I have two beautiful, very young granddaughters - Stella right and Dagny's new Facebook picture, left. Re-posting because, apparently, the photos did not come through in a previous memo.
I also have two older granddaughters who are also beautiful - Emily and Emma. Alas, no current pictures.
In early January, we also become great grandparents for the first time.
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When it comes to Islamic Terrorism, Obama has been an abject failure and wants Americans to accept their being killed by Lone Wolves embracing a radical Islamic philosophy etc. as a new norm. Obama's approach towards challenges to our Constitutional freedoms is to cave and accept the fact that we are a weakened nation, we cannot indulge in profiling and we must bend to the ways of Muslim extremism. I reject this approach and submit Obama's empathy for Muslims may be commendable but when it extends to our laying down in the face of threats he is, as a once famous American General said to a German General, NUTS!
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Just a little more terror reaches our shores. Whether from within or without it is still terror.
Allowing more immigration from areas where terror is a daily occurrence seems a bit dumb but then Hillary has probably been told by Obama, support my plan or no campaign help and we know Hillary will sell her soul for the right price.
If you like more terror in America, whether against the public in general or police etc. or if you want four years of continuing revelations about Clinton Foundation corruption while more terror attacks are happening, just elect Hillary. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Worth re-posting: https://www.youtube.com/embed/
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Commentary regarding the moral problems associated with fighting terrorism and the Saudi's terrorism conundrum. which has metastasized. (See 2, 2a and 2b below)
And do not forget about the Khans who Trump attacked, according to the mass media who made a field day of the episode ,and then we learned the Khan's were not innocent attendees for Hillary but actually had deep and embedded roots with Obama so it was probably another mischievous setup deal/DNC/Hillary ploy. (See 2c below.)
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A film is being made about the struggle Birmingham had throwing off the yoke of Segregation and ridding the city of its infamous police chief - Bull Connor. I received this from one of my father's former partners, Chervis Isom..
( ...a documentary film... is being produced by Tommy Wier, concerning the pivotal years 1962 - 1963 in the City of Birmingham. This documentary involves the change of City government from the Commission form of government to a Mayor/Council form of government. It was that change in the form of the City government which effectively threw Bull Connor out of office in May, 1963, not the Civil Rights demonstrations which were occurring at the same time and which were resolved only a week or so before the Supreme Court of Alabama removed Bull Connor from office.
It was the early members of this law firm who were involved in that action, namely, Abe Berkowitz, David Vann, Erskine Smith and Vernon Patrick. I came on board three years later, and the firm I joined was Berkowitz, Lefkovits, Vann, Patrick & Smith.
Dick, we are producing some background information here in the firm and I've asked for photos of your Dad. Do you have a few you could send me to copy? I will send them right back to you. Chervis)
This is a link to a trailer Mr. Wier has produced to the Direct Action film trailer:
https://vimeo.com/164623662
In the trailer Mr.Drennen, was a prominent businessman and owned several leading auto distributors , David Vann was a partner in my father's firm and the remaining people were prominent relatives of the founders of
The Birmingham Realty Company which developed a good bit of Birmingham's residential and commercial entities.
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1)
Dick
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Another Terror Weekend
Three attacks remind Americans of the clear and present danger.
The brief respite from terrorist attacks on American soil ended abruptly on the weekend, with a knife assault at a shopping mall in Minnesota and bombings in New Jersey and New York City. It’s a miracle no one was killed, but the timing and nature of the attacks rightly have investigators looking for evidence of Islamist or other terrorist links.
The explosion in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 29 was “obviously an act of terrorism,” said New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo on Sunday morning, though he added that so far there was no evidence of an international terrorist connection.
But police also found what had the look of another improvised-explosive device not far from the bombing site. The device contained a pressure cooker and a cellphone that might have served as a trigger. The Tsarnaev brothers used pressure cookers in their Boston marathon bombs, and Islamic State offers an online how-to guide to make the IEDs.
The episode comes as thousands are arriving in New York for this week’s annual United Nations General Assembly session. If a bomber’s goal was to inflict maximum casualties, there are many other Manhattan venues better than Chelsea. But the relatively few casualties was a matter of luck because Mr. Cuomo said it was “a very powerful explosion” and the damage was “much more extensive than I had anticipated” before he surveyed the site.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who couldn’t even muster the word “terrorism,” oddly preferring “intentional act,” nonetheless laid on another 1,000 police and security officers for duty during the U.N. session. Mr. de Blasio has been among those decrying the New York police antiterror surveillance that has helped to keep the city safe since 9/11, so New Yorkers will be watching closely to see who was responsible for the bombing and how it was executed.
The Chelsea blast occurred about 11 hours after three pipe bombs exploded in a plastic garbage can in Seaside Park, New Jersey shortly before thousands of runners were to participate in a 5K run to benefit Marines and Navy sailors. The race was cancelled, and no one was hurt, but many could have been if the explosion had occurred while the race was on.
The most harm was done across the country in St. Cloud, in central Minnesota, where a man stabbed nine people Saturday night before he was shot dead by an off-duty police officer. The FBI is investigating the background of the attacker whose name had not been publicly released by the time we went to press. But witnesses said the man referred to Allah, and an Islamic State news agency said Sunday the attacker was a “soldier of Islamic State.”
ISIS has sometimes claimed opportunistic credit for attacks undertaken by lone attackers with no formal connection to the group. But the example of the solo killer inspired by Islamic State propaganda over the internet is now familiar in the U.S.
No matter the motivations for these attacks, they show how the daily lives of Americans have been altered by the reality of modern terrorism. Americans know that anyone at anytime anywhere can become a target, and that is why they expect their political leaders to focus on preventing attacks, not merely deploring them after the fact.
1a)
Another Bomb After a Weekend of Terror
Plus, more Clinton email revelations.
A bomb exploded early Monday near a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey as police attempted to disarm it with a robot. No injuries were reported. This follows a weekend of violence including a knife assault at a shopping mall in Minnesota and other bombings in New Jersey and New York City. “It’s a miracle no one was killed, but the timing and nature of the attacks rightly have investigators looking for evidence of Islamist or other terrorist links,” notes the editorial board.
Speaking of terrorism, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir writes in our pages today that public pronouncements from Iran about fighting extremism are “ironic at best and little more than insincere propaganda. The fact is that Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, with government officials directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks since 1979.”
Ari Fleischer hopes the four moderators of the coming presidential and vice-presidential debates pay no attention to recent criticism of NBC’s Matt Lauer over his candidate interviews. “If moderators at the debates try to become live on-air fact checkers, they will fail in their one and only duty, which is to moderate a debate that allows the American people to decide which candidate they prefer.”
Our columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady explores emails showing Clinton Foundation staff “hobnobbing with a powerful Haitian politician and using connections at the State Department to try to influence U.S. policy decisions involving that same politician.” Ms. O’Grady notes that foundation efforts on behalf of Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive ran “contrary to what Mrs. Clinton promised when she went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2009 as president-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of state nominee.”
“If Donald Trump knew that promoting school choice would cause such a ruckus on the left, maybe he’d have weighed in sooner,” says the editorial board. “The Republican nominee has found a winning issue by pitching a plan to ‘provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America.’ Amen,” adds the board.
The Journal’s Gordon Crovitz explains how the University of Chicago has maintained a tradition of free speech and intellectual integrity. For one thing, the school’s focus on academics “helps keep politicians and celebrities at arm’s length. In the 1950s, Chicago’s mayor asked the university to award Queen Elizabeth II an honorary degree when she visited the city. ‘We’re happy to consider it,’ the university replied. ‘Please send copies of her scholarly work.’”
A Journal editorial says that Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic “is the only commendable candidate in the mix” to succeed Ban Ki-moon as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Mr. Jeremic “was a leader of the social movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic’s dictatorship in Belgrade in 2000. He later served in the pro-Western government of Boris Tadic, who in 2010 issued a historic Serbian apology for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica,” notes the editorial board.
Philip Howard offers a plan to make Washington work better: “Simplify regulation so that individual responsibility, not rote bureaucracy, is the organizing principle of government.
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2)
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| Is it possible to take the steps necessary to fight terrorism while maintaining an open society that protects basic freedoms and liberties? Many would argue that it is not. Precisely those aspects of democracy that afford citizens privacy, freedom of movement and other liberties are what would-be terrorist exploit to strike at the heart of open societies. To stop the terrorists, it is argued, those freedoms must be curtailed, if only temporarily. These steps are often justified as emergency measures designed to protect democracies from those who seek their destruction. A delicate balance must be maintained, however. If too many freedoms and liberties are curtailed, democratic countries risk deteriorating into police states in which the basic rights of citizens are trampled. The very raison d’etre of democracies is undermined in the process. Freedom-loving citizens lose their patriotic zeal, and with it the conviction that justice is on their side. A number of democracies have been forced to grapple with the moral dilemmas of waging a war with terrorism. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US launched a “war on terrorism” under the leadership of the Bush administration, which led to the adoption of controversial measures. Torture was used to extract information that turned out to be unreliable; suspects were held without due process on Guantanamo Bay long after they ceased to pose a threat; the privacy of hundreds of thousands of US citizens and foreigners was compromised; and non-combatants were killed in counter-terror insurgency. In the wake of terrorist attacks in a number of European cities, political leaders are contemplating controversial measures of their own, from more widespread surveillance methods – particularly on the Internet – to restriction of movement to the revocation of citizenship. Europeans have criticized their leaders for failing to take measures necessary to prevent these attacks. Some European leaders have now turned to Israel to learn how to combat terrorism without compromising their commitment to the freedoms of an open society. Few democracies have confronted a more sustained Islamic terrorist offensive than Israel. From its inception, the Jewish state has been forced to fight an almost constant battle against terrorism while struggling to uphold the freedoms and liberties afforded citizens of a democracy. In the process, the Jewish state has adopted a number of controversial methods such as profiling at Ben-Gurion Airport, and the use of curfews and checkpoints on the West Bank. European and UN delegations that visit Israel normally take the opportunity to criticize the attempts to protect itself from terrorist threats – whether from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or from Lebanon. But last week a European visitor was here for a different purpose altogether: to learn from Israel’s extensive experience fighting terrorism at home, in the face of protecting democracy and freedom. Georges Fenech, the French counter-terrorism “czar” and head of the country’s inquiries into its failure to stop major recent terrorist attacks – and also an opposition MP– was in Israel learning more about our country’s use of administrative detention. As part of his visit, Fenech met with IDF Judea and Samaria Court President Col. Netanel Benishu. Fenech heard about Israel’s use of administrative detention to prevent terrorist activities before they take place. Israel does this by placing suspects under arrest without a full-fledged criminal trial, and without having to publicize intelligence information that seemingly raises suspicions about a suspect. He also learned about the restrictions on security bodies such as the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the police, such as the need to receive court approval for the detention, and the reappraisal of each case every six months. Until now most of the international community, particularly in Europe, has been critical of Israeli methods, including its administrative detention policy, though the US and Australia have adopted similar measures. Israel is not alone in grappling with the dilemma inherent in any war on terrorism. The US, Europe and other Western countries are facing similar threats. This shared challenge of struggling to maintain the freedoms and liberties of an open society, while at the same time taking the steps necessary to combat terrorism, has led some Europeans to finally appreciate Israel’s efforts to defend itself instead of disparaging them. | ||
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By Zalmay Khalilzad (Politico)
- On my most recent trip to Saudi Arabia, I was greeted with a startling confession. In the past, when we raised the issue of funding Islamic extremists with the Saudis, all we got were denials. This time, one top Saudi official admitted to me, "We misled you."
- He explained that Saudi support for Islamic extremism started in the early 1960s as a counter to Nasserism and then became a way of resisting the Soviet Union, often in cooperation with the U.S., in places like Afghanistan in the 1980s.
- But over time, the Saudis say, their support for extremism turned on them, metastasizing into a serious threat to the Kingdom and to the West. They had created a monster that had begun to devour them.
- In their current thinking, the Saudis see Islamic extremism as one of the two major threats facing the kingdom - the other threat being Iran.
- One byproduct of the Saudi focus on ISIS and Iran seems to be a more enlightened view by Riyadh toward Israel. The Saudis stated that they do not regard Israel as an enemy and that the kingdom is making no military contingency plans directed against Israel.
- They did emphasize the need for progress on the Palestinian issue, but the tone on this subject was noticeably less emotional than in the past.
The writer is a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN.
Iran Can’t Whitewash Its Record of Terror
Saudi Arabia would welcome better ties with Tehran—but first it must stop supporting terrorism.
Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting John Adams, who famously said: “Facts are stubborn things.” So when Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made public pronouncements about fighting extremism, the facts show that his comments are ironic at best and little more than insincere propaganda.
The fact is that Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, with government officials directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks since 1979. These include suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport; the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; attacks against more than a dozen embassies in Iran, including those of Britain, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and the assassination of diplomats around the world, to name a few examples.
Nor can one get around the fact that Iran uses terrorism to advance its aggressive policies. Iran cannot talk about fighting extremism while its leaders, Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard continue to fund, train, arm and facilitate acts of terrorism.
If Iran wants to demonstrate sincerity in contributing to the global war on terrorism, it could have begun by handing over al Qaeda leaders who have enjoyed sanctuary in Iran. These have includedOsama bin Laden’s son, Saad, and al Qaeda’s chief of operations, Saif al-Adel, along with numerous other operatives guilty of attacks against Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and other targets. It is a fact that Saif al-Adel placed a call from Iran in May 2003 giving orders for the Riyadh bombings that claimed more than 30 lives, including eight Americans. Yet he still benefits from Iranian protection.
Iran could also stop funding terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, whose secretary-general recently boasted that his organization gets 100% of its funding from Iran. Iran could stop producing and distributing improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which have killed or injured thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Iran could halt supplying weapons to terrorists and sectarian militias in the region who seek to replace legitimate governments with Iranian puppets.
In Syria, the blood of the more than 500,000 people slaughtered by the regime of Bashar al-Assad stains the hands of Iran, which sent forces—both regular troops and nonstate actors—to prop up the Syrian regime. Iranian leaders have said publicly that if not for their efforts, Assad would have fallen from power.
Iranian officials sometimes lament sectarian strife and violence. But here again, the facts are stubborn. The region and the world were at peace with Iran until the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic revolution, whose principal slogan remains, “Death to America!” Mullahs seized power and vowed—as written in their constitution—to export the revolution and spread their ideology through religious and sectarian conflict.
To export the revolution, Iran set up so-called Cultural Centers of the Revolutionary Guard in many countries, including Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Comoros Islands. The aim was to spread their ideology through propaganda and violence. Iran went so far as to propagate that the Shiite Muslims living outside Iran belong to Iran and not the countries of which they are citizens. This is unacceptable interference in other countries and should be rejected by all nations.
It is this ideology of “Khomeinism”—driven by an appetite for expansion, fueled by anti-Western hatred and motivated by sectarianism—that has energized and empowered extremism. Only by ridding the world of this toxic and radical mind-set can sectarianism be contained, terrorism defeated and calm restored to the region. If Iran is serious about combating extremism, then it should refrain from policies and actions that give rise to extremism.
Since signing the nuclear deal with the U.S. last year, Iranian leaders have taken to pointing fingers at others to assign blame for the regional problems that they helped create. But before buying into their rhetoric, consider a few questions: Which country issues a fatwa for the execution of author Salman Rushdie, a death threat that is still in force today? (Iran.) What country has attacked more than a dozen embassies inside its own territory in violation of all international laws? (Iran.) What country managed, planned and executed the 1996 attack in Khobar Towers against the American Marines? (Iran.) Do these answers describe a country that is serious about combating terrorism and extremism?
The rest of the Islamic world has unanimously condemned Iran’s behavior. In Istanbul in April, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation formally rejected and deplored Iran’s policies of sectarianism, interference in the affairs of others and support for terrorism.
Saudi Arabia is a leader in the war against terrorism. My country brought the world together for an international conference in 2005 to align nations in the fight against terrorism. The kingdom contributed more than $100 million to create a global center for counterterrorism at the United Nations and established a 40-member Islamic Military Coalition to combat terrorism and extremism. It also is a member of the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and is part of the coalition’s continuing military operations.
The kingdom has also foiled several attacks aimed at the U.S., and its leaders have been a target of suicide terror attacks. The kingdom’s record is clear, and attested to by our allies and the international community.
Iran’s record is one of death and destruction, as the situation in Syria and parts of Iraq clearly attests. Words will not change that; concrete action will.
Saudi Arabia’s position has remained constant with regard to Iran. The kingdom would welcome better relations with Iran, based on the principles of good neighborliness and noninterference in the affairs of others. That means Iran has to abandon its subversive and hostile activities and stop its support for terrorism. Thus far, Iran’s record has not been encouraging.
Mr. Al-Jubeir is the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia.
2c) The mainstream media and all of the DNC operatives are working overtime to destroy Donald Trump over his comments about "Gold Star Parents" Khizr Kahn and his wife. Well guess what, they are both longtime DNC supporters and fund raisers. Their son was killed in combat in 2004. The DNC didn't need them to speak at their convention in 2008, nor again in 2012. The DNC decided that they finally needed the Khan's to speak against the Republican candidate in 2016 (because the Dems are more afraid of Trump than they were of McCain or Romney)
This was Barack Obama with Khizr Khan's wife in 2009 at a White House dinner for big Democratic fund raisers and donors. She was not in her Muslim garb. And if you think they accidentally ended up at the DNC convention, think again. Khan is a Dem CON man, and prop of the Left. He's Muslim Brotherhood affiliated, and a law professor who teaches and practices Sharialaw.Until now, it looked like the Khans were just Gold Star parents who the big bad Donald Trump attacked. It turns out, however, in addition to being Gold Star parents, the Khans are financially and legally tied deeply to the industry of Muslim migration — and to the government of Saudi Arabia and to the Clintons themselves. Khan used to work at the law firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, a major D.C. law firm that has been on retainer as the law firm representing the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States for years. The government of Saudi Arabia has donated heavily (over $25,000,000) to the Clinton Foundation over the past several years.
The firm also handles Hillary Clinton's taxes. A lawyer at Hogan & Hartson has been Bill and Hillary Clinton’s go-to guy for tax advice since 2004, according to documents released by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.Now, aren't you glad that you listen to the mainstream media to get your daily dose of DNC propaganda disguised as 'news'.
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