Tag Archives: NBC

August 16, 2018 · 14:05

When inability drives fear

It is a dangerous place to be in. We all have been there and in most cases it is as innocent as it could ever be. You see, sometimes life throws you a curveball. Gamers tend to identify it most easily. In my particular case it was a game called Magic Carpet. It was a Bullfrog game and I was testing it on the PC. It played magnificently there, and soon thereafter I also tested it on the very first PlayStation. There, because of the controller it was good, but not great. Still, it was fun to play and I tended (in those early years) to really get into a game, so when the situation blew into my face, I got a little frustrated. The next two times were worse and the last time (on that day) I went slightly angry (with myself) and I kicked the door. The issue was not the door, it was my steel tipped boot and I went straight through the door, so, I was not merely ticked off, I had a hole in the door (which would require funds to repair) and the boss in Magic Carpet was still alive. We all have had these moments. Our car, our bike, the TV, things go wobbly on you and we sometimes react wrongly to this situation and in light of that get to reflect on our own ego’s a little.

These are the images going through me when I was confronted to new information when looking at the unrealistic response by America (and Australia) to Huawei. In the case of Australia it seemed the mere application of greed and fear as politicians cater to the greed of a large telecom company, which was not seemingly the case with America. Yet that tip was raised for me less than 24 hours ago. The article (at https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/), shows how the CIA got their own systems handed to them through ego and what I would regard as stupidity. The initial headline ‘The number of informants executed in the debacle is higher than initially thought‘ is rather unsettling. It gets to be worse with “The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it. “The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.” Other factors played a role as well, including China’s alleged recruitment of former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee around the same time.” This is the most dangerous of settings. The wrongful setting comes straight from Sun Tsu where we learn that all war is based on deception. China is not some place that is tinkering at the side of the road, the Art of War COMES FROM CHINA! It gets to be worse when you consider that that book was written long before Americans had adopted proper reading and writing skills, close to 1200 years before that, so that was their first error.

When we see: “But the penetration of the communication system seems to account for the speed and accuracy with which Chinese authorities moved against the CIA’s China-based assets. “You could tell the Chinese weren’t guessing. The Ministry of State Security [which handles both foreign intelligence and domestic security] were always pulling in the right people,” one of the officials said. “When things started going bad, they went bad fast.”“. The entire matter seems to be exponentially wrong. The big issue is not on how it was cracked, or even if it was cracked. My issue had been (for a much longer time now) that for too long, the deciding voices, all listening to some CTO, often with multiple sides lacking wisdom that the setting was not merely that there was ‘a security risk’, there was for the longer time a much larger security flaw. For much too long a time, we got the ‘slides of wisdom’ on how data in transit tends to be safe and data at rest tended to be in danger. Even when I started my CCNA, the amount of knowledge given in the Cisco books gave the rise to the consideration that data in transit is not merely as vulnerable, it was that a lot more could be done unnoticed (not merely by the Chinese mind you). It was some time before the Sony hack that I expected a setting where the routers themselves might be used against the owner, it went further when we consider Wired in 2013 (at https://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-router-hacking/). The headline is not merely ‘NSA laughs at pc’s, prefers hacking routers and switches‘. It is the setting where we see: ““No one updates their routers,” he says. “If you think people are bad about patching Windows and Linux (which they are) then they are … horrible about updating their networking gear because it is too critical, and usually they don’t have redundancy to be able to do it properly.” He also notes that routers don’t have security software that can help detect a breach“. This is where I was in 2011, when I started to comprehend the working of a router and router tables, I figured out that it is not the router they can see that is the problem; it is the one they cannot see. That idea came from a presentation by Thomas Akin, CISSP, Director, Southeast Cybercrime Institute who had a presentation for the Blackhat briefings. The 2002 presentation gave me the idea. You see apart from the lack of security, the +1 hop hack allows form something truly unique. Consider [.MIL Server], that server connects to <secure router 1> and things are set into motion. Now, we cannot direct all the traffic, yet materials from that location to let’s say ‘preferred consultant one‘ will go via certain paths, yet the first router after <secure router 1> tends to be merely one or two routers (depending on traffic) to that preferred consultant. It is easy to find a router that could optionally be a link to these routers and duplicate all packages that go to that specific next step. Not only is the task easily done, the path is not hindered, the router is not intervened with and a simple reset takes away whatever evidence existed in the first place. In addition, the additional part is that the compact flash in those routers is ‘The maximum storage capacity for the CF in Slot0 and Slot1 is 4GB‘, yet the only part here is that you only needed 32 MB, which is what most of us used then, but cards that small are no longer made, so most IT people just plug in what they have. You have well over 3GB of package storage, so all packages to that one location could be stored and redirected on the ‘off’ hours as not to leave any monitored spike. Until the CFlash card is ejected from the router and investigated no one will have a clue. That was 7 years ago and the systems are even more capable now, a 3GB glitch will not register on most systems, especially when those IT people do not block Spotify and/or YouTube. By the time they figured it out, the setting is already wiped, and this path can be adjusted on a daily bases so that most IT networkers never had a clue in the first place.

You think that I am alone in this, that I am this clever? No, I am not! There are plenty of IT Networkers running circles around me and that is now set into the stage of ‘we’re untouchable‘. The CIA was never that, they never needed to be touched, the opponent merely needed a clear line of sight to the router that is one skip from the secure router that they needed to get to. We see more in the Foreign Policy article with the quotes “Information about sources is so highly compartmentalized that Lee would not have known their identities. That fact and others reinforced the theory that China had managed to eavesdrop on the communications between agents and their CIA handlers” and “an encrypted digital program, allows for remote communication between an intelligence officer and a source, but it is also separated from the main communications system used with vetted sources, reducing the risk if an asset goes bad“. Now we merely add “But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to interact with its vetted sources, according to the former officials“. I believe it goes further than that. If we see the entire layer process and consider that in the end, certain systems merely replicate a process. Cisco (at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/lan-switching/8021q/17056-741-4.html) gives us: “A device can determine which VLAN the traffic belongs to by its VLAN identifier. The VLAN identifier is a tag that is encapsulated with the data. ISL and 802.1Q are two types of encapsulation that are used to carry data from multiple VLANs over trunk links”, as well as “The DA field of the ISL packet is a 40-bit destination address. This address is a multicast address and is set at “0x01-00-0C-00-00” or “0x03-00-0c-00-00”. The first 40 bits of the DA field signal the receiver that the packet is in ISL format“, so as the destination was known, the people needing this could search very specifically. When we consider ‘It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform‘, the connection back would enable those seeking to find the needed value of the DA field. That does not merely impede the CIA, it stands to reason that to some degree the NSA would be just as vulnerable.

The main course

In my case, I tend to go for the Bambi burger, ideally I watch Bambi whilst having that lovely slice of venison. You see when we get to “As part of China’s Great Firewall, internet traffic there is watched closely, and unusual patterns are flagged. Even in 2010, online anonymity of any kind was proving increasingly difficult. Once Chinese intelligence obtained access to the interim communications system,­ penetrating the main system would have been relatively straightforward, according to the former intelligence officials. The window between the two systems may have only been open for a few months before the gap was closed, but the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability“, I believe the setting is worse than that. These players still require their consultants. It does not matter whether you call them construction workers, members of Blackwater, Xe Services, or Academi. It is those places as well as Booz Allan Hamilton and other providers that still require to be informed, and that is where the interception could start. The setting is not ‘the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability‘, it is the long term flags that they were able to test at this point and that is the fear we see with their setting of Huawei and partners. Not that Huawei is the danger, but the fact that Chinese intelligence is just as able to get into nearly all systems, it merely can get into Chinese systems faster (for now). This is where it gets a little more complicated, because it is not about the now, it is about tomorrow and the tomorrows that are coming. The only ones who have a chance of getting things done are players like the Constellis Group and Palantir when they unite abilities. It is going to be about data and about the ability to forecast how traffic goes. Thomas Akin was teaching this wisdom 16 years ago. We see this when we are made to realise

  • Live system data is the most valuable.
  • Immediate shutdown destroys all of this data.
  • Investigators must recover live data for analysis.

And the loss is merely a reset away, in most cases if there is an automatic reset; the only data available is the last transgression at best. With the coming of 5G live real-time capturing data streams is what is more likely to set the stage of finding out what happened, in this the entire setting of ‘China’s Great Firewall‘, we are already looking at outdated Chinese technology and I do believe that those behind the article, as well as some DARPA people are aware of that. America and Europe are behind in ways that we cannot even perceive, because the players that need to move forward are doing so iteratively, that whilst the time of reengineering is now merely 10% of what the development time was. We see this with “Call this the IBM problem, which faced an existential threat as soon as Asian groups started churning out cheap PCs in the 1990s. But here IBM also provides a few tips to the future, with its pivot to software and solutions. By the time of IBM’s iconic “solutions for a small planet” ad campaign in 1996, the company was trumpeting voice recognition and ecommerce — producing the sort of digital enterprise backbone that ended up helping develop the internet economy” (source: Australian Financial Review). In the first instance the Asian market required 10-15 years to catch up, the second time around it took 2-3 years and now with Google and Apple working globally, it takes months. IBM (others too) took iterative steps to maximise the economic footprint, instead of truly leaping forward whenever possible, they lost the advantage and are now trailing the markets. Huawei is one clear example where the American market was surpassed. Samsung showed its supremacy by having 5G home routers ahead of everyone else and the advantage in Asia is only growing. It is seen with “Alternatively, authorities might have identified the system through a pattern analysis of suspicious online activities. China was so determined to crack the system that it had set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security and the Chinese military’s signals directorate (roughly equivalent to the NSA), one former official said“. I do not read this part in the same way. I believe that with ‘set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security‘, was not about cracking. I personally believe that the Cisco books were so illuminating that they decided to change the setting in their own game. I believe that the Chinese now have a more advanced system. They have done what players like Cisco should have done before 2014 and they did not. I believe that when we see a partnership between Constellis and Palantir, their findings will bear that out with in addition an optional link that shows part of the accusation that China let Russia in on certain findings (and the Russian evolution of certain networking devices). This and the next part is largely speculative, but it is supported to some extent. We see this in: “Once one person was identified as a CIA asset, Chinese intelligence could then track the agent’s meetings with handlers and unravel the entire network. (Some CIA assets whose identities became known to the Ministry of State Security were not active users of the communications system, the sources said.)“. I believe that he part given in ‘not active users of the communications system‘ gives us the third part. I believe that the system was not merely invaded. There is every chance that certain systems when activated also leave tags behind and that is where the intrusion would have paid off. You see, in the Cisco setting (as an example), the data frame has an optional 60 bytes of extension headers, yet is that always empty? More important, when were these data packages truly thoroughly checked? In this speculative setting I take you to the movie Die Hard 2. In that movie we see on how someone decided to get clever and uses the outer marker beacon to warn the planes that were in danger. The beacon can be used in other ways than merely give a beep. I believe that Cisco data packages have other optional parts than can be ‘reused’ to do something different, like the optional headers. They are to most merely empty pre-set ‘spaces’, but they could have more. That is the setting that America faces and the fact that they could get overwhelmed by Chinese intelligence because they did not rely on iterative parts. Huawei had been leaping forward, for example now offering a 128GB Android 8.1 phone (the Huawei nova 3i 128GB Handset), for 50% less than its competitors. A system that is just as advanced as anything Apple and Samsung offer; at merely half the price whilst Chinese Intelligence has been digging into that device for months, unlike the NSA that needs to queue up with all the other users to get to look at the Pixel 3 and the iPhone 8 on launch day. That is the setting we seem to be seeing and America is indeed and rightfully worried, not because Huawei has backdoors (which I never really believed) but because the players here had been held backwards through iterative technology. Apple is actually staged by Forbes that way with the quote ‘a minor point update for the iOS 11.1 iteration‘, even Forbes speaks about iterative changes. That is the setting that they are up against and they have been surpassed for years and with Huawei leading the 5G stage on a global setting the US authorities are merely getting more and more afraid that not only are they no longer the leading players, they are now sidelined by not being able to keep up with what will be presented ‘tomorrow’.

That part can be supported through the CIA with analyses reports (at https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no3/html_files/Collection_Analysis_Iraq_5.htm), in here we see that Richard Kerr, Thomas Wolfe, Rebecca Donegan, and Aris Pappas give us (in a different context): “The analysis on this issue by the Intelligence Community clearly was wide of the mark. That analysis relied heavily on old information acquired largely before late 1998 and was strongly influenced by untested, long-held assumptions. Moreover, the analytic judgments rested almost solely on technical analysis, which has a natural tendency to put bits and pieces together as evidence of coherent programs and to equate programs to capabilities. As a result the analysis, although understandable and explainable, arrived at conclusions that were seriously flawed, misleading, and even wrong“. It is important to realise that this was on the WMD setting, so in a different context and on a different setting. Yet the information systems were all designed to upholster that flaw to an ‘evolved’ placement, the systems in their entirety are nowhere near ready, now even for the previous setting. The movement from a lot of staff to more fruitful consultant settings is now paying off in a negative way for the CIA (and the NSA too). This is where it gets interesting. You see, the previous setting that I gave should partially have been dealt with through the flashlight program that DARPA has. Raytheon BBN is working on that with Professor Richard Guidorizzi from George Mason University Fairfax. I think that the system is not entirely ready here, not if the packages can be duplicated via the router and as long as the original is not touched, that system will not get the alert lights ringing.

To get you on board on how far all the NATO partners are behind, let me give you two settings. The first is a DARPA Project called ‘Probabilistic Programming for Advancing Machine Learning (PPAML)‘, the man in charge is Dr. Suresh Jagannathan, yet the bigger brain might be MIT graduate Dr. Jennifer Roberts. The given setting is “Probabilistic programming is a new programming paradigm for managing uncertain information. Using probabilistic programming languages, PPAML seeks to greatly increase the number of people who can successfully build machine learning applications and make machine learning experts radically more effective“, whilst we also see the goods in the DARPA article by Dr Roberts with “If successful, PPAML could help revolutionize machine learning capabilities in fields from Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to predictive analytics and cybersecurity“, this is certainly leaping forward, but it is still based on a system. I believe that the Chinese decided to turn the funnel upside down. To illustrate this I need to get you to an app called Inke. The article (at https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/02/09/hidden-world-chinese-livestreaming-app-inke/), gives us ‘The hidden world of Chinese livestreaming app Inke‘, this is not a few people; this is a craze that has already infected millions upon millions. So with “he was actually doing a livestream, an extremely popular hobby for young people in China. China is way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to embracing livestreams.” you are missing out and missing out by a lot. These streams are real-time and often geo-tagged. I believe that the Chinese have changed the setting, they are optionally collecting Terabytes of daily data and they are converting that to actionable intelligence. Facial recognitions in phones, geo-tagged and all uploaded and streamed, all converted on the spot, like the SETI screensaver, millions of affordable mobiles (this is where the Huawei nova 3i 128GB Handset and all other new handsets come in), parsing all that data into uploaded files and Chinese intelligence gets global information close to real time, whilst their learning machines are about efficiencies of collected data, it is not about the better application by making them more effective, it is about the massive amounts of data offered to get the systems to upgrade the efficiency of parsing data, because parsing data is where the bottleneck will be in 5G and they already have a larger advantage.

In the meantime, on any given day thousands of Inke users are filming life around them in malls and famous places looking awesome doing it. Yet, if you look at the CCTV settings, how many users would have passed 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, or at London SE1 9EL, UK walking towards London Bridge? How many people were merely assuming that they were tourists face timing with mom and dad? Are you getting that picture now? and also realise that Inke is merely one of more than 300 live streaming companies, all capturing that data all those tags that a smartphone allows it to capture and at the top of all this, Facebook and YouTube are eagerly pushing people to gain following by doing just that. So how long until the user realises that uploading the same stream to 2-3 providers gets them to gain a lot more following and optionally cash? Yes, the intelligence community is that far behind at present. So when we are worrying on “The system was not designed to withstand the scrutiny of a place like China, where the CIA faced a highly sophisticated intelligence service and a completely different online environment“, we need to consider that China is already ahead of the game and the CIA systems might be merely an option to scrutinise their own data, because that remains the Chinese bottleneck, the data will require verification and that is the one field where their opposition could gain the advantage if they set their minds to a different algorithm, one on reliability, not on likelihood. It is a setting where all the players involved have a second tier of consideration. They embrace a ‘not now, but soon‘ thought, when ‘I needed this yesterday‘ is the proper setting as I personally see it, because data without proper vetting is merely used space on any given storage device.

That final part can be considered when we look at the linked article that NBC had from last January. There we see: “When agents searched Lee’s hotel rooms in 2012, they found notebooks with the names of covert CIA sources, according to court documents. But not all of the agent arrests and deaths could be linked to information possessed by Lee, who left the CIA in 2007“, an issue I mentioned in an earlier blog. We get there when we consider his actions and ‘found notebooks with the names of covert CIA sources‘, do you think that anyone, especially in this setting would be that stupid? It’s like keeping the condom as a trophy after having intercourse, its useless and stupid. I believe that either it is not the ‘covcom’ system, or not merely the ‘covcom’ system. I believe that (if it is all correct) that Chinese intelligence got in further and deeper into acquiring the data required and the notebook is the proverbial red herring in all this, especially as Jerry Chun Shing Lee left the CIA in 2007. You do not hold on to that level of information 11 years after you might have had some level of valid reasons to have it in the first place. That is the part many overlooked, or looked away from.

In the end, I do believe that it is not merely the inability that drove the anti-Huawei waves, it is the fact that those decision makers have no idea where to navigate towards next is what drives their fears almost exponentially.

 

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April 4, 2018 · 09:47

Evidence by candlelight

This was coming. It took me less than an hour to fathom this outcome when i wrote the initial articles on Novichok and the Skripal family. On March 17th, within ‘Something for the Silver Screen‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/17/something-for-the-silver-screen/), the situation was clear to me and it was given by the media with ‘U.S., France and Germany join Britain‘, as I see it this was about something else. The additional ‘evidence’ as we saw it in the Guardian, the Washington Post and the BBC gave us a lot and when read and put together, the evidence was not stacking up. That is now seen in ‘Porton Down experts unable to verify precise source of novichok‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/03/porton-down-experts-unable-to-verify-precise-source-of-novichok). Now, let’s be clear. It does not make Russia innocent, yet whether it was a Russian or the Russian government can’t be verified and when we consider that truth we need to realise that PM Theresa May overreached her abilities and her office by a long stretch. The fact that Porton Down cannot identify whether the Novichok was made in Russia is merely one side, it does not absolve Russia, yet in similar thought, the fact that the origin cannot be determined also implies, or better stated, clearly indicates that the premise ‘beyond all reasonable doubt‘ goes straight out of the window. Now, do not get me wrong, I am just as eager for the next cold war as the next guy, but let’s do it for the right reasons!

You see the quote “Aitkenhead said the government had reached its conclusion that Russia was responsible for the Salisbury attack by combining the laboratory’s scientific findings with information from other sources” is window dressing at best. You see, the nightmare scenario is about to get to the surface and the second quote gets us there. That would be the quote “He said: “It’s a military-grade nerve agent, which requires extremely sophisticated methods in order to create – something that’s probably only within the capabilities of a state actor.”” You see, they shot themselves in the foot there. With: ‘state actor’ we see ‘evidence’ of optional locality, yet they cannot establish that. So now we get back to the original setting that I had on that day and that was that someone had personal skin in the game. It is overkill on a very different level, whilst we know that there were other ways to do this, the choice of weapon made it emotional and governments tend to not be emotional. Now we can go all conspiracy theory on the statement ‘There’s no way that anything like that would ever have come from us or leave the four walls of our facilities‘, yet the reality is that Porter Down is not the most advanced place in Europe. In Germany Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals LLC have the research locations that equal, if not surpass Porter Down. Even as we agree that this was not made in Russia, Russia is still not absolved and that is where the nightmare starts. You see a Novichok is a NBC weapon and whilst we are pushed towards the ‘state actor’ Russia, we forgot that once out, it Jinn will not get back in the bottle. The Ivan Kivelidi and Leonard Rink part took that out into the open and that happened in 1995. So for the larger part of 23 years this has been out in the open and now that someone trying to score a name for him (or her) the issue is out in the open and I am fairly certain that the UK and France (with their lovely chemical experimental places in Lyon) are now becoming an issue. These places have been unmonitored to the larger extent and someone got to be creative. In a world where the cost of living is rising someone has a commodity that the bulk of organised crime is willing to pay for and they are willing to pay through the nose. That is not withstanding the lone wolves and the terrorist cells that are getting funding from some ‘state actor’.

that is now the ball game and it is reinforced with “He said the location of manufacture could be established through “a number of different input sources which the government has access to”, adding: “Scientific evidence is only one of those sources“, so as Gary Aitkenhead is now hiding behind ‘different input sources ‘, we can see that his PD location failed to establish that and if we comprehend Novichoks than we should see that this is not a surprise, even as the sources could be basic composites, those sources are not always possible to be determined. Even as Dmitry Peskov is crying fowl play (pun intended), Russia is not out of the woods. You see even as Russia was the designer, it falls on their heads that Novichoks possibly got out into the open. The setting of responsibility seems to be clearly there, even as the papers I talked about three weeks ago shows that the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fumbled the ball, their own meeting minutes shows that to be the fact. In a similar light we see the quote from Boris Johnson as an issue (not merely his haircut). As we are introduced to: “When I look at the evidence, the people from Porton Down, the laboratory, they were absolutely categorical. I asked the guy myself, I said: ‘Are you sure?’ And he said: ‘There’s no doubt.’ So we have very little alternative but to take the action that we have taken” and there is the issue, because the entire setting of evidence would have taken weeks not hours, which was a clear indication for me that the entire matter had been bungled by adding ‘projection weight’ into the fold in a place where there was no lighting, no electricity and no illumination of almost any kind. In this day and age evidence by candlelight is no evidence at all.

So it is my personal belief that gives us the last quote in this and the opposition it also creates. With “Alexander Grushko, called the attack a “provocation arranged by Britain” to justify high military spending because “they need a major enemy”“, Grushko might not be wrong, but he failed to add to this that there is every chance that Russia let slip the chemical dog of war and leave it in the hands of Russian organised crime and that is the nightmare that the European State actors were not ready for. The papers of the State Advisory Board (SAB) and the OPCW gave us that part when we see the gap of well over a decade. I am also decently certain that when we ‘grill’ Vil Mirzayanov in a toaster we will learn a few additional uncomfortable truths, the kind that the media is skating around as fast as they can, and in this one instance I actually do not blame them. In the end it still makes for one awesome Matt Damon movie and in light of the shown governmental shortcomings (and adding that to the script) it might just be a billion dollar hit, which is good for whoever decides to produce it.

So even as the media focused on that one place named Shikhany where that bad demon came from, we all forget that places like Dow, Bayer, Unilever, Laboratoire de Chimie ENS de Lyon and at least three more places where the setup could possibly facilitate for its creation and that is merely in Europe, that list gets to be significantly larger when we widen the net. Someone has played a very dangerous game and it is my personal belief that the global intelligence branch was so focused on optional terror cells that they forget that organised crime has a ‘mere’ need to satisfy their need for greed in any way they can and they forgot to look into that direction. I wonder how long it will take for me to be proven right yet again. Don’t get me wrong, I would love (read: prefer) to be wrong. Yet so far that has not happened. The idea of the Russian Mafia, or any large enough organised crime group to have their fingers on the C of NBC is scary, more so than a lone wolf terrorist. Because a lone wolf is likely to get emotional and would therefor fuck up, the calculating nature of organised crime is a much harder puppy to crack.

Yet that is merely my view on the matter.

 

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January 14, 2015 · 11:01

By the Jewish numbers

I have been thinking a lot in regards to the Jewish population. It all started when the numbers showed how small the fraction of Muslim extremists is. Was it like the fatwa pronounced against snowman in Saudi Arabia? I am not judging on that ruling, or on the reasoning there. It seemed so odd that one religion was such a large issue to some. You see, outside of Israel and the US, the Jewish population is less than 2% of whichever nation they are in, it is 1.9% in Gibraltar, because Gibraltar counts 600 people (excluding the monkeys), which gives us less than 12 people. It is likely just one family, perhaps even two. Why is this hatred against the Jews so intense? Perhaps the thought is sedition? Anyone who ever has a Shoarma (with garlic sauce) will decide to become Jewish?

A totally random reason, but what to think of this hatred? A level of hatred (or perhaps envy), that has existed in the minds of some people for such a long time. Let’s not forget that the total Jewish population is around 15 million globally, which is less than the Dutch population, giving us 0.19% of the global population, so what gives?

It is not just the events in France that have sparked an issue regarding the safety of Jews. When we look at the Atlantic, we see a different link (at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/will-this-time-be-different/384322/) ,

“A survey of French Muslims in 2014 found a community seething with anti-Semitism. Sixty-seven percent said “yes” when asked whether Jews had too much power over France’s economy. Sixty-one percent believed Jews had too much power in France’s media. Forty-four percent endorsed the idea of a global Zionist conspiracy of the kind described by the Holocaust-denying French Muslim comedian Dieudonne. Thirteen percent agreed that Jews were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis“. The quote is an interesting one. You see, statistics are at times like horoscopes, if the numbers fall flat, you can just ignore them. The last one on the financial crises is such a revelation, because the fact is not false (Marcus Goldman, the founder of Goldman Sachs is indeed Jewish, so is a slice of the top of Goldman Sachs), so even as this fact cannot be denied, the entire 2008 financial fiasco such a weird mention. Yes, the same involvement could be stated for the Lehman brothers. It was a twist of managed fates that kept Wall Street out of jail. Loads of the involved parties were not Jewish at all, the fact that national laws allowed for these events calls blaming the Jews even more in question. It is actually the mention “Sixty-one percent believed Jews had too much power in France’s media” that is central in all this. You see, these facts have bearing, but not in the way you might have ever considered.

If you look at different religions, we see that some are in unison, but for the most, people for the most remain at odds and in strife. The next is not a proven given, but it has shown to be correct. If we look at the old ages, we see that at times the Jews started in a place, in Munich (Germany) the first recorded name is ‘Abraham the Municher‘ in 1229, persecution through rumours and non-evidence has started from as early as 1285 (Source: Susanne Rieger), it took until the late 1700’s for levels of false persecution to diminish. When the Jewish population returned, it did so fairly quickly, and there is a weird situation linked to this. Wherever they moved to, the change was monumental.

Now the next parts are supposition and very speculative. It is my personal believe that the Jewish community is not one person, it is a united group. I have seen that the Jewish population at large is communicative almost in extremis ad infinitum. They debate and discuss everything with one another. What was then the Jewish area, now in Munich ‘the streets surrounding Gaertnerplatz in the trendy area of Glockenbachviertel are in increasing demand‘, which is a real estate quote! So as you consider my statement as reductio ad absurdum, than consider that this is not an isolated case. Amsterdam, Paris and many other cities in Western Europe have areas what was before the German culling through World War 2 to be amongst the most valuable real estates. This was not due to magic, witchcraft or crime. These people would buy a property and then take all effort to improve the house and to make the house a proper home, keeping it in perfect order. Where we would see rental properties fall into decline due to bad maintenance and greed driven choices, the Jewish houses would increase in value. In many cases (especially in Paris and Amsterdam) we see the proper optimised commercial use of any property, making it a long term asset. Now consider the Jewish population talking with each other, not at each other (as we see in many Christian places).

Weirdly enough, nowadays we share information open through social media, in those days the Jewish population did this using a Goose-feather, an ink jar and paper (aka actual communication). That trait got these people an advantage in banking, commerce and what is now regarded as media.

So is my speculation (based upon information read) so far out of synch with what might be? That is of course the question, which does not let the Goldman and Lehman family off the hook, but here we see an aggregated factor of growth that is exponential above many others. Is that the reason for the hatred? When someone internally ponders ‘the Jews’ are doing so much better then poor old lazy drinking me? If that is the view of some of these people, then perhaps they will consider getting educations and jobs instead of picketing against Jews (a subtle Westboro reference). Interestingly enough, in a Jewish family, everyone works (not unlike some Muslim families I know). That will in the end have an impact on the budget a family has and on the amount of debt that they can reduce.

Now we go back to some of the references, so even though some statements are true, are they still correct? That is the part no one can actually honestly answer. You see, they do not have too much power over the French economy, they are part of it, and many regard Natixis to be the biggest player in France, not a Jewish firm at all (as far as I can tell), so as we watch the quote of ‘found’ events, we see that in the cold light of day, against all elements the fact seemed true but they were not, neither were the facts correct.

The big issue here is anti-Semitism, by the numbers we see a correlation where bad economies seem to need scape goats, as these emotional attacks start, we must tactically acknowledge that for those people, attacking a group that represents less than 1% is an easy target, what is strange is how this can happen again and again, whilst the governments involved seem unable to stop such attacks until serious damage has already been inflicted. Yet, this is not completely correct either, when we see that in the French case it was actually a Muslim hiding the people under attack in the cooler, there we see that this one man Lassana Bathily, made all the difference in keeping the intended victims safe.

The issue goes further when we consider the Guardian article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/13/french-jewish-community-ponders-future-after-paris-attacks), where we see the following ““I’m tempted to go,” he said, referring to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s invitation on Saturday to French Jews to “come home to Israel” to escape anti-Semitism in Europe“. I very much disagree with the sentiment for two reasons. The first one is that if the Jews leave and they all move to Israel, we as a people have failed them. I believe that people when united, can and will achieve a lot more then when they are segregated and divided. We must find a way to keep our people (in a local national sense) all of them regardless of religion safe.

Yet then again, we need to learn how to stop and how to counter such hatred. Part is seen in the analyses of the people regarding Charlie Hebdo. The Guardian article states: “Amédy Coulibaly took the first steps towards terrorism in prison, but what the three had in common was growing up on the margins of French society“, here we see part of the issue as Nazi Germany grew, and now we see similar patterns after the 2008 crash. ‘The margins of French society‘ is more than just a phrase, it is a global issue. As we see the stronger and longer exploitation through big business, we see an unbalanced shape of life, so unbalanced that the mass of the people is growing resentment and require the need of scape goats to focus, the reality is that their marginalised lives came from speculators, big business and the financial industry. Sides governments all over the world were unable (partially refused) to deal with, now we see the results and this is only the beginning. As we see the facts evolve on how these events also could be seen When we take the quote “At that point, the young Kouachi, known as Abou Issen in the group, didn’t seem structured in his thinking. “He couldn’t differentiate between Islam and Catholicism” and wasn’t well educated, said the source“, we see a pattern that we have seen before, radicalisation through confusion. It is not unheard of. What is more important is the person who was connected to Amédy Coulibaly, namely Farid Benyettou. When we take the NBC quote “Farid Benyettou was sentenced to six years in prison for recruiting young Parisians for al Qaeda, including Kouachi, but since his release from jail has been training to be nurse“, we must wonder why he had such a change. Has Farid truly changed, or has he taken a vocation, where his chance to find marginalised people has a much stronger chance on finding those ready to radicalise through a marginalised world.

This is a question, not an accusation!

You see, in the way the Jews are spread (thinly) over nations, Lone wolf attacks would be devastating towards diminishing the Jewish population. The authorities would have no way to counter it and until it deals with the elements of marginalisation, they might never succeed at all. That part is not just France, that is a global issue and we need to find a solution fast, because as the economy goes at present, there is every danger that the attacks in France are only the beginning. I truly hope I am absolutely wrong here, time will tell!

 

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February 14, 2014 · 18:11

A senseless merger?

OK, as stated in earlier blogs, I am not an economist; I do not have any degree in economy! Yet, the information that passed my eyes less than 2 hours before has me slightly baffled. I feel happy that this all is happening in the US and not anywhere in the Commonwealth, yet, the issues as presented makes me wonder when this will hit the Commonwealth borders.

The issue is that Comcast has decided to buy Time Warner Cable. (at http://news.sky.com/story/1210921/comcast-to-buy-time-warner-cable-for-45bn) This is not a huge thing, we are in a civilisation where the hyena and vulture rules, hence mergers happen a dime a dozen and many of them before most have had a chance to enjoy their first coffee. Comcast has 21 million viewers and they are acquiring Time Warner with 11 million viewers. This all seems to make sense. Now for the kicker! This deal will cost Comcast $45 billion dollars. Are we all awake now?

So, 45,000 million divided by 11 gives us a little more than $4000 per viewer. When you consider that Cable TV is set at an average of $30 a month, it could take 133 months just to break even (providing this is all borrowed at 0%, which it is never). So there might be a price hike for all 32 million users of that cable solution.

This is not a chance to become the large bully, as they were described by a consumer group, but you must admit that this is about a lot more than just ‘adding’ new customers. Oh and by the way, this is happening less than three years after Comcast bought NBC for a little less than $14 billion. (at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-18/comcast-nbc-universal-deal-said-to-be-near-u-s-fcc-approval.html)

The Washington Post has an interesting mention, which was not found at Sky News “It’s worth remembering that Comcast limits how much data its customers are able to stream from the Internet, while Time Warner offers unlimited Internet plans.” (at http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/comcast-time-warner-to-merge-what-happens-to-my-service/2014/02/13/b285f81e-94b4-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html), so there are a few more kinks that the customer base might face as the merger goes through.

This all goes far beyond just Cable TV. It involves 30,000 community Wi-Fi spots (amongst several other elements); this entire picture becomes a lot more ‘interesting’ if we take the merger of Comcast and NBC in 2011. This is not just about TV; it is about digital media on an unparalleled level. The merger stipulates the 33 million cable users, yet, does that give a real view of the picture? In the first regard the 45 billion seems ludicrous, yet when we consider community Wi-Fi, broadband (or better stated digital media and networking), it becomes an entirely different picture, especially when we consider the following information from Reuters (at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/comcast-ondemand-idUSL2N0JC1S120131202). Now we get an entirely different picture. If we consider this quote “The new technology is meant to give TV networks a way to earn ad dollars from earlier episodes. Currently, most advertisers only pay for ads watched live or within three days after a show airs. That could change if Comcast’s technology, which it developed in partnership with Nielsen, is widely adopted.” and add the following case study (at http://www.sierratechno.com/sites/default/files/Turning%20Data%20into%20Customer%20Insights%20for%20Comcast%20Cable_0.pdf) we now get another view. This is about data, plain and simple, when we consider the value of collected big data in long term planning, having a data warehouse filled with the acts of 33 million people, the 45 billion dollar deal is a steal at twice the price.

It is in my humble opinion really funny to see all these people nag, complain and cry on what the NSA is alleged to be doing, whilst at the same time, their cable provider seems to be tagging them with a ‘value’ price tag for marketing, sales and identification. So what is the cable value of a customer at Hunts point, the Bronx (ZIP:  10474)?

So it seems that Comcast is getting their value on several fields, yet I am still in the dark why Americans are so against the NSA trying to find the people endangering their citizens, whilst giving big business more than twice the powers that many bargained for. It seems that this is not a senseless merger at all, yet do both consumer groups realise the powers their cable provider (slash phone, slash internet provider) ends up with?

 

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September 2, 2013 · 13:06

A plea for our future

This is a call to students, teachers and companies all over. It is to the group that work in the field of chemistry, environments and other areas. We need their help and we need it more desperately then even they can imagine.

The issue is Fukushima!

Yes, we all know issues happened, we know mistakes were made and we know that nature itself has had an impact on the events. Fukushima stands alone, but is not the only danger we face. Yes, there are al kinds of environmentalists cheering and partying on how the bad, evil and unneeded nuclear power solution is just not a solution. This is not about their inherent lack of insight. This is about finding a solution that works!

We need to find a way to diminish radiation and a way to clean up irradiated water. Yes, I get it, there are in some conditions options where we do not need to rely on nuclear power. Yet, consider that wind farming is not always an option. The London array consists of 175 huge windmills and they give less than 50% of an above average sized nuclear reactor. Yes, the Aswan Dam is Hydroelectricity gives of a lot more then that, yet many nations lack the options to get such a solution (it’s not like every nation has a waterfall or a Nile to dam in). So Nuclear power is here to stay (for now).

Why the plea? Japan is facing more and more hazardous events with the Fukushima power plant. The water around it seems to be getting irradiated and the radiation levels in the area are too high and in some places rising. A person would get killed there in less than 4 hours. We need to find new solutions!

Not just for them, or for this situation. We see the need for nuclear type solution in many more places. Until a better solution comes, we get to live with this risk. If someone stated, no we do not! Then that person must sign a voucher approving coal plants and accepting to live in smog. If it is abroad then your taxation in carbon tax will still be levied at $500-$750 per person on national scales and a power usage limit that is 20% lower than these persons have today. See the picture?

We either accept to live in smog like conditions forever, live without view or find something better. Until true fusion comes around Nuclear reaction is what we are faced with. Just so you know, even though true fusion will be cleaner on several levels, once an accident happens there, your goose is likely cooked on a massively larger scale then a nuclear reactor could achieve. If we believe the past, then we will have to face at least two fusion reactor accidents. This gives additional power to the need to find solutions for Fukushima. Whatever direction we take, we need to find alternative ways.

Can we suck away radiation?

I am not coming with answers here, but I learned many times over that nature is a mother, a taskmaster and a teacher. If depleted Ozone was reason for UV-radiation, is this not a lesson we could use in the opposite way? I do know that they are different forms of radiation, I just wonder if scientists took a good look at alternative approaches to the Fukushima disaster. If we have a leaky basement we need a sponge to suck the last water of the floor. If the current sponge does not do the job, we will need to invent one that does. I am not claiming that there is a simple solution; I am more worried that certain scientific quests have been neglected and forgotten about.

If we do not push ourselves forward then we can never be ready for the larger quest that will hit us around the corner. There are many industrialists who will counter this with their needy call on how the new innovation will also bring new solutions. There is a truth in there, but their answers are misguided and intentionally misdirected. Because cleaning up is not a profit, it is for those people a cost. A cost that is later pushed onto others anyway. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is clear evidence of that.

Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) is struggling to deal with the vast – and growing – volume of water it has used to cool the broken reactors. Growing? So if that is the case, what would happen if we treat the core with liquid nitrogen or liquid oxygen? These users seem to go for the readily available options, what if we step away from that? What other options are there?

This is exactly the issue, when a solution does not work; some seem to use it longer, hoping that this will solve it. The initial quote as we read it in the South China Morning post “The world’s nuclear watchdog has urged Japan to explain more clearly what is happening at Fukushima and avoid sending ‘confusing messages’, the country’s atomic regulator revealed.”

If that is true, then the Japanese government should hereby be placed under a mandatory position to reveal the complete chain of communications. From the spokesperson to the one giving out the information, reveal the entire chain! If we are to solve anything then it is only with proper information. It could even be that people like Kazuhiko Shimokobe and Naomi Hirose might be removed from office. This is not about bowing and apologising, this is about solving the issues. Like any scientific endeavour, that will only ever work if complete and correct information is given out. I reckon that this is even more prudent when we look at the fact that this disaster, not unlike the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki could change the Japanese landscape for decades.

The world events are also in play. The dangers of a dirty bomb has not diminished, it has actually only increased. Now consider that in the late 70’s NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) wash streets were designed to deal with radiation and irradiated dirt on vehicles and on personnel. This was 40 years ago and since then no real forward steps have been made. In 40 years of innovation, no better solution was produced. Seems odd doesn’t it?

In an age where more energy is needed on a global scale, in places where those in charge just blunder forward and where profit is the bottom line, we need to find new solutions for questions not answered for decades. We need to find them now, before we irreparable poison the well we all eat and drink from.

 

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May 1, 2013 · 18:01

The brutal end of an old man

We all have moments we are not proud of, we all have moments when something hits us and we do not realise it that it came, even though we were not involved or responsible. This happened to me this morning when I got my daily dose of Sky News at 05:00. Mr Mohammed Saleem Chaudry was stabbed to death less than 4 metres from his home in Birmingham. I remember Birmingham; it is a nice looking city. When I was there (I only saw it once) the city looked decently clean with plenty of pedestrian areas. One could say that it is a nice looking town. I visited the Walkabout and I had a gator tail steak. The last is hilarious, because I NEVER ate that in Australia. For football (soccer) fans there is the warning that this city is loaded with Ashton Villa fans, but what city is perfect nowadays. 😉

So, I have seen the place, and even though we see issues in every place we are, I feel happy that I am sensitive enough that the murder of this old man gets to me. He is described as an old man, walking with a cane on his way home from the Mosque. Is this an anti-Muslim attack? Was it just a drunk or doped up idiot not knowing what he was doing? All this is sheer speculation and I think it should be left up to investigators to find out what had happened and I hope they will find out with or without the assistance of crime stoppers (whose information had been added to the Sky News newscast).

Yet, there is a sense of fear that this is just the beginning. Is this all linked to the Six extremists who decided to attack the EDL? They failed because the rally ended early. Their admittance comes at almost the same time that the attack was. Is this what was linked? The timeline does not support this completely as there is a lap of 5 hours. Mr Chaundry was knifed 5 hours earlier, yet some idiot thinking that knifing an innocent old man walking with a cane is a solution?

It seems to me that there seems to be an interesting twist to this story at present.

When looking at the information the internet can give (so that I am as correct as possible) I initially found a BBC link that seemed to have been on the same route. The odd part was that the reference is pointing to February 2013.

This is the information the link gave: “Terrorism trial focus on Birmingham – BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-21458869
Feb 21, 2013 – Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, all from Birmingham, face life … November 2008: Rashid Rauf from Birmingham died in Pakistan in a US drone attack but his body was … “They have no experience of talking to Muslims at their level. … A 75-year-old man is stabbed to death near a primary school in …”

When looking at the link (as these summaries usually are automatically parsed), I found the page and there is NO mention at all of the 75-Year old. Now, I am very willing to consider that it was just another link to a current article, which makes perfect sense. Yet, this is not the case. There was no link. It is almost like the BBC either edited the story and forgot about the links already on the internet, or it is a second level of information.

There is supporting evidence of this.

UK NBC had this link to show:

“75-year-old man stabbed to death – News
news.uk.msn.com/uk/75-year-old-man-stabbed-to-death
23 hours ago – A 75-year-old man attacked as he returned from evening prayers had … in an attack just yards from his home in Small Heath, Birmingham, on Monday night. ….. dallying…..it was a hate crime…simply because he was a Muslim.”

The search engine provided the information above, yet the link takes you to the article with the headline “Murder victim stabbed three times”

It seems there are several levels of editing going on, which in reality might be fine enough. Articles get updated and edited all the time. There will always be an over-zealous writer who needs a little editing by his/her editor.
Consider the text “it was a hate crime…simply because he was a Muslim.” could even have been a valid response in anger. If it was my partner or father, I might have responded in similar ways. Could we blame the family for such feelings? Yet, I do not know whether it was or was not said.

Yet, this al shows another side of the press. This in my view is another notch on the barrel of press reform a-la Leveson. Why is information missing? The NBC article is only 234 words. As web space is next to free, the article could have been a lot more informative. If there was nothing more, then WHY is there such misinformation in the search engine? The press is not allowed mentions of ignorance on their side in this matter, considering the massive amounts of text they put on the internet. The fact that these events seem to have happened with BOTH the BBC and NBC gives food for thought that there is some level of managed information.
I cannot oppose the thought that some information might be suppressed for the need to keep the peace and not make issues escalate, why make things harder for the police? Yet, the press has shown too often that it is all about THEIR needs, the rest be damned. That much, the bulk of all people can agree on in the light of the Leveson report.

A 75-year-old man is stabbed to death near a primary school in Birmingham.

It is a sad event and no matter how sad the event, trying to manage information is often a bad idea.
I must add ‘IF THAT WAS THE CASE!’ The simple truth is that I cannot prove one side from the other, yet the evidence as the search engines bring them to me gives indication that information was edited, yet where and on what level is less certain. There was the report by the police as mentioned in more than one source that there was nothing to suspect that the attack was racially motivated. I doubt whether it could be disregarded at face value, but I am willing to take the police view at this point as they were on the scene and I was not.

Over the next few days we will likely hear more. Will the truth come out? This is less likely, but not because of the efforts of the Midlands Police. The reality is that when a man is walked upon and gets stabbed in the open road, there will likely be a lack of forensic evidence. I do not envy the work Detective superintendent Mark Payne has ahead of him, but no matter what. Should he find those behind this brutal and cowardly attack then the sweet taste of victory will definitely and well deserved be his.

A man, coming back from his place of worship is on his way home only to be stabbed to death pretty much in front of his home. It happened on the other side of the world, yet it saddened me more than usual.
What has this world come to?

 

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April 18, 2013 · 17:15

Jamie Foxx showed more!

Even though there is a lot to talk about, and more will be talked about. This first part is something I feel quite strong about. It all started with the MTV movie awards. I used to be a movie buff. Being able to see one movie a week on the big screen is what I still consider the good life.
I was watching the awards, noticing Jamie Foxx wearing a t-shirt. The text as the letters ‘N’ and ‘O’ were in red would read as “Know Justice – Know Peace” and “No Justice – No Peace”. I thought it was a clever t-shirt the way it was brought. There were pictures on the t-shirt and that is all where I left it. That is, until the day after when I saw all over social media (Facebook/Google+) the racist remarks Jamie Foxx was subjected to. It was quite fascinating how that t-shirt turned a group of Americans in Racist Bigots, a statement that might be slightly too synonymous.

So this is how I learned that this is all linked to the Trayvon Martin case. I had heard of those events, as they even made the news here on our small island of Australia (only island with 35,876 km beach front). Jamie’s T-Shirt implies that he is speaking out for the deceased young man Trayvon Martin, and that is all fair and good. It is always good to see the Hollywood limelight take a decent look at social matters, so I started to take another look at this case.

The shortest (and not so correct) look would be that a Neighbourhood watch coordinator notices a suspicious person and calls the police. When the police arrives it turns out that the Neighbourhood watch coordinator has shot the man in self-defence. The dead person is Trayvon Martin. The man responsible for shooting him is let go after 5 hours at the police station.

This way too short story is the start of a lot of issues.

Now let us take a deeper look at the events as they are currently known.

Let us take a look at the victim. The young man Trayvon Martin (from now on referred as TM) was on that day still 17 years old. He was a High School student in Miami Gardens (which is in the North of Miami city). That day he was visiting that location with his father where his father was visiting his fiancée. He had been there a few times before. So, TM had a clear reason for being there and according to some of the information, he was walking back to his father’s Fiancée’s place coming from a convenience store.

There are all kinds of information coming from area’s regarding school suspensions (plural) and other issues. Yet, the question becomes on what this have to do with the actual case. Character assassination might be regarded as good form in the court. Yet, in my humble opinion, that is the approach you take when you need to get someone OFF the hook. Not when there is clear evidence of a transgression, where there was clear evidence of self-defence.

The information (as I have so far seen it):

  1. Shows that TM was unarmed
  2. Shows that he was on route back from a convenient store
  3. He had been there before and on route to the house of a ‘relative’ (he was shot less than 65 meters from that place).

 

These clear points seem to have been made.

The evidence against the shooter Mr George Zimmerman (from now on referred as GZ) is of another nature. No matter if he is a neighbourhood watch coordinator.

From that side we see that he noticed TM was noticed by GZ. He called the sighting in to the police and the report states that TM was very suspicious in his view and GZ made several emotional responses in regards to seeing TM.

From the information that I know now (the police might not have had all the information at that time) there is still a collection of facts that make it questionable why GZ would have been released after only 5 hours. This is at best manslaughter in defence, at worst this was cold blooded murder.

If GZ was a real neighbourhood watchman then chasing after him was pretty pointless. I agree that I am unfamiliar with that area. Yet, the police was called. The police would respond and his job would have been done. Unless he had ACTUAL knowledge that someone was in immediate danger, the only thing he should have done was waiting for the police. So we have a case where GZ had a 9mm semi-automatic weapon. TM had no weapon at all. This reads more than just amateur hour. This does not read like a case against gun control. It reads like a case against Neighbourhood watch looking to satisfy some quick justice.

But I am digressing.

On April 12th 2012 GZ was charged with second degree murder.

The media soon after took over and from part of the info I read it seems that this case is getting flooded with historical ‘evidence’ of many sides. The case will go to trial in June 2013, so June will see a lot of heated debates. From my view towards this case my points are the following:

  1. Why did GZ did not keep his distance? EVEN if TM was there with no good intentions, he knew he had been spotted so he would not stay there. If that had been done TM would be alive and there would be no issue at all.
  2. GZ was armed. By keeping a safe distance he would never have been in danger at any point. Even IF there was danger, he could have shot his attacker in the leg, which meant no fatalities, and people tend to stop being a threat when shot in the leg.
  3. The fact that TM was shot from a distance LESS than half a metre away.
  4. The statement that GZ was not to follow and the response that GZ did not have to follow TM was not a legally binding advice is an interesting approach.

I see this as debatable. It could be seen that GZ was out for ‘blood’. By inviting to be seen as a threat he could make TM act out as TM was in danger trying to defend himself and as such GZ had the option to shoot TM and look like a hero. I agree that I am speculating here. These facts and more are all to be spoken of the trial and it is up to a jury to decide whether he is guilty or innocent. The trial is where this comes to a point. This will flame a massive amount of racial outbursts.
If the social media is anything to go by, then the US will be in for a rough ride comes next June. It does not just stop with social media however. NBC fired several people involved with editing the tapes they had on the events (9-1-1 telephone call). In this it seems that they intended to paint Mr Zimmerman in a negative way. So, there seems to be little doubt in my mind that racial issues in America are still far from over. Having a Non-Caucasian President seems to have changed way too little.

The part I do feel strong about is that this is not, and should not be about gun control. From my view, whether right or wrong Mr George Zimmerman SHOULD have listened to the 9-1-1 dispatcher. I still believe that guns do not kill people. In this case stupid people kill people. Many people will see this as gun control. At that point consider. If TM was killed in ‘self-defence’ with an axe, does this mean the US will need to have Axe control?

Getting back to the Mr Jamie Foxx issue of social awareness. I think he had every right to wear that T-Shirt. I believe that being socially aware is a good thing. To wear it on such a day, where you can inspire an entire generation to be(come) socially aware is a good thing, and as such I say ‘Well done Mr Foxx!’

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