Posts Tagged ‘2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN’
2003 IRAQ WAR, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, AL QAEDA, ALTERNET, ASIANS, BREITBART NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHILE, CIA, CLAUS VON STAFFENBERG, CNN, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, DAILY KOS, DAVID DUKE, DONALD TRUMP, EMPEROR TIBERIUS, FACEBOOK, FBI, GUATEMALA, HISPANICS, HOMOSEXUALS, INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, IRAN, JACABO ARBENZ, JAMES W. DOUGLAS, JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN KASICH, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, KU KLUX KLAN, LESBIANS, MARTIN NIEMOELLER, MEDICARE, Military, MOHAMMED MOSADDEGH, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MUSLIMS, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NAVY SEALS, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, POLITICO, PRISONERS OF WAR, RAW STORY, SALON, SALVADORE ALLENDE, SLATE, SS, STEVE BANNON, TERRORISTS, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DISABLED, THE HOLOCAUST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, WEHRMACHT, WOMEN, WORLD WAR 11
In History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2017 at 12:49 am
On July 20, 1944, a one-eyed, one-armed man tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941). And he had been seriously wounded in its service.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces–well before the much-feared Russians gained a foothold in Germany.
But Stauffenberg wanted him dead: A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But–how to do it?
Hitler was a closely-guarded target. He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
Adolf Hitler
But his single greatest protection–he claimed–was an instinct for danger. He would often suddenly change his schedule–to drop in where he was least expected. Or to suddenly depart an event where he was scheduled to stay a long time.
On November 9, 1939, this instinct saved his life. He had been set to give a long speech at a Munich beer hall before the “Old Fighters” of his storm troopers.
Sixteen years earlier on that day, in 1923, Hitler had led them in a disastrous attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. Police had put down the effort, killing and wounding about a score of storm troopers in the process.
Hitler himself had later been arrested, tried and convicted for treason–and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
But instead of proving to be the end of Nazism, the “Beer Hall Putsch” turned Hitler into a national celebrity. And it launched his career as a legitimate, ultimately successful politician.
So Hitler was expected to speak to his longtime supporters for a long time that evening. Instead, he suddenly cut short his speech and left the beer hall.
Forty-five minutes later, a bomb exploded inside a pillar–before which Hitler had been speaking.
Since then, a series of other assassination attempts had been made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it went off.
So now it was the turn of von Stauffenberg. He would carry his bomb–hidden in a briefcase–into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.
But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber. He meant to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis.
His bomb–also rigged with a time-fuse–would be left in the conference room while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Then, the coup–“Operation Valkyrie”–would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
So the Germans–both Nazi and anti-Nazi–knew what they could expect if soldiers of the Soviet Union reached German soil.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it–appropriately enough–“Wolf’s Lair.”
“Wolf’s Lair”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler–who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table.
Then Stauffenberg excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
But the Third Reich didn’t come to an end–because, as if miraculously, Hitler had survived.
Hitler shows off the site of the explosion
What had happened?
First, the conference location had been changed–from a wooden building to a concrete one. The concrete absorbed much of the blast.
Second, owing to the summer’s heat, Hitler had ordered all the windows–about ten–opened to let in a breeze. This allowed much of the force of the blast to be dispersed.
Third, and perhaps most important: Stauffenberg had carefully placed his briefcase near Hitler, who was standing next to a heavy oaken support of the conference table.
But after Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, who stood next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it–to the other side of the heavy oaken support.
When the bomb exploded, Hitler was partially shielded from its full blast. Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.
2003 IRAQ WAR, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, AL QAEDA, ALTERNET, ASIANS, BREITBART NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHILE, CIA, CLAUS VON STAFFENBERG, CNN, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, DAILY KOS, DAVID DUKE, DONALD TRUMP, EMPEROR TIBERIUS, FACEBOOK, FBI, GUATEMALA, HISPANICS, HOMOSEXUALS, INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, IRAN, JACABO ARBENZ, JAMES W. DOUGLAS, JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN KASICH, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, KU KLUX KLAN, LESBIANS, MARTIN NIEMOELLER, MEDICARE, Military, MOHAMMED MOSADDEGH, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MUSLIMS, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NAVY SEALS, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, POLITICO, PRISONERS OF WAR, RAW STORY, SALON, SALVADORE ALLENDE, SLATE, SS, STEVE BANNON, TERRORISTS, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DISABLED, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, WEHRMACHT, WOMEN, WORLD WAR 11
In History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 2, 2017 at 12:12 am
The voice belonged to Tom Moe, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force–and a former Vietnam prisoner-of-war.
It was a video produced by the 2016 Presidential campaign for John Kasich. Kasich, the governor of Ohio, had been peddling a message of creating jobs, balancing the Federal budget and disdain for Washington, D.C.
John Kasich
But he remained far behind in the polls, dropping 50% in support in just one month–from September to October. Meanwhile, Trump, the New York billionaire developer, was backed by 25% of Republican primary voters.
So, with nothing to lose, Kasich decided to take off the gloves. He invoked the “N” word for Republicans: Nazi. “You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims must register with the government, because you’re not one,” continues Moe.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
Donald Trump
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care of Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
Click here: Trump’s Dangerous Rhetoric – YouTube
The above is indeed a paraphrase of a famous quote by Martin Niemoeller (1892–1984), a prominent Protestant pastor. Although he had been a U-boat commander during World War 1, he became a bitter public foe of Adolf Hitler.
A staunch anti-Communist, he had initially supported the Nazis as Germany’s only hope of salvation against the Soviet Union. But when the Nazis made the church subordinate to State authority, Niemoeller created the Pastors’ Emergency League to defend religious freedom.
Martin Niemoeller
For his opposition to the Third Reich, Niemoeller spent seven years in concentration camps. With the collapse of the Reich in 1945, he was freed–and elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947.
During the 1960s, he was a president of the World Council of Churches.
He is best remembered for his powerful condemnation of the failure of Germans to protest the increasing oppression of the Nazis:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Neither “Adolf Hitler” nor “Nazi Party” was mentioned during the one-minute Kassich video. But Trump was furious.
“I will sue him [Kasich] just for fun,” said Trump, if he could find anything “not truthful” within the ad.
So said the man who called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and accused President Barack Obama of being a Muslim and born outside the United States.
The Kasich ad was by far the darkest attack made against Trump by any candidate–Republican or Democrat. And it raises a disturbing question:
If Donald Trump is America’s Adolf Hitler, who will be its Claus von Stauffenberg?
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the German army officer who, on July 20, 1944, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).
While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943 when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
For most of these officers, the motive was craven: Germany was losing the war it had launched on the world–and they feared the worst. This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg–more than many German––knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “1,000 year Reich” fell.
Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans–even members of the Wehrmacht–were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces–well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany.
For Stauffenberg, arresting Hitler wasn’t enough.
Stauffenberg wanted him dead. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But–how to do it?
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ACADEMY AWARDS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BARACK OBAMA, BEST ACTRESS, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, BIRTHERS, BULLYING, CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CHRIS CUOMO, CNN, CREDIBILITY GAP, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DISABILITY, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FOX AND FRIENDS, FRANK STANTON, FULL METAL JACKET, GEORGE MCGOVERN, GOLDEN GLOBES, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, KELLEYANNE CONWAY, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MARK SHIELDS, MERYL STREEP, MORLEY SAFER, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEEWSWEEK, NEW DAY, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER ARNETT, POLITICO, RICHARD NIXON, RONALD ZIEGLER, SALON, SERGE KOVALESKI, SLATE, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, STANLEY KUBRICK, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE IRON LADY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, USA TODAY, VIETNAM WAR, WATERGATE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 16, 2017 at 12:14 am
After being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, Meryl Streep criticized Donald Trump’s mocking of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.
Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.
At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from an article he had written four years earlier.
Trump had earlier said the article proved that New Jersey Muslims had celebrated the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Kovaleski had insisted there was no credible proof of such celebrations.
Angered at being contradicted, Trump mocked Kovaleski: He flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”
Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right
At the Golden Globe Awards on January 8, Streep denounced this behavior that “broke my heart.”
“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
Streep’s words outraged Trump’s supporters–especially his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway.
Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.
“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”
Conway didn’t say what common ground Streep should find with Trump. Perhaps agreeing on mocking the disabled?
Kelleyanne Conway
Then Conway visited CNN’s “New Day,” where she offered a “black-is-white” defense for Trump’s videotaped ridiculing of Kovaleski: It didn’t happen.
The host, Chris Cuomo, having seen the video, wasn’t buying it.
CUOMO: But is [Streep] wrong? Is she wrong that it was wrong for Trump to make gestures like that about a man with disabilities?
CONWAY: He didn’t–but that is not what he did and he has said that a thousand times. As he tweeted out today–
CUOMO: He can say it a million. Look at the video.
CONWAY: Why can’t you–wait, excuse me. Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt the way the benefit of the doubt was given to CNN’s polling, all of its analysts?
CUOMO: Because he’s making a disgusting gesture on video talking about Serge.
CONWAY: Not about that reporter and that’s just a fact. That is what he’s said. You should give him–
CUOMO: But how is it not about the reporter?
CONWAY: –the deference and respect if he says that it was–he was not mocking, he was mocking the groveling. He said it again this morning. He has three tweets out about it.
CUOMO: But he’s doing a gesture that goes right to the guy’s vulnerability.
CONWAY: You’re saying you don’t believe him. You’re calling him a liar and you shouldn’t.
CUOMO: Look, Kellyanne, to me that’s like you’re trying to scare me off the point and we both know it’s a waste of time.
CONWAY: I’m not going to scare you off anything.
CUOMO: He’s making a gesture that is so keenly tuned to what Serge’s vulnerability is.
CONWAY: And now you’re giving oxygen to what Meryl Streep said.
CUOMO: Forget about Meryl Streep. This happened before her. If our kids did that, could you imagine what we would say to them?
Conway said she would not bring her children into the discussion.
CUOMO: I will. If my kid did something like that, it’d be a really tough day.
CONWAY: You have to listen to what the president has said about that. Why don’t you believe him?
Conway tried to change the subject to Hillary Clinton: “She was given the benefit of the doubt here constantly.”
When Cuomo asked for specifics, she refused to give them. Then she returned to claiming that Trump had never mocked Kovaleski:
CONWAY: You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this, when he’s telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth, rather than look at what’s in his heart.
* * * * *
Previously, politicians had defended themselves with arguments like: “You can see right here on the tape, I did (or, I didn’t)….”
Trump has cast aside that logic–and the taped evidence–by demanding: “Believe what I’m telling you, not what you’ve just seen.”
By that rationale, if a security camera shows Trump robbing a bank at gunpoint, we’re supposed to believe him if he says: “No, I didn’t rob that bank. I was simply checking my bank balance.”
Such “logic” holds appeal for paid shills like Kelleyanne Conway. But most people will continue to judge by the evidence.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ACADEMY AWARDS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BARACK OBAMA, BEST ACTRESS, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, BIRTHERS, BULLYING, CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CHRIS CUOMO, CNN, CREDIBILITY GAP, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DISABILITY, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FOX AND FRIENDS, FRANK STANTON, FULL METAL JACKET, GEORGE MCGOVERN, GOLDEN GLOBES, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, KELLEYANNE CONWAY, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MARK SHIELDS, MERYL STREEP, MORLEY SAFER, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEEWSWEEK, NEW DAY, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER ARNETT, POLITICO, RICHARD NIXON, RONALD ZIEGLER, SALON, SERGE KOVALESKI, SLATE, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, STANLEY KUBRICK, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE IRON LADY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, USA TODAY, VIETNAM WAR, WATERGATE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 13, 2017 at 12:02 am
For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that Barack Obama was born in Kenya–and was therefore an illegitimate President.
For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so.
As his popularity fell to less than 1% among blacks, the managers of his campaign urged: Put the “birther” issue behind you.
So, on September 16, 2016–10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–Trump made his version of a reversal.
Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words–after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:
“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement–and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.
On the evening of September 16, Hillary Clinton strongly responded to Trump’s comments:
“For five years, he has led the birther movement to de-legitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”
And First Lady Michelle Obama slammed Trump for his “birther” claims:
“Then, of course, there were those who questioned, and who continue to question for the past eight years, and up to this very day, whether my husband was even born in this country.
“Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the examples he set, by going high when they go low. And he’s answered these questions with the progress we’ve achieved together.”
Michelle Obama
But perhaps the best perspective on this event was provided by syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Each Friday they appear on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
On September 16, Shields (a liberal) and Brooks (a conservative) addressed Trump’s about-face on birtherism.
MARK SHIELDS: “I think it’s important to establish right at the outset that [Trump] wasn’t only the loudest and the highest-profile and the most persistent and the most well-publicized birther, he, Donald Trump. He lied. He lied consistently and persistently.
“And, today, without explanation or excuse, he just changed his position and tried to absolutely falsely shift the blame onto Hillary Clinton.
“And this was an appeal to–he debased democracy. He debased the national debate. He appealed to that which is most ignoble or least noble in all of us.”
DAVID BROOKS: “Usually, there’s some tangential relationship to the truth, but a corroding relationship to the truth, frankly, as politics has gone on over the years.
“But now we’re in a reverse, Orwellian inversion of the truth with this. And so we have a team of staffers and then the candidate himself who have taken the normal spin and smashed all the rules.
“And so we are really in Orwell land. We are in 1984. And it’s interesting that an authoritarian personality type comes in at the same time with a complete disrespect for even tangential relationship to the truth that words are unmoored.
“And so I do think this statement sort of shocked me with the purification of a lot of terrible trends that have been happening. And so what’s white is black, and what is up is down, what is down is up. And that really is something new in politics.
“And the fact that there is no penalty for it, apparently–he’s doing fantastic in the last two weeks in the polls–is just somehow where we have gotten.”
Less than two months later, Trump won the Presidency.
Since then, Trump has continued to inhabit what David Brooks called “Orwell land.”
The most recent example of this occurred on January 9, 2017.
The night before, Meryl Streep had enraged Trump and his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway, at the Golden Globes Awards ceremony.
While being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, she had criticized Trump’s mocking, on November 25, 2015, of disabled New York Times reporter Serve Kovaleski:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ACADEMY AWARDS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BARACK OBAMA, BEST ACTRESS, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, BIRTHERS, BULLYING, CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CHRIS CUOMO, CNN, CREDIBILITY GAP, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DISABILITY, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FOX AND FRIENDS, FRANK STANTON, FULL METAL JACKET, GEORGE MCGOVERN, GOLDEN GLOBES, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, KELLEYANNE CONWAY, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MARK SHIELDS, MERYL STREEP, MORLEY SAFER, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEEWSWEEK, NEW DAY, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER ARNETT, POLITICO, RICHARD NIXON, RONALD ZIEGLER, SALON, SERGE KOVALESKI, SLATE, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, STANLEY KUBRICK, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE IRON LADY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 12, 2017 at 12:10 am
In 2011, Donald Trump, host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against Barack Obama.
Seeking to gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya–and was not an American citizen.
His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Donald Trump
Among the statements Trump made:
February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”
March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate. … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”
March 28, 2011: “I am really concerned” [that Obama wasn’t born in the United States]. He said that the birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaii newspaper could have been planted “for whatever reason.”
March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. … He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”
April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”
April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”
On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawiian birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.
“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”
And on May 1, he announced the solving of one of those “big problems”: Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had been tracked down and shot dead by elite U.S. Navy SEALS in Pakistan.
SEALS attacking bin Laden’s compound in the 2012 movie, “Zero Dark Thirty”
And how did Trump respond? With the following series of Tweets on Twitter:
May 18, 2012: “Let’s take a closer look at that birth certificate.@BarackObama was described in 2003 as being “born in Kenya.” http://bit.ly/Klc9Uu
August 6, 2012: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.”
August 27, 2012: “Why do the Republicans keep apologizing on the so called “birther” issue? No more apologies–take the offensive!”
September 13, 2012: “Wake Up America! See article: “Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake”
June 30, 2013: “@davidrhythmguit: @realDonaldTrump @Chuffman48 Mark Cuban accepts the fact that the President of the United States was born here. Doubt it”
August 22, 2013: “Why are people upset w/ me over Pres Obama’s birth certificate? I got him to release it, or whatever it was, when nobody else could!”
December 12, 2013: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived”
November 23, 2014: “@futureicon: @pinksugar61 Obama also fabricated his own birth certificate after being pressured to produce one by @realDonaldTrump“
Even after declaring his candidacy for President on June 16, 2015, Trump continued to insist that Barack Obama was an illegitimate President.
Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity among blacks had steadily fallen. In June, 2016, a Quinnipiac poll revealed that Trump had 1% of support from black voters. By comparison, 91% of black voters backed Hillary Clinton.
Among the reasons for this:
- His enthusiastic support by racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
- His “birther” attacks on President Obama as a non-citizen from Kenya–and thus ineligible to hold the Presidency.
- His attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and calling on his supporters at rallies to rough up minority protesters.
Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.
And so, on September 16–10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–Trump made his version of a reversal.
In doing so, he entered into what conservative New York Times political columnist David Brooks called “Orwell land.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ACADEMY AWARDS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BARACK OBAMA, BEST ACTRESS, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, BIRTHERS, BULLYING, CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CHRIS CUOMO, CNN, CREDIBILITY GAP, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DISABILITY, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FOX AND FRIENDS, FRANK STANTON, FULL METAL JACKET, GEORGE MCGOVERN, GOLDEN GLOBES, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, KELLEYANNE CONWAY, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MARK SHIELDS, MERYL STREEP, MORLEY SAFER, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEEWSWEEK, NEW DAY, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER ARNETT, POLITICO, RICHARD NIXON, RONALD ZIEGLER, SALON, SERGE KOVALESKI, SLATE, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, STANLEY KUBRICK, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE IRON LADY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, USA TODAY, VIETNAM WAR, WATERGATE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 11, 2017 at 12:02 am
“Credibility gap” is a term that came into use during the mid-1960s to describe public and journalistic distrust of President Lyndon B. Johnson. In particular, the term was applied to his administration’s conduct of the Vietnam war.
It was, in short, a euphemism for accusing government officials of outright lying.
An example of the credibility gap in full swing appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1987 Vietnam war movie, Full Metal Jacket.
Vietnam was a war where military and political officials spewed a gung-ho version of constant American progress against a tough enemy.
And where civilian reporters like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite saw–and labeled–the war as a brutal, wasteful and ultimately doomed effort.
Midway through the film, there’s an editorial meeting of The Sea Tiger, the official Marine newspaper.
Lieutenant Lockhart is presiding–and he is determined to give his superiors an endless stream of “all-systems-go” propaganda reports. He reads a series of stories that have been published:
Story #1: DIPLOMATS IN DUNGAREES–MARINE ENGINEERS LEND A HELPING HAND REBUILDING DONG PHUC VILLAGES.
LOCKHART: “Chili, “if we move Vietnamese, they are evacuees. If they come to us to be evacuated, they are refugees.”
Story #2: N.V.A. SOLDIER DESERTS AFTER READING PAMPHLETS.
LOCKHART: “A young North Vietnamese Army regular, who realized his side could not win the war, deserted from his unit after reading Open Arms program pamphlets.”
Story #3: NOT WHILE WE’RE EATING: N.V.A. LEARN MARINES ON A SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSION DON’T LIKE TO BE INTERRUPTED WHILE EATING CHOW.
LOCKHART: “‘Search and destroy.’ Uh, we have a new directive on this. In the future, in place of ‘search and destroy,’ substitute the phrase ‘sweep and clear.’ Got it?”
Lt. Lockhart, editor of The Sea Tiger
LOCKHART: “And, Joker–where’s the weenie?”
JOKER: “Sir?”
LOCKHART “The Kill, Joker. I mean, all that fire, the grunts must’ve hit something.”
JOKER: “Didn’t see ’em.”
LOCKHART: “Joker, I’ve told you, we run two basic stories here: Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants–winning of hearts and Minds–okay? And combat action that results in a kill–Winning the War. Now you must have seen blood trails … drag marks?”
JOKER: “It was raining, sir.”
LOCKHART: “Well, that’s why God passed the law of probability. Now rewrite it and give it a happy ending–say, uh, one kill. Make it a sapper or an officer. Grunts like reading about dead officers.”
JOKER: “Okay, an officer. How about a general?”
LOCKHART: “Joker, maybe you’d like our guys to read the paper and feel bad. I mean, in case you didn’t know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.”
So great became the divide between truth and lies during military “press briefings” that reporters started calling them “The Five O’clock Follies.” And even some soldiers took to wearing buttons that said: “Ambushed at Credibility Gap.”
Reporters who dared to write truthfully about the military’s crimes and failures–like David Halberstam of the New York Times and Peter Arnett of the Associated Press–were regarded as traitors by military and political officials.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy became enraged by Halberstam’s reporting on the corruption of the South Vietnamese government. He pressured New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to transfer Halberstam to another locale. Sulzberger politely refused–and then extended Halberstam’s stay in Vietnam another six months.
David Halberstam
In 1965, when CBS Correspondent Morley Safer filmed Marines setting fire to the village of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters, President Lyndon B. Johnson was similarly outraged.
He placed an early-morning call to CBS News President Frank Stanton and shouted: “Your boys shat on the American flag!”
The trail of deceit and attempted censorship continued right up to the end of the war–in April, 1975. That was when North Vietnamese forces invaded the South and quickly overwhelmed the incompetent defenses arrayed against them.
And while America was still bogged down in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal erupted on June 17, 1972.
Watergate Hotel
Members of the Nixon administration’s secret “Plumbers Unit” burglarized the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel.
Obsessed with re-electing Richard Nixon, they sought incriminating information to discredit U.S. Senator George McGovern, the Democrats’ nominee for President.
When the burglars were caught, President Richard M. Nixon and his topmost officials lied and stonewalled both reporters and investigators seeking the truth.
Nixon’s press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, repeatedly slandered the integrity of The Washington Post for its coverage of the mushrooming Watergate scandal. He called the Watergate break-in “a third-rate burglary” and attacked the Post for “shabby journalism.”
Finally, on April 17, 1973, Ziegler, announced at a press conference: “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”
In short: We’ve been lying to you for the last 10 months. But now we’re telling the truth.
Like Vietnam, the Watergate scandal destroyed the reputations of many of its chief architects. Forty government officials were indicted or jailed.
Vietnam and Watergate were seminal events for Americans coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They taught an entire generation: Don’t trust the government. Its officials routinely lie, and their lies can be deadly.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ACADEMY AWARDS, BEST ACTRESS, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, BULLYING, CBS NEWS, CNN, DISABILITY, DONALD TRUMP, FOX AND FRIENDS, GOLDEN GLOBES, KELLEYANNE CONWAY, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, MERYL STREEP, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NBC NEWS, NEEWSWEEK, NPR, POLITICO, SALON, SERGE KOVALESKI, SLATE, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE IRON LADY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, USA TODAY
In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 10, 2017 at 12:06 am
Every year, the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) bestow Golden Globe awards to recognize excellence in television and film, both inside and outside the United States.
And on Sunday, January 8, the presenters honored actress Meryl Streep with the Cecil B Demille lifetime achievement Award.
Since 1979, she’s been nominated for more Academy Awards than any other actor–15 nominations for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress.
She won Best Supporting Actress in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, Best Actress in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice and again in 2012 for The Iron Lady.
But when Streep appeared to accept her latest award, she had a nomination of her own to present: One for a performance that “broke my heart.”
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
It had come in real life, not a movie. And the performer she nominated was Donald Trump, for his mockery of a disabled New York Times reporter in 2015.
The reporter, Serge Kovaleski, suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.
Since declaring his Presidential candidacy on June 16, Trump had attacked the patriotism of America’s Islamic population. He claimed that he had seen Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
To prove this, Trump cited a September 18, 2001 article written by Kovaleski when he was a reporter for The Washington Post.
In this, Kovaleski wrote that police “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties.”
After Trump mentioned the story, Kovaleski said that the key word in it was “allegedly,” adding that there were no credible reports of such celebrations.
At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from his article.
To mock Kovaleski, he flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”
Click here: Donald Trump mocks disabled New York Times reporter – Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability – YouTube
Attacked for mocking Kovaleski’s disability, Trump claimed: “Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago–if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.”
Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right
But Kovaleski quickly contradicted Trump: He had covered Trump as a reporter for the New York Daily News and had met him face-to-face on at least a dozen occasions.
So Meryl Streep knew what she was talking about when she said:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.
“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Kelleyanne Conway served as Trump’s mouthpiece during the 2016 Presidential campaign. She continues in that rule as he prepares to take office as President on January 20.
And she was thoroughly upset with Streep’s remarks.
Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.
“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”
What common ground she didn’t say. Agreeing on mocking the disabled?
Not to be outdone in “inciting people’s worst instincts,” President-elect Trump quickly took to Twitter–his preferred mode of communication.
Since Twitter allows only 140 characters, Trump couldn’t say all he wanted in one tweet. So it took three:
Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..
Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him…….
“groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!
In 2015–before she insulted him–Trump told The Hollywood Reporter: “Julia Roberts is terrific, and many others. Meryl Streep is excellent; she’s a fine person, too.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, CBS NEWS, CNN, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, GATES OF FIRE, MERCENARIES, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, SPARTA, STEVEN PRESSFIELD, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PROFESSION, THE VIRTUES OF WAR, THE WASHINGTON POST, THERMOPYLAE, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, USA TODAY
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 19, 2016 at 12:05 am
On August 17, 2015, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump outlined his strategy for defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
He would order American forces to take over the oil fields that ISIS has seized in Iraq.
Trump outlined his plans for future military operations against ISIS on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd.
“Now we’re there, and you have ISIS….And ISIS is taking over a lot of the oil in certain areas of Iraq.
“And I said, you take away their wealth. You go and knock the hell out of the oil. Take back the oil. We take over the oil, which we should have done in the first place” during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
After taking over the Iraqi oil fields, said Trump, “we’re going to have so much money.
“And what I would do with the money that we make, which would be tremendous, I would take care of the soldiers that were killed, the families of the soldiers that were killed, the soldiers, the wounded warriors that are–see, I love them.”
Actually, Trump’s idea forms the plot of The Profession, a 2011 novel by bestselling author Steven Pressfield.
Pressfield made his literary reputation with a series of classic novels about ancient Greece.
In Gates of Fire (1998) he explored the rigors and heroism of Spartan society–and the famous last stand of its 300 picked warriors at Thermopylae.
In The Virtues of War (2004) he entered the mind of Alexander the Great, whose armies swept across the known world, destroying all who dared oppose them.
Steven Pressfield
But in The Profession, Pressfield created a plausible world set into the future of 2032. The book’s own dust jacket offers the best summary of its plot-line:
“The third Iran-Iraq war is over. The 11/11 dirty bomb attack on the port of Long Beach, California is receding into memory. Saudi Arabia has recently quelled a coup. Russians and Turks are clashing in the Caspian Basin….
“Everywhere military force is for hire. Oil companies, multi-national corporations and banks employ powerful, cutting-edge mercenary armies to control global chaos and protect their riches.
“Even nation states enlist mercenary forces to suppress internal insurrections, hunt terrorists, and do the black bag jobs necessary to maintain the new New World Order.
“Force Insertion is the world’s merc monopoly. Its leader is the disgraced former United States Marine General James Salter, stripped of his command by the president for nuclear saber-rattling with the Chinese and banished to the Far East.’
Salter appears as a hybrid of World War II General Douglas MacArthur and Iraqi War General Stanley McCrystal.
Douglas MacArthur (left), Stanley McCrystal (right)
Like MacArthur, Salter has butted heads with his President–and paid dearly for it. Now his ambition is no less than to become President himself–by popular acclaim. And like McCrystal, he is a pure warrior who leads from the front and is revered by his men.
Salter seizes Saudi Arabian oil fields, then offers them as a gift to America. By doing so, he makes himself the most popular man in the country–and a guaranteed occupant of the White House.
And in 2032 the United States is a far different nation from the one its Founding Fathers created in 1776.
“The United States is an empire…but the American people lack the imperial temperament. We’re not legionaries, we’re mechanics. In the end the American Dream boils down to what? ‘I’m getting mine and the hell with you.’”
Americans, asserts Salter, have come to like mercenaries: “They’ve had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order. They want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden….
“They want their problems to go away. They want me to to make them go away.”
And so Salter will “accept whatever crown, of paper or gold, that my country wants to press upon me.”
Returning to the United States, he is acclaimed as a hero–and the next President.
He is under no delusion that his country is on a downward spiral toward oblivion: “Any time that you have the rise of mercenaries…society has entered a twilight era, a time past the zenith of its arc.”
Nor does he believe that his Presidency will arrest that decline: “But maybe in the short run, it’s better that my hand be on the wheel…rather than some other self-aggrandizing sonofabitch whose motives might not be as well intentioned….”
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli warned of the dangers of relying on mercenaries:
“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure; for they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal; they are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.
Niccolo Machiavelli
“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”
Centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli issued a warning against relying on men whose first love is their own enrichment.
Steven Pressfield, in a work of fiction, has given us a nightmarish vision of a not-so-distant America where “Name your price” has become the byward for an age.
Both warnings are well worth heeding.
"HAMILTON", 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, BECKET (MOVIE), BLACKS, BRANDON VICTOR DIXON, CBS NEWS, CNN, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, HAMILTON (MUSICAL), HENRY II, JOHN GIELGUD, KU KLUX KLAN, MIKE PENCE, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, PETER O'TOOLE, POLITICO, RICHARD BURTON, SALON, SLATE, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THOMAS BECKET, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, VICTOR DIXON, WHITE SUPREMACISTS
In History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on November 28, 2016 at 12:01 am
There are many ways a Donald J. Trump Presidency could go fatally wrong. To learn just one, it’s necessary only to watch the 1964 classic, Becket.
This story of a 12th-century struggle between an English king and archbishop may seem irrelevant to the upcoming Trump Presidency.
In fact, it has a dangerous lesson to teach.
Becket (Richard Burton), a brilliant Saxon noble, is the favorite friend of England’s King Henry II (Peter O’Toole). They hunt, fight and bed women together. Henry even appoints him as Chancellor, the highest law enforcement officer in the country.
Where Becket is cold and calculating, Henry is impulsive, often explosive. Henry admires and resents Becket’s keen intelligence, knowing that Becket is better-suited for kingship than himself.
Meanwhile, the power of the Catholic Church is rising. Henry needs a highly-placed ally against its power. When the Archbishop of Canterbury dies, Henry appoints Becket in his place.
Suddenly the entirely secular Becket undergoes a religious conversion–and an unexpected change in allegiance. He insists that priests accused of criminal offenses be tried only in the church’s own courts–thus making them immune from Henry’s secular ones.
For Henry, this isn’t simply a conflict between church and state. It’s an unforgivable betrayal of friendship. And it means all-out war.
He falsely charges Becket with embezzlement during his time as Chancellor.
Becket flees to France, where he’s given asylum by King Louis VII (John Gielgud).
From there, Becket proceeds to Rome, where he meets with the Pope.
He begs the Pope to let him renounce his position as Archbishop and retire to a monastery as an ordinary priest.
But the Pope refuses: Becket must return to England and defend the Church against civil interference in its affairs.
Becket asks Louis to arrange a meeting with Henry on the shores of Normandy to hopefully negotiate a reconciliation.
Henry grudgingly lifts all charges against Becket and allows him to return to England.
But the feud isn’t over–for Henry.
While Becket focuses on his duties as Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry drinks and broods over his lost friendship with Becket.
His barons fuel this hatred by pointing out that the returned Archbishop has become a hero to the vanquished Saxons. They resent their Norman conquerors, and see Becket as the only man brave enough to stand up against them.
Finally, in a drunken rage, Henry blurts out: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
At that, four of his barons ride to Canterbury Cathedral and hack Becket to death with their swords.
When he learns the news, Henry is shocked. He has lost more than a former friend.
His reign–his soul–are now in mortal peril.
His words have caused the murder of the highest religious official in England.
His kingdom could be torn apart in civil war between Becket-loving Saxons and the Normans who conquered them in 1066.
Even worse, Henry could be excommunicated by the Pope and damned to eternal hellfire for this most unthinkable of crimes.
So Henry seeks redemption in the only way he can: He does penance by allowing himself to be publicly whipped by Saxon monks. And he proclaims Thomas Becket a saint.
Like Henry II, Donald Trump is infamous for his quick temper.
According to the The New York Times, during the 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump aimed nearly 4,000 tweets at 281 different targets.
Donald Trump
His Twitter assaults have often dominated entire news cycles for days on end.
As President-elect, he has continued these assaults–the most recent one occurring on November 18.
On that evening, Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a Broadway performance of the hit musical “Hamilton.”
After the curtain call, the actor Brandon Victor Dixon–who plays Aaron Burr–respectfully addressed Pence:
“We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our friends, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
Dixon–who is black–is rightly alarmed.
Trump has received the open and enthusiastic support of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. Since his election, white thugs have assaulted blacks and other non-whites across the country.
Trump’s reaction to Dixon’s plea came in two Twitter rants:
“Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!”
And: “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”
What happens if some of Trump’s 5.9 million Twitter followers decide–like Henry’s barons–to “rid” him of “this meddlesome actor”? Or the whole “meddlesome cast” of “Hamilton”?
And if not Dixon, then whoever next arouses the ire of this most easily-offended egomaniac?
Because he won’t stop.
When the victims of his weaponized tweets appear in hospitals or morgues, will Congress dare to hold him accountable through impeachment?
And, if so, will a Trump Presidency suddenly become a Pence one?
It’s only a matter of time before the explosion occurs.
2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SPEECH, BARACK OBAMA, BARBARA TUCHMAN, CBS NEWS, CNN, COLD WAR, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, DONALD TRUMP, DREAMS OF MY FATHER, FACEBOOK, HERMAN CAIN, JEB BUSH, JOHN F. KENNEDY, NBC NEWS, NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY, REPUBLICANS, RICK PERRY, Sarah Palin, SOVIET UNION, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE GUNS OF AUGUST, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, USA TODAY, VIETNAM WAR
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 24, 2016 at 12:19 am
November 22 marked 53 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas by an embittered Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald.
Historians generally agree that he left three great legacies to his country:
- The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
- The Apollo moon landing; and
- The Vietnam war.
But there was a fourth legacy—and perhaps the most important of all: The belief that mankind could overcome its greatest challenges through rationality and perseverance.
Kennedy demanded timely, reliable information about national and international issues. He speed-read several newspapers every morning. He nourished personal relationships with reporters—and not for entirely altruistic reasons.
These journalistic relationships gave Kennedy additional sources of information and perspectives he felt he could not get through government agencies.
When giving speeches, Kennedy—a 1940 cum laude graduate of Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in Government—never tried to hide his education. Nor did he talk down to his audiences.
Republicans, on the other hand, have made appealing to the ignorant and uneducated a centerpiece of their political campaigns.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, real estate mogul Trump famously said; “I love the poorly educated.”
Trump may love “the poorly educated,” but he didn’t want to join them. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics.
Donald Trump
And for all his notorious bragging about himself, Trump didn’t share this achievement with his audiences.
During the 2012 Presidential race, Republican candidates seemed to value ignorance as a prime requirement for entering the White House.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain thus excused his ignorance of the reasons for President Barack Obama’s intervention in Libya: “We need a leader, not a reader.”
Herman Cain
Texas Governor Rick Perry showed similar pride in not knowing there are nine judges on the United States Supreme Court:
“Well, obviously, I know there are nine Supreme Court judges. I don’t know how eight came out my mouth. But the, uh, the fact is, I can tell you—I don’t have memorized all of those Supreme Court judges. And, uh, ah–
“Here’s what I do know. That when I put an individual on the Supreme Court, just like I done in Texas, ah, we got nine Supreme Court justices in Texas, ah, they will be strict constructionists….”
And former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin rewrote history via “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”:
“He warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”
Actually, Revere was warning his fellow Americans about an impending British attack—as his celebrated catchphrase “The British are coming!” made clear.
Republicans have attacked President Obama for his Harvard education and articulate use of language. Among their taunts: “Hitler also gave good speeches.”
And they resent his having earned most of his income as a writer of two books: Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope.
As if being a writer is somehow subversive.
In that sense, Obama is a “throwback” to John F. Kennedy, who was similarly gifted with language as a writer and orator.
Kennedy was perhaps the last President to convince most Americans that they could overcome their problems through reason and open-mindedness.
White House painting of JFK
At American University on June 10, 1963, Kennedy called upon his fellow Americans to re-examine the events and attitudes that had led to the Cold War. And he declared that the search for peace was not futile:
“Some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament….But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief.
“It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable—that mankind is doomed—that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
“We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
“Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.”
Today, politicians from both parties cannot agree on solutions to even the most vital national problems.
On November 21, 2011, the 12 members of the “Super-Committee” of Congress, tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in cuts in government spending, threw up their hands in defeat.
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke with aides about a book he had just finished: Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, on the events leading to World War 1.
For him, the book’s most important revelation was how European leaders had blindly rushed into war, without thought to the possible consequences.
Kennedy said that he did not intend to make the same mistake. Having read his history, he was determined to learn from it.
And he did, for the world escaped all-out nuclear war.
When knowledge and literacy are attacked as “highfalutin’” arrogance, and ignorance and incoherence are embraced as sincerity, national decline and collapse lie just around the corner.
.jpg)
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
2003 IRAQ WAR, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, AL QAEDA, ALTERNET, ASIANS, BREITBART NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHILE, CIA, CLAUS VON STAFFENBERG, CNN, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, DAILY KOS, DAVID DUKE, DONALD TRUMP, EMPEROR TIBERIUS, FACEBOOK, FBI, GUATEMALA, HISPANICS, HOMOSEXUALS, INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, IRAN, JACABO ARBENZ, JAMES W. DOUGLAS, JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN KASICH, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, KU KLUX KLAN, LESBIANS, MARTIN NIEMOELLER, MEDICARE, Military, MOHAMMED MOSADDEGH, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MUSLIMS, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, NAVY SEALS, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, POLITICO, PRISONERS OF WAR, RAW STORY, SALON, SALVADORE ALLENDE, SLATE, SS, STEVE BANNON, TERRORISTS, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DISABLED, THE HOLOCAUST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, WEHRMACHT, WOMEN, WORLD WAR 11
IF TRUMP IS OUR HITLER, WHO WILL BE OUR STAUFFENBERG?: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2017 at 12:49 amOn July 20, 1944, a one-eyed, one-armed man tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941). And he had been seriously wounded in its service.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces–well before the much-feared Russians gained a foothold in Germany.
But Stauffenberg wanted him dead: A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But–how to do it?
Hitler was a closely-guarded target. He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
Adolf Hitler
But his single greatest protection–he claimed–was an instinct for danger. He would often suddenly change his schedule–to drop in where he was least expected. Or to suddenly depart an event where he was scheduled to stay a long time.
On November 9, 1939, this instinct saved his life. He had been set to give a long speech at a Munich beer hall before the “Old Fighters” of his storm troopers.
Sixteen years earlier on that day, in 1923, Hitler had led them in a disastrous attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. Police had put down the effort, killing and wounding about a score of storm troopers in the process.
Hitler himself had later been arrested, tried and convicted for treason–and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
But instead of proving to be the end of Nazism, the “Beer Hall Putsch” turned Hitler into a national celebrity. And it launched his career as a legitimate, ultimately successful politician.
So Hitler was expected to speak to his longtime supporters for a long time that evening. Instead, he suddenly cut short his speech and left the beer hall.
Forty-five minutes later, a bomb exploded inside a pillar–before which Hitler had been speaking.
Since then, a series of other assassination attempts had been made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it went off.
So now it was the turn of von Stauffenberg. He would carry his bomb–hidden in a briefcase–into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.
But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber. He meant to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis.
His bomb–also rigged with a time-fuse–would be left in the conference room while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Then, the coup–“Operation Valkyrie”–would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
So the Germans–both Nazi and anti-Nazi–knew what they could expect if soldiers of the Soviet Union reached German soil.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it–appropriately enough–“Wolf’s Lair.”
“Wolf’s Lair”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler–who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table.
Then Stauffenberg excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
But the Third Reich didn’t come to an end–because, as if miraculously, Hitler had survived.
Hitler shows off the site of the explosion
What had happened?
First, the conference location had been changed–from a wooden building to a concrete one. The concrete absorbed much of the blast.
Second, owing to the summer’s heat, Hitler had ordered all the windows–about ten–opened to let in a breeze. This allowed much of the force of the blast to be dispersed.
Third, and perhaps most important: Stauffenberg had carefully placed his briefcase near Hitler, who was standing next to a heavy oaken support of the conference table.
But after Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, who stood next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it–to the other side of the heavy oaken support.
When the bomb exploded, Hitler was partially shielded from its full blast. Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.
Share this: