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A FOOL FOR HIS CLIENT

In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2023 at 12:18 am

“A lawyer who pleads his own case has a fool for his client.”  

It’s a long-known legal maxim—and a time-tested one.

When you’re facing a major life stress—such as a criminal indictment—you can’t be objective on your own behalf. 

That’s why even brilliant lawyers hire other lawyers to represent them when they’re facing civil or criminal charges. 

Of course, if you’re Donald Trump, all bets are off.

On June 13, he became the first ex-President to be formally booked by the Justice Department on federal charges.

United States Department of Justice - Wikiwand

Seal of the Department of Justice

He’s now facing 37 felony charges based on his retaining and hiding classified government documents from authorities.

 These charges include: 

  • Willfully retaining national defense information: Storing 31 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
  • Conspiring to obstruct justice: Conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury.
  • Withholding a document or a record: Misleading one of his attorneys by moving boxes of classified documents so the attorney could not find or introduce them to the grand jury.
  • Concealing a document in a federal investigation: Hiding Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago from the FBI and causing a false certificate to be submitted to the FBI.
  • Scheme to conceal: Trump hid his continued possession of documents from the FBI and the grand jury.
  • False statements and representations: Trump caused another of his attorneys to make false statements to the FBI and grand jury about the search at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has long bragged that he is an expert on virtually everything. 

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consulted about foreign policy, Trump replied; “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.” 

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Donald Trump

Among the professions Trump has claimed to be an expert on 

TV ratings: “I know more about people who get ratings than anyone.”

ISIS: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.”

Social media: “I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?”

Courts: “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.”

Lawsuits: “[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I’m the king.”

Politicians: “I understand politicians better than anybody.”

Trade: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.” 

Nor is that by any means the end of his claimed expertise. If you believe him, he’s also an expert on:

  • Drones
  • Technology
  • The economy
  • Construction
  • Democrats
  • Infrastructure
  • Debt
  • Money
  • Taxes.

So it’s inevitable that, when you believe you’re the smartest person on earth, you aren’t going to pay attention to a mere criminal attorney—even when you’re facing the most serious crisis of your life.

Not only did he reject the advice of one attorney—he rejected the advice of several.

According to The Washington Post, Trump was extremely stubborn about negotiating with government officials. When one of his attorneys, Christopher Kise, suggested meeting with the Justice Department to negotiate a settlement that could avoid charges, Trump rejected that plan.

Instead, he listened to the advice of Tom Fitton, the president of the Right-wing group Judicial Watch. Fitton, who is not an attorney, told him he could keep the documents and that he should fight the Justice Department.

Tom Fitton

Tom Fitton 

Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Trump regularly cited Fitton to his advisers as he continued to fight the Justice Department. Several of those advisers blame Fitton for convincing Trump he had the right to keep the classified files.

Fitton told the Post he didn’t understand “any” of the indictment, saying he believed the charges levelled against the former president were a “trap.” 

This, of course, did not persuade Trump that he should listen to attorneys who did understand the legal dangers he was facing.

Fitton blamed Trump’s lawyers for not being more aggressive in fighting the subpoenas issued by the government.

“They had no business asking for the records….and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that,” Fitton told the Post. “There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”

But it won’t be Fitton who discovers whether the Justice Department has a weak case. It will be Trump. 

Trump has had serious difficulties in finding attorneys to represent him in this case—and in the ones almost certain to arise before the year is out.

Free Scales Of Justice Clipart, Download Free Scales Of Justice Clipart png images, Free ClipArts on Clipart Library

According to a June 14 story in Forbes: Trump was represented by two of his existing attorneys at his arraignment. They were not, however, specialists in national security and lacked a security clearance.

This last is a mandatory requirement, owing to the Espionage Act charges that involve classified national defense information.

Many attorneys have refused to represent Trump—including David O. Markus, who recently defended former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum against corruption charges. Another, Howard Srebnick, was not allowed to represent Trump after talking to his legal partners.

Among the reasons lawyers don’t want to work for Trump:

  • His difficult reputation;
  • Using attorneys as attack dogs or political aides;
  • Refusing to heed legal advice and
  • Not paying his legal bills.

Donald Trump faces two major enemies: The Justice Department—and the private legal community. 

SERVING THE LORD—OR THE DEVIL

In History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 17, 2019 at 12:06 am

Right-wingers, who support many of the same policies of Adolf Hitler, often attack liberals as Nazis.

This was especially true when President Barack Obama held office.  

But in 2016 a genuine authority on Fascism came forward to assess the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination.

“If Donald Trump become[s] the next president of the United States it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”  

So said Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. As a survivor of Auschwitz, Schloss knows something about Nazis.

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Eva Schloss

Then 86, Schloss met Anne in Amsterdam as a fellow refugee.  Both their families had taken refuge there after fleeing Nazi Germany.

Anne Frank spent four years hiding in an attic and keeping a diary. But in 1944 she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  

She was 15 when she died there of typhus in March, 1945. After the war, Eva Schloss’ mother, Fritzi, married Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

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Anne Frank

Eva was detained at the same time as Anne and sent to Auschwitz. She survived when the camp was liberated on January 27,1945.

In a January 27, 2016 essay for Newsweek, Schloss warned of dire consequences if Donald Trump became President: 

“During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.”  

She was 11 when her family immigrated to Belgium after Hitler forcibly annexed Austria in 1938.  

“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture….

“I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders,” said Schloss, who lives in London. “Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees.”  

And on February 18, 2016, Pope Francis also waded into the 2016 Presidential race with his own assessment of Trump.  

During a six-day trip to Mexico, a reporter asked the Pontiff: What did he think  of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border and expel millions of illegal aliens now living in the United States? 

“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian,” replied the Pope. “This is not the gospel.” 

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Pope Francis

Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” to Trump because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently.

But he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”

Trump, a Presbyterian, responded minutes later: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

Trump has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama—a self-described Christian—as a secret Muslim.

Donald Trump

On February 21, 2016, for example, he tweeted: “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of [Supreme Court] Justice [Antonin] Scalia if it were held in a mosque.”  

Obama had paid tribute to Scalia at the Supreme Court on the day prior to the funeral. He declined to attend the service because his heavy security detail might disrupt the ceremony.

“I am proud to be a Christian,” added Trump, “and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”  

Nor did he stop there: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.  

“ISIS would have been eradicated, unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.” 

Trump thus implied that the Pope’s future security depended on the United States generally—and on Trump in particular.  

And he ignored the fact that, since September, 2014, the United States Air Force had been bombing ISIS convoys in Iraq and Syria.

On Easter Sunday, 2019—more than two years into Trump’s Presidency—ISIS bombed a series of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, killing at least 321 people.

Trump has long been critical of the Pope’s stand on immigration.

As the Pope undertook his trip to Mexico, Trump told Fox Business Network that he didn’t think Francis understood “the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.

“I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is,” he said. “They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.” 

A Vatican spokesman replied: “The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace.”  

For millions of Jews and Christians, the election of 2016 has turned into a referendum:  Am I serving the Lord—or Satan?

TRUMP ON THANKSGIVING: “I’M THANKFUL FOR—ME”

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 23, 2018 at 12:09 am

Thanksgiving Day is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a legal holiday for people to be thankful for what they have.” 

So what did President Donald Trump give thanks for on November 22, 2018?

“For having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn’t believe it. 

“And I mean, you see, but so much stronger people can’t even believe it. When I see foreign leaders they say we cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago. Made a lot of progress.”

Anyone expecting Trump to show even the slightest humility on this occasion had only to recall his first appearance at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

This occurred on January 21, 2017—his first full day as President.

Officially, he was there to pay tribute to the men and women who serve on the front lines of America’s Intelligence community. Who dedicate their lives to finding out when and where America’s enemies are planning to strike—and to countering those threats.

And now Trump was appearing before what, to CIA employees, was the agency’s most sacred site: The star-studded memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA officers who had fallen in the line of duty.

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Donald Trump at the CIA

So what did Trump spend much of his time talking about?

Himself, of course.

Here are the major excerpts:

“….You know, when I was young and when I was — of course, I feel young. I feel like I’m 30, 35, 39. Somebody said, are you young? I said, I think I’m young. You know, I was stopping — when we were in the final month of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young….

“When I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade. We’d win with wars….We don’t win anymore. The old expression, “to the victor belong the spoils” — you remember.

“I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil….

“Now, I said it for economic reasons. But if you think about it….if we kept the oil you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay.  Maybe you’ll have another chance….

“And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.

“And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite — exactly. And they understand that, too.

“And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech?  I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. 

“I say, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, the field was — it looked like a million, million and a half people….

“And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech….

“But, you know, we have something that’s amazing because we had — it looked — honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was….

Crowds at Trump and Obama Inaugurals

“We had 250,000 people literally around — you know, in the little bowl that we constructed. That was 250,000 people. The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed. So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.

“So a reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right?

“I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record….that can ever be broken.  Do you agree with that? What do you think?”

* * * * *

At least one former CIA director thought that Trump’s remarks were “despicable.” In a tweeted statement, Nick Shapiro, John Brennan’s former deputy chief of staff, said:

“Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes. Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself.” 

MERCENARIES: NO FEAR OF GOD, NO LOYALTY TO MAN

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 7, 2017 at 12:03 am

On October 4, four American Special Forces soldiers were ambushed and gunned down at the border of Niger and Mali.

For 12 days after the tragedy, President Donald Trump said nothing.

Then, during an October 16 press conference in the White House Rose Garden, a reporter asked him about his silence.

Donald Trump Pentagon 2017.jpg

Donald Trump

So Trump claimed—falsely—that earlier Presidents—including Barack Obama—had  never or rarely called or written family members of soldiers who died on duty.

But it was his call to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, that ignited a firestorm.

According to Florida Democratic Representative Frederica Wilson, Trump’s condolence call was brutally insensitive.  Wilson was riding in a limousine with Johnson and heard the conversation on speakerphone.

“He knew what was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway,” Wilson quoted Trump as telling the grieving widow.

But maybe Sergeant Johnson didn’t know what he was signing up for.

On October 19, Pentagon officials said that a private contractor airlifted some of the troops from the scene.

Trump had sent a private aviation contractor—instead of the U.S. military—to retrieve the bodies of the four soldiers killed in Niger.

Robyn Mack, an official for U.S. Africa Command, said Texas-based Berry Aviation was “on alert during the incident and conducted casualty evacuation and transport for US and partner forces.”

Sergeant Johnson’s body was left behind when the bodies of his three fellow soldiers were evacuated. His remains were recovered two days after the extraction by Nigerien troops. 

Even worse, his corpse had been so corrupted by heat that the Pentagon demanded a closed coffin for his burial service.

Contractor aircraft are typically not armed, though their crews may carry side-arms for personal protection.

It’s possible that lightly-armed private contractors were so eager to leave the danger area they did a slapdash search for bodies—and accidentally left Johnson’s behind.

Berry Aviation has also done Defense Department work in Afghanistan, Central African Republic and Burkina Faso. 

Since the end of the Cold War, the American military and Intelligence communities have grown increasingly dependent on private contractors. In the past, such groups were called mercenaries.

In his 2007 bestseller, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner writes:

“Patriotism for profit became a $50-billion-a-year business….The [CIA] began contracting out thousands of jobs to fill the perceived void by the budget cuts that began in 1992.

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“A CIA officer could file his retirement papers, turn in his blue identification badge, go to work for a much better salary at a military contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Booz Allen Hamilton, then return to the CIA the next day, wearing a green badge….”

Much of the CIA became totally dependent on mercenaries. They appeared to work for the agency, but their loyalty was actually to their private companies. The CIA thus had two workforces-–but the private one was paid far better.

Wrote Weiner: “Legions of CIA veterans quit their posts to sell their services to the agency by writing analyses, creating cover for overseas officers, setting up communications networks, and running clandestine operations.”

One such company was Total Intelligence Solutions, founded in 2007 by Cofer Black, who had been the chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center on 9/11.

His partners were Robert Richer, formerly the associate deputy director of operations at the CIA, and Enrique Prado, who had been Black’s chief of counter-terror operations at the agency.

Future CIA hires followed suit: Sign up for five years, win that prized CIA “credential” and sign up for far more money with a private security company.  

This situation met with full support from Right-wing “pro-business” members of Congress and Presidents like George W. Bush.

They had long championed the private sector as inherently superior to the public one. And they saw no danger that a man dedicated to enriching himself might put greed ahead of safeguarding his country.

One of Trump’s key military advisers is Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. Under President George W. Bush, the now-infamous mercenary company got $1 billion to provide security for American officials and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Blackwater was also accused of abusing Iraqis and engaging in torture.

There were, however, others who could have offered a timely warning against this use of mercenaries-–had there been leaders willing to heed it.

One of these, reaching back more than 500 years ago, was the Florentine statesman, Niccolo Machiavelli, who famously warned of the dangers of relying on mercenaries.

Image result for Images of Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli

In The Prince, Machiavelli writes:

“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.

“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to man, and destruction is deferred only as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”

Centuries after Machiavelli’s warning, Americans are realizing the bitter truth of it firsthand.

ISLAMIC TERRORISTS: PC VS. REALITY: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 3, 2017 at 12:13 am

Islamics are quick to assert that they, too, are Americans. But getting Islamics to point out the terrorists within their ranks is an entirely different matter.

According to author Ronald Kessler, this has caused serious problems for the FBI. In his 2011 book, The Secrets of the FBI, Kessler notes the refusal of the Islamic community to identify known or potential terrorists within its ranks.

Says Arthur M. Cummings, the Bureau’s executive assistant director for national security: “I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in [Washington] D.C. And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”

“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants. It’s the Muslims.”

Occasionally, Muslims will condemn Al Qaeda. But “rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about.’” said Cummings.

“They don’t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community. Well, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everybody already knows it. The horse has left the barn.

“So there’s a lot of talk about engagement. But, realistically, we’ve got a long, long way to go.”

At one community meeting, an Islamic leader suggested to Cummings that then-FBI director Robert Meuller III should pose for a picture with his group’s members. The reason: To show that Islamics are partners in the “war on terror.”

“When you bring to my attention real extremists who are here to plan and do something, who are here supporting terrorism,” said Cummings, “then I promise you, I will have the director stand up on the stage with you.”

“That could never happen,” replied the Islamic leader. “We would lose our constituency. We could never admit to bringing someone to the FBI.”  

Cummings has no use for such Politically Correct terms as “man-caused disasters” to refer to terrorism. Nor does he shy away from terms such as “jihadists” or “Islamists.”

“Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says bluntly.  

In May, 2014, Steven Emerson, a nationally recognized expert on terrorism, posted an ad in The New York Times, warning about the dangers of PC-imposed censorship:

“Our nation’s security and its cherished value of free speech has been endangered by the bullying campaigns of radical Islamic groups, masquerading as ‘civil rights’ organizations, to remove any reference to the Islamist motivation behind Islamic terrorist attacks.

“These groups have pressured or otherwise colluded with Hollywood, the news media, museums, book publishers, law enforcement and the Obama Administration in censoring the words ‘Islamist’, ‘Islamic terrorism’, ‘radical Islam’ and ‘jihad’ in discussing or referencing the threat and danger of Islamic terrorism.

“This is the new form of the jihadist threat we face. It’s an attack on one of our most sacred freedoms—free speech—and it endangers our very national security. How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”

He has a point—and a highly legitimate one.

Imagine the United States fighting World War II—and President Franklin Roosevelt banning the use of “fascist” in referring to Nazi Germany or “imperialist” in describing Imperial Japan.

Imagine CNN-like coverage of the Nazi extermination camps, with their piles of rotting corpses and smoking gas ovens, while a commentator reminds us that “Nazism is an ideology of peace.”

Then try to imagine how the United States could have won that life-and-death struggle under such unrealistic and self-defeating restrictions. 

It couldn’t have done so then. And it can’t do so now.

Then consider these Islamic terrorist outrages of our own time: 

  • The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans. 
  • The 2004 bombing of Madrid’s commuter train system. 
  • The attack on the London subway in 2005.  The killing of 13 U.S. Army personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim army major in 2009. 
  • The bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013.
  • The kidnapping of 300 Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram in 2014. 
  • The slaughter of 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine that had published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed in 2015.
  • The slaughter of more than 100 people in ISIS attacks across Paris in 2015.
  • A series of deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, killing 31 and injuring 270 in 2016.
  • The mashing of eight bicyclists and pedestrians by a truck-driving ISIS supporter in 2017.

In every one of these attacks, the perpetrators openly announced that their actions had been motivated by their Islamic beliefs.

In his groundbreaking book, The Clash of Civilizations (1996) Samuel Huntington, the late political scientist at Harvard University, noted:

The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”  

The West may not be at war with Islam—as countless Western politicians repeatedly assert. But Islamics have no qualms about declaring that they are at war with the West.

ISLAMIC TERRORISTS: PC VS. REALITY: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 2, 2017 at 12:12 am

The 2016 Boston Marathon was scheduled for April 18, 2016.

And local, State and Federal law enforcement authorities had been planning security for the event since October, 2015.

So it was only natural that these agencies wanted the public to know the Marathon would be as safe as more than 5,000 law enforcement officers could make it.  

The Boston Marathon 

“‘Leave the worrying to us’: Security Ramped Up for Boston Marathon,” read the headline of the April 16 issue of USA Today.

And it gave the reason for this: Three years earlier, on April 15, 2013, two bombers had wreaked havoc at the finish line of the race.

It also named the bombers—brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev—whose terrorist act killed three people and injured about 264 others.  

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

It further noted that Tamerlan had died in a shootout with police three days after the marathon–and police had captured Dzhohkar several hours later. (He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death.)

But the story said nothing about their citing Islam as the reason for their murderous rampage.

Click here: ‘Leave the worrying to us’: Security ramped up for Boston Marathon

The April 16 edition of The Boston Patch carried this headline: “Boston Marathon 2016: Security Changes You Can’t See All Around You.”

The article stated that most of these precautions couldn’t be revealed. Then it added that even though law enforcement officials hadn’t identified a credible threat to this year’s Boston Marathon, “recent events make the world feel less safe today than in 2013.” 

But the article said nothing about those “recent events,” such as:

  • In 2013, two Muslims butchered and beheaded a British soldier on a busy London street.
  • In 2014, an ax-wielding Muslim slashed two New York police officers before being shot by other cops. 
  • In 2015, Muslims slaughtered 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine for publishing cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed. 
  • In 2015, more than 100 people were murdered in ISIS attacks across Paris. 
  • In 2016, a series of Islamic terrorist bombings in Brussels killed 31 and injured more than 300.

Nor did the story say that all of these “recent events” were carried out by followers of the Islamic religion. Or that the perpetrators openly announced that their actions had been motivated by their Islamic beliefs.

Click here: Brussels attacks add urgency to Boston Marathon security | US News

On April 6, 2016, The Boston Globe announced: “Tight Security Planned for Upcoming Boston Marathon.”

The story noted that, in drawing up their security arrangements, “authorities analyzed terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, Calif., and Brussels in recent months.”

The San Bernardino attack had occurred on December 2, 2015. 

The story said that Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, had slaughtered 14 people and wounded 22 at a Department of Public Health training event and birthday party.  

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Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook

But the article did not inform readers that Farook and Malik were Muslims acting in the name of Islam.

The story quoted Harold Shaw, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Field Office, as saying: “San Bernardino taught us something very significant. They [the killers] were not on the radar.”

But the article omitted “something very significant”: Farook and Malik had melded perfectly into American society before their outrage.  

Thus, the only factor that could have put them “on the radar” as potential terrorists was their being Muslims.

And in an America driven by Political Correctness, noting that would have been verboten.

Click here: Tight security planned for upcoming Boston Marathon – The Boston Globe

NBC News carried a story on “How the Boston Marathon is Using Security Technology.”  

The story then described how police used a high-tech partner, Esri, to track, in real-time, the progress of the morning’s race.  

“When you look [at] security, there’s three legs to the stool: People, process and technology,” said Arnette Heintze, CEO and co-founder of Hillard Heintze, an investigation and security risk management company. 

Click here: How the Boston Marathon is Using Security Technology – NBC News

Yet for all the gushing kudos leveled at the new uses of sophisticated technology for keeping people safe, one thing was conspicuously ignored.

The opening paragraph, “Three years after a deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon….” left unnamed those had made the use of this technology necessary–Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  

Nor did it mention that Dzhokhar had laid out, in a note, his reason for attacking innocent men and women: “We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.  

“Well at least that’s how Muhammed wanted it to be forever. The ummah [Islamic community] is beginning to rise.  

“Know you are righting men who look into the barrel of your gun and see heaven, how how can you compete with that. We are promised victory and will surely get it.”

Click here: Text from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s note left in Watertown boat – The Boston Globe

Of all the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates in 2016, only Donald Trump dared to say the politically un-sayable: Islam is at war with us.  

And this candor—coupled with repeated Islamic atrocities—gained him both the Republican nomination and the White House.  

TYRANTS AND EMPATHY

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 19, 2017 at 12:21 pm

On October 4, four American Special Forces soldiers were ambushed and slain on the border of Niger and Mali. Their killers were members of an ISIS-affiliated guerrilla group.

The next day, President Donald Trump attacked one of his favorite targets—the free press—as “fake news.”

Over the weekend of October 7-8, Trump went golfing. Then he took to Twitter and let his venom flow.  His victims included:

  • The National Football League;
  • Puerto Rico;
  • North Korea;
  • Bob Corker, Republican United States Senator from Tennessee and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

For 12 days after the tragedy, Trump said nothing.

Then, during an October 16 press conference in the White House Rose Garden, a reporter asked him about his silence.

So Trump claimed—falsely—that earlier Presidents—including Barack Obama—had  never or rarely called or written family members of soldiers who died on duty.

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Donald Trump

But it was his call to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, that ignited a firestorm.

According to Florida Democratic Representative Frederica Wilson, Trump’s condolence call was brutally insensitive.  Wilson was riding in a limousine with Johnson and heard the conversation on speakerphone.

“He knew what was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway,” Wilson quoted Trump as telling the grieving widow.

Cowanda Jones-Johnson, a family member who raised Johnson, told CNN that Wilson’s account of the call was “very accurate.”

Veterans such as Arizona United States Senator John McCain have expressed their outrage at Trump’s callousness. But this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.

On January 21, Donald Trump—on his first full day as President—visited CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Officially, he was there to pay tribute to the men and women who dedicate their lives to discovering when and where America’s enemies are planning to strike.  And to countering those threats.

Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency.svg

And now Trump was appearing before what, to CIA employees, was the agency’s most sacred site: The star-studded memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA officers who had fallen in the line of duty.

So Trump spent much of his time talking about himself.

Among the worst examples:  

  • Somebody said, are you young?  I said, I think I’m young.  You know, I was stopping—when we were in the final months of that campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops. Speeches, speeches, in front of 25,000, 30,000 people, 15,000, 19,000 from stop to stop. I feel young….
  • And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? I’ve been given good reviews. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field….
  • And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech…..
  • So a reporter for Time magazine—and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.  

Obama vs. Trump inaugural crowds | Facebook

Crowds at Trump and Obama Inaugurals

In February, Trump approved and ordered a Special Forces raid in Yemen on an Al-Qaeda stronghold.

The assault resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.

Disavowing any responsibility for the failure, Trump said:

“This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do. They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do—the generals—who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”

* * * * *

Seventy-four years before Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, Adolf Hitler suffered a blow from which he never recovered: The surrender of his once-powerful Sixth Army at Stalingrad.

For five months, 330,000 of the German army’s finest troops had fought to capture that city on the Volga River. Then they had been surrounded by even larger Russian armies and became the besieged. 

Finally, on February 2, 1943, their commanding general, Friedrich Paulus, surrendered.

Adolf Hitler flew into a rage.

  • Not at the loss of 150,000 Germans who had been killed.
  • Not at the agonies of the tens of thousands of others wounded.
  • Not at the suffering of the 91,000 men taken prisoner.

No, what infuriated Hitler was the refusal of General Friedrich Paulus to commit suicide rather than surrender.

Knowing that no German field marshal had ever allowed himself to be taken prisoner, Hitler had, by wireless, promoted Paulus—shortly before he chose to do so.

“When the nerves break down, there is nothing left but to admit that one can’t handle the situation and to shoot oneself,” screamed Hitler.

“This hurts me so much because the heroism of so many soldiers is nullified by one single characterless weakling.”

In April, 1945, with Russian troops about to capture Berlin, Hitler, 50 feet below ground in a fortified bunker, blamed his defeat on the Germans who had given him their unconditional loyalty for 12 years. 

For egomaniacal tyrants, blame always falls on others.

KNOWING THE ENEMY, BUT REFUSING TO NAME IT: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 27, 2016 at 1:25 am

Since October, 2015, local, State and Federal law enforcement agencies had been planning security for the 2016 Boston Marathon.

With the event scheduled for April 18, authorities wanted to assure the public that the Marathon would be as safe as more than 5,000 law enforcement officers could make it.

Yet, many of the articles written about security for this upcoming event refused to identify the enemy responsible for spending millions of dollars and stationing thousands of local, State and Federal law enforcement officers to protect 30,800 runners and one million spectators.

That enemy: Islamic terrorism.

On April 18, Massive.com carried a story on “Boston Marathon: 2016 security: A look inside the MEMA bunker in Framingham.”

The article noted that on the day of the Marathon–April 18–more than 200 members of 60 Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies gathered at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA)

Among the agencies represented: The State police, the FBI, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Their task: “Keeping 30,800 runners and one million spectators safe.”

But–safe from what?  Or who?

The article noted that, owing to the 2013 attack:

  • More ambulances and wheelchairs were positioned near the finish line.
  • Medical tents were also positioned closer to the finish line.
  • Communications were improved with trauma centers and operating rooms.
  • Each community had safe havens where runners could take shelter in an emergency–and could be picked up by buses.
So there could be no doubt that a huge effort–and expense–had been undertaken to protect tens of thousands of people attending this event.
Yet there was absolutely no mention as to what enemy could justify going to such huge expense in effort and money.
Could it be…Islamic terrorists?
During the Cold War, the Government had never hesitated to name the Soviet Union as America’s foremost enemy.
The United States has been the target of Islamic attacks since the 1970s.
In his groundbreaking work, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote in 1996:
“During the 15 years between 1980 and 1995…the United States engaged in 17 military operations in the Middle East, all of them directed against Muslims.  No comparable pattern of U.S. military operations occurred against the people of any other civilization.

Samuel P. Huntington (2004 World Economic Forum).jpg

Samuel P. Huntington

On September 11, 2001, Islamics turned four passenger jetliners into flying bombs and slaughtered 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
Since 9/11, the United States has been actively engaged in military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
The war that Huntington warned was coming has erupted into fullscale conflict, with no end in sight.

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Yet the most important officials in Washington, D.C. refuse to name the enemy they are spending billions of dollars to fight–and protect American citizens against.

As a result, those officials who dare to name that enemy stand out as beacons of honesty and courage.

One of these is Arthur M. Cummings, the FBI’s executive assistant director for national security.

Cummings has no use for such Politically Correct terms as “man-caused disasters” in referring to terrorism.  Nor does he shrink from terms such as “jihadists” or “Islamists.”

“Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says bluntly.

“I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here [Washington, D.C.].  And he said ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’

“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom are seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings.  “It’s not the Irish.  It’s not the French.  It’s not the Catholics.  It’s not the Protestants.  It’s the Muslims.”

In May, 2014, Steven Emerson, a nationally recognized expert on terrorism, posted an ad in The New York Times, warning about the dangers of PC-imposed censorship:

“Or nation’s security and its cherished value of free speech has been endangered by the bullying campaigns of radical Islamic groups, masquerading as ‘civil rights’ organizations, to remove any reference to the Islamist motivation behind Islamic terrorist acts.

“These groups have pressured or otherwise colluded with Hollywood, the news media, museums, book publishers, law enforcement and the Obama Administration in censoring the words ‘Islamist,’ ‘Islamic terrorism,’ ‘radical Islam’ and ‘jihad’ in discussing or referencing the threat and danger of Islamic terrorism.

“This is the new form of the jihadist threat we face.  It’s an attack on one of our most sacred freedoms–free speech–and it endangers our very national identity.

“How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”

Emerson has a point–of utmost relevance.

Imagine the United States fighting World War II–and President Franklin D. Roosevelt banning the use of “Fascist” in referring to Nazi Germany or “Imperialist” in describing Imperial Japan.

Imagine CNN-like coverage of the Nazi extermination camps, with their piles of rotting corpses and smoking gas ovens, while a commentator reminds us that “Nazism is an ideology of peace.”

Then try to imagine how the United States could have won that life-and-death struggle under such unrealistic and self-defeating restrictions.

It couldn’t have done so then.  And it can’t do so now.

KNOWING THE ENEMY, REFUSING TO NAME IT: PART ONE (OF TWO)

In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 26, 2016 at 12:05 am

The 2016 Boston Marathon was scheduled for April 18.

And local, State and Federal law enforcement authorities had been planning security for the event since October, 2015.

So it was only natural that these agencies wanted the public to know the Marathon would be as safe as more than 5,000 law enforcement officers could make it.  

The Boston Marathon 

“‘Leave the worrying to us’: Security Ramped Up for Boston Marathon,” read the headline of the April 16 issue of USA Today.

And it gave the reason for this: Three years earlier, on April 15, 2013, two bombers had wreaked havoc at the finish line of the race.

It also named the bombers–brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev–whose terrorist act killed three people and injured about 264 others.  

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

It further noted that Tamerlan had died in a shootout with police three days after the marathon–and police had captured Dzhohkar several hours later.  (He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death.)

The story said nothing, however, about their citing Islam as the reason for their murderous rampage.

Click here: ‘Leave the worrying to us’: Security ramped up for Boston Marathon

The April 16 edition of The Boston Patch carried this headline: “Boston Marathon 2016: Security Changes You Can’t See All Around You.”

The article stated that most of these precautions couldn’t be revealed.  Then it added that even though law enforcement officials hadn’t identified a credible threat to this year’s Boston Marathon, “recent events make the world feel less safe today than in 2013.”

But the article said nothing about those “recent events,” such as:

  • In 2013, two Muslims butchered and beheaded a British soldier on a busy London street.
  • In 2014, an axe-wielding Muslim slashed two New York police officers, before being shot by other cops.
  • In 2015, Muslims slaughtered 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine for publishing cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed.
  • In 2015, more than 100 people were murdered in ISIS attacks across Paris.
  • In 2016, a series of Islamic terrorist bombing attacks in Brussels killed 31 and injured more than 300.

Nor did the story say that all of these “recent events” were carried out by followers of the Islamic religion.

Click here: Brussels attacks add urgency to Boston Marathon security | US News

On April 6, The Boston Globe announced: “Tight security planned for upcoming Boston Marathon.”

The story noted that, in drawing up their security arrangements, “authorities analyzed terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, Calif., and Brussels in recent months.”

The San Bernardino attack had occurred on December 2, 2015. 

The story said that Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, had slaughtered 14 people and wounded 22 at a Department of Public Health training event and birthday party.  

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Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook

But the article did not inform readers that Farook and Malik were Muslims acting in the name of Islam.

The story quoted Harold Shaw, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Field Office, as saying: “San Bernardino taught us something very significant. They [the killers] were not on the radar.”

But the article omitted “something very significant”: Farook and Malik had melded perfectly into American society before their outrage.  Thus, the only factor that could have put them “on the radar” as potential terrorists was their being Muslims.

And in an America driven by Political Correctness, noting that would have been verboten.

Click here: Tight security planned for upcoming Boston Marathon – The Boston Globe

NBC News carried a story on “How the Boston Marathon is Using Security Technology.”  

The story then described how police used a high-tech partner, Esri, to track, in real-time, the progress of the morning’s race.  

“When you look [at] security, there’s three legs to the stool: People, process and technology,” said Arnette Heintze, CEO and co-founder of Hillard Heintze, an investigation and security risk management company. 

Click here: How the Boston Marathon is Using Security Technology – NBC News

Yet for all the gushing kudos leveled at the new uses of sophisticated technology for keeping people safe, one thing was conspicuously ignored.

The opening paragraph, “Three years after a deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon….” left unnamed those had made the use of this technology necessary–Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  

Nor did it mention that Dzhokhar had laid out, in a note, his reason for attacking innocent men and women: “We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.  

“Well at least that’s how Muhammed wanted it to be forever. The ummah [Islamic community] is beginning to rise.  

“Know you are righting men who look into the barrel of your gun and see heaven, how how can you compete with that. We are promised victory and will surely get it.”

Click here: Text from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s note left in Watertown boat – The Boston Globe

TRUMP: THE LORD OR THE DEVIL?

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2016 at 9:48 am

Ironically, Right-wingers, who support many of the same policies of Adolf Hitler, often attack liberals as Nazis–especially President Barack Obama.  

But now a genuine authority on Fascism has come forward to assess the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination.

“If Donald Trump become[s] the next president of the US it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”  

So says Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. As a survivor of Auschwitz, Schloss should know something about Nazis.

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Eva Schloss

Now 86, Schloss met Anne in Amsterdam as a fellow refugee.  Both their families had taken refuge there after fleeing Nazi Germany.

Anne Frank spent four years hiding in an attic and keeping a diary. But in 1944 she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  

She was 15 when she died there of typhus in March 1945. After the war, Eva Schloss’ mother, Fritzi, married Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

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Anne Frank

Eva was detained at the same time as Anne and sent to Auschwitz. She survived when the camp was liberated on January 27,1945.

In a January 27th essay for Newsweek, Schloss warned of dire consequences if Donald Trump became President.

“During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.”  

She was 11 when her family immigrated to Belgium after Hitler forcibly Annexed Austria in 1938.  

“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture….

“I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders,” said Schloss, who lives in London. “Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees.”  

And on February 18, Pope Francis also waded into the 2016 Presidential race with his own assessment of Trump.  

The comment came in answer to a question by one of several reporters who were accompanying the Pope to Rome from a six-day trip to Mexico.  

What, a reporter asked the Pontiff, did he think of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border and expel millions of illegal aliens now living in the United States?

“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian,” replied the Pope. “This is not the gospel.” 

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Pope Francis

Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” to Trump because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently.

But he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”

Trump, a Presbyterian, responded minutes later: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

Trump has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama–a self-described Christian–as a secret Muslim.

Donald Trump

On February 21, for example, he tweeted: “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of [Supreme Court] Justice [Antonin] Scalia if it were held in a mosque.”  

Obama had paid tribute to Scalia at the Supreme Court on the day prior to the funeral. He declined to attend the service because his heavy security detail might disrupt the ceremony.

“I am proud to be a Christian,” added Trump, “and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”  

Nor did he stop there: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.  

“ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.”

Trump thus implied that the Pope’s future security depended on the United States generally–and on Donald Trump in particular.  

And he clearly ignored the fact that, since September, 2014, the United States Air Force has been bombing ISIS convoys in Iraq and Syria.

Trump has long been critical of the Pope’s stand on immigration.

As the Pope undertook his trip to Mexico, Trump told Fox Business Network that he didn’t think Francis understood “the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.

“I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is,” he said. “They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.” 

A Vatican spokesman replied: “The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace.”  

For millions of Jews and Catholics, the election of 2016 may turn on how they answer the question: Am I serving the Lord–or the devil?