2000 Yrs Ago Cicero Spoke of Trevon Martin Case

Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman statesman, orator and essayist, 106–43 B.C.).

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Over Two Thousand years ago Cicero said that if one is ignorant about prior history of themselves then they will remain always a child. Many people never grow up because they do not look back on past events to learn and so history just repeats the same mistakes over again. So, we better not 6'2" - 175 lbs Trayvon Martin at 7-Eleven. (A physically man-sized 17 yr old) rely on how the facts were presented in the Prosecutor's story of the Trayvon Martin case. It is more than just a young juvenile who bought a bag of skittles at a 7-Eleven store to eat as he skipped along on his way home. Lets evaluate what documented evidence was presented and what actually happened in fact devoid of hysterics, hyperboles and innuendos.

The trial opened around an exhibit about the calls of a 911 dispatcher and George's cell phone conversations that had time-displayed recordings with a four minute span from the time Trayvon was first spotted by George in the evening rain with a hoodie pulled up over covering his head while meandering back and forth under roof eaves through a condo housing complex and to then disappear and only to show up again coming on to George as he was returning to his car with an "in-your-face-to-face" confrontation with a verbal threat and "fist-in-your-face" attack instead of getting out of the area away from George. During that time span Trayvon was on the phone talking about George with Rachael, a friend who heard a commotion like a fight with loud screams of terror, then the phone disconnected.

Trayvon was unarmed and George had a gun. However, it came out in the trial that Trayvon was armed too. Trayvon had his height and build over the shorter fat guy and Trayvon with a younger, stronger set of arms with fists along with a fighter's military-style prone body hold to pin anybody down below him onto the ground to pummel them. Trayvon had access to another deadly weapon too, a long massive concrete pathway leading throughout the side yard lawn to bash George's head against which was deemed a deadly force trauma weapon capable of causing concussion, possibilities of great bodily harm to the head and brain leading to injury or death according to expert witnesses.

The fight quickly went to the ground as the marijuana high Treyvon, his autopsy tested positive, went into a fury of fist punches as adrenaline elevated the fear in George of an imminent threat to his life and limb as Trayvon bloodied and broke his nose, lacerated his face and hit his head bloody onto the hard concrete as he continued his attack. A witness testified to describe it as a "ground and pound" attack by Treyvon. The legal question was raised about how much is considered too much of a beating before one takes any action to stop it? The condition also existed that George was cornered and had nowhere to run to get away - the basic "stand your ground" law. So, is George's defensive action taken as a simultaneous decision or just a reflexive reaction? Whether he can reason or react is not the issue, it is to defend, stand his ground if he feels he is in fear of his life. The jurists decided for the defendant based upon the "stand your ground" law.  In the end, it was justice for both families.

Interestingly, there were no racial slurs from George brought out in depositions or during the trial. Then not until the trial proceedings were on that George himself was called a "creepy-ass cracker" by Trayvon according to Rachael Jeantel, a prosecution witness who was on the phone call at the time prior to the fight describing Trayvon's racially charged animus towards crackers, white people, even though George is Hispanic too.

During and after the trial, George Zimmerman was being called by some a "white-Mexican" to "race-bait" the trial proceedings to gin up anger because a Mexican murderer wasn't as good to lynch as an angry white one.

George's mother is Mexican and his dad is white - Barack's father is black and his mother is white. So is Obama a "white African-American?  How can Barack say "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" when Trayvon Martin had both black parents?  Hmmn....

FYI: 2005 FBI Report - 91% of U.S. Black Homicides are committed by Blacks and then 50% of all total U.S. homicides are committed by Blacks.

Honoring an Astronaut - First Man on the Moon

Washington: Historic misquote? Neil Armstrong's famous quote "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" uttered by the American astronaut after becoming the first person to land on the Moon in 1969 had a small error, according to a new study. Many listeners think he left out the "a".  However, as Armstrong himself pointed out many times, the sentence is meaningful only if he says, "That's one small step for "a" man  ...one giant leap for mankind." - as he lowered his foot from the lunar module to the surface of the Moon, otherwise, there is no distinction between a single individual and all of humanity.

The researchers have taken a novel approach to deciphering Armstrong's quote by studyingOne Small Step For A Man how speakers from his native central Ohio pronounce "for" and "for a" and results suggest that it is entirely possible that Armstrong said what he claimed, though evidence indicates that people are statistically more likely to hear "for man" instead of "for a man" on the recording ...and this is the true factoid!

Many quotes and tales labeled "unattributed" or "unconfirmed" are disregarded as worthless rumours, better some should be credited instead to "anon".  Deservedly so, ones always worth retelling should be elevated to loftier heights such as folklore, tales, urban legends or mythologies. The following story has no doubt travelled many more miles via the internet than Armstrong's two-way moon trip:

On July 20, 1969, commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. His first words after stepping on the moon, "That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", were televised to Earth and heard by millions. But just before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark: "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.

Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled. On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

In 1938 when he was a kid in a small Midwest town, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in his neighbor’s yard by the bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky.

As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Sex! You want sex?! You’ll get sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

On November 28, 1995, Neil Armstrong wrote, "I understand that the joke is a year old. I first heard it in California delivered by (comedian) Buddy Hackett." Although Armstrong himself debunked this story, it is still worth retelling - after all, that's how lunar legends live on beyond the moon forever. 

National Security Agency - Truman's Legacy

In June 1952, President Harry Truman (that would be president number 33, the same guy who authorized the only nuclear weapons releases during wartime) signed a secret order that formed the National Security Agency, NSA, which in and of itself was an outgrowth of the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), formed in 1949, which was to coordinate the communications and electronic intelligence activities of all the US military intelligence units.

The formation of the NSA under Harry Truman took this a step even further to a national level, and extended its reach beyond the armed forces into the civilian population.

The mission of the NSA, by US law, is limited to monitoring foreign communications, whether it is electronic intelligence (ELINT) or signal intelligence (SIGINT). The CIA, by comparison, mainly acts on human intelligence gathering (HUMINT), and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) primarily uses satellite space imaging as their main assets.

So, while the NSA's legal charter limits them to foreign communications, in reality, foreign combatants (terrorist organizations and state-sponsored entities) will have used US-based systems to conduct their operations. The US Patriot Act has made NSA wiretapping on US soil something of a gray area, particularly now that the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI freely exchange information with each other in the interests of national security.

NSA started with radio transmissions and analogue telephone signals as the world went digital.  It wiretaps the internet. PRISM simply extends that wiretapping to not just the traffic moving across the "pipes," but now, presumably, directly into the databases of the providers hosting the most widely-used applications and services in the cloud which include intrusive private emails and online activities.

If these new technologies were not available, would we have got "Geronimo" on Zero Dark Thirty? It's difficult to say, but easy to assume that they certainly didn't hinder surveillance activities either. Many say they're happier and will sleep better at night knowing that the NSA and our executive branch have these tools at their disposal.

The times have and are ever-changing rapidly with morphing technologies' advances. I must add that, first and foremost, our Constitutional rights must be constantly updated to include them as we utilize these newer weapons in our terrorist espionage arsenal.

Therefore, the law of the Patriot Act must be revisited for defining search warrants to prevent unspecified dragnets and random fishing expeditions trawling unfettered for criminal activities everywhere. The way the warrants are written or rewritten under collabortive judicial oversight and filed in the courts determine how judges develop opinions for jurisdiction and decide whether they are to be classified or non-classified cases.

At issue against FISA courts is their clandestine legal process that is not adversarial since it only requires the filing agency and the judge and it is at the judge's option to include or not a third party representing the defendants. Under this FISA court system an individual does not necessarily have any "legal standing" to even file an action or "constitutional recourse" to reverse actions or seek civil satisfaction in any Federal court of law.

To then balance fairness, FISA courts should include an outside, independent ombudsman representing the rights of citizens in challenging all authorities about warrants being filed or after proceeding as a conduit to seek entry into a court to hear an individual's civil rights case seeking protection and remedy under Federal law statutes. 

The Executive branch of government has usurped tremendous powers beyond its Constitutional laws and now Obama's own actions have proved out how this political abuse does happen. The Patriot Act itself must be reined in now on how this law of the land has been distorted and administered by the current President using Homeland Security.