Avoid Being Alone in Car Parks

(Read news report at bottom)

Predators prefer easier targets and would abandon their attempt if they find that you are not an easy target.

PREVENTION (always the best):

1. Always be aware of what is around you. Do NOT do things that make you lose your awareness (like talking on phone and messaging etc.) Such people are holding a big 'pick me as target' sign.

2. BEFORE entering car park, have remote control ready. Advantages: Many cars have alarm that can be triggered from remote. It reduces time you have to spend in car park searching for keys (the longer time you spend exposed the greater the chances for attackers). Searching for key at car park also lowers your readiness and awareness of what is around you. Sharp pointed keys can be used as a defence weapon too.

3. BEFORE entering and WHEN at car parks, always scan around all the time (esp. behind you). Look out for suspicious people watching or following you. Such predators usually work in pairs but sometimes alone or more than 2.

4. Look at them to let them know that you have noticed them (they prefer easier targets that are unaware) and see what they do and re-act accordingly.

5. Abandon trip to car park or car and stay in or go back into mall where other people's presence means safety

6. At safe distance and still watching them, take out handphone to pretend to call for help

7. Wait for other people (as many as possible esp families) to enter car park before going in. Ask for their help if need be.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Make sure to practice above all the time so that it becomes second nature or 'automatic'....

IF ATTACK IS IMMINENT:

1. Maintain distance. Once you sense something is not right, do NOT let them get near you (see prevention). Abandon going to car and go back to mall or places where there are other people.

2. Drop everything you holding and free your hands for self-defence. Get hold of anything that can be used for defence if any.

3. Run. If suspicious characters are between you and door back to mall, run to another entrance to mall (if you have high sense of awareness they shouldn't be that near to you or you should enter car park only when other people are entering per above).

3. Attract attention. If they are approaching you fast or try to grab you, do anything to attract other people's attention (shout or yell for help etc.) and run to places where other people can see you and start creating attention like yelling for help etc. Many cars have alarm that you can trigger from your remote - practice using it once a while!

READ UP and train yourself up on some basic self-defence techniques. 

http://cckplanetblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/self-defence-basics.html

PRACTICE above self-defence regime (at least mentally) to get prepared. Better still if can practice for real e.g. by going for self-defence classes or practicing the 'movements' by yourself.

CHANCES FAVOUR THE PREPARED...

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/woman-abducted--almost-raped-at-the-curve.html

Woman abducted, almost raped at The Curve

Quick thinking and fast action helped an Internet marketeer escape after she was abducted by a couple of would-be rapists from the car park of Damansara Perdana's The Curve shopping mall.

Chin Xin-Ci, who was alone at the time of the abduction, was putting her shopping bags onto the back seat of her boyfriend's car on Sunday evening when she was bundled into the vehicle by a man brandishing a meat cleaver.

"Just as I was putting my shopping bags in the rear seat, the rear car door was slammed against my back, and a meat cleaver was pressed against my throat.
A man covered my mouth with his hand, and whispered not to scream. He then shoved me onto the floor of the backseat of the car and waved the cleaver at me, reminding me not to scream," she recounted on her Facebook page.

She said an accomplice then appeared, The second man grabbed her car keys and demanded for her parking ticket before driving the car, with Chin in the back seat, out of the carpark.

She said the first man, who was at the back with her, began making sexual advances.

"Then it hit me. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is really happening. I'm being kidnapped.. and I think I know what they want," Chin said.

When the car slowed down to exit the mall, she opened the door and tried to make a run for it.

She said she kicked kicked her legs out of the car, but was pulled back in by her abductor.

"At that point I remember thinking; even if I don't get out now, I need to keep the door open and my legs out the door. At the very least, it should cause a scene, and someone would see me. Or, the door might hit another car and they'll be forced to slow down.

"So I continued kicking. My right foot pushed against the wide-open car door to keep it open. I recall elbowing, struggling, kicking, and even biting. I lost my glasses, and was struggling blindly for my life."

Her actions proved to be too much for her abductors. The driver yelled at his accomplice to let her go and Chin jumped out of the still-moving car, and ran for her life.

Chin escaped with scratches and bruises, but lost most of her belongings, including her mobile phone.

The Star, in its report on Wednesday, quoted The Curve manager Jazmi Kamaruddin confirming that CCTV footage has been handed over to the police.

Meanwhile, according to the Malay Mail, Petaling Jaya deputy OCPD Supt Meor Hamdan Meor Mohamad said a report was lodged over the incident. The case is being investigated under Section 394 of the Penal Code for voluntarily causing hurt during a robbery.

Computer Viruses as Weapons

Background to report below (by CCK)
For almost a decade, the US, Israel and some western countries had been claiming that Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb and threatened to attack Iran. However, other countries like Russia says that Iran's ability to do that is still very far e.g. to make a bomb the uranium has to be enriched to above 95% while Iran can only achieve about 3% when the accusations began years ago and about 20% in 2012 even by US claims.

Over the last few years, there were reports of Iranian scientists being murdered and their computer systems attacked by viruses. Report below is the latest.

Key things to note:
 - latest discovery was made by Russian computer security experts at request of the UN which clearly suspect the US or their allies. That's why the UN requested US' 'opposite' to do the investigations
Moral: if you suspect some one is the thief, do not use him as the police/investigator
 - the viruses discovered so far uses the same flaw in Microsoft Windows (made by US company). It may not be a coincident that the virus attacker and the supplier of the software (Windows) are from the same country. E.g. Indian and Chinese government do not allow their officials to us Blackberry phones made in Canada for fear of information theft
Moral: your supplier or the one closest to you may be the one compromising you
 - a few weeks ago, a new Russian commercial plane (Sukhoi Superjet) crashed in Jakarta during an air expo demo. Russia has openly said they suspect the US was behind the crash as commercial sabotage. At same time, Russia claimed that is similar to crashes of other Russian crafts flying over areas near the US. They suspect the US has powerful equipments that can sabotage the functioning of electronic devices.


Powerful 'Flame' cyber weapon found in Iran
By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - Security experts have discovered a highly sophisticated computer virus in Iran and other Middle East countries that they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that claimed responsibility for discovering the virus.

Kaspersky researchers said on Monday they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.

Cyber security experts said the discovery publicly demonstrates what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.

"This is one of many, many campaigns that happen all the time and never make it into the public domain," said Alexander Klimburg, a cyber security expert at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs.

A cyber security agency in Iran said on its English website that Flame bore a "close relation" to Stuxnet, the notorious computer worm that attacked that country's nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.

Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran have said were responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

Kaspersky Lab said it discovered Flame after a U.N. telecommunications agency asked it to analyze data on malicious software across the Middle East in search of the data-wiping virus reported by Iran.

STUXNET CONNECTION

Experts at Kaspersky Lab and Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security who have spent weeks studying Flame said they have yet to find any evidence that it can attack infrastructure, delete data or inflict other physical damage.

Yet they said they are in the early stages of their investigations and that they may discover other purposes beyond data theft. It took researchers months to determine the key mysteries behind Stuxnet, including the purpose of modules used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran.

"Their initial research suggest that this was probably written by the authors of Stuxnet for covert intelligence collection," said John Bumgarner, a cyber warfare expert with the non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit think tank.

Flame appears poised to go down in history as the third major cyber weapon uncovered after Stuxnet and its data-stealing cousin Duqu, named after the Star Wars villain.

The Moscow-based company is controlled by Russian malware researcher Eugene Kaspersky. It gained notoriety after solving several mysteries surrounding Stuxnet and Duqu.

Their research shows the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, then Sudan and Syria.

The virus contains about 20 times as much code as Stuxnet, which caused centrifuges to fail at the Iranian enrichment facility it attacked. It has about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information, said Kaspersky Lab senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg.

GATHERING DATA

Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.

Kaspersky Lab said Flame and Stuxnet appear to infect machines by exploiting the same flaw in the Windows operating system and that both viruses employ a similar way of spreading.

That means the teams that built Stuxnet and Duqu might have had access to the same technology as the team that built Flame, Schouwenberg said.

He said that a nation state would have the capability to build such a sophisticated tool, but declined to comment on which countries might do so.

The question of who built flame is sure to become a hot topic in the security community as well as the diplomatic world.

There is some controversy over who was behind Stuxnet and Duqu. Some experts suspect the United States and Israel, a view that was laid out in a January 2011 New York Times report that said it came from a joint program begun around 2004 to undermine what they say are Iran's efforts to build a bomb.

The U.S. Defense Department, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency, and U.S. Cyber Command declined to comment.

Hungarian researcher Boldizsar Bencsath, whose Laboratory of Cryptography and Systems Security first discovered Duqu, said his analysis shows that Flame may have been active for at least five years and perhaps eight years or more.

That implies it was active long before Stuxnet.

"It's huge and overly complex, which makes me think it's a first-generation data gathering tool," said Neil Fisher, vice president for global security solutions at Unisys Corp (UIS.N). "We are going to find more of these things over time."

Others said that cyber weapons technology has inevitably advanced since Flame was built.

"The scary thing for me is: if this is what they were capable of five years ago, I can only think what they are developing now," Mohan Koo, managing director of British-based Dtex Systems cyber security company.

Some experts speculated that the discovery of the virus may have dealt a psychological blow to its victims, on top of whatever damage Flame may have already inflicted to their computers.

"If a government initiated the attack it might not care that the attack was discovered," said Klimburg of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs. "The psychological effect of the penetration could be nearly as profitable as the intelligence gathered."

(Additional reporting by Jim Wolf in Washington, Daniel Fineran in Dubai and William Maclean in London; editing by Edward Tobin, Ron Popeski and Mohammad Zargham)

How To Know If Someone Is Lying

(Article extracted from Yahoo News)

We have all done it and also know that many people do it to us too, i.e. Tell Lies.

Many of us are good at decoding when being lied to while some of us struggle to identify liars. Thus, it makes sense in knowing a bit about how to decipher if somebody is lying. The following tips will help you identify a liar:

Get Started with Reading the Liar’s Body Language

It was once stated in a Quentin Tarantino movie that people who have served time in prison have a typical way of walking, as if they are carrying a few bricks on their shoulder. Such typical, body language traits are present in liars too.

Many liars try not able to face their audience with an open stance. Their palms might be folded tight and they might be a bit fidgety. A tightly clinched fist or slight blushing on the face or around the ears too is reflective of a lie.

However, the more seasoned liars can easily hide such traits. These liars can be found out by reading more into their face rather than their body. Some of the most experienced liars too tend to develop typical facial mannerisms when lying. This includes increased creasing in their forehead or a nervous smile before answering questions.

Some liars tend to place their hands very firmly on the chair or table as if they are holding on to these objects to save their lives. This is essentially a way of de-stressing the body that is reacting to the growing anxiety within them.

Catching Liars by Noticing their Eyes

Those who are good at grasping the eye language have a much better chance of find out if they are being lied to. Apart from the seasoned crooks, most liars cannot hold their glare straight towards a person. They tend to look around or divert their range of vision, desperately hoping that their nervousness will not be revealed. The most unskilled of liars have a tendency to look downwards when lying. Their eyes tend to wander about. This is caused by their guilt that makes it difficult for them to maintain eye contact.

Lookout for Inconsistencies to Identify Liars

Even the more experienced liars can commit the mistake of not remembering the story they had spun to hide the facts. This is something you can use to your advantage. Just try to remember the things the person you suspect of lying is saying. After a few minutes, question about the smallest of details that the liar had mentioned. If the person isn't an expert liar, he is bound to make mistakes in answering the question. This is the easiest way to find out if you have been lied to.

Liars are Prone to Getting Anxious

Most folks suffer from some form of anxiety when lying. You can use this to find out if somebody is lying. All you need to do is watch-out for the typical signs that suggest an increased degree of nervousness. Typical traits of a person getting anxious when lying include sweating excessively, talking too fast, getting fidgety with the legs or arms or stammering. For instance, a person lying to you might repeatedly change his seated position, as if the chair or sofa is making him feel very uncomfortable.

Catch Liars by Identifying Superficial Talk

Most liars are prone to avoiding the subject which they fear will expose their act. This can be easily identified. You need to notice if a particular topic is making a person uncomfortable. The person you suspect of lying might continuously try to change the subject or ignore it with a nervous laugh. These are tell-tale signs of a liar.

Many liars create another kind of trace when communicating, i.e. they are not very assertive. You might find the suspected person giving very short or vague answers. This kind of superficial talk lacks any degree of surety. This is a major indicator that the person isn't sure what he is talking about, i.e. he is either lying or trying to cover-up the facts.

Concluding Thoughts: Being a Keen Observer is Elementary to Identify Liars

If you find it difficult to use any of the above-listed techniques for identifying a liar, just remember that your ability to detect lies is essentially a result of your observation skills. As one of the best on-screen personas to identify liars, Sherlock Holmes, once said, “It’s elementary…”

Eurozone Crisis

Bankground to Eurozone Crisis
The Euro single currency introduced in 1999 removed currency risk from cross border investments within the Eurozone.

In addition, banking regulations (like Basel) in western world consider government debts as risk-free and bank holders of such bonds therefore do not need to put aside capital as reserve against loss! This arrangement benefitted both the governments that set the 'regulations' (they can borrow more) and the banks which theoretically can buy as much government bonds as they like and earn more interest.
The above encouraged banks and funds in stronger Euro countries like Germany and France (more so than banks from outside Eurozone) to buy government bonds from weaker countries paying higher interest rates to increase profit.

It also tended to redirected capital to the non-productive public sector instead of the private sector.

Over time, cost of financing for weaker countries dropped to close to that of stronger countries and encouraged those weaker countries to borrow even more. The low cost of government borrowing also reduced cost of borrowing by their households and private sector(including banks) resulting in not just huge government debt to GDP ratios but also private debts and financial bubbles in housing etc. That was the case from 1997 to 2007.

However, when crisis started in 2008 fears about solvency and default of banks and governments in those weaker countries (as well as their potential Eurozone exit and currency devaluation) caused a reverse flow from weaker to stronger countries. That worsened the weaker countries' and their banks' bad situation even more. Financing to rollover their debts dropped and interest rates jumped. By 2011, interest rates for German 10 year bonds was 2-3% vs 6-7% for countries like Italy and Spain. Irish and Greek rates were worse at more than 10% at the peak of their crises.

As those fears increased, some holders of weak country bonds started to sell them and their price dropped. That wiped out the profits and capital of many banks which then had to be bailed out by their governments which bought the all sorts of collaterals including dubious ones from their troubled banks. That resulted in the transfer of the problem from banks to governments, and the crises transformed from 'banking crisis' or 'banking liquidity crisis' to 'sovereign crisis'.

Holders (like the banks doing 'national service') that continue to hold onto the problem bonds started to buy protection in the form of credit default swaps (CDS) whose cost (or insurance premium) then jumped. The high CDS premium in turn attracted other banks and funds into 'writing' or selling CDS to profit from the high premium. In addition, the fears caused the price of those bonds to collapse and attracted new buyers hoping to profit from price recovery later.

As a result, when the weak countries like Ireland and Greece entered their respective 'crisis', banks and funds all over the world had taken their respective 'bets' on whether the country involved would eventually default or not.

As example, in 2011 the American broker-dealer MF Global in US bet wrongly that Greece would not default. They went bankrupt in end 2011 when Greece eventually defaulted with 75% haircut on all their debts. MF Global then illegally used (i.e. stole) US$1.5 billion of their customer funds to pay off its largest creditor JP Morgan who was also one of the largest seller of CDS on European bonds. In May 2012, JPM announced they incurred US$2 billion loss on hedge trades but did not give any detail.

(Side note: top 4 US banks - JPM, Citi, Goldman, BOA - and HSBC account for more than 95% of all derivative trades in the world. Total notional value is more than US$220 trillion)

The MF Global case showed that many American funds and banks may have been betting that the weak Eurozone countries would everntually be bailed out by the rest of the Eurozone countries the way the US and Irish governments bailed out all their insolvent banks.

Thus one can see that there are opposing interests with opposing preferences on how the Eurozone would resolve this debt crisis. That was the reason why in 2011 EU officials publicly said that the rating downgrades of many EU countries by credit rating agencies (all owned by US) were 'politically motivated'.

As weak countries' financing cost increased, they were forced to cut back on expenses (i.e. enter into austerity) which resulted in large loss in public sector jobs that they supported in the past using borrowed money. Unemployment in those problem countries were very high e.g. 25% in Spain where 50% of youths are jobless. As more people lost their jobs, households and companies cut back on expenses and investments and government tax revenues nose dived resulting in a vicious downward spiral for the whole country...


2008/09 Irish Banking Crisis
 - largest creditors to Irish banks were British banks
 - government bailed out & nationalised Irish banks thereby bailing out also British banks
 - accepted low quality collaterals incl Irish gov bonds and 'IOUs' issued by the banks
   (note: practice suppose to end according to new EU agreeement of 2011?)

2009/10 Icelandic Crisis
 - Iceland not in Eurozone devalued currency Kroner
 - government refused to bail out banks

2011/12 Greek Crisis
 - Greek gov aided by US/UK banks hid their true debt levels to qualify as Eurozone member
 - government debt (EUR200 billion) to GDP was 160% by end 2011 (from 115% at start 2010)
 - legislated retroactive 'collective action' law that forces all creditors to go along with 'voluntary' haircut of 75% on gov debts held by private creditors (although as result of ECB bail etc most were held by ECB, Greek banks and Greek Central Bank)
 - US broker-dealer MF Global announced bankruptcy due to betting on Greek bonds
   (USD1.5B of missing customer funds - transferred to creditors like JP Morgan etc)
 - JP Morgan announced USD 2B loss on 'hedge' trades (May 2012)

Note: due to fear of Greek bank solvency & Euro exit, people transferred money out to other Euro countries thereby causing a 'run' on Greek banks which made problem worse (same problem for all weak Euro countries)

2011 Nov: New EU Fiscal Agreement
 - UK & Poland? opt out
 - Tobin tax on banking transactions
 - reduction of national deficits to ?%
 - banks stop dubious collaterals (own gov bonds & bank IOUs) to obtain financing fr own government?
 -

Spain
 - gov and private sector started borrowing a lot since 1999
 - gov debt to GDP 50% in 2007
 - private sector (households & corporate) reversed borrowing binge in 2008
 - this resulted in gov deficits & jump in gov debt to 70% of GDP
 - unemployment rate 25% (youth 50%)

Self Defence Basics

Key to self-defence
1. Avoid confrontation. Walk away before confrontation can begin, This requires awareness of what is happening around you all the time.

2. (If unavoidable) At start of physical attack by another person, strongly fend off or side step any intial attempt to grab hold of you. To discourage further attack shout 'Back Off!" loudly at opponent to warn attacker off and attract other people's attention. Do not show fear as that will encourage attacker to continue attack.

3. If forced to defend, use quick combination of different attacks to overwhelm or surprise opponent quickly (within 30 seconds). Then run away

4. In any confrontation, do not stay still. Keep moving. Moving target is more difficult to attack

5. Practice defensive and attacking moves regularly to get used to them. Can also mentally imagine and practice them mentally.

Most Effective Weapons on Your Body
1. Cusped Hand (more versatile than using fist) - see video below
    Use all sides of palm to chop (throat or neck)
    Use cusped palm to slap or back-swipe (face, neck, eyes)
    Use both cusped hands to slap both ears at same time to break ear drum
    Use base of wrist to jab at nose, chin or chest-bone (middle and just above stomach)
    Use 2 cusped hands together to push attacker away
    Use fingers of cusped hand to poke at eyes

 2. Elbow
    Thrust forward and inward to stab at face, neck or chest
    Thrusting elbow inward (i.e. keeping upper arm close to body) gives more power and also protects your own body and arm-pit from attack.

3. Knee
    Thrust knee forward to stab at groin or stomach

4. Ankle
    Thrust ankle forward to stab at shin, knee or area just above ankle

5. Forehead
    To bang face esp nose

The most effective and speediest attacking combination is the 'cusped hand and elbow combination'.
Use cusped hand to chop, thrust or swipe and then thrust with elbow. Continue with knee thrusts and ankle strikes.

For more 'power' put 2 cusped hands together in one move. E.g. to destabilise on rushing attacker, put both cusped hands together and push on one side of chest or shoulder, or strike at chin, throat or nose. Keep low and use body weight to thrust forward and upward.

If both hands are held or restrained by attacker, use knee or ankle to thrust into lower parts of body, or use forehead to hit nose hard.

Most Vulnerable Places to Attack
1. Upper parts of body to be attacked using 'cusped hand and elbow combination' and forehead:
 - Nose, Eye, Temple, Ears
 - Throat or neck
 - Center of Chest or stomach

2. Lower parts of body to be attacked using knee or punch:
 - Chest and stomach
 - Groin (or lower stomach area between private part and hip bone)

3. Leg areas to be struck with ankle or bottom of foot:
 - Knee (front, side or back)
 - Shin
 - lower sides of shin just above ankle (to break ankle)

4. Nerve areas to be attacked using 'u-turned fingers' jab:
 - area below jaw and behind ear
 - arm-pit

To form u-turned fingers jab: from cusped hand bend all 4 fingers into u-shape so that lower third of bent fingers form straight line with palm and fore arm (keep all 4 fingers and thumb tightly together the same way as cusped hand) - see video.

Practice changing from cusped hand to u-turned fingers jab to get used to the conversion. Hold cusped hand up and while jabbing hand forward change finger positions into u-turned finger jab formation. Make sure wrist is locked tight, fingers and thumb are closed tightly together, and fingers and palm are in straight line with fore arm.

How To Protect Vulnerable Points from Blows or Strikes
The best way to protect upper body is to make use of the same 'cusped hand and elbow combination'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWdDr5ftUzo&feature=related
 - Protect all parts of head, throat and neck by raising cusped hand over side of face with elbow pointing forward
 - Protect chest by placing 'cusped hand and elbow combination' in front of chest
 - Protect throat by keeping chin down

The same 'cusped hand and elbow combination' can also be used to block punches or attempts to grab you:
 - to block blows, raise elbow and block using fore arm
 - to get out of a grip of the hand or arm, twist or swirl your elbow back and forth


Useful self-defence videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtFclzN8iTg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZD0sdtrpwk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZDwCJziO-o&feature=related