Posts Tagged ‘SAUDI ARABIA’
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PENTAGON, POLITICO, RAW STORY, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SLATE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SYRIA, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIRD REICH, TIME, TURKEY, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 3, 2017 at 12:02 am
When historians—and ordinary citizens—think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann—yes.
But Werner Willikens? Why him?
Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
Ian Kershaw is a British historian and author who has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society—everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street—were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw did not minimize the historical role played by Hitler and his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.’”
With the Third Reich dying in the flames of Berlin, at about 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 72 years later—to 4:42 p.m. on January 27, 2017.
Newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signs into law an executive order that:
- Suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Bars Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocks entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Trump’s executive order read: “In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.
“The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”
President Donald Trump
But that statement excluded three extremely troubling facts.
First: Over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks within the United States by immigrants from any of those seven banned countries.
Second, approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. Most of those victims died during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In fact, 15 of the 19 highjackers who took part in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind of the attacks, was himself a Saudi from a wealthy family with strong ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Third, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump lists companies on his FEC filing possibly related to a development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, located outside Mecca: DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager LLC, DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager Member Corp., THC Jeddah Hotel Manager LLC and THC Jeddah Hotel Manager Member Corp.
Trump lists two companies on his FEC filing possibly related to business in Egypt: Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
On January 11, Trump said that:
- He would resign from his positions at the Trump Organization but that he would not divest his ownership.
- The organization would be managed by his sons Eric and Don Jr. and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
- The organization would terminate pending deals and not seek new international business.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said that these measures did not resolve the President’s conflict-of-interest problems and called them “meaningless.”
It was after Trump signed his executive order that the true consequences of “working towards the Fuhrer”—or President—were fully revealed.
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AP, BBC, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMODUS, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MORNING JOE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, POLITICO, QATER, RAW STORY, REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, REUTERS, REX TILLERSON, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SAUDI ARABIA, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PRINCE, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on July 4, 2017 at 12:30 am
If Donald Trump ever read The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman, he’s decided he doesn’t need it. And his ever-falling popularity among Americans clearly proves his mistake.
First published in 1532, The Prince lays bare the qualities needed by a successful political leader. At the top of this list must be creating and preserving a sense of his own dignity. Thus, he must appear to be a combination of mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion.
As Machiavelli puts it:
A prince must take great care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of the above-named five qualities, and he should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump has violated Machiavelli’s injunction on integrity with a vengeance. He has been caught in repeated falsehoods–so many, in fact, that the New York Times gave over its June 23 front page to a story headlined: “Trump’s Lies.”
According to the Times, Trump “told public falsehoods or lies every day for his first 40 days.”
“There is simply no precedent,” went the Times‘ opinion piece, “for an American president to spend so much time telling untruths. Every president has shaded the truth or told occasional whoppers.
“No other president—of either party—has behaved as Trump is behaving. He is trying to create an atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant.”
Donald Trump
Machiavelli also advises:
[He] must contrive that his actions show grandeur, spirit, gravity and fortitude….
It’s hard to convey those qualities in a series of 140-character rants on Twitter. Yet, from the start of his Presidency, Trump has put his ambitions, excuses and rants on social media.
As CNN Political Analyst Julian Zelizer outlined in a July 3 article:
“Putting aside the specific content of the recent blasts from the Oval smart phone, the President’s ongoing Twitter storms make all leaders uneasy. The heads of government in most nations prefer a certain amount of predictability and decorum from other heads of state.
“To have one of the most powerful people in the room being someone who is willing to send out explosive and controversial statements through social media, including nasty personal attacks or an edited video of him physically assaulting the media, does not make others….feel very confident about how he will handle deliberations with them.”
Trump’s apologists have fiercely defended his tweetstorms, claiming they allow him to bypass the media and “communicate directly with the American people.”
On June 29, Trump attacked the physical appearance of Mika Brzezinski, a frequent journalistic critic on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, his deputy press secretary, excused it: “The president has been attacked mercilessly on personal accounts by members on that program. And I think he’s been very clear that when he gets attacked he’s going to hit back.”
On July 2, Trump tweeted a video showing him punching a wrestler–with a CNN logo imposed over his face.
The tweet brought Trump widespread criticism. Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the video was a “threat of physical violence against journalists” and “beneath the office of the presidency.”
Trump’s mania for tweeting has often led him to contradict statements by his administration’s highest officials.
In early June, Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Qater because of its alleged support for terrorism in the Persian Gulf. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson publicly said that the United States hoped to mediate an end to the dispute.
But the next day, Trump tweeted: “During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar—look!”
Machiavelli urged rulers to safeguard their reputations:
…A prince must show himself a lover of merit, give preferment to the able, and honor those who excel in every art.
Besides this, he ought, at convenient seasons of the year, to keep the people occupied with festivals and shows….mingle with them from time to time, and give them an example of his humanity and munificence, always upholding, however, the majesty of his dignity, which must never be allowed to fail in anything whatever.
Rulers who disregard this advice do so at their peril:
A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed. But when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody….
…[The Roman Emperor Commodus], being of a cruel and bestial disposition, in order to…exercise his rapacity on the people, he sought to favor the soldiers and render them licentious.
On the other hand, by not maintaining his dignity, by often descending into the theater to fight with gladiators and committing other contemptible actions…he became despicable in the eyes of the soldiers. And being hated on the one hand and despised on the other, he was conspired against and killed.
Donald Trump has repeatedly violated these lessons. It remains to be seen if he will pay a price for doing so.
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MUSLIM REFUGEES, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PENTAGON, POLITICO, RAW STORY, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SLATE, SOMALIA, STALINGRAD (MOVIE), SUDAN, SYRIA, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIRD REICH, TIME, TURKEY, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 1, 2017 at 12:01 am
In Stalingrad, a 1993 war movie, a platoon of German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules–and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them–triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
According to Homeland Security officials, 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access; 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America. Eighty-one people who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she did not force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who have not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 8, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump–a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance–to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see–if they had wanted to see them:
- His threats against his political opponents;
- His five-year “birtherism” slander against President Obama–which even he was forced to disavow;
- His rampant egomania;
- His attacks on everyone who dared to disagree with him;
- His refusal to release his tax returns;
- His history of bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him;
- His bragging about sexually abusing women (“Grab them by the pussy”).
Those who voted against Trump are now learning the meaning of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.”
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PENTAGON, POLITICO, RAW STORY, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SLATE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SYRIA, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIRD REICH, TIME, TURKEY, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 31, 2017 at 12:11 am
When historians–and ordinary citizens–think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann–yes.
But Werner Willikens? Why him?
Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
Ian Kershaw is a British historian and author who has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society–everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street–were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw did not minimize the historical role played by Hitler and his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.'”
With the Third Reich dying in the flames of Berlin, at about 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 72 years later–to 4:42 p.m. on January 27, 2017.
Newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signs into law an executive order that:
- Suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Bars Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocks entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Trump’s executive order reads as follows: “In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.
“The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”
President Donald Trump
But that statement excludes three extremely troubling facts.
First: Over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks within the United States by immigrants from any of those seven banned countries.
Second, approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. Most of those victims died during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In fact, 15 of the 19 highjackers who took part in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind of the attacks, was himself a Saudi from a wealthy family with strong ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Third, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump lists companies on his FEC filing possibly related to a development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, located outside Mecca: DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager LLC, DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager Member Corp., THC Jeddah Hotel Manager LLC and THC Jeddah Hotel Manager Member Corp.
Trump lists two companies on his FEC filing possibly related to business in Egypt: Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
On January 11, Trump said that:
- He would resign from his positions at the Trump Organization but that he would not divest his ownership.
- The organization would be managed by his sons Eric and Don Jr. and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
- The organization would terminate pending deals and not seek new international business.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said that these measures did not resolve the President’s conflict-of-interest problems and called them “meaningless.”
It was after Trump signed his executive order that the true consequences of “working towards the Fuhrer”–or President–were fully revealed.
1991 GULF WAR, 2003 IRAQ WAR, 2016 ELECTION, 9/11, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, CBS NEWS, CLINTON FOUNDATION, CNN, DEBBIE WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, EMAIL SERVER, FACEBOOK, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE W. BUSH, GLASS-STEAGALL ACT, HILLARY CLINTON, HURRICANE KATRINA, JEB BUSH, KUWAIT, MICHAEL BROWN, MONICA LEWINSKY, NBC NEWS, REPUBLICAN PARTY, Ronald Reagan, SADDAM HUSSEIN, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, SAUDI ARABIA, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIMOTHY MCVEIGH, TWITTER, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WHITEWATER
In History, Politics, Social commentary on November 9, 2016 at 11:38 am
If there is one thing Republicans, Democrats and Independents can agree on, it’s this: 2016 gave America perhaps its most divisive Presidential election in modern history.
Many pundits have correctly noted that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump–especially Trump–brought a coarseness to the election never before seen.
Saturday Night Live brutally captured this in a series of skits featuring Alec Baldwin as Trump and Kate McKinnon as Clinton.
But if basic civility proved a casualty of this campaign, there were two other casualties that the overwhelming majority of Americans will be glad to see finally buried: The Bush and Clinton family political dynasties.
Since 1980–36 years ago–there has been only one American Presidential election that did not feature a Bush or Clinton as a candidate. Consider:
- 1980: George H.W. Bush–first as a Presidential candidate; then, losing the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan, as Reagan’s pick for Vice President.
- 1984: Bush--as Reagan’s continued choice as Vice President.
- 1988: Bush–as Reagan’s anointed choice for President, and then serving as President for four years.
- 1992: Bush--as President running for a second term, only to be defeated by Bill Clinton, whose star now rises.
- 1996: Clinton–as President, running for and winning a second term until 2001.
- 2000: George W. Bush, son of the former President and Governor of Texas, runs for and wins the Presidency.
- 2004: Bush, running for a second term and winning it.
- 2008: Hillary Clinton–former First Lady and now New York Senator runs for the Democratic nomination and loses it to Barack Obama. Even so, he picks her to be his Secretary of State for the next four years.
- 2012: The only Presidential election year since 1980 when neither a Bush nor a Clinton is a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate.
- 2016: Jeb Bush–son of George H.W. and brother to George W., he seeks the Republican nomination but is easily humiliated and defeated by Trump.
- 2016: Hillary Clinton–having resigned as Secretary of State, she wins the Democratic nomination and loses the race to Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Among the “legacies” of both the Clintons and the Bushes:
- George H.W. Bush: Sends a half-million American troops to Saudi Arabia to “liberate” Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. The real reason: To secure continued American access to Kuwaiti oil.
George H.W. Bush
- Presides over one of the worst recessions in American history–causing him to lose the 1992 Presidential election.
- Bill Clinton: “Romances” White House intern Monica Lewinsky–and gets impeached (but not convicted) for it.
Bill Clinton
- Repeals FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking. This allows big banks to merge, becoming “too big to fail”–and sets the stage for the 2008 financial meltdown.
- After Right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh blows up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Clinton refuses to condemn Republicans’ 50-years’ demonizing of government that is largely responsible for it.
- George W. Bush: Repeatedly ignores intelligence warnings of a coming attack by Al Qaeda, which results in the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
George W. Bush
- Lies the United States into a needless war in Iraq, which costs the lives of 4,486 Americans and costs the treasury at least $2 trillion.
- Assures his fellow Americans that he has “looked into the soul” of Vladimir Putin and found him a man “very straightforward and trustworthy.”
- After Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans, his Federal Emergency Management Agency–staffed with political hacks–bungles getting desperately-needed aid to America’s stricken citizens. Bush famously congratulates FEMA Director Michael Brown: “Heck of a job, Brownie.”
- Hillary Clinton: As First Lady, refuses to release documents about Whitewater, a failed Arkansas land deal. This brings on a needless, seven-year investigation by a Republican special prosecutor which turns up–nothing.
Hillary Clinton
- After leaving the White House, she and her husband set up the Clinton Foundation, a public charity to bring government, businesses and social groups together to solve problems “faster, better, at lower cost.”
- As Secretary of State, more than half of Clinton’s meetings with people outside government are with donors to the Clinton Foundation. If there isn’t a “pay-to play” system at work, there certainly is the appearance of one.
- Clinton casts further suspicion on herself by her unauthorized use of a private email server. She claims it’s so she doesn’t have to carry two cell-phones. But, as Secretary of State, she travels with a huge entourage who carry everything she needs.
- As a candidate for President, she “secretly” works with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, to ensure that she will get the nomination.
- She wins the nomination–but is so unpopular she loses to Donald Trump by an overwhelming margin in the Electoral College.
Millions of liberals and Democrats are no doubt dismayed at the outcome of the 2016 election.
And Republicans who sided with Trump will now find themselves at odds with those who refused to do so.
But Democrats and Republicans alike can rejoice that these two embarrassing–and disastrous–family political dynasties have finally been swept into the ashcan of history.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, ABC NEWS, BOEING, CBS NEWS, CNN, DAVID BROOKS, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, GEORGE C. WALLACE, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN MCCAIN, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, MAFIA, NBC NEWS, PRISONERS OF WAR, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, SAUDI ARABIA, STATE DEPARTMENT, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE KENNEDYS, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, WOMEN
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 31, 2016 at 9:15 am
Today, America has two major candidates running for President: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Trump is a billionaire businessman and television personality. Clinton is a former First Lady (1993-2001), U.S. Senator from New York (2001-2009) and Secretary of State (2009-2013).
Despite the great differences in their backgrounds, they both share one thing in common: They are fiercely hated by millions of their fellow Americans.
Trump’s character has been poignantly summed up by David Brooks, a conservative political columnist for The New York Times:
“The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.”
For Republicans, Hillary Clinton arouses hatred that is often as much directed at her sex as her political views: She’s a bitch, a lesbian, physically unattractive. She’s not feminine enough. She “shrieks” and “shouts” when making speeches. She hates men–and, worse, castrates them.
She will abolish religion and force everyone to become atheists. She will authorize U.N. soldiers to confiscate the more than 300 million guns Americans privately hold. She will throw open American borders to millions of illegal aliens from Central and South America. She will sell out America to whoever pays the highest bribe to the Clinton Foundation.
But 48 years ago, Senator Robert Francis Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator from New York (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
In October, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his wise counsel helped steer America from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. As a U.S Senator he championed civil rights and greater Federal efforts to fight poverty.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished–while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4–when he was shot in the back of the head.
His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.
Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
America has never again seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates have waged war on crime–and the poor. And Democratic candidates have moved to the Right in eliminating anti-poverty programs.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia–and the compassion to fight poverty. At a time when Americans long for candidates to give them positive reasons for voting, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, AFGHANISTAN, ALAN KURDI, CBS NEWS, CNN, FACEBOOK, FBI, IRAQ, ISALM, ISLAMICS, JAMES COMEY, KUWAIT, LIBYA, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, PENTAGON, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, QTAR, REAL ID ACT, RELIGION, SAUDI ARABIA, SUICIDE BOMBERS, SYRIA, TERRORISM, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, WORLD TRADE CENTER
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2016 at 12:04 am
Americans are suckers for children.
Even if many of them might come wrapped in suicide vests.
On September 2, 2015, the body of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi washed ashore on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey.
He and his family had boarded a small rubber boat to reach Europe amid the carnage of the Syrian civil war. The boat capsized.
The resulting photo flashed around the world and triggered international demands by humanitarian organizations that the West “do something.”
Drowned Alan Kurdi lies on a Turkish beach
Only eight days later, on September 10, 2015, the Obama administration announced that it would take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrian refugees over the next year.
That was in addition to the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States had already accepted.
Almost one year later–on August 17, 2016–another photo captured the world’s attention.
It depicted a five-year-old Syrian boy named Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance. Covered head to toe in dust, his face bloodied, he seemed dazed. He had been pulled out of a building hit by an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria.
Once again, demands arose among liberal interventionists, especially in the United States: “We must do something.”
All of which overlooks the increasing threat posed to the United States by Islamic terrorism.
According to U.S. Census data, America legally welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.
The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online
Meanwhile, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.
On July 8, 2015, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.
“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.
“But it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see my [agency’s] stopping these [plots] indefinitely.”
The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects. And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.
And even children, for all their supposed innocence, are not to be ignored as potential weapons of Islamic terrorist organizations.
On August 20, a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 attacked a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey, killing at least 51 people.
Preliminary evidence indicates that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was behind the attack.
Palestinian child suicide bomber
America may well become a similar target for child suicide bombers.
How did all of this come to be?
On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war.
By April 23, 2016, the United Nations estimated that 400,000 Syrians had so far died in the conflict.
Put another way:
- More than 400,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
- Additional thousands are certain to follow their example.
- And the United States cannot be held in any way responsible for it.
But Americans and Europeans have chosen to see these positives as negatives.
The United Nations refugee Agency, UNHCR, estimates that 366,402 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015.
And while the West has thrown open its doors to fleeing Syrians, the reaction of neighboring Islamic nations has been entirely different.
This was brutally but accurately depicted in a cartoon of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at the body of Alan Kurdi.
While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.
According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States. And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.
Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists.
Meanwhile, the Arab world–awash in petrodollars and land–is closing its own doors to Syrian refugees
The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post
* * * * *
During the 1980s, the United States waged a cold war against Islamic nations. Their acts of anti-American terrorism were seen as simply crimes, and not acts of war.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that. For the last 15 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And now Syria.
To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.
2001 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, AFGHANISTAN, ALAN KURDI, CBS NEWS, CNN, DRIVER'S LICENSES, FACEBOOK, FBI, IRAQ, ISALM, ISLAMICS, JAMES COMEY, KUWAIT, LIBYA, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, PENTAGON, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, QTAR, REAL ID ACT, RELIGION, SAUDI ARABIA, SEPTEMBER 11, SYRIA, TERRORISM, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TRANSPORTATION SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, TWITTER, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, WORLD TRADE CENTER
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 15, 2016 at 12:02 am
Starting in 2016, traveling by air in the United States became more complicated.
In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act as a counter-terrorism measure. Its goal was to set security standards for government-issued IDs.
The Act started to be introduced in late 2013. Now in the last phase of its implementation, its enforcers have decided that some states haven’t complied with its requirements.
As a result, driver’s licenses from those states will no longer suffice to pass through airport security. And that includes domestic flights as well as international ones.
Those states: New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Louisiana and American Samoa.
The reason: Licenses issued by those states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).
So how are residents of these states supposed to cope? The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.
Your old New York driver’s license may make it harder for you to fly in 2016 | syracuse.com
And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own. As one soon-to-be affected New York traveler outlined:
“To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certifcate.
“And to get a copy of my birth certificate I need only to submit a copy of my driver’s license. A copy, no face-to-face, is-that-really you?
“So a New York driver’s license isn’t good enough for flying but it is good enough to get a birth certificate, whch gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”
Got all that?
Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act
And while TSA is beefing up security at the back door, the Obama administration is casting aside the front door.
On September 10, 2015, the administration announced that it would accept at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the next year.
That is in addition to the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States has already accepted.
According to U.S. Census data, America welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.
The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online
And while all this is happening, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.
On July 8, 2015, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.
“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.
“But it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see my stopping these indefinitely.”
Consider the math: The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects.
And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.
How did all of this come to be?
To start at the beginning: On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war. Since then, more than 470,000 Syrians people have been killed.
Put another way: More than 470,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
But European nations and the United States have chosen to see this truth as a negative, not a positive.
More than a million Islamic migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015.
And all it took to make this happen was a photo that’s been seen the world over: A photo of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach.
A cartoon parody of this picture showed a group of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at Kurdi’s body.
It also highlighted a Politically Incorrect truth:
While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.
According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States. And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.
Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists. Meanwhile, the Arab world has closed its own doors to Syrian refugees
The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post
* * * * *
During the 1980s, the United States government considered Islamic acts of anti-American terrorism as simply crimes, and not acts of war.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that. For almost 15 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, ABC NEWS, BLACKS, BOEING, CBS NEWS, CNN, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, GEORGE C. WALLACE, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOHN MCCAIN, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, MAFIA, MEXICANS, NBC NEWS, PRISONERS OF WAR, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, SAUDI ARABIA, STATE DEPARTMENT, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE KENNEDYS, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, WOMEN
In History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on June 6, 2016 at 12:01 am
Today, America has two major candidates running for President: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Trump is a billionaire businessman. Clinton is a former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State.
Despite the great differences in their backgrounds, they both share one thing in common: Extremely high negatives among voters.
Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric has deliberately or unintentionally offended almost every major American voting group, including:
- Mexicans: “They’re bringing drugs.They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” He’s also promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
- Prisoners-of-War: Speaking of Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain, a Vietnam POW for seven years: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
- Women: “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?”
These insults delight his white, uneducated followers. But they have alienated millions of other Americans who might have voted for him.
As for Clinton: She continues to be dogged by charges that she used her position as Secretary of State (2009-2013) to enrich herself.
Countries that made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation got an increase in State Department-approved arms sales.
For example: In 2011, the State Department green-lighted a $29 billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia, despite its dismal record on human rights.
Years before Clinton became Secretary of State, Saudi Arabia donated $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. And Boeing, the biggest defense contractor involved, donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation just two months before the deal was finalized.
But 48 years ago, Senator Robert Francis Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished–while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4–when he was shot in the back of the head. His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel. He died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched their baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
The Kennedy family never again roused the same passions among voters as it did during RFK’s short-lived run for the Presidency.
And America has never again since seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates have waged war on crime–and the poor. And Democratic candidates have moved to the Right in eliminating anti-poverty programs.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia–and the compassion to fight poverty. At a time of rising rates of income inequality and corporate crime, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
2001 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, AFGHANISTAN, ALAN KURDI, CBS NEWS, CNN, DRIVER'S LICENSES, FACEBOOK, FBI, IRAQ, ISALM, ISLAMICS, JAMES COMEY, KUWAIT, LIBYA, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, PENTAGON, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, QTAR, REAL ID ACT, RELIGION, SAUDI ARABIA, SEPTEMBER 11, SYRIA, TERRORISM, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TRANSPORTATION SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, TWITTER, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, WORLD TRADE CENTER
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 28, 2015 at 1:04 pm
Starting in 2016, traveling by air in the United States is going to become more complicated.
In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act as a counter-terrorism measure. Its goal was to set security standards for government-issued IDs.
The Act started to be introduced in late 2013. Now in the last phase of its implementation, its enforcers have decided that some states haven’t complied with its requirements.
As a result, driver’s licenses from those states will no longer suffice to pass through airport security. And that includes domestic flights as well as international ones.
Those states: New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Louisiana and American Samoa.
The reason: Licenses issued by those states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).
So how are residents of these states supposed to cope? The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.
Your old New York driver’s license may make it harder for you to fly in 2016 | syracuse.com
And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own. As one soon-to-be affected New York traveler outlined:
“To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certifcate.
“And to get a copy of my birth certificate I need only to submit a copy of my driver’s license. A copy, no face-to-face, is-that-really you?
“So a New York driver’s license isn’t good enough for flying but it is good enough to get a birth certificate, whch gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”
Got all that?
Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act
And while TSA is beefing up security at the back door, the Obama administration is about to cast aside the front door.
On September 10, the administration announced that it will take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the next year.
That is on top of the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States has already accepted.
According to U.S. Census data, America welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.
The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online
And while all this is happening, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.
On July 8, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.
“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.
“But it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see my stopping these indefinitely.”
Consider the math: The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects.
And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.
How did all of this come to be?
To start at the beginning: On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war. Since then, more than 310,000 Syrians people have been killed.
Put another way: More than 310,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
But European nations and the United States have chosen to see this truth as a negative, not a positive.
The United Nations refugee Agency, UNHCR, estimates that 366,402 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year.
And all it took to make this happen was a photo that’s been seen the world over: A photo of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach.
A cartoon parody of this picture showed a group of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at Kurdi’s body.
It also highlighted a Politically Incorrect truth:
While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.
According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States. And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.
Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists. Meanwhile, the Arab world is closing its own doors to Syrian refugees
The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post
* * * * *
During the 1980s, the United States waged a cold war against Islamic nations. These acts of anti-American terrorism were seen as simply crimes, and not acts of war.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that. For the last 14 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And now Syria.
To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.
&docid=yt8OxrbTDh591M&tbnid=ik44Wblm3ZvX6M%3A&vet=1&w=325&h=475&bih=469&biw=819&ved=0ahUKEwjC-_Ka0enRAhVJKGMKHV61ApUQMwghKAAwAA&iact=c&ictx=1)
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, DAILY KOS, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PENTAGON, POLITICO, RAW STORY, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SLATE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SYRIA, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIRD REICH, TIME, TURKEY, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, YEMEN
‘WORKING TOWARDS THE FUHRER–UH, PRESIDENT”: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 3, 2017 at 12:02 amWhen historians—and ordinary citizens—think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann—yes.
But Werner Willikens? Why him?
Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
Ian Kershaw is a British historian and author who has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society—everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street—were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw did not minimize the historical role played by Hitler and his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.’”
With the Third Reich dying in the flames of Berlin, at about 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 72 years later—to 4:42 p.m. on January 27, 2017.
Newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signs into law an executive order that:
Trump’s executive order read: “In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.
“The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”
President Donald Trump
But that statement excluded three extremely troubling facts.
First: Over the past four decades, there have been no fatal attacks within the United States by immigrants from any of those seven banned countries.
Second, approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. Most of those victims died during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In fact, 15 of the 19 highjackers who took part in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind of the attacks, was himself a Saudi from a wealthy family with strong ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Third, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump lists companies on his FEC filing possibly related to a development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, located outside Mecca: DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager LLC, DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager Member Corp., THC Jeddah Hotel Manager LLC and THC Jeddah Hotel Manager Member Corp.
Trump lists two companies on his FEC filing possibly related to business in Egypt: Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
On January 11, Trump said that:
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said that these measures did not resolve the President’s conflict-of-interest problems and called them “meaningless.”
It was after Trump signed his executive order that the true consequences of “working towards the Fuhrer”—or President—were fully revealed.
Share this: