I have just read the most fascinating essay by investigative journalist, William Thomas, who claims China, with a genius masterstroke, quietly included the ability to remotely overide all of the microchips that have been outsourced to production facilities within its control. ‘Intel inside’ might have a completely new meaning, lol!
It sounds like something from a James Bond movie but it also has the ring of ‘I wish I’d thought of it because it’s genius and makes perfect sense!” After all, Chinese military strategy has for thousands of years sought to use an opponent’s strength against them and what better way to use it than to include a small trojan-type overide system into every Western-outsourced microprocessor?
As early as 2003, China was being hailed as the next Microprocessor Giant and had then (2003), since 1991, built 53 new high-technology industrial centers and witnessed over 22 billion dollars worth of new tech trade.
William Thomas claims that the August event where a B 52 bomber flew with six fully armed and primed nuclear cruise missiles hanging from its wings, apparently without anyone noticing until the following day (cough, bullsh*t, cough), was a demonstration of Chinese ability to gain control of virtually any electronic system employed by the US, intended to send a stark warning to an increasingly warmongering America that it doesn’t have the free reign it once thought it had to rampage at will.
October 20th, 2007
When I wrote an earlier piece about how tired I was of the parents’ guilt is being inflicted on the rest of us in the daily media barrage of claim and counter-claim I thought I was something of a lone voice. Not a lone voice in how I felt but a lone voice in expressing dislike at the McCann’s guilt being paraded on daily television and in the newspapers as if I was supposed to feel sorry for them in some way. It seems I’m not alone - Booker prize winner Anne Enright wrote a 2,000 word essay entitled, “Disliking the McCanns”, apparently ‘attacked’ by the McCann family as ‘publicity seeking’.
Let’s recount what’s undisputed in the public domain - the McCann’s, Kate and Jerry, decided to leave their three very young children alone in an unfamiliar and unlocked apartment in a strange town in a foreign country while they went out for a meal and wine.
The Booker prize winner says, “”I disliked the McCanns earlier than most people (I’m not proud of it). I thought I was angry with them for leaving their children alone.”
This reminded me of a somewhat heated debate I had with my wife quite early on in the sorry saga. She had said she felt sorry for the parents. I replied I had no sympathy for them whatsoever. She called me a heartless monster. I pointed out that even now with two largely grown up children in a small, fairly quiet, uneventful town in Scotland I would never, ever contemplate leaving my children asleep in an unlocked house let alone a strange town in a foreign country. Turned out I was not alone in my views as she discovered when talking to her colleagues at work.
Last night’s rather disappointing Channel 4 documentary, “Searching For Madeleine”, where a number of British experts were commissioned to offer their opinions on what they believed may have happened, inevitably failed to deliver anything of substance although it did offer some interesting observations about how, in the absence of real information, the media were inclined to simply make things up to fill the vacuum.
Sadly, the truth may never be known.
October 19th, 2007
