Tag Archives: Long Beach

Brother, can you spare a clue?

Yup, we all need clues at time. In some cases it is a simple as a vowel or a consonant, a stage where the word is still hidden to us. At times it is a clue to a larger picture, like the Guardian giving us ‘Biden to Trump – you’re embarrassing US’, now I am no Trump fan, yet the elections are not called yet in two states (31 electoral votes), we are optionally facing a recount in Wisconsin and Arizona (21 electoral votes), and there we see the larger difference, it is up in the air who becomes president. The media is shouting and screaming that Biden has won, which would be nice, but I deal in certainties and this is not certain. Georgia is leaning towards Biden, North Carolina is not. Yet until these two are officially called this race is still on. We can scream ‘count every vote’ and I support that, but not all the votes have been counted yet and there we have the larger station.

Then we see China optionally requiring a legal clue, we see this in BBC article ‘Hong Kong disqualifies four pro-democracy lawmakers after China ruling’, a lot of us might go all huffy and puffy, yet does that remain when we see “The expulsion came moments after Beijing passed a resolution allowing the government to disqualify politicians deemed a threat to national security”, as well as “China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee says that lawmakers should be disqualified if they support Hong Kong independence, refuse to acknowledge China’s sovereignty, ask foreign forces to interfere in the city’s affairs or in other ways threaten national security”, a setting that is open to interpretation. Especially when I consider “Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilisation. Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and the evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s triumph over all these foes”, which President George Bush gave us from the White House in 2002, it comes in context with The National Security Strategy (NSS) which is a document prepared periodically by the executive branch of the government of the United States for Congress. It sets a tone towards the outlines the major national security concerns of the United States and partial methods on how to to administer these plans for dealing with issues. The legal foundation for the document is spelled out in the Goldwater-Nichols Act. The document is purposely general in content (read: Ambiguous), and its implementation relies on elaborating guidance provided in supporting documents. Both are choices in execution the need for a national security. Did you actually believe that the stage where Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898 was the end of that? After WW2, 50% of that lease period was surpassed, what did you think was going to happen? China giving up on the most profitable region in history? It is emphasised when we consider the Conversation giving us a year ago “Since 9/11, American domestic and international security policy has been focused on individual terrorists, terrorist groups and rogue countries as the primary threats. The country’s defensive response has been focused on the military and law enforcement capabilities. That’s natural, because the military knows how to shoot, drop and launch things at threats like that. And those dangers still exist”, do you think that China was not doing that as well? Since 2000 almost 100 attacks (mostly lone wolves) have been nipping at the heels of the USA, do you think that China is waiting for an attack? It will be minimising risk and Hong Kong is seen as all risk. 

Yet these matters are out in the open, there is a whole range of issues the remain in the dark, in the US, in China, in the Middle East and in Russia, each having its own baton of transparency, each having a different working method and in position we see the media pushing buttons and giving a partial view whenever possible, they too have their share holders, their stake holders and their advertising needs, it does not help many of us getting a clear picture. Consider the AP 4 days ago when they gave us “On Saturday, Biden captured the presidency when The Associated Press declared him the victor in his native Pennsylvania at 11:25 a.m. EST. That got him the state’s 20 electoral votes, which pushed him over the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to prevail”, which is by all accounts a fair call, but the votes are not counted yet, the 31 out in the open and the end result could become Biden 276-Trump 262. This is an awful close call to be celebrating when votes are still being counted, one contested state is all the is required to show is all overboard and Wisconsin with 10 electoral seats might get us Biden 266 – Trump 272, that is the ball game. This is where it is at and the previous stage will be abandoned by so many it will scare you. You see, I am no Trump fan, and the chaos will ensure that the US will see several attacks, it infrastructure is massively undercut, its resources strained in the wrong directions and we are all screaming: Biden save us, all whilst the stage is not yet set, a stage that the Lone Wolves are really liking at present. Consider Savannah Georgia, Long Beach California, Seattle, Houston and South Carolina, they all have something in common and they neglected a lot in the last decade, the finds were not there. So when problems come calling the American people better have a real focal point instead of the reds versus the blues, we saw how that happened in Gangs of New York, how did the city fair there? It was set to Herbert Asbury’s 1927 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York. Yet what set it all apart, how do you remember the New York City draft riots? You think it does not relate? Consider that it was the moment when the population of New York fell below 11,000 and the area’s demographics changed pretty much forever as a result of the riot. You think that the second time around it will be better? When the reds versus the blues come calling instead of uniting, the US stands to lose a massive amount more from the start and this time around nationwide. I agree, it does not help when one of the players isn’t the sharpest tool in the tool chest, but the stage needs to be secured, China did it from the start, here we see a stage that is open for all with a gun and a loud mouth. Still thinking I have gone coo-coo? Consider ‘Three-quarters of Americans fear post-election violence and riots, Independent reveals’ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/election-results-2020-riots-trump-biden-b1700559.html), a stage given to us 2 days ago. That stage still exists, and it still holds water and there is the larger danger, not the rioters, but the opening the they give the lone wolves waiting for a signal. We are given “Such fears appeared directly linked to Americans’ concerns that it will not be clear by 4 November who won the presidential race”, now consider that one week later this issue is still in play. I watched two states remaining at 99% for 3-4 days, so what is hampering the final count? 

As you can see, in light of the unknown and there is quite a lot of it, brother, can you spare ME a clue?

Oh, and I was not done yet (well, not completely). You see, the Goldwater-Nichols Act is the foundation of a larger issue (at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a525942.pdf), you see when we consider “Goldwater-Nichols may have made DOD more efficient but at the cost of civilian control. It has also politicised the Armed Forces. Like the law it replaced, it has created a national military command structure that ignores the separation of powers. The amended National Security Act has consolidated dispersed powers into one office, unintentionally establishing conditions under which an imperious Secretary might abuse them”, as such we can surmise that the US will be under a larger version of exposed danger until the 19th of January, 2021. You did not actually think that these lone wolves are sitting on their hands, did you? The danger is not red versus blue, it is those seeking an advantage during that time and as I personally see it, the US is not ready to deal with that danger.

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Waking up 6,897 miles away

I admit that at times I do not understand the motive of those who embrace extreme actions. The LA Times gave us yesterday (at https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-terror-plot-20190429-story.html) the issue of continued action after an attack. In this case it is the attack on the Al Noor Mosque on the 15th of March 2019. There Brenton Tarrant decided to murder 50 innocent people, and almost succeeded in murdering 39 additional people. The event drove Mark Steven Domingo (26) to make an IED, and he had planned to detonate it at a rally scheduled to take place in Long Beach this past weekend. The man who only recently had converted to Islam seems to have converted with too much anger in his heart, or perhaps he was always too sociopathic and psychopathic to begin with and he hoped that Islam would give him more support in his violent needs. It is anybody’s guess; so this “U.S. Army veteran who wanted revenge for attacks on Muslims around the globe was planning to detonate a bomb at a Long Beach rally this past weekend before he was intercepted by law enforcement officials, authorities said Monday“. According to papers, he was planning “various attacks — including targeting Jews, churches and police officers“, in all this targeting the police makes even less sense, that is, unless you consider that his sociopathic nature came into play and he merely wanted to target people in uniform. And when I read: “Prosecutors said Domingo sought retribution for the March 15 attacks on New Zealand mosques and was willing to die a martyr“. I wonder if he actually wanted to do that at all. You see, it dawns on me (optionally a completely inaccurate view) that he is one of these people that fear taking their own life, and as the numbers of ‘suicide by cop‘ have dwindled, these people have sought out another path to get it done, because a clear ‘suicide by cop’ tends to become a conversation with the police being able to talk people like that away from such an edge pretty efficiently, yet a terrorist is a target that is to be killed on the spot to safeguard as many people as possible. The fact that he got arrested before his plan came together is merely a nice coincidence for all parties concerned (optionally with the exception of Mark Steven Domingo). In support there is the case of Suicide by Cop: A Psychiatric Phenomenon. It is a work from 2017 by Ralph H. de Similien and Adamma Okorafor. There is one part that came up to debate in light of this optional case. The paper gives us: “It is reported, for example, to be more common in those with previous encounters/experiences with law enforcement agencies. It is estimated that about 66% of victims have had criminal histories“, I am not debating that it is wrong, I wonder if the text needed to be altered to: ‘with previous encounters/experiences with law enforcement, or defence agencies‘, it would fit this bill, yet making a resolution fit is not academically correct and as such I am not stating that I am right, I am merely wondering whether I could be right.

And there are other considerations to make, like how did he convert to Islam? Was he officially converted by an imam khatib? At what mosque did this happen? These questions are equally important for the reason that we need to ascertain how he became radicalised, was it an interior push or an exterior one. The facts as they are shown at present seem to imply that he was an angry person seeking another solution to whatever problem he thought he had, an extreme one and that makes it an internal change, but that is not a given. The data is important here as it casts a much larger shadow on several key elements and until they have been resolved there is no certainty that this will not happen again in the foreseeable future, a threat that Long beach (and other places) can do without.

Even now we see more questions rise. The BBC gave us only hours ago: ‘US Army veteran ‘planned to bomb Nazi rally’‘, we might all think that this is not the worst idea to have, but the extreme part of this is starting to form a pattern, he wanted to blow something up. We can argue that we have all had it at some point; some lash out at their high school, some do it in their high school. There is more in this case: “the former infantryman with combat experience in Afghanistan“, as such I have met plenty of people from that place who came out alright, to some extent I am unwilling to merely hand it over to the label called PTSD. There is a larger issue in play in the United States and this is merely the beginning. Never before in history has a nation been this polarised both politically and socially.

The political players have done everything to better their own lives and quality of life, but for the most they have been utterly unable to do that for the lowest 35% of that nation. The homeless, the unemployed and the minimum wage employees have been under increasing levels of pressure. Some need to work two jobs just to meet the cost of living; it gets even worse when we consider certain facts. For example in Kalamazoo, Michigan (expertly found) we see that well over 30% of the city population lives below the poverty line. That is well over twice the U.S. poverty rate, which stands at 12.3%. In a place that is seemingly affordable, a place where houses are on a median that is below $100K, we see a splurge of poverty. A place that is roughly 2.5 hours from Chicago , a city where the prices are non affordable for most these people. Did you not think that this inequality would come home to roost? If there are 15 places where these economic groups can live than it would be a lot, the issue is a lot less positive and the pressures keep on going up.

When we consider that a US veteran, a person that signed up to protect its civilians, is now on a course to kill them; we need to see that the issue is a lot larger than we think it is. Now as the expression goes ‘One Swallow does not make for a summer‘ we can see that one case does not mean it is so, but the pressures are visibly there, the deterioration of the lowest 30% of American incomes is there and when we start seeing the difference on what represents the quality of life in the US against what is regarded to be the standard of living, at that point do we see a first light on how much change is needed in the US. This has been known for the longest time, yet when we consider the simplest part in all this; when we consider that up to 21 million Americans are getting water from systems that violate health standards. When we consider that this is 8% of all Americans and when we realise that this group is more likely than not represented in 95% of the lowest 35% incomes, people who more often than not cannot afford to buy bottled water, how serious do you think that the pressure issue is and how worse could it get soon enough?

I believe that Mark Steven Domingo is the beginning of a much larger problem, it was not founded in religion, it is founded in social desperation and when that hits the least balanced people are the first to totally lose it.

 

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