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AuthorBill Carico When I was only 4 a murder rocked my world and became cemented as my most vivid and earliest childhood memory. Both my dad and I were born in Coeburn, Va. I was born 2 months before he turned 30. Growing up, everyone called me "Little Billy" because my dad was "Billy.” My family was blessed to live next to the nicest neighbors anyone could ever hope to have. Zell and Earnest Bray had three grown children who had moved away but visited frequently, especially to eat Sunday dinner. Zell paid a much welcomed attention to my sister Susan and me for the 8 years we lived beside them on East Avenue. They celebrated Johnny's return home after serving in the marines. He settled 40 miles away in Abingdon and worked managing a chain of movie theaters spread across multiple counties. In the early morning hours of September 11, 1955 while I was asleep in my bed...my mother grabbed me and carried me to Zell’s living room. Dad and Susan were away that night. Zell was hysterical and Mom tried to comfort her. Zell had just received a telephone called shortly after midnight and was informed by police in Marion Virginia, that her son Johnny’s body was found in his car on a rural road just on the outskirts of town. Johnny had been stabbed to death. So, I sat on the couch and watched people come and go throughout the night. My family left Coeburn and moved to Roanoke when I was in the third grade. Fast forward a few decades to the summer of 2016. I was visiting my mother in Roanoke when she handed me a faded newspaper tabloid and said, “Look what I found!” Mom had been going through some old boxes of papers and came across a 1956 crime magazine tabloid featuring a story about the murder of Johnny Bray. The reporter had done his homework. The accounts of the murder, the investigation, and the arrest were very detailed. I read with great interest about an event that had happened 60 years ago. The article had been published before the trials were completed. It described how the police were baffled in the search for Johnny’s killer, and how investigation dragged on for months as they chased one dead end after another, until they had exhausted all their theories. The breakthrough in the case came when a jailhouse snitch said two boys, ages 16 and 15, were acting suspicious after having been arrested that same night in Montgomery County. These two young boys were eventually charged for the murder. Mom and I reminisced about Johnny and his brother Billy and his sister Jackie. Johnny was a handsome young man who had just come home from serving in the marines. He had a steady girl friend. Mom also recalled that the trial was cut short by a plea deal that was offered mid-way through. Johnny’s parents, Bee and Zell, were just glad the ordeal was over. Now 60 years later, the newly discovered information made me curious to dig deeper. First I tracked down Jackie Bray who I found living in a retirement home in Kingsport, TN. She is a very gracious person and we had a nice chat on the phone, which led to a meeting on August 29, 2016. That day I drove from Concord Virginia to Tennessee. En route I stopped by Smyth County courthouse and got a copy of all the court records for the two trials pertaining to the murder. I eventually learned one boy went to prison for 15 years, the other went free, so I sensed there was a lot more to this story. Jackie and I met and chatted at length. We went through old family pictures from our Coeburn years. After lunch we then traveled together to Coeburn where we visited my Aunt Lucille and drove by our houses on East Ave. Jackie remembered two "Little Billy" stories her Mom like to tell about me. One story was that I was a comfort to her in the months following Johnny’s death. She said Zell was greatly distressed during the period when no progress was made in the investigation, and that I made her a promise that “I’ll find out who killed Johnny when I grow up.” This promise I did not remember. Neither did I remember the other story about the day I was in Zell’s kitchen looking at some bananas in her fruit bowl when I said, “I would like to eat a banana when I get home… ‘ceptin we don't have any.” After taking Jackie back to Kingsport, I returned to Concord and the next morning I began an online search to find the two men who would be in their late seventies if still living. I eventually found that both men were deceased. Then on December 21, I contacted the ex-wife of the man who spent 15 years in prison and we spoke for 42 minutes. She told me her ex-husband did not like to talk much about his past but had always professed his innocence. She said she did recall one conversation early in their relationship that he was complaining that his defense lawyer was a public defender who did a terrible job. She said he was upset that his co-defendant got off, which he attributed not only to his family having enough money to hire a decent lawyer, but because they had connections with authorities who were powerful enough to make a murder charge go away. She eventually divorced her husband because he had a drinking problem, and he became homeless and wandered the streets of Alexandria, Va., for the rest of his life. She asked to see the 1956 tabloid article I had found. I mailed her a copy with my contact information but never heard back. Both men implicated in Johnny Scott Bray's murder grew up in the greater Roanoke area. Eventually Jackie and I found Johnny's girlfriend. We had a nice conference call and told her all we had learned. Both ladies found it helpful and said it gave them closure. |
China Research Notes - Part 3
contact: bill.carico@gmail.com 434-426-2287 m
Note: Since beginning my IT career in 1973, I've guided over 1500 clients in making the best choices. The two most frequent users of my investigative research are IBM, who over an 8 year stretch from 1992 to 2000 had me speak at over 50 events spanning 5 contents. My other most active customer has been the The Government of Canada including their departments of Public Works, Defense, DOC, Health, and Treasury.
--------------------------
Why China Started the Covid19 Pandemic
Since President Trump took office in January of 2017 China has remained the world’s second largest economic power and is close to overtaking the U.S.
When President Trump took office, China’s leading telecom companies, state-owned Huawei and ZTE, were well on their way to dominating the world 5G network market. Telecom is at the heart of the Chinese strategy to achieve world-wide technological superiority by 2025. However, President Trump has put roadblocks in place that threaten China’s very existence, the most recent action being taken May 15, 2020 attempting to block global chip makers from shipping computer components to China.
China has experienced a number of similar setbacks during Trump’s first two years in office. For example, President Trump first persuaded allies Italy and the UK, that technology provided by Huawei and ZTE could not be trusted. Italy cancelled a signed contract with Huawei to build their entire 5G network. The UK also scaled back their plans to use Huawei. Trump is trying to make all countries aware of China’s imminent threat.
The May 2020 executive order was a renewal of one implemented the previous year. Since May of 2019 U.S. companies have been barred from using telecommunications equipment made by firms that could pose a national security risk. In all, there were 114 firms blacklisted, and many were Huawei and ZTE affiliates.
Dependency on the US supply chain has become China’s Achilles heel, and tensions between the US and China are at an all time high.
A second Trump term at a minimum would be devastating to China’s technology roadmap and cause its 5G plans to unravel, but if he can persuade enough countries to go against communist China it could threaten the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Taking a Closer Look
China has created multiple state-owned companies that compete in markets world wide. Two of these, ZTE (created in 1985) and Huawei (1987), are telecom manufacturers of both infrastructure equipment and smartphones.
State-owned means the real owner is the CCP even though they claim they are employee-owned, but they aren't fooling anybody who knows the track record of the CCP.
The Huawei website states:
“Huawei is an independent, privately-held company. We are not owned or controlled by, nor affiliated with the government, or any other 3rd party corporation. In fact, Huawei is owned by our employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) that has been in place since the beginning. No one can own a share without working at Huawei, and as of 2018 there were 96,768 shareholding employees. Our founder, Ren Zhengfei, owns a 1.14% stake in the company. Shares confer voting rights. Shareholding employees elect members to form a Representatives' Commission, getting one vote for each share held. Then the Commission elects the company’s Board of Directors and Supervisory Board. At the last election in January 2019, 86,514 shareholding employees voted to elect 115 representatives at 416 polling stations around the world. Employee-ownership is instrumental to our rapid growth. Over the years, it has offered an incentive to our loyal employees and helped us attract talented people. Unlike many publicly-owned companies, Huawei’s decisions are not based on the need for quarterly returns and annual dividends." see: https://www.huawei.com/us/about-huawei/corporate-governance/corporate-governance for more info
Please watch this 2 minute Huawei sales video for 5G networks that promotes putting communist built and managed technology into every home in the world: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/spotlight/5g
.
It appears if the price is right, buyers don’t mind that they are contracting with the Fox to guard the hen house. Being generously subsidized by the CCP, State-owned Chinese companies set product prices 20% to 40% below their international competitors. In a deal with Mexico, on top of the standard deep discounts, Huawei offered Mexico a 1% loan in return for being allowed to build out 80% of Mexico's 5G infrastructure.
As of May 2020 Huawei is still working with prominent telecom companies including British Telecom (BT), Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile. As mentioned previously, Huawei’s Achilles heel is its product manufacturing that is totally dependent on obtaining technology and parts from a number of U.S. companies. If access to it’s U.S supply chain goes away it would be catastrophic for China and could even threaten its existence, and that is what Trump is currently using for leverage in his dealings with China.
Here are a few more details regarding how Trump stopped China's telecom juggernaut:
(remember President Trump took the oath of office in Jan 2017)
March 2017 - ZTE pled guilty to illegally exporting U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea in violation of trade sanctions, and was fined by the US Dept of Commerce a total of US$1.19 billion... the largest fine ever imposed by the USA for export violations.
Jan 2019 - the USA filed an indictment against Huawei Technologies for the systematic theft of intellectual property and some other offenses.
Huawei was founded in 1987 and it took 22 years (2009) to land its breakout contract - building a 4G network in Norway. Since then Huawei has expanded operations to more than 170 countries and has signed more than 60 contracts for 5G with international carriers.
Security Flaws Discovered
Security companies and US intelligence agencies have examined Chinese products found backdoors in Huawei’s code along with other security flaws. That's why the US warned allies that the Chinese were positioning to conduct cyber-espionage worldwide. As a result, the US Congress banned the use of Huawei products in federal projects.
Feb 2019 - Italy, who had already closed the deal to have Huawei build their 5G infrastructure, backed out and canceled the contracts, citing strong pressure from the United States. Italy refused to pay China penalties for cancellation, and announced it would ban both Huawei and ZTE from playing a role in the 5G rollout. After Italy embarrassed China on the international stage, exactly one year later Italy became one of first and hardest hit countries by Covid-19.
Aug. 18, 2019: The UK is still on the fence about using Huawei, so President Trump applies more pressure on UK to not do business with Huawei, again raising the "national security threat".
Even though the US exposed Huawei as a threat to the national security of anyone using their products, the UK hesitated for financial reasons. The UK already had so much Huawei equipment in their 4G infrastructure that it would cost a fortune to replace it, so they ended up doing a partial ban, agreeing no Huawei equipment could be used in the core infrastructure, only in the towers.
Overall, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan also banned Huawei from their respective countries.
Jan 2020 – Huawei forecasted a difficult year ahead.
Since Trump has just survived impeachment and the democrats looking weak, anything that could destroy the US economy could also remove Trump from office.
April 2020 - Contrary to its grim business forecast regularly fed to analysts, Huawei still managed to show 1Q revenue growth of 1.4% year over year despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Huawei (37%) and Ericsson are the current market leaders for 5G infrastructure called "the mobile core." In 2019 only 19 million 5G capable phones total were sold, of which Huawei sold almost 7 million...barely edging out Samsung as the top seller. Nokia and Ericsson are the other main competitors from Europe and Cisco, Qualcomm, and Juniper Networks are in the US.
Other Technology Fronts
In addition to 5G networks, China has a strong presence on a number of technology fronts. China is heavily invested into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and well positioned to dominate the software market for self-driving cars. They are leading the industry in facial recognition capabilities and already have millions of video cameras in place to track movements and activities of their citizens and rank them according to their compliance. Watch this 10 minute video from Bloomberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydPqKhgh9Mg which includes a segment interviewing foreign workers. One worker from Australia reported having jay walked and 20 seconds later a fine was withdrawn from his Wechat account. Here is a segment of the video transcript including timestamps:
03:50 Narrator:
[referring to finding QR codes on everything:} “America laughed these things off years ago, but here, they run the entire economy. Cash and credit cards are history. Instead you scan QR codes to pay for everything: restaurants, groceries, even buskers. On the surface this is all good. It's the easy, convenient mobile payment system of the future. But there's also a dark side. The Chinese government can peer into the two dominant payment systems, AliPay and WeChat, as it sees fit. It's already started tracking behavior as part of a plan to rank citizens and measure how good and obedient they are. The tech revolution may have brought prosperity to Shenzhen but it's also brought more and more insidious intrusions into people's lives. To dig deeper into life under the Chinese deep state, I've assembled a team of extraordinary foreigners who work at tech startups in Shenzhen.
Hopefully a few beers will encourage them to open up about their thought crimes.
[Host asks the group of several young men:] “Living in a very tightly regulated Communist country - does that bother you, or you don't care?
05:17 [Answers from the young men:] “The presumption at least that I got before I came from Australia was sort of like moving into a sort of like a militarized state, like things are going to be really intense. But like, you take a beer, just like walk down the road, hang out in the park, fine. Do that back in my hometown in Australia, like, straight to the cop-house.
05:30 [person 2] But then, play spikeball on the grass, and then all of a sudden the cops come and stop you.
05:36 Narrator: Well and you got, you jaywalked and you had facial recognition?
05:41 [person 3]... So I was jaywalking in Nanxian. And all of a sudden I got a fine to my WeChat.
05:48 Was it instant?
05:48 It was about 20 seconds after, I guess. I had money in my balance and it just went straight out.
05:54 This is just for the one thing - it just came straight out.
05:59 Didn't even authorize it. That's crazy.
06:02 It's true. Try to jaywalk in certain parts of Shenzhen, and the government's facial recognition will spot you. There's even a board of shame, showing the faces of recent offenders.
I'm surprised and very very worried that they have your face in the facial recognition - like, the facial recognition system. But they have everyone's though. When you go across the border they take that picture, exactly, yeah. So it's all in the system, they know where you are.That's scary.
06:28 [Narrator] It gets even scarier. Because big brother is watching what you do online too.
06:36 Most of the websites we know and love are blocked in China, replaced with Chinese equivalents that the government can monitor: a sort of mirror universe internet.
.(end of video transcript excerpt)
Please feel free to share this info, and contact me to request a copy of the full research report, which is free.
==============================
Part 4 is about the Power of Propaganda and China’s secret plan to replace America
Part 5 is about my findings from examining some of the more plausible claims of corruption in diagnosing and inaccuracies reporting Covid-19
Part 6 is my report on accumulating reliable info on Covid-19 from people who have contracted it and/or who can provide trustworthy information about someone they know who has had it..
======= end of Part 3 ===============================================
contact: bill.carico@gmail.com 434-426-2287 m
Note: Since beginning my IT career in 1973, I've guided over 1500 clients in making the best choices. The two most frequent users of my investigative research are IBM, who over an 8 year stretch from 1992 to 2000 had me speak at over 50 events spanning 5 contents. My other most active customer has been the The Government of Canada including their departments of Public Works, Defense, DOC, Health, and Treasury.
--------------------------
Why China Started the Covid19 Pandemic
Since President Trump took office in January of 2017 China has remained the world’s second largest economic power and is close to overtaking the U.S.
When President Trump took office, China’s leading telecom companies, state-owned Huawei and ZTE, were well on their way to dominating the world 5G network market. Telecom is at the heart of the Chinese strategy to achieve world-wide technological superiority by 2025. However, President Trump has put roadblocks in place that threaten China’s very existence, the most recent action being taken May 15, 2020 attempting to block global chip makers from shipping computer components to China.
China has experienced a number of similar setbacks during Trump’s first two years in office. For example, President Trump first persuaded allies Italy and the UK, that technology provided by Huawei and ZTE could not be trusted. Italy cancelled a signed contract with Huawei to build their entire 5G network. The UK also scaled back their plans to use Huawei. Trump is trying to make all countries aware of China’s imminent threat.
The May 2020 executive order was a renewal of one implemented the previous year. Since May of 2019 U.S. companies have been barred from using telecommunications equipment made by firms that could pose a national security risk. In all, there were 114 firms blacklisted, and many were Huawei and ZTE affiliates.
Dependency on the US supply chain has become China’s Achilles heel, and tensions between the US and China are at an all time high.
A second Trump term at a minimum would be devastating to China’s technology roadmap and cause its 5G plans to unravel, but if he can persuade enough countries to go against communist China it could threaten the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Taking a Closer Look
China has created multiple state-owned companies that compete in markets world wide. Two of these, ZTE (created in 1985) and Huawei (1987), are telecom manufacturers of both infrastructure equipment and smartphones.
State-owned means the real owner is the CCP even though they claim they are employee-owned, but they aren't fooling anybody who knows the track record of the CCP.
The Huawei website states:
“Huawei is an independent, privately-held company. We are not owned or controlled by, nor affiliated with the government, or any other 3rd party corporation. In fact, Huawei is owned by our employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) that has been in place since the beginning. No one can own a share without working at Huawei, and as of 2018 there were 96,768 shareholding employees. Our founder, Ren Zhengfei, owns a 1.14% stake in the company. Shares confer voting rights. Shareholding employees elect members to form a Representatives' Commission, getting one vote for each share held. Then the Commission elects the company’s Board of Directors and Supervisory Board. At the last election in January 2019, 86,514 shareholding employees voted to elect 115 representatives at 416 polling stations around the world. Employee-ownership is instrumental to our rapid growth. Over the years, it has offered an incentive to our loyal employees and helped us attract talented people. Unlike many publicly-owned companies, Huawei’s decisions are not based on the need for quarterly returns and annual dividends." see: https://www.huawei.com/us/about-huawei/corporate-governance/corporate-governance for more info
Please watch this 2 minute Huawei sales video for 5G networks that promotes putting communist built and managed technology into every home in the world: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/spotlight/5g
.
It appears if the price is right, buyers don’t mind that they are contracting with the Fox to guard the hen house. Being generously subsidized by the CCP, State-owned Chinese companies set product prices 20% to 40% below their international competitors. In a deal with Mexico, on top of the standard deep discounts, Huawei offered Mexico a 1% loan in return for being allowed to build out 80% of Mexico's 5G infrastructure.
As of May 2020 Huawei is still working with prominent telecom companies including British Telecom (BT), Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile. As mentioned previously, Huawei’s Achilles heel is its product manufacturing that is totally dependent on obtaining technology and parts from a number of U.S. companies. If access to it’s U.S supply chain goes away it would be catastrophic for China and could even threaten its existence, and that is what Trump is currently using for leverage in his dealings with China.
Here are a few more details regarding how Trump stopped China's telecom juggernaut:
(remember President Trump took the oath of office in Jan 2017)
March 2017 - ZTE pled guilty to illegally exporting U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea in violation of trade sanctions, and was fined by the US Dept of Commerce a total of US$1.19 billion... the largest fine ever imposed by the USA for export violations.
Jan 2019 - the USA filed an indictment against Huawei Technologies for the systematic theft of intellectual property and some other offenses.
Huawei was founded in 1987 and it took 22 years (2009) to land its breakout contract - building a 4G network in Norway. Since then Huawei has expanded operations to more than 170 countries and has signed more than 60 contracts for 5G with international carriers.
Security Flaws Discovered
Security companies and US intelligence agencies have examined Chinese products found backdoors in Huawei’s code along with other security flaws. That's why the US warned allies that the Chinese were positioning to conduct cyber-espionage worldwide. As a result, the US Congress banned the use of Huawei products in federal projects.
Feb 2019 - Italy, who had already closed the deal to have Huawei build their 5G infrastructure, backed out and canceled the contracts, citing strong pressure from the United States. Italy refused to pay China penalties for cancellation, and announced it would ban both Huawei and ZTE from playing a role in the 5G rollout. After Italy embarrassed China on the international stage, exactly one year later Italy became one of first and hardest hit countries by Covid-19.
Aug. 18, 2019: The UK is still on the fence about using Huawei, so President Trump applies more pressure on UK to not do business with Huawei, again raising the "national security threat".
Even though the US exposed Huawei as a threat to the national security of anyone using their products, the UK hesitated for financial reasons. The UK already had so much Huawei equipment in their 4G infrastructure that it would cost a fortune to replace it, so they ended up doing a partial ban, agreeing no Huawei equipment could be used in the core infrastructure, only in the towers.
Overall, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan also banned Huawei from their respective countries.
Jan 2020 – Huawei forecasted a difficult year ahead.
Since Trump has just survived impeachment and the democrats looking weak, anything that could destroy the US economy could also remove Trump from office.
April 2020 - Contrary to its grim business forecast regularly fed to analysts, Huawei still managed to show 1Q revenue growth of 1.4% year over year despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Huawei (37%) and Ericsson are the current market leaders for 5G infrastructure called "the mobile core." In 2019 only 19 million 5G capable phones total were sold, of which Huawei sold almost 7 million...barely edging out Samsung as the top seller. Nokia and Ericsson are the other main competitors from Europe and Cisco, Qualcomm, and Juniper Networks are in the US.
Other Technology Fronts
In addition to 5G networks, China has a strong presence on a number of technology fronts. China is heavily invested into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and well positioned to dominate the software market for self-driving cars. They are leading the industry in facial recognition capabilities and already have millions of video cameras in place to track movements and activities of their citizens and rank them according to their compliance. Watch this 10 minute video from Bloomberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydPqKhgh9Mg which includes a segment interviewing foreign workers. One worker from Australia reported having jay walked and 20 seconds later a fine was withdrawn from his Wechat account. Here is a segment of the video transcript including timestamps:
03:50 Narrator:
[referring to finding QR codes on everything:} “America laughed these things off years ago, but here, they run the entire economy. Cash and credit cards are history. Instead you scan QR codes to pay for everything: restaurants, groceries, even buskers. On the surface this is all good. It's the easy, convenient mobile payment system of the future. But there's also a dark side. The Chinese government can peer into the two dominant payment systems, AliPay and WeChat, as it sees fit. It's already started tracking behavior as part of a plan to rank citizens and measure how good and obedient they are. The tech revolution may have brought prosperity to Shenzhen but it's also brought more and more insidious intrusions into people's lives. To dig deeper into life under the Chinese deep state, I've assembled a team of extraordinary foreigners who work at tech startups in Shenzhen.
Hopefully a few beers will encourage them to open up about their thought crimes.
[Host asks the group of several young men:] “Living in a very tightly regulated Communist country - does that bother you, or you don't care?
05:17 [Answers from the young men:] “The presumption at least that I got before I came from Australia was sort of like moving into a sort of like a militarized state, like things are going to be really intense. But like, you take a beer, just like walk down the road, hang out in the park, fine. Do that back in my hometown in Australia, like, straight to the cop-house.
05:30 [person 2] But then, play spikeball on the grass, and then all of a sudden the cops come and stop you.
05:36 Narrator: Well and you got, you jaywalked and you had facial recognition?
05:41 [person 3]... So I was jaywalking in Nanxian. And all of a sudden I got a fine to my WeChat.
05:48 Was it instant?
05:48 It was about 20 seconds after, I guess. I had money in my balance and it just went straight out.
05:54 This is just for the one thing - it just came straight out.
05:59 Didn't even authorize it. That's crazy.
06:02 It's true. Try to jaywalk in certain parts of Shenzhen, and the government's facial recognition will spot you. There's even a board of shame, showing the faces of recent offenders.
I'm surprised and very very worried that they have your face in the facial recognition - like, the facial recognition system. But they have everyone's though. When you go across the border they take that picture, exactly, yeah. So it's all in the system, they know where you are.That's scary.
06:28 [Narrator] It gets even scarier. Because big brother is watching what you do online too.
06:36 Most of the websites we know and love are blocked in China, replaced with Chinese equivalents that the government can monitor: a sort of mirror universe internet.
.(end of video transcript excerpt)
Please feel free to share this info, and contact me to request a copy of the full research report, which is free.
==============================
Part 4 is about the Power of Propaganda and China’s secret plan to replace America
Part 5 is about my findings from examining some of the more plausible claims of corruption in diagnosing and inaccuracies reporting Covid-19
Part 6 is my report on accumulating reliable info on Covid-19 from people who have contracted it and/or who can provide trustworthy information about someone they know who has had it..
======= end of Part 3 ===============================================