I will carefully spell his name here. Mohammed bin Salman. (from Wikipedia.)

He is the current crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

He is implicated in the killing of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Turkey.

Now I invoke Lenin’s Law: to understand a historical event, find out who profited from it.

MBS has consolidated power with many scary moves, including imprisoning a large number of key Saudi persons in a ‘gold star’ hotel. Many were allowed to exit after paying large fines.

MBS is modernizing his country. Women can drive. Big university budgets. Diversity from oil revenue.

MBS has made a Lot of enemies with the above, and other, decisions..

If you were to benefit from MBS being deposed, who are you? Those who do not want the country to move forward – in women’s rights, in science, in non-oil economic prospects?

So, what would you do? Send a team of 15, mostly by private jet,.to assassinate a journalist in Turkey?

Lenin’s law: who benefited?

Is MBS dumb enough to arrange the murder, and body disposal, of a minor journalist?

Was it a plot to reduce his power and credibility?

That’s today’s dumb question.

A few days ago my cell phone went off for an emergency alert system test.

There was an emergency alert in Hawaii last year that turned out to be false. The threat of an incoming missile was incorrect. Officials did not correct this for some 38 minutes.

I have a request to the tall foreheads setting up this emergency alert system. Don’t warn me of an incoming atomic missile. There’s nothing I can do in this case, and would rather be surprised than spend a minute or so in dread.

I also have a dumb question.

Will this alert go off if my phone is in airplane mode? Supposing its a hurricane warning, telling me to take cover.

What do you think is the right answer here? That’s the dumb question.

I personally own and use a number of ‘technical’ pieces of equipment. My cameras all have a serial number. My binoculars all have a serial number. My desktop and laptops all have a serial number. My car has a VIN number which uniquely identifies it. Some (expensive) cars have the VIN recorded again, hidden in multiple parts and places.

I submit that a drone is roughly as complex as a good camera. So, why do they not have serial numbers burned into them?? Why is this not a legal requirement from the government to the manufacturers?

If they did, capturing a drone in Gatwick could have led directly to the manufacturer, the lot and retailer, and the eventual purchaser.

If drones don’t have numbers burned into them, why not?
If they do, why can’t law enforcement find their purchasers?

Canada does not seem to have term limits. This creates career politicians whose lives might collapse if not re-elected. (We’re going to see a lot of this in Ontario, eh?)

Chile’s president can only run for one term. Bachelet has been back repeatedly, but she had a one-term gap each time. This seems to work out well; Chile’s economic numbers look a lot better than Peru’s, for example. Bachelet either has a backup job or wealthy independence. She does not need to be re-elected because she can’t be.

The US President can only be elected twice. There’s also a ten-year limit to cover the case of succession.

I have two examples of long-running country leaders. One is Paul Kagame of Rwanda. Kagame was referred to by Romeo Dallaire as the best general in Africa. He is now, apparently, a despot.

Does this always happen after too many years in power?

My other example is Daniel Ortega. Ortega was the recipient of attacks funded by arms sales to Iran (Oliver North) used to fund the Honduran Contras. Ortega made positive changes in Nicaragua at the start of his rule. He is now, apparently, silencing the media and allowing dissenters to be killed.

Does this always happen after too many years in power?

Despite logging in successfully, I can Not ask a question nor add to any forum. I’ve read the instructions and I’m told to click an ‘add new’ button that is not there.

My problem is this:

I updated to 4.9.6 after backing up, as was suggested.

Then I got about 350 spam posts to my blog.

I think that all WordPress sites that updated were so targeted. I’ve seen a lot of c..p posting, but never at this volume. It was too fast to be manual, and several IP addresses were involved. I think there’s an alternate TOR being used.

Any ideas about this? I’m tempted to simply .htaccess the top level IP range for every spam I get.