I have been thinking a lot about “what if”’ scenarios. I also have been thinking about how precarious things are at the moment. The last time I felt this way was August, 2001. I had just started a new job in Riyadh. All my financial problems were over. I knew something was going to happen. I didn’t know what. I thought that maybe Saudi Arabia might reset or even break off diplomatic relations.
I have been thinking a lot about “what if”’ scenarios. I also have been thinking about how precarious things are at the moment. The last time I felt this way was August, 2001. I had just started a new job in Riyadh. All my financial problems were over. I knew something was going to happen. I didn’t know what. I thought that maybe Saudi Arabia might reset or even break off diplomatic relations.
Law school will not teach you how to survive an assassination attempt. That is a skill you will have to learn on your own.
In travel news, Trump wants to send Abrego Garcia to Uganda and federal troops to Chicago. Anna Delvey (Inventing Anna) remains in the US because the Nine Sages of the Supreme Court haven’t dealt with the appeal of her criminal case. With so much Trump-related litigation taking up the court’s attention on both its regular and “shadow” dockets, perhaps there is little time to devote to Anna’s case. It shouldn’t take long for the Nine Sages to issue their “cert.
I spent the better part of the day trying to get access to a Windows 11 laptop. I hadn’t used the laptop for two months. There is a Windows setting that forces you to change your password periodically. I don’t know where this setting is found. I don’t even want a password; it’s an unnecessary inconvenience. If Iranian Intelligence steals the laptop, I have no doubt they will know how to get in, password or not.
Gerry Spence, the famous trial lawyer, died yesterday. Here’s my Gerry Spence story.In 1990, I wanted to be among the top ten criminal defense lawyers in Miami. That was my goal. Not the best–there were already some very good lawyers practicing. But reaching the top ten was possible. This meant looking at trials not as a mere rote procedure described in Thomas Wolfe’s The Right Stuff–first I do this, then I do that.
What is more American than the grift? George Santos “embellished” his resumé, not worrying about the fact that identity politics trumps even outright lies. Santos claimed to be Jewish, biracial, and finding one box unchecked, gay. He is Latino enough and there are Holocaust survivors, albeit imaginary ones, in his family tree. A claimed 9/11 death in the family makes up for a lack of military service, and when the New York Times finally looked into his background and uncovered his failure to graduate from college only means the fact that he is a high-school dropout was lost in the noise.
The Hotel Arbez was selected as a debriefing site. The border between France and Switzerland cuts through the dining room and a staircase. During WWII the Germans respected Swiss neutrality and respected the border. It is said that even the SS did not go up the Hotel’s stairs in search of enemies of the regime. Tarek wasn’t supposed to leave Switzerland; USDoJ attorneys had no authority to operate in France. So he was going to sit on the Swiss side of the table while USDoJ sat on the other side.
My first exposure to the shadow puppets was their display in the film The Year of Living Dangerously, starring transgender Linda Hunt, except that she wasn’t transgender, the term was not in use then, she merely played a man, a photographer. A pre-antisemitic Mel Gibson also starred. Based on a novel by C.J. Koch. Journos in Jakarta, all of them hearing the siren call of Vietnam. We forget that Indonesia was the Dutch East Indies, that Bali was the only Hindu territory outside of the subcontinent and that once women there normally went bare-breasted.
On the day I was stopped by police for possible involvement in an attempt to assassinate Jacques Chirac, I went to a saloon in Paris and brought a puppet I had purchased as a gift for my son. At first the puppet stayed in its backpack, but then he insisted on being brought out. How was I to know that he had a foul mouth? A French-speaking English woman drinking with a group from work popped in to translate now and then because the puppet had little fluency in French.