Jun 10, 2023
It’s hard not to be dramatic in response to this. First, the indictment proves my point that classified information is radioactive. Lawyers should not accept a clearance in a criminal trial.
A Roosevelt moment. Republicans pushed the 22nd Amendment to avoid another Roosevelt. The Amendment ended up prohibiting another Reagan term. The risk to a sitting president is trumped-up criminal liability might be created after he leaves office. The safest move is to stay in office. Declare martial law? Inconceivable. But on Wednesday, indicting a former president was pretty much inconceivable.
Equal protection: Pence, Biden, Clinton and Obama all had classified info and were not indicted.
Politics: 70% of Americans believe this indictment is political as do I.
Does anyone honestly believe that Trump was acting as an espionage agent of a foreign government? I do not.
The case will be decided based on jury instructions, and I don’t think there are pattern instructions for this crime.
Whatever your views on Trump, this indictment is a huge mistake. The case will tear the country apart.
I don’t know why Trump kept the documents. Research for his memoirs? Probably it has something to do with his belief that he was rightfully elected. Does that turn the trial into a trial on the 2020 election?
Jun 9, 2023
Mind your Pronouns
I heard a native speaker say, “They can come with you and I.”
This is incorrect. Here, the word “I,” a subject pronoun, is used instead of the correct “me.”
Would you say, “They can come with I?”
Of course not. You’d say, “They can come with me.
I ascribe this error to an episode of the television show Bonanza where a one-room frontier schoolhouse teacher forced her barely literate charges to always use the pronoun “I.”
Me can’t think of any other explanation.
Jun 9, 2023
Patti is a poet; friend of Robert Mapplethorpe (she wrote about him in Just Kids.) She was part of the 70’s New York Lower East Side Renaissance, born too late for the Beats she nevertheless followed the spirit of Rimbaud and made friends with William Burroughs, he of Junky, Naked Lunch, and his wife’s murderer. She was an accomplished poet, seeing her work published in the zines of the day.
Patti’s breakthrough was to set her poetry to music; the poem Oath with a back-up band led to her first album, Horses. A collaboration with Bruce Springsteen and a #1 hit record followed.
Then she retreated to the Midwest and married life, only to emerge twenty years later as if nothing had happened. Before you adjudge Patti of “aberrant behavior,” keep in mind that the rules she follows are those of the French poetes maudites: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud; those who sought insight through a derangement of the senses. Only by that standard can she be judged. Political activist she was not; something tells me that she would not suffer Republican book clubs in the Detroit suburbs at all. Patti a sell-out?
Pas possible.
May 31, 2023
I had just returned to Saudi Arabia. This is the view from my office on the Dammam Highway.
May 29, 2023
“Why do you like Thailand so much?” they asked.
Lunch in Chicago: six chicken wings, french fries and a roast beef sandwich.
$47.80.
’Nuff said.
May 28, 2023
“Why do you like Thailand so much?” they asked.
Six chicken wings, french fries and a roast beef sandwich.
$47.80.
’Nuff said.
Apr 20, 2023
My friend left his passport in the aircraft seatback at 0800 March 30 2023. Flt. 105 LHR-DXB. An unfortunate act, to be sure, for which he takes full responsibility. But BA made things worse: he realized that he didn’t have his passport while on the Arrivals train at DXB. Once on the train, it is impossible to return to the gate without setting off alarms. There were no BA personnel available upon exiting the Arrivals train. At DXB immigration, likewise there was no BA staff available. We advised DNATA staff who called BA.
(Even though we could not leave immigration for lack of a passport, I later learned that there are no BA employees tasked with dealing with customer service baggage issues in the baggage claim area of DXB. You outsource this function and these third-party employees are not authorized to leave the area to go to BA gates.)
BA initiated a search for the passport, which was found at 0900. BA did not, however, arrange to bring the passport to the Immigration hall. Keep in mind that returning to the gate was not possible.
1000 and no response from BA, besides, “We’re busy.”
1100 and no response from BA, besides, “We’ll get to it.”
In the meantime, we were treated to exclusive seats on the bench reserved for criminals and other potential deportees, subjecting us to humiliation.
1200 and no response from BA, besides “We’re busy.”
1300 and no response from BA, besides, “We’re busy now.”
1400 Passport finally delivered.
I’d like to know why you think this is acceptable behavior.
I’d like to know why BA staff felt that it was appropriate to make us wait for six hours. I’d like to know why BA has no staff available airside or landside at DXB. BA closed its office at DXB during the pandemic. DNATA staff advised that in case of an emergency, they have no way of reaching BA.
I’d like to know how you can possibly believe this behaviour is consistent with your airline’s purported high standards.
I am truly shocked by this, and I doubt it is the first time something like this has happened.
Case No. 24675455
Mar 30, 2023
Some have suggested that the death of 58 concert-goers in the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas in October, 2017 was an attempted assassination targeting Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. The holes in the official story of the massacre are many and the Saudi angle has not been fully explored.
The secret history begins with a coup: on July 17, 2017, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the Deputy Crown Prince, replaced the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, the head of Saudi intelligence, in what is widely regarded as a coup. Alarmed at Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rapid rise and leapfrogging over older family members in line to the throne, the conspirators decided to remove him from the line of succession. They were aided by friendly elements of the US intelligence services, who may or may not have known their ultimate intentions.
The top floors of the Mandalay Bay aren’t part of the hotel at all; they belong to the Four Seasons hotel, a hotel owned by Prince Walid bin Talal, a prominent Saudi investor and one of the Kingdom’s richest men. Prince Walid had a fleet of airplanes that included a 747 and for a while, even a double decker Airbus A-380, the world’s largest passenger plane. From an Islamic point of view, the Four Seasons is almost chaste: the Four Seasons hotel is unique among hotels on the Las Vegas Strip in that no gambling is offered. Thus, a Saudi staying at the hotel is insulated from charges of un-Islamic behavior. It is a perfect place to lodge for the future Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the official title of the king of Saudi Arabia.
Stephen Paddock, the man blamed for the attack, was to supply CIA-provided weapons, purchased legally from gun stores, to the assassination team. The guns are stashed in his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay. The hotel has always given conflicting information about how Paddock bypassed all the security the hotel had in place. No casino on the Vegas Strip has lax security. But with US intelligence as part of Paddock’s team, badges could be shown to bypass that security and carry bags without inspection to anywhere in the hotel.
The conspirators would pick up the guns on the 32nd floor and then head up the stairs to the Four Seasons where they would attack MbS. After he and his bodyguards were killed, they would return to the 32nd floor and escape in the confusion, perhaps with the credentials they had used to plant the guns prior to the commencement of the operation.
Two events happen to thwart the plot. MbS was not sitting with his entourage smoking sheesha in his suite at the 4 Seasons, instead he had put on Western clothes and melted into the Vegas crowds without his phalanx of bodyguards, walking to the Tropicana Casino, where he was enjoying himself playing cards, oblivious to the events that would soon unfold.
MbS bodyguards have in the meantime been alerted to the plot. They go to the Tropicana and pick up the prince, taking him to the McCarran Airport. There is a firefight at the airport. It is not clear whether this is shooting from the Mandalay Bay by frustrated coup plotters or a contingent that had somehow gotten wind of MbS’ flight to the airport from the Tropicana.
The FBI is busy arresting the coup plotters’ forces, which have now spread to other venues. There are sporadic shoot-outs. Two assassins are with Paddock in his room. They kill Paddock and do all the shooting of the concert-goers themselves in the hopes of creating a diversion that will permit them to escape.
They realize that the coup has failed and both commit suicide.
The CIA tells the FBI that the evidence of the coup attempt must be covered up. The FBI takes control of the crime scene and removes the bodies. Paddock is blamed for the massacre. The fact that the US government provided Paddock with the guns used for the massacre is buried along with the victims. The official story is that Paddock is a madman. The investigation turns up no motive for the attack.
How Paddock earned the vast sums needed to achieve “Whale” status is never quite clear. The story is that he regularly bet heavily, won at video poker, and that is why he was afforded privileges by the hotel. But no one wins regularly in Vegas, especially at any type of electronic slot machine. No one.
MbS returned to Saudi Arabia. A few weeks later, on November 4, Prince Walid was arrested, incarcerated at the Ritz-Carlton and the vast bulk of his fortune was eventually forfeited to the Saudi state. Prince Mansour, son of the former crown prince, fleeing arrest, was killed in a helicopter crash the next day.
Saad Al-Jabri was a top deputy to the former Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Nayef. He left Saudi Arabia in May, 2017. After the June 20 coup that ousted bin Nayef, Al-Jabri asked for and was granted political asylum in Canada.
On April 21, 2018, reports of another violent coup attempt were denied by Riyadh. According to the reports, MbS had been shot and wounded. Al-Jabri now claims that MbS sent an assassination squad to kill him five months later, in October, 2018.
There is little doubt that there has been one coup and countercoup attempt after another over the past three years. The Saudi government on March 6, 2020 arrested Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and accused him of planning a coup. If Al-Jabri can confirm that the Mandalay Bay massacre was linked to an attempted coup, he is indeed living on borrowed time. That is a story that must not get out.
The recent history of Saudi Arabia shows that the government and the coup plotters routinely ignore international borders when planning or carrying out operations. Coup attempts explain so much; the Ritz-Carlton arrests, the assassination of Khashoggi—what if he knew of the coup?—and MbS’ hard stance towards domestic critics. In an article published in The New Yorker on November 6th, 2017, Khashoggi was called an advisor to Saudi diplomats, strongly suggesting that he was a dissident. Did Khashoggi learn of the coup against MbS? If Khashoggi did and failed to warn him, this could be the real reason for his elimination. If MbS came to believe that Khashoggi was not just a journalist but one of the coup planners, killing Khashoggi is completely understandable.
Much of what has happened is in the public record; what is not proven is whether or not the Mandalay Bay massacre was part of a botched attempt to assassinate Mohammed bin Salman. Parts of this story can easily be corroborated; for other parts there is no evidence, or that evidence has been suppressed. Keep in mind that the official story requires belief that the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia just coincidentally happened to be a few floors above a madman who single-handedly plotted and executed the largest mass murder in American history.
Or maybe it all just happened the way they said it did.
Mar 29, 2023
Is there a Bahrain underground? This book answers that question and tells the story of its denizens.
Mar 29, 2023
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This book claims that there is an underground in Bahrain and tells the story of its denizens.