear. After that we get a clip from CBS This morning (at 1:08) with a followup and direct accusation towards the WhatsApp account ‘from the account of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia‘ (3), even as I am tempted to ignore ‘We can’t know what was going on in the mind of Mohammad Bin Salman‘ (at 1:55) (4)

After that there is a reference to ‘the experts that she spoke to‘ (at 2:12) and they point to the fact that he is the owner of the Washington Post, not the owner of Amazon or merely a rich dude. ‘It was an attack on the Press‘ is what seemingly comes out of this. 

We get a few more events, but nothing that is too interesting, not in this view.

Personally I actually do not care about Bezos and his needs, I do not give a hoot about a few items, and my personal view is that any person is innocent until PROVEN guilty and the attacks on Saudi Arabia as well as the Crown Prince are offensive to me as we should know and act better.

So as we get to the stage of the why, we need to see the stage we are entering. This is not (merely) a Criminal situation, this is a cyber ploy and that is where the focus is, I have written more than enough about the joke that is the FTI Consulting report, but in the end it is linked to all this. 

  1. Who is somehow personally involved

How? I am not referring to item 3, there is a larger stage here. The alleged infecting file was received on May 1st 2018. In this I am using alleged as the investigation did not start until February 2019. However, the FTI Consulting report on page 12, item 22 gives us that hours after the reception of a file resulting in egress data in excess of 29,000%. I do not question that, I do not question that Bezos got hacked. 

Why am I opposing here?

As I stated in ‘6 simple questions‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/6-simple-questions/) yesterday. Other experts give us “Check Point Research, however, recently unveiled new vulnerabilities in the popular messaging application that could allow threat actors to intercept and manipulate messages sent in both private and group conversations, giving attackers immense power to create and spread misinformation from what appear to be trusted sources.” This is important when we consider ‘allow threat actors to intercept‘ as well as ‘spread misinformation from what appear to be trusted sources‘ as such Check Point research gives us that false information could be sent to a person from anyone claiming to be anyone else. The source of the infection cannot be verified in this. that is an important fact, one that was out in the open and FTI Consulting never went there.

  1. According to his own security team victim of some sort of hack by Saudi Arabia

So his security team are cyber experts? And they know somehow that Saudi Arabia did the attack? Based on what evidence? I showed in the previous point that this is optionally not the case and the FTI Consulting report is nothing short of a joke (as I personally see it), there is no path to where the data is going, there is no evidence on where the infection came from. 

  1. from the account of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

Here is the larger issue and even as I debunked it in point one, we must not ignore this, there is one path that is not investigated and not one that can no longer be investigated. The mobile of the Crown Prince might be infected itself. My point one avoids it, but we cannot ignore it. The chances of Saudi Arabia or its officials in light of the attacks cooperating is close to zero and as such this point will remain on the books. From my point of view gathering intel and evidence before shouting foul would have been a much better approach and why the UN gets involved in this is still open to debate on a few sides. 

  1. We can’t know what was going on in the mind of Mohammad Bin Salman

In this we can speculate and debate until we are blue in the face, but the truth is that all this started 2 years ago and the evidence is largely missing, more important, whomever was involved has removed whatever sides they needed to and as such the actual guilty party will never be found. Yet the foundation of the accusation is larger.

He was being attacked by the press and we seemingly forget that the infection started BEFORE someone seemingly ended the life of some columnist named Jamal Khashoggi, as such we can argue that there was no attack on the Washington Post. To be more honest, at the time of the infection Jamal Khashoggi was some columnist most people on the planet had never heard of (apart from the Washington Post readers) 

Yet when we look at the Vice article (at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v74v34/saudi-arabia-hacked-jeff-bezos-phone-technical-report), there we see that former FBI investigator Anthony J Farrante gets into the fight and the report gives us ““to assess Bezos’ phone was compromised via tools procured by Saud al Qahtani,” the report states“, it is an interesting plot, especially when we consider another Vice article (at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xvzyp/hacking-team-investor-saudi-arabia) where we saw “Hacking Team was thoroughly owned, with its once-secret list of customers, internal emails, and spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see“, so lets put this in the right frame, Anthony J Farrante is going out to prove that a tool procured by Saud al Qahtani, and as far as we can speculate is in the possession of thousands of hackers through ‘spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see‘ is the guilty perpetrator. How is that ever going to work? 

Well that is optionally still the case if we can examine the source of the problem, and that is basically already debunked by Alex Stamos, the former chief information security officer at Facebook who gave us “Lots of odd circumstantial evidence, for sure, but no smoking gun“, in this I also got to “several high-profile and respected researchers, highlights the limits of a report produced by FTI Consulting, the company Bezos hired to investigate the matter“, as well as “A key shortcoming of the analysis, Edwards said, was that it relied on a restricted set of content obtained from Bezos’s iTunes backup. A deeper analysis, she said, would have collected detailed records from the iPhone’s underlying operating and file systems. Other security experts characterized the evidence in the report as inconclusive“, and “a research group at the University of Toronto, offered a suggestion that could allow investigators to gain access to encrypted information that FTI said it could not unlock” (source: CNN), we see a whole range of experts giving out claims towards non-conclusivity, lack of expertise and optionally students in Toronto giving out solutions to a situation that FTI said it could not unlock. 

These are all matters that played out over time, some before the video report and it seems to me that the press is bashing with smoke signals as loud as possible hoping someone will scream ‘fire!‘. That is my view on the matter!

Now, all what I see and expose does not make any party innocent, it merely shows that there is no evidence to call anyone guilty on and that is what matters, because we want to turn this into an event where a person needs to prove that they are innocent, we must prove that anyone is guilty. In some cases beyond all reasonable doubt and in some cases on the setting of probability of guilt set against the average man. The entire cyber event fails on both terms and that is not merely me, and when we see ‘Other security experts characterized the evidence in the report as inconclusive‘ we need to realise that (apart from) FTI Consulting did a piss poor job in this case, the finding of actual and factual evidence is a lot harder in this day and age. The WhatsApp vulnerability showed that there is a larger problem and when we cannot determine the origin of any hack or virus, we are in for a much larger problem and this is happening before 5G is fully rolled out. That nightmare was brought nicely by Kenneth White, former advisor to DHS with “it can be extremely challenging to reconstruct the activities of a determined, well-resourced hacker“, this is what the Jeff Bezos team faced and from my view, they went about it the wrong way. Their report was never ready for release and the fact that basic parts were missed gives out a much larger problem, if billionaires rely on someone like FTI Consulting and this report is the standard, then the entire cyber setting in the United States could be regarded as a larger problem from beginning to end.

In this there is one highlight that Vice gave us that matters here, it is “The second obstacle regarded the password for the iTunes backup“, and “They apparently never obtained the password” that makes no sense, because the owner should have his backup, so unless Jeff was hit by the ID10T virus, we see a failing on more than one level and as such at what stage, in light of EVERYTHING out there in 2018 why was Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ever accused?

That is what angers me, not who was accused, but that an accusation came whilst there was a whole truckload of information out there making it a bad choice from beginning to end, so was the Washington Post owner hacked, or was the hack a way for the Washington Post to strike out to someone? That is the larger game that is now in the court of perception, a massive failing of properly assessing pieces of evidence by the media (and the UN). 


Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Politics

6 simple questions

I have written about it before, yet the article last friday forces me to take more than another look, it forces me to ask questions out loud, questions that should have been investigated as this case has been running for two years, lets not forget the hairy Amazon owner had his smartphone allegedly hacked in 2018.

My article ‘The incompetent view‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/01/28/the-incompetent-view/) was written on January 28th. I kept it alone for the longest of times, yet the accusations against Saudi Arabia, especially as that French Calamari UN-Essay writer is again involved forced my hand and the article last friday gives me the option to lash out and ask certain questions that the investigation optionally cannot answer, as such two years by these so called experts should be seen as 2 years by whatever they are, but I have doubt that expertise was part of the equation.

as such we begin with the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/31/jeff-bezos-met-fbi-investigators-in-2019-over-alleged-saudi-hack), here we see the following

NSO said: “we have not been contacted by any US law enforcement agencies at all about any such matters and have no knowledge or awareness of any investigative actions. Therefore, we cannot comment further.”“, which is a response towards the FBI who had been investigating NSO since 2017, which is based on the setting of “officials were seeking information about whether the company had received any of the code it needed to infect smartphones from US hackers

Yet it is the quote “Two independent investigators at the United Nations, Agnes Callamard and David Kaye, revealed last week that they have launched their own inquiry into allegations that Bezos’s phone was hacked on 1 May 2018 after he apparently received a video file from a WhatsApp account belonging to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince“, in this, can anyone explain to me why the UN is involved? I do not care how wealthy Jeff Bezos is and this has nothing to do with the Washington Post, either way this would be an initial criminal investigation, optionally running through the FBI.

  1. Why is the UN involved?

In defence we must observe “WhatsApp has said it believed NSO has violated criminal laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law that is used to prosecute hackers. WhatsApp has claimed 1,400 users were hacked using NSO technology over a two-week period in April-May last year, after NSO was allegedly able to exploit a WhatsApp vulnerability that was later fixed

And again, we see that NSO technology is involved, yet FTI Consulting makes no mention of that part of the equation, more important whether the same atack was used, and in light of all this, we might see ‘NSO was allegedly able to exploit a WhatsApp vulnerability that was later fixed‘, yet when exactly was it fixed? That too is part of the equation.

When we look at the FTI report, other issues become surface materials. Like the quote “The phone maintained an unusually high average of 101MB of egress data per day for months thereafter, including many massive and highly atypical spikes of egress data. Forensic artifacts demonstrated that this unauthorized data was transmitted from Bezos’ phone via the cellular network.” What data was sent exactly? The report gives us: “they provide the ability to exfiltrate vast amounts of data including photos, videos, messages, and other private or sensitive files. It should be noted that spikes resembling these might occur legitimately if a user enabled iCloud backup over cellular data service. Bezos. however. had iCloud backups disabled on his device. Other legitimate causes of spikes in egress data could be if a user willingly uploaded or transmitted large amounts of data via a chat or messaging app. email client, or cloud storage service, but none of these activities were corroborated by GDBA or Bezos.

As such, as FTI Consulting gives us “Advanced mobile spyware. such as NSO Group’s Pegasus35 or Hacking Team’s Galileo,36 can hook into legitimate applications and processes on a compromised device as a way to bypass detection and obfuscate activity in order to ultimately intercept and exfiltrate data. The success of techniques such as these is a very likely explanation for the various spikes in traffic originating from Bezos’ device.” Yet is that what happened? lets not forget that the FTI Consulting report on page 16 states “The following investigative steps are currently pending.

  1. Intercept and analyze live cellular data from Bezos’ iPhone X“, as well as “2. Jailbreak Bezos’ iPhone and perform a forensic examination of the root file system.” steps that are seemingly incomplete and optionally not done at all, as such how did anyone in Saudi Arabia get fingered as the guilty party? It could be the German Cracking Service for all we know stating to Jeff Bezos ‘Copy me, I want to travel‘.
  2. Where is the evidence on the hack and the destination of the hacked data?

There are two parts in this, as I explained earlier, Vice.com gave an earlier consideration with ““Hacking Team was thoroughly owned, with its once-secret list of customers, internal emails, and spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see”” yet the stage that we see here, is merely a footnote in the FTI Consulting report and is given no weight at all.

This leads to the question 

  1. How was the phone of Jeff Bezos infected and where is that evidence?

This could lead to 3a. Who actually infected the iPhone of Jeff Bezos?

Which leads to the last part of last friday’s article and perhaps the biggest smear of all time “New revelations about the alleged hacking of Bezos’s phone have caught the attention of a handful of politicians in Washington who have sought more information about the alleged hack, including whether there was any evidence that Saudi Arabia had infected phones of any members of the Trump administration.” and because of this (as well as more) we get to:

  1. What exactly are the new revelations, as the FTI Consulting report is incomplete.
  2. Where is the evidence that Saudi Arabia infected ANY phones?

You see, someone infecting another person by claiming that they are someone they are not is at the core of this, as such any person in the room could have infected Jeff Bezos’s phone and optionally other phones too. Claiming to be MBS and being MBS are two separate parts. 

In this it was CNN who gave us “The report’s limited results are a reminder that it can be extremely challenging to reconstruct the activities of a determined, well-resourced hacker” and if hat is the setting, we again get to the stage where we cannot tell who infected the system of Jeff Bezos in the first place. As such Kenneth White (formerly with DHS) as well as  Chris Vickery (Director UpGuard) who gives us “other evidence provided by FTI increased his confidence that Bezos was being digitally surveilled“, we do not question that, we merely question the lack of evidence that points to Saudi Arabia as a perpetrator, basically the guilty party is not seen, because no evidence leading there is given, the fact that essential tests have not been done is further evidence still of the absence of any guilty party.

As that stands I merely end with the question:

  1. Why on earth is the UN involved in an alleged Criminal investigation where so much information is missing?

When we realise the small line in the Guardian “An analysis of the alleged hack that was commissioned by the Amazon founder has not concluded what kind of spyware was used” we are given a much larger consideration, if the spyware used is unknown, how can the data spy be seen? This gets an even larger mark towards the question when we consider “Check Point Research, however, recently unveiled new vulnerabilities in the popular messaging application that could allow threat actors to intercept and manipulate messages sent in both private and group conversations, giving attackers immense power to create and spread misinformation from what appear to be trusted sources.” (at https://research.checkpoint.com/2018/fakesapp-a-vulnerability-in-whatsapp/), and another source (at https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/whatsapp-vulnerability-allows-attackers-to-alter-messages-in-chats/) gives almost the same information and also has the text “Using these techniques, attackers can manipulate conversations and group messages in order to change evidence and spread fake news and misinformation“, the FTI Consulting report gives us nothing of that, and as it does not set the stage of disabling that these were options that were disregarded, we see that this mobile situation might not now or not ever see the light of day with an actual reference to an attacker that will hold water in any court. 

As such the UN will have a lot to explain soon enough, I got there through 6 simple questions, 6 questions that anyone with an application of common sense could have gotten to, I wonder why the UN did not get there, I wonder why FTI Consuilting handed over a report that was failing to this degree.



Filed under IT, Law, Media, Politics

The Bully’s henchman










Vulnerable Products

  • 200 Series Smart Switches
  • 300 Series Managed Switches
  • 500 Series Stackable Managed Switches











Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics

The incompetent view

I’ll admit, there are other things to write about, yet this is a larger issue than anyone thinks it is. The previous writers did not ponder the questions that were adamant, and Stephanie Kirchgaessner follows suit (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/nsa-faces-questions-over-security-of-trump-officials-after-alleged-bezos-hack) when we consider that the focus here is the NSA in ‘NSA faces questions over security of Trump officials after alleged Bezos hack‘. You see, it is not merely the fact that they got the stage wrong, it is the fact that everyone is looking at the stage, whilst the orchestra is missing, so how about that part of the equation and that leads to very uncomfortable question towards WHY the US is tailing on 5G and why it is trying to tailgate into the 5G room. They forgot what real innovation is and Saudi Arabia is seemingly passing them by, a nation that has forever been seen as a technological third world is surpassing the US and it is upsetting more and more people.

The US National Security Agency is facing questions about the security of top Trump administration officials’ communications following last week’s allegations that the Saudi crown prince may have had a hand in the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos“, with this the article opens and basically nothing wrong is stated here, yet when seen in the light of the byline which was “Democratic lawmaker asks agency if it is confident the Saudi government has not sought to hack US officials“, as such it becomes an issue. first off, the question is not wrong, because the US administration has a duty to seek the safety of communications for its coworkers (senators and such), yet in all this, it does become a little more clear when we see “Ron Wyden, a senior Democratic lawmaker, asked the director of the NSA whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials“. You see in the first, Saudi intentional involvement was NEVER established, moreover, the report (I looked at that last week) has several hiatus of a rather large kind, as such the formulation by this 70 year old person is quite the other issue. 

It is my personal conviction that a Fortune 100 company should consider the danger they open themselves up to when letting cyber issues be investigated by FTI Consulting. The entire matter of how infection was obtained (if it was infection), and that the entire matter was instigated by any third party who had gained access to the phone of Jeff Bezos, and in all this enough doubt was raised who got access and more importantly that there was no evidence that this was ANY Saudi official, as such the short sighted “whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials” by a 70 year old who shows issues of lack of critical thinking, no matter what which school he went to when he was half a century younger.

And again we see the reference towards “The senator from Oregon is separately seeking to force the Trump administration to officially release the intelligence it collected on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in a state-sponsored murder in October 2018“, which is another flaw as there was never any clear evidence that anyone in Turkey was “killed in a state-sponsored murder in October 2018“, more importantly, the French UN Essay writer who was seemingly involved in both reports is showing a lack of critical thinking all by herself.

All this whilst Paul Nakasone (director NSA) is confronted with “was believed to have been the victim of a hack that was instigated after he allegedly received a WhatsApp message from the account of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman“, the problem is twofold, in the first I personally see the report by FTI Consulting as a hack job, not a job on a hack. There are several sides that give doubt on infection source and moreover there is additional lack of evidence that the source was a Saudi one. More importantly other sources gave away issues on WhatsApp some time overlapping the event, exploits that made it into the press from all sides giving the weakness that any unnamed party could have played to be a Saudi delivery whilst the file was not from that delivery point. Issues that were out in the open and the report gives that FTI Consulting ignored them. It could read that a certain French Essay writer stated ‘I Have a Saudi official and an American phone, find me a link, any link‘, I am not stating that this happened, but it feels like that was the FTI Consulting case. When was the last time you saw an intentional perversion of justice and truth?

And when we see: “The issue is now the subject of an investigation by two independent UN investigators“, we see an almost completed path. When we see all this lets take a step back and consider. 

  1. An American Civilian had his mobile allegedly (and optionally proven) hacked.
  2. The hacker is not found, the one accused cannot be proven (at present) to be the hacker.
  3. This ends up with the UN?

And I am not alone here. Three days ago (after my initial findings) I see (at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/24/tech/bezos-hacking-report-analysts/index.html) the headline ‘Bezos hacking report leaves cybersecurity experts with doubts‘, there we see “independent security experts, some of whom say the evidence isn’t strong enough to reach a firm conclusion” as well as “several high-profile and respected researchers, highlights the limits of a report produced by FTI Consulting, the company Bezos hired to investigate the matter“, so basically, the hair lacking CEO, who owns the Washington Post (where Khashoggi used to work) is allegedly hacked, he seemingly hires FTI Consulting on what I personally believe to be a hack job on hacking phones and the UN is using that biased piece of work to slam Saudi Arabia? Did I miss anything?

Yes, I did, the quote “The report suggested the incident bore hallmarks of sophisticated hacking software“, the problem here is that there is no way to see WHERE IT CAME FROM. Yet other sources give out several pieces on WhatsApp and how other sources could have a free go at infesting people. All whilst we also see “the paper revealed a lack of sophistication that could have been addressed by specialized mobile forensics experts, or law enforcement officials with access to premium tools“, all this whilst the entire setting went around the existence of cyber divisions. There is a link Jeff Bezos – Amazon – FTI Consulting – United Nations. At no point in this do we see any police department, or the FBI, why is that?

As such when we see “A key shortcoming of the analysis, Edwards said, was that it relied on a restricted set of content obtained from Bezos’s iTunes backup. A deeper analysis, she said, would have collected detailed records from the iPhone’s underlying operating and file systems. Other security experts characterized the evidence in the report as inconclusive“, I would state that this is merely the beginning.

Rob Graham (CEO Errata security) gives us “It contains much that says ‘anomalies we don’t understand,’ but lack of explanations point to incomplete forensics, not malicious APT actors” and Alex Stamos, the former chief information security officer at Facebook and a Stanford University professor gives us “Lots of odd circumstantial evidence, for sure, but no smoking gun“, in all this the extreme geriatric Ron Wyden (Oregon) is asking questions from the NSA with the text “asked the director of the NSA whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials” with the emphasis on ‘also‘, a stage that is not proven, and more importantly is almost redundant in the hack job we got to read about. As such I am not surprised to see “FTI Consulting declined to comment“, I wonder why?

It is even more fun to see the CNN article have the stage where we see “a research group at the University of Toronto, offered a suggestion that could allow investigators to gain access to encrypted information that FTI said it could not unlock“, as such we see that there are skill levels missing in FTI, for the simple reason that this report was allowed to leave the hands of FTI Consulting, a Firm that is proudly advertising that they have 49 of the Global 100 companies that are clients. If I had anything to say about it, those 49 companies might have more issues down the road than they are ready for, especially as they have over 530 senior managing directors and none of them stopeed that flimsy report making it to the outside world. I would personally set a question mark to the claim of them being advisor to 96 of the world’s top 100 law firms. I would not be surprised if I could punch holes in more cases that FTI Consulting set advice to, in light of the Bezos report, it might not be too hard a stage to do.

CNN also has a few critical points that cannot be ignored. With “The report’s limited results are a reminder that it can be extremely challenging to reconstruct the activities of a determined, well-resourced hacker, said Kenneth White, a security engineer and former adviser to the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security“, I do not disagree with that, but the stage where WhatsApp had a much larger problem, is a given, and the report does not bring that up for one moment, that report was all about painting one party whilst the reality of the stage was that there was an open floor on how it was done, yet the report silenced all avenues there. In addition, Chris Vickery (Director UpGuard) gives us “other evidence provided by FTI increased his confidence that Bezos was being digitally surveilled“. that is not in question, core information directs that way, yet the fact that it was a Saudi event cannot be proven, not whilst Jeff Bezos is around hundreds of people in most moments of the day, that part is the larger setting and FTI Consulting knowingly skated around the subject, almost as it was instructed to do so.

One expert who wanted to remain anonymous gave us all “There’s an absurd amount of Monday morning quarterbacking going on” as well as “This isn’t a movie — things don’t proceed in a perfect, clean way. It’s messy, and decisions are made the way they’re made“, that expert is not wrong, and he/she has a point, yet the foundation of the report shows a massive lack in critical thinking whilst the report relies in its text on footnotes (as one would) yet on page 3, the text is “Al Qahtani eventually purchased 20 percent ownership in Hacking Team, apparantly acquired on behalf of the Saudi government. 8

all whilst footnote 8 gives us “https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xvzyp/hacking-team-investor-saudi-arabia” so not only does the FTI Consulting Job rely on ‘apparantly‘, the article gives in the first paragraph “Hacking Team was thoroughly owned, with its once-secret list of customers, internal emails, and spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see” as such we see ‘spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see‘, how did FTI Consulting miss this? That and the WhatsApp issue in that same year opens up the optional pool of transgressors to all non state hackers with considerable knowledge, as such the amount of transgressors ups to thousands of hackers (globally speaking). 

FTI Consulting missed that! and it missed a lot more. The article also sets a link to David Vincenzetti and for some reason he is not even looked at, there is no stage in the FTI report that his input was sought out, which in light of all this is equally puzzling. He might not have had anything to report, or perhaps he had enough to report taking the focal point away from Saudi players, we will never know, the joke (read: report) is out in the open in all its glory on limitation. 

In light of all this, did the question by Ron Wyden to the NSA make sense? As far as I can see, I see several points of incompetance and that has nothing to do with the one expert stating that this is a messy, the entire setting was optionally incompetent and for certain massively incomplete. 

More importantly, the last paragraphs has more funny parts than a two hour show by Jimmy Carr. The quote is “Anyone who has had communication with either MBS or his brother Khaled should assume their phone is hacked. Congress needs to get answers from NSA on what it knew about the hack of Bezos phone, when it knew it, and what it has done to stop Saudi criminal hacking behavior” and it comes from CIA analyst Bruce Riedel. Now, the quote is fine, but the hilarious part is how it was phrased (expertly done). Lets go over it in my (super subtle) way: “Anyone who has had communication with either MBS or his brother Khaled should assume their phone is hacked by Saudi, US or Iranian officials. Congress needs to get answers from NSA for a change on a matter that they were never consulted on whilst the report ended up with the UN on what it knew about the hack of Bezos phone, a person who has a few billion and a lack of hair but beyond that has no meaning to the US economy, he keeps all his gotten gains, when it knew when the phone of a civilian was allegedly hacked and, and what it has done to stop Saudi criminal hacking behavior which is not proven at present other than by people who have something to gain from seeing the Saudi’s as the bad party (like Iran), all in a report that is lacking all levels of clarity and proper investigation“, this is an important setting here. Just like the disappearance of a Saudi columnist writing for the Washington Post (another Jeff Bezos affiliate), we do not proclaim Saudi Arabia being innocent, merely that the lack of evidence does not make them guilty, in the present the hacking issue does not make Saudi Arabia guilty, the irresponsible version of the FTI Consulting report shows a massive lack of evidence that makes any Saudi Arabian party more likely than not innocent of all this and as both reports have one UN Female French Essay writer in common, it is more and more like a smear campaign than an actual event to find out what actually happened. Who signed up for that? I wonder if the NSA did, I feel decently certain that until they get all the actual evidence that they do not want to get involved with political painting, their left foot is busy keeping them standing up in a world of hunkered and crouched idiots.

Yet that is just my simple personal view on the matter.


1 Comment

Filed under IT, Media, Military, Politics

There is more beneath the sand

The Australian Financial Review has an interesting article that they released a little over 12 hours ago (at https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/is-saudi-arabia-s-royal-family-ready-for-a-market-economy-20191112-p539sv), the title ‘Is Saudi Arabia’s royal family ready for a market economy?‘ is an interesting view on the issues that are coming around over the next decade. Stephen Cook gives us part of the goods, yet I wonder if he is cautiously holding back (an acceptable stance for any journalist) or is there more?

That is not an attack on the article; it is well written and shows a writer with a good grasp of grammar 😉 He also makes a few very nice observations. The issues that come from that are not always visible, but we should argue before we get there that any cautious journalist does not need to go there; a blogger like me on the other hand is (at times) all about the informed speculation. So when we see: “to pull off Vision 2030, Mohammed bin Salman needs some of the international goodwill he enjoyed until mid-2017“, that partially true, most of it can however be built with money and Saudi Arabia has plenty of that. At which point Mr Cook takes that frying pan and hits us with “There’s just one problem: the Aramco IPO is far riskier than the Saudis are letting on“. He gives it in the form of “The Saudis are offering stock in 2-5 per cent of the company. One of the sticking points has been valuation“, he is true, and we see that in the article that there is a margin of valuation (depending on the offerer) that is almost 50%, And that is not the only part, there is a view that Saudi Aramco will value at almost twice the price of Apple, that is a lot and there will be an actual benefit that Mr Cook does not offer. He does give us that the Saudi offering could end up netting between 24 billion and 115 billion. No matter how this turns, there will be plenty of Saudis all wanting a share or two, a population supporting its own national product, so there is interest, the benefit we do not see here is the corporatocracy that the EU has become, with value in the fire of shares, whatever Iran will think of next will bounce back, any attacks is no longer a mere Saudi Problem, Saudi Arabia has done something interesting. By offering 2.5% of a company its visibility will become global and that is the first nail in a coffin named Iran. And that is not the only one; there is another benefit to see when we take a harder look at Vision 2030.

You see Vision 2030 will be a clean systems sweep of 5G (and 4G lte) systems, the old 3G and other systems will be absent, the Saudi’s will get a much better view of what is needed in the 5G atmosphere without having old equipment holding it back, you might laugh, but do you have any idea on the amount of equipment out there switched on because there is some ‘twittle’ hardware connection, or the owners merely does not know that some equipment does not need to be turned on? It amounts to almost 7% of the electricity bill and the amount of technology and hardware involved shows a massive amount of additional loopholes requiring fixing. You might not think this is essential, yet when we realise that there is an amount that is between calculated and measured that is not addressed, we see a much larger issue, in at least two cases I have seen the ‘connections’ merely being ‘improperly’ addressed, I wonder what else was not done. Vision 2030 will allow us to look at hardware connected and we will see a whole range of equipment never connected. There will be an amount of niche markets that will evolve because of it and as we see that evolve, whoever is working in Neom City, will get an interesting benefit to this change.

Getting back to the IPO, there is every concern that the quote “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has every reason to keep the Saudis on the defensive and mess with Aramco’s IPO” has value, yet the first one who is part of the IPO will have the benefit of calling out Iran’s actions and now there will be nations with skin in the game, Iran is basically done for and it needs the nuclear benefit of playing the bully, yet it is running out of time no matter how blind the EU tends to be. When any Wall Street corporation has skin in the IPO, they will report it to any channel willing to expose Iran and that is what Iran really does not like, you see playing the bully only works when no one is looking at you and that option is about to end. They will now enter a stage where the writer claims ‘make investors nervous‘, yet when they go a little overboard and ‘make investors angry‘ their benefit is gone and that is why they need the nuclear pact to be in their favour. A bully merely knows no other way to look at matters, but now we see a much larger field and Iran is about to get exposed a lot more.

So now we get back to Neom City, the writer gives us “The plans (and promotional video) were impressive, but the effort failed miserably“, yet he gives no reason, I will, The amount of media willing to give Neom City the light of day could be counted with two hands, with the hundreds of accepted media in the Aether, they all shied away from Neom City and it was not Jamal Khashoggi. It was in part America and in part Europe that was scared. A city that is stated to be 22 times the size of New York is a building marvel, it would be no less than another world wonder and the powers that be have no intention of letting Saudi Arabia walk away with a world wonder, not in this age. Even as the bridge to Africa might never become a world wonder, the bridge itself will be a global accomplishment and it will give larger gains to Saudi Arabia. In addition it takes another premise, the city of Sharm-El-Sheikh (Sinai) would gain in several ways, whilst the bridge would open Saudi Arabia to Egypt in larger ways. It would also open up technology paths to Saudi Arabia. In addition we see: “Mohammed bin Salman has calculated that he has a greater chance of eliciting the loyalty of his subjects – and thus shoring up his power – by giving them movies, concerts, and WWE wrestling events; reining in the religious police; and granting women the right to drive“, yet it is missing a part, with the building needs growing for close to two decades, we will see a new class of people, A class to Egyptian Muslims working in Saudi Arabia growing the population and growing a larger stage of a new population drive, those needing a better life, we have seen this in America and Europe and it will drive a new need in these people finding a niche where they can settle their family in growth, that part will be new to Saudi Arabia and it will create new wealth group and a larger drive towards Saudi Arabia. I reckon that Saudi Arabia could grow to well over 20% this was and the size of Neom city would allow for a much larger growth giving new options to Saudi’s and those wanting to be Saudi.

As I see it Saudi Arabia could over time grow that IPO to be up to 9%, so basically it will get access to 3 times that maximum of 115 billion, with an offering that over time will be close to $400 billion, we see that Neom city has been paid for, at that point with the IPO in place, and Neom city ready to grow Iran will be shown to be the bully of the Middle East, and bullies can be dealt with in swift ways by any global population that is clearly aware, which now leaves us Hamas and Hezbollah, we actually need not look in those directions, Israel is looking there already, we merely have to wait what will happen next, with these two elements clearly in lace it will not take long for technology firms to seek their nesting grounds in Neom city, Huawei is actively looking, Google has set its premise, as have Apple, Microsoft and IBM (who added 197 jobs in the last month alone), so the need is being addressed, now it merely takes time for the entire stew to settle, once all the elements have been added, we only have to wait (which will be the hardest part), yet there is little to no doubt in my mind that when we see the elements of Neom City, we will see a much larger shift in the west, it will not only be to stay on par with Saudi Arabia, it will be to get all the residual hardware and all the non-effective hardware to be removed from hundreds of places, I reckon that the US will face a new technology need at that point.

You see, in the end, there is less to a decade to a ‘futuristic city’ and a technologically ‘apt city’, Saudi Arabia is about to show the world that part and all the other nations will need to show that they can keep up and with their debts sized the way they are that will be the hardest issues for them and the US knows it has a large problem keeping up, as does the EU, they never thought that they would require to meet wits with Saudi Arabia, they never thought it was ever going to happen, as such they were not ready. Iran is banking on it, in the end I wonder which of the two elements will be the strongest, I’ll let you figure out what I mean.

i believe that by 2035 the global technological will be redrawn, it will be a map that the EU and the US will not be happy about. The Wall Street Journal gave a nice presentation 4 days ago with ‘U.S. Government Is Tripping Over Itself in Race to Dominate 5G Technology‘ and ever as we see sources stating: “U.S. officials say the country is in position to reap those benefits”, we merely need to see SDXCentral giving us: “AT&T is tempering expectations for its forthcoming 5G network riding on sub-6 GHz spectrum. While AT&T says it was the first wireless operator to demonstrate 1 Gb/s and later 2 Gb/s speeds on a commercial 5G network running on millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, it’s not making any grand projections for a speed improvement on its forthcoming 5G network running on the lower spectrum bands” (at https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/att-down-on-low-band-5g-speed/2019/11/) to see that they are all running for the advertised word and there is a large hiatus between the ‘advertised word‘ and ‘achieved technology‘, that difference was seen at the end of October as Reuters gave us: ‘Trump says U.S. will cooperate with ‘like-minded’ nations on 5G networks‘, everybody on the US sided mind is trying to fix the backlog that they have against Huawei and some of them have a huge backlog, when we see “Trump has held numerous calls with foreign leaders, including British Prime Minister Johnson in August, to urge them not to let Huawei use 5G networks“, yet at by the time have we seen ANY EVIDENCE that there is a national interest failure on Huawei hardware? America hopes that it has taken the hardware drive and fixed its own economy (and the mere fact that we will not ask questions), yet Saudi Arabia already has ties to Huawei giving Saudi Arabia the option to pull ahead and make the monthly gap larger on a daily basis. The difference is that intense. There is more and more evidence to see that the EU is not going the way of the US and that will give them an advantage on the hardware range, yet they still have all the other old hardware to deal with. They could face two issues, let’s not forget that Riyadh faces that too, but if Neom City shows the benefit to a newly constructed fast internet city, what we saw in the UK 5G image, that path will be faster seen in Neom city, merely because the change is pushed from the beginning and not after the fact (as most technologies are).

The ‘what 5G is about‘ shows what 5G could do and in many nations we see part of this appear over time, yet in case of Neom city, with a 5G focus it will come all at once, it will give Arabian software Engineers a larger playing field and a playing field on rolling out some of those solutions anywhere else in the world. It is a path that we seemingly forgot about and we have seen this path a few times from Japan and the US, just the idea that Saudi Arabia will be able to focus on it was never in the sight of any of them and it is scaring them, Neom City has become that scary to both the US and the EU (well and Japan too). They have all been in the mind for well over 5 years that they see it first in Japan and later on it will be rolled out to the rest of the world. Now that setting changes those in charge are afraid, they have no ties to Saudi Arabia and no ways to make them.

Fear will be the key that the US and the EU will employ to set issues straight, and stopping Neom City to a much larger extent will be their focus, which gets us back to the quote we saw: “the effort failed miserably“, There was as I see it a much larger need to keep it out of the media, the people just never got to see all the elements that were clearly visible in 2018 when initial view of Neom City was given. I saw the first parts in May 2nd 2018 when I gave “the attached Burton presentation ‘Opportunities in Saudi Arabia – Vision 2030 and Beyond‘ spends two slides on it and the most important part shown is “Vision 2030 calls for 50 percent of military equipment purchases from domestic suppliers instead of imports“” a presentation by Edward Burton, President and CEO, U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council from June 2017. (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/05/02/are-there-versions-of-truth/) in the article ‘Are there versions of truth‘ I had not realised all the elements at that point (why should I?) yet I saw that Vision 2030 would be a bigger issue yet the larger impact would be visible beyond “90 executives from both countries to sign new trade and investment agreements worth $350 billion” the fact that in these 90 we would see “Lockheed Martin ● Honeywell ● JPMorgan Chase ● The Dow Chemical Company ● ExxonMobil ● Jacobs Engineering ● Baker Hughes ● McDermott International” was clear, the fact that Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (Steven J. Demetriou) was involved was a clear indicator of that. I believed that whatever think-tank Edward Burton responded to was seeing ‘roadmap for economic development‘ and Identifies general directions, policies‘ and optionally ‘CEDA established new operating models‘ and realised that this went way past the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (Saudi Arabia) there was an actual global impact. This setting has merely taken an accelerated view, especially in regards to Huawei, there is a much larger setting and we will soon see that the impact is global.

Darn! I was not the first to notice!

Even as we realise that the Council of Economic and Development Affairs was created in 2015, there is a larger stance where Saudi Arabia has found the flex point where they will become a global player, that is why Iran is scared, that is why other parties are about to play diminished roles and they are all afraid, their status quo is about to be removed.


Leave a comment


Uber driving facts

It seems that people do not like Dara Khosrowshahi that much, it all started with Jamal Khashoggi and now ever the Guardian staff member Edward Helmore adds to this with: “Khashoggi, a Saudi national resident in the US, and a severe critic of the Saudi regime who wrote for the Washington Post, was murdered in Istanbul last year after visiting the Saudi Arabian consulate there. His body was dismembered and disposed of“, it is the part ‘His body was dismembered and disposed of‘, that part cannot be proven and in light of that we also have ‘was murdered in Istanbul last year after visiting the Saudi Arabian consulate there‘, at best we can use these sentenced with the added word of ‘alleged‘. That is the foundation, anything else is a joke, we have laws and we seemingly (at least the media) uses the law to hopefully get better interviews by incorporating slander (as I personally see it), by using the name of Aggy Calamari, UN essay writer the writer thinks he can just marginally add the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia into this mix by stating: “His death has been described by Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, as a “deliberate, premeditated execution” that warrants further investigation into the responsibility of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman“, you see, there is no evidence of killings. I am not digressing; I believe that a bad fate has befallen Jamal Khashoggi, although one can argue that he is 97% more known after than before is long term absentee. When we in what is (laughingly) called the free west, can we claim that part when we just apply laws on a mediocre level? By the way, the article is (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/11/uber-jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia-mistake-dara-khosrowshahi)

And the part where Aggy makes a jump from Istanbul to a Saudi Crown prince with “warrants further investigation into the responsibility of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman“, even as the article did not reminiscent on it, the truth is that the report is using: “The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the Washington Post has reported. The Post said US officials expressed high confidence in the CIA assessment, which contradicts Saudi government assertions that he was not involved.” something a collection of papers have been using since that report was given freedom to fly anywhere. You see, I have an issue with “US officials expressed high confidence in the CIA assessment“, now we can bid high and low with the CIA, but they are the people who instigated the silver briefcase tour with Colin Powell, at least they had graphics in that assessment, can anyone tell me where those Iraqi WMD’s were? And why was it by some laughingly referred to as Operation Whatever? So before we give any level of certainty to the CIA, we better be sure that the right people are looking at that data.

All issues that Aggy Calamari should have been aware of, yet her report was laden with CIA elements.

And now we get to the attack on Dara Khosrowshahi “In an interview with Axios on HBO, broadcast on Sunday, Khosrowshahi was asked about the Uber board member Yasir al-Rumayyan, a director of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is the company’s fifth-biggest investor“, which is followed by another assumption “He was seized, killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad“, we cannot prove any of that, and why is that? There is no body, all matters are subject to supposition, the Guardian refused to follow supposition when it came to Grenfell, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), you know that building where ‘Grenfell Tower blogger threatened with legal action by council after writing about safety concerns‘, coming from a warning letter from solicitor, Vimal Sama, dated 25 July 2013 and addressed to Francis O’Connor, accusing him of “defamatory behaviour” and “harassment.”, I reckon that the entire matter is off hand as the building looks a nice charcoal black, you know that building in North Kensington, yet when it comes to one journalist, and one the bulk of the planet does not give a hoot about, we see supposition on top of supposition.

One could even argue that HBO, after the finale of Game of Thrones, HBO needed a new channel for emotions, and Axios seemingly provided. My point of position I clear, I do not know who did what, because Jamal Khashoggi was never found, we can assume that he was killed, at present he is merely missing (murdered requires additional evidence) but we cannot prove any of it. In case of Axios, there is a simpler situation, the setting was loaded before the interview and Dara Khosrowshahi has handed a curveball that he tried to ‘laugh off’ or diminish. It was his interview on HIS Company, on this there was mention of one of his board members, a Saudi individual named Yasir al-Rumayyan, director for the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The entire article that was on the interview of Dara Khosrowshahi was washed into another article (trying to) slap the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia around, I think that the articles writer Edward Helmore made a few mistakes, getting into Journalism might be one of them. So whilst we reminisced on ‘American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed‘ my request becomes simple ‘Can we please see that evidence?‘, because not unlike the entire WMD issue that was apparently happening in Iraq, I will be able to punch holes into this issue as well.

Oh, and I was not talking about that flimsy piece we saw in Aggy’s essay, I want to see all the raw data available, perhaps I will be turned around, more likely than not, we see the need for turning heads away from other matters, we have seen it before, but I am willing to investigate the evidence (curiosity killed this cat, miaow).

The fact that makes this entire matter so interesting is that this one cat Jamal Khashoggi gets all the capture and the 231 journalists have been arrested after July 15, 2016 in Turkey get ZERO words from pretty much ANY newspaper around the world. Whilst Mehmet Akif Öztürk was jailed for 8 years and nine months in February this year, his colleague Turgut Usul (presenter) has been jailed since January 2018 pending trial. Oh and perhaps someone can find out what crimes Nazlı Ilıcak did, he was sentenced to life in prison with solitary confinement. I wonder how many journalists are out there what crime a publisher/journalist has to undertake to find himself in a lifetime of solitary confinement. Perhaps Axios could look into that, they seemingly need an emotional side in there broadcasts now that HBO has ended its game of thrones.

I wonder how long it takes form the people to wake up shouting some stupid slogan involving Jamal Khashoggi whilst there are issues out there that are a lot worse and in light of the diminished value of journalists, the entire mass is getting crazy shouting: ‘A pigeon is pooping on the street‘ whilst one corner from that place someone is shooting pigeons left, right and centre. I wonder if the who is shouting the claim so that no one is watching the one shooting all the pigeon’s one street further.

I wonder if Jamal Khashoggi realises that his value allegedly dead is seemingly 1000 times higher than when he was still writing some column in the Washington Post.


1 Comment

Filed under Finance, Law, Media, Politics

Not a small house for boys









Leave a comment

Filed under Law, Media, Politics

Demanding Dismissal












Have a great Thursday Agnes!

UN Khashoggi Report June 2019

1 Comment

Filed under Law, Media, Politics

Slapping the New York Times

This is a weird day, I for one had never expected to have a go at places like the Washington Post, or the New York Times; they are supposed to be journalistic bastions. Now, for the most I avoid slapping the Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi was one of theirs, I get it, tensions and emotions run high. The New York Times does not get that excuse.

So when I saw ‘Saudi Arabia Is Running Out of Friends‘ I got a little hot under the collar. First off, this is an opinion piece and that makes it not really a New York Times part, or does it? They decided to publish it. The article (at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/saudi-arms-sales-britain.html) raises a lot of questions, not on Saudi Arabia, but on the people and their comprehension of the issues that are involved. And it goes further than that. The start gives us: “a United Nations expert released a report calling for an investigation into the role of Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The next day in Washington, the Senate voted to block arms sales worth billions of dollars, the latest in a string of congressional efforts to halt American support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen“.

  1. The full UN report (added later down).
  2. The Saudi-wed war in Yemen.

The first will be dealt with further down; the ‘Saudi-led war in Yemen‘ is a disruptive boast that has zero validity. First of all, the Yemen issue comes from the ‘Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen‘, which came from the call for help by the internationally recognized President of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi for military support, which was as far as I can tell, his right to do so, it was a response to attacks by the Houthi movement. In the entire article the following words are not found: ‘Houthi‘, ‘Hezbollah‘, and ‘Iran‘ they are all participating players on the side attacking ousted President of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. And for the more comprehensive part, what is regarded as Saudi led, which is not a lie also involves the United Arab Emirates, Behrain, Kuwait, Qatar (only initially), Egypt, Jordan, Marocco (until recently), Senegal, and Sudan. They all seemingly agree that the Houthi forces are the evil bringers here, and that is before we all realise that there is a mountain of evidence linking Iran to all that, and the press has done its massive share to not inform the public on those parts.

So as we get to: “As the chorus of condemnation grows louder, defending the arms supplies that have always been a core feature of the West’s ties to Riyadh has become a near impossible task“, well sell them to me, I will happily and proudly offer these goods to the Saudi government, any cowardly and weasel likened politician (mostly Americans) want to be in denial, I will step in. My commission and bonus comes from their share, some things come at a cost, as it should.

Then we get to the ugly part: “They want the sources of the present crisis to be resolved, not left to fester, which means a swift conclusion to the Yemen war and a satisfactory accounting for the murder of Mr. Khashoggi“, in this we will get to that journalist later, the entire ‘swift conclusion to the Yemen war‘ required the world to do something about the Houthi support system. This includes terrorist organisation Hezbollah and its hosting nation Lebanon, as well as Iran. The US as well as the European Union failed at least 5 times, mostly because Europe has this delusional thought that the nuclear pact could be saved somehow, in addition Iran has been facilitated to by Turkey who had a larger role to play and we will get to that soon enough. It failed by blocking arms and intelligence when it mattered most, it failed by not giving proper light to the activities of Hezbollah training, as well as optionally (still unproven) firing missiles directly into Saudi Arabia, in all this it might be unproven, yet the hardware used in conjunction with the skill that Houthi forces could not have, gives us a clear light that the operators of these missiles were optionally Iranian, or Hezbollah (Lebanese), the press steered clear of that part to the largest degree.

Then we get the empty threat: “If the world finally gets serious about tackling the climate emergency, a large proportion of existing oil reserves will have to remain in the ground, leaving the Saudis sitting on stranded assets“, so how about the reality that hits the US when 100% of Saudi Oil only goes towards Europe, India and Asia? When that flow to America stops, fuel prices (based on Chicago) will go from $3.62 per gallon, to $5.99-$7.51 per gallon within weeks. Good luck trying to have an economy in America at that point. In New York (where that paper comes from) the taxi costs will soon go up by 50% or more, what happened the last time that New York was completely dependent on public transport? And for those driving their own cars? That will be for the wealthy only, so let’s keep a real sense of reality, shall we?

Now we get to the hard part. There is an issue with: And in London — on the same day — a court ruled that Britain had acted unlawfully in approving arms exports to Saudi Arabia“, there is the optional stage where the arms deal is merely delayed. We see that in the BBC part: “Judges said licences should be reviewed but would not be immediately suspended“, which was a week ago. It comes from “Under UK export policy, military equipment licences should not be granted if there is a “clear risk” that weapons might be used in a “serious violation of international humanitarian law”“, this is an issue, but not the one you think it is. Yes, there is a chance that these weapons are used in Yemen, yet as I stated earlier, the entire Yemen war is misrepresented by ignoring three warring parties, the Houthi, Hezbollah and Iran. In addition Houthi forces have resorted to terrorist tactics by placing weapons and troops directly behind civilians, basically using them as a shield. In addition, Houthi forces have done whatever they could to stop humanitarian aid and claiming whatever they could for their own military forces, they are the catalyst to the Yemeni humanitarian nightmare and the media remains largely silent on it. We get additional evidence from Gulf News only 11 hours ago with: “Yemeni government forces had repulsed fierce attacks by Iran-allied Al Houthi militants that had targeted residential areas inside the coastal city of Hodeidah and outskirts, military forces said on Thursday“, this is still happening right now, but the media remains silent, why is that?

So as we finish part one of the hatchet job that the New York Times allowed to be published in their papers, it becomes time to raise part 2, the full UN report [UN Khashoggi Report June 2019].

There are several issues with the report but let’s start with the ruling premise that they place in item 37 “This human rights inquiry into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi raised many challenges. By the time the inquiry was initiated, much had already been reported about the killing and the likely responsibilities of various individuals. The risks of confirmation bias (the tendency to bolster a hypothesis by seeking evidence consistent with it while disregarding inconsistent evidence) were particularly high.

There are two parts, the first is ‘the killing of Mr. Khashoggi‘, now I personally believe he is dead, through methods unknown, and there is credibility in that statement, but there is no evidence whatsoever. If we are nations of laws, than we must adhere to these laws. We must also accept that the law is not always our friend, and here we see Turkey facilitating towards Iran to the largest degree. They had set a stage in motion by relying on here-say, using things like ‘might’ and adding evidence that is none of anything. When we see the rumour mill giving us millions upon millions of articles all based on hearsay and unverified anonymous sources, we see an engine that was designed to halt whatever positive actions Saudi Arabia were trying to do on an international stage. Turkey succeeded in being the puppet read: bitch) of Iran to a degree never seen before and let’s not forget, Turkey holds the current record of having the most incarcerated journalists in the world at present.

And the most damning part starts at the very beginning, but not in the direction you would like it to see. Here we see: “Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the State of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible. His attempted kidnapping would also constitute a violation under international human rights law. From the perspective of international human rights law, State responsibility is not a question of, for example, which of the State officials ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s death; whether one or more ordered a kidnapping that was botched and then became an accidental killing; or whether the officers acted on their own initiative or ultra vires“, as I stated: ‘We can assume that Jamal Khashoggi is dead‘, yet where is his body? There is no evidence in any direction and it happened in a nation that is facilitating to a nation that is actively hostile and in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia, a fact no one seemed to acknowledge, that Turkey has currently imprisoned 68 journalists and is regarded to have killed dozens more.

Now we get to point 11 (page 5): “She also found that Turkey’s fear over an escalation of the situation and retribution meant that the consular residences or consular cars were also not searched without permission even though they are not protected by the VCCR“, Was it really ‘fear’ or ‘orchestration’? Turkey has scathed all laws for numerous reasons, broken promises and not adhered to issues, and now they are ‘suddenly’ afraid? I acknowledge that this is speculation from my side, yet aren’t all parties speculating here?

when we seek the word evidence in the report we see ‘no independently verified evidence‘ and all kinds of fusions with other words, yet not with ‘evidence found‘, is that not weird that the UN spend all this time on a report and there was no ‘clear evidence found‘?

You can check for yourself, the report has been added. The special rapporteur (or is that reporter) gives us: “The Special Rapporteur reviewed four potentially credible hypotheses related to the unlawful death of Mr. Khashoggi“, it merely turns paper A/HRC/41/CRP.1 into an essay, a very expensive essay I might add (OK, I am exaggerating here).

And now we get to the paper and the recommendations that start at page 95. Here we see: “Initiate a follow-up criminal investigation into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi to build-up strong files on each of the alleged perpetrators and identify mechanisms for formal accountability, such as an ad hoc or hybrid tribunal” Yes? How?

There is no evidence and most evidence was tainted by Turkish authorities by mismanagement and by allowing so called government officials make statement that had no bearing and touched no evidentiary surface. It became a 70 million article joke with references to burned remains and all kinds of photographs that show nothing at all.

In this I find item 480 even more hilarious. For the most (it seems) there is a lack of knowing what accountability means, you merely have to look at several issues in the UN with a special reference to the UN and UN security council sides in Egypt (1981) Assassination of Anwar Sadat, there has been several moments where it was uttered that certain paths were not fully investigated, does it matter? So when I see: “Accountability demands that the Saudi Arabia government accept State responsibility for the execution” whilst that evidence is not in existence. There is a case for rogue activities, if that constitutes evidence, than the UN should take a hard look at Viktoria Marinova, optionally investigating the mere accepted fact by the media that the ‘they did not believe the killing of Marinova was connected to her work, suggesting it was a “spontaneous” attack‘, or there are the unanswered questions regarding Abdul Samad Rohani. What is most striking is that the Taliban was never shy of admitting their acts, so why was his death closed when the Taliban was very apt in denying this one? It is important when we consider this unidentified government spokesman in light of the fact that this happened in a place where there is a flourishing opium trade, so as some gave clearly: “Rohani was killed for his reporting on drug trafficking and its possible ties to government officials“, yes because that has always been a reason to keep a journalist alive, has it? So Agnes Callamard, where are those essays?

It is in that light that I want to illuminate another item that was in the document: ‘Turkey failed to meet international standards regarding the investigation into unlawful deaths‘ (Page 4, Item 5). So why was that? There are always truckloads of excuses to find, yet who was responsible to keep international standards? Why were these standards not met? That term was used in several ways, yet the mention and clarification of Turkish ‘international standards‘ and more important which person, or perhaps more correctly stated which Turkish office was responsible for that is also missing in this Agnes Callamard document, is that not equally part of the investigation in all this? Why is that part missing in this document?

In the end the entire matter of Khashoggi smells and the Washington Post in this one instance can hide behind rumours and speculations all they want, the New York Times does not! In the end there are too much questions, but the participating player (Turkey) has its hands in too many Iranian issues and there is clear evidence (actual evidence) that the entire Khashoggi investigation got tainted and no longer an option to investigate. Yet that too is seemingly missing from the essay of Agnes Callamard (I remain cautious as I might have missed a piece in that 99 page essay.

I will leave it to you good folks to draw your own conclusion and the issues I reported, feel free to Google Search it, feel free to text search it in the document. the opinion piece did not mention the other parts making it unfair, unbalanced and as I personally see it completely unworthy of the New York Times, as such I do place blame, but from my point of view the buck stops at Dean Baquet, it is on his watch that this happened, we accept that everyone is allowed their opinion, but in a paper like the New York Times, it should not be this unbalanced ever, not for a global paper like the New York Times

UN Khashoggi Report June 2019

Leave a comment

Filed under Law, Media, Politics