#hasan trump cemetery

[keywestlou]

MORNING STEW #6

A number of significant topics today beginning with my yesterday and then into the world. I generally share the topics in some sort of order. On a day like this it would add an hour to the blog. No time today. I have been at it 2.5 hours gathering the information. Started at 6:30. Need to be done by 11.

So I present you with a Morning Stew. Number 6.

Cath scan time yesterday in the hospital. My appointment was for 1. Did not get taken till 2:30. Thought they were taking another look at my aortic stenosis. Nurse told me order sheet indicated aortic aneurysm. Bothered me. I have known for several years about the aneurysm. Do not think about it. Now it is back in my thought process.

Had to fast for the Cath scan. Was hungry following the test. Back to Harpoon Harry’s. Wednesday is Thanksgiving turkey day. I enjoyed a complete turkey meal.

When last in friday, I forgot to tip the waitress. Embarrassing. First thing I did when I arrived yesterday was to find her and give her a $5 bill. She was grateful, but said she actually did not remember me nor that I failed to tip her.

Whatever, I have made a friend for life.

The waitress actually waiting on me was Allana. European born, she has been in the U.S. 30 years. Twenty seven in Aspen. The last 3 in Key West. Knows how to pick her spots to live!

The time sitting around the hospital waiting for the Cath scan gave me time to finish Becoming Michelle Obama. I enjoyed reading it. Recommend you read it.

Nothing fantastic about the book. It is merely the step by step progression of Michelle’s life from her birth in South Chicago to retirement now following the White House. A modest work. Personal. Like Barrack still leaves his dirty socks on the floor.

Today, a haircut at noon with Lori. Lunch. The Farmers Market at Bayview Park for a special bread and tomatoes that are softer than the rocks available at Publix.

I am looking forward to this evening. Dinner at the home of Larry and Cindy. A couple I have visited with 2 years in a row at the Chart Room. They are from Ontario, Canada. Have a second home on the golf course.

Cindy is cooking.

I have a special affinity to Cindy. She is a loyal blog follower.

I will not be appearing with Laurie Thibault this afternoon on her radio show. Traffic is so heavy this time of year that I would be late for dinner. Tune in however. Laurie needs no help. A born natural for radio. Station 107.5 FM, WGAY FM.

Sex and the Catholic Church. Back in the limelight. Today the beginning of a conference of Bishops. A Sex Abuse Prevention Summit at the Vatican. Pope Francis presiding.

The problem an open wound.

The issues will center around gay priests, secret rules, and the abuse of nuns.

A dynamite conference in the making!

Trump has nominated Jeffrey Rosen to be Deputy Attorney General. He will be the #2 person in the Justice Department.

His only connection to the law is that he is a Harvard law grad. Never worked in criminal prosecution. No police background of any kind.

Why? Of what value will he be? I fear another Trump step in trying to destroy the Department of Justice.

Tired last night. Watched Syracuse/Louisville at 7 from home. Syracuse won decisively 69-49.

A great game!

Next #1 Duke on saturday at the Carrier Dome. Syracuse beat Duke 2 weeks ago on Duke’s home court. Duke was #1 at the time, also.

There is a gluttony overtaking college sports.

I watched part of the Duke/North Carolina game following the Syracuse one. Obama was there. No seats available. A huge sell out.

Certain seats were going for $2,600 each. Super Bowl prices. It was announced that 4 seats at the Syracuse/Duke game saturday will be selling for $3,500 each.

College ball? Professional ball?

There is a drive underway to pay college athletes. In addition to free tuition, room and board. The argument is they are making their schools rich.

The day is coming. Very soon. I don’t like it. Something wrong with paying college athletes especially after they are getting a free ride to a college education.

Iran recently publicly hung a 31 year old man for being gay. Seventy one countries have criminalized homosexuality. Eight of them call for the death penalty.

In Iran, gays as young as 9 can be put to death. And they are.

Lesbians included.

Now comes Donald Trump to lead the battle to end the criminalization of homosexuality across the globe. Announced yesterday. He says he will launch a campaign and lead the cause.

Something irregular here. Trump goes out of his way in the U.S. to do whatever he can to hurt the gay community. He is anti LGBT. His most recent action to prevent transgenders from being in the military.

Hypocrisy? You better believe it.

I can remember John L. Lewis. He was a big man in union work in the 1930’s through 1950’s. A huge man with bushy eyebrows.He was CEO of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and President of the United Mine Workers.

An autocrat in his work. Tough guy similar to Trump. A liar, also. He was described during his time as the most experienced truth-twisting wind bag ever produced in the U.S.

Possessed brass testicles. He called a coal strike during World War II.

I mention Lewis today because on this day in 1940 he was a guest at the Casa Marina.

Cemetery stroll sunday. The Key West Cemetery. The history of our island carved into the stones. Always a crowd. Reservations required. Three starting times 9:30 to 10:10. A $20 donation requested.

I love the cemetery. One of the best stones reads: “I Told You I Was Sick.”

Washington Post columnist Reuben Navarrette in a recent article wrote about Trump, El Paso, and his lies.

Trump was in El Paso this past week pushing the border wall/barrier, whatever it is called. He claimed El Paso had one of the highest crime rates in the U.S. till a wall was built on their border. The problem is El Paso was never a high crime city. Before, during or after the wall was built.

Typical Trump exaggeration, lie.

Navarrette wrote  that Trump “…..since his days selling real estate in Manhattan, has never let the truth interfere with a good pitch. The PT Barnum of Fifth Avenue used to attempt to convince people that the Trump Tower had ten more floors than it really did.”

He continued, “Trump doesn’t just sell steak, or the sizzle. He can get by with just selling you the thought of a steak. That’s a gift folks.”

It’s the nature of the beast, folks!

U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Paul Hasan has been arrested. A white supremacist interested in terrorist attacks. Leading them himself. Against the U.S. government.

His intent to kill members of Congress and the media. As part of a purpose to create a white homeland. Among those designated for elimination were Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Joe Scarborough, and John Podesta.

In a draft of an e-mail authorities recovered, Hasan wrote: “Much blood will have to be spilled to get whitey off the couch.”

The U.S. worries about terrorism coming at us from the Middle East. We fail to have any significant concern with the terrorism on our shores lying in silence ready to attack. Our efforts must be directed at them also.

I end with Karl Marx. Author of the Communist Manifesto. Written in collaboration with Frederich Engels. Published this day in 1848.

The Manifesto was slow to take hold. However by 1950, half the world’s population lived under Communism.

Marx’s closing words in the Manifest set forth marching orders for those to become his followers: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite.”

Enjoy your day!

  MORNING STEW #6 was originally published on Key West Lou

[newstfionline]

With sharp words and stealth strikes, Israel sends a message to Hezbollah and U.S.

By Loveday Morris and Louisa Loveluck, Washington Post, September 21, 2017

JERUSALEM--Israel has flexed its military muscles in recent months as the regional balance of power has pitched further in favor of its most bitter adversaries: Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.

Analysts and former senior Israeli military officers say Israel is showing that it will act with force to protect its interests, while using just enough of it to limit its enemies without sparking a war. But it’s a precarious line to tread, and even a small misstep could lead to conflict, they say.

Israel is scrambling to adjust as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has taken the upper hand in his country’s six-year war, propped up by an emboldened Iran and an array of Shiite militias, including Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to back him.

The Israeli government had expressed frustration as the Trump administration focused on fighting Islamic State militants without, in Israel’s opinion, sufficiently limiting Iran and its proxies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly criticized a U.S.-Russia cease-fire deal in southern Syria for not including provisions to stop Iranian expansion.

Israel is now making itself heard. Last week Israeli jets buzzed so low over southern Lebanon that they shattered windows and caused panic. That followed the bombing of a military site in Syria earlier in the month that had been linked to missile production for Hezbollah.

On Tuesday, the army used a Patriot missile to shoot down a drone that neared its airspace.

Threats have escalated on both sides. “If the Zionist regime makes any wrong move, Haifa and Tel Aviv will be razed,” Iran’s army chief Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi warned this week in comments published by Fars news agency, referring to Israeli cities within the range of Hezbollah rockets.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a month-long war in 2006 that caused heavy casualties, and both sides claimed victory. Since then, the Syrian war has provided Hezbollah fighters with a training opportunity, while Israel estimates that it has built up a stockpile of more than 100,000 rockets.

Israel fears Iran will help Hezbollah upgrade to more accurate precision-guided missiles and establish a permanent military presence in Syria, from where they could eventually turn their focus south.

“Generally speaking, this is the kind of threat we can’t live with,” said Brig. Gen. Nitzan Nuriel, a former Israeli Defense Forces officer who was deputy commander of the division responsible for the Lebanese front during the 2006 war. “This is the kind of threat we need to deal with.”

In recent months, Netanyahu has accused Iran of establishing long-range missile-manufacturing sites in both Lebanon and Syria. Satellite images showing one alleged site, near the port city of Baniyas, were shared with the press.

Israel is keen to leverage more favorable outcomes in Syrian cease-fire deals where it feels its interests have been ignored, and public threats and messages are meant as much for Israel’s allies as its enemies, Nuriel said.

In a speech last month, Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah mocked Netanyahu for ��crying” over the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Nasrallah has repeatedly warned Israel against attacking Lebanon.

“If the Israelis think they can now make war in Lebanon, then they are making a big mistake. In Syria we have learned to attack,” said a senior official from the military alliance of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press.

“The rhetoric on both sides is a substitute for action--a way of reinforcing deterrence without having to take military action--and a way of saving face,” said Faysal Itani, a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “But I do think things are trending negatively.”

Netanyahu tried to drive his point home at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, saying that “those who threaten us with annihilation put themselves in mortal peril.” Israel will act to prevent Iran from opening “new terror fronts” on Israel’s northern border, he said.

He also pushed for changes to the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities.

“This is all classic Netanyahu,” said Ofer Zalzberg, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group. “Saying ‘hold me back before I do something,’ but I don’t see Israel launching a preemptive war. The next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be dramatic for Israel’s population and will have consequences for whoever is in power.”

But the prospect is not impossible; there are some Israeli officials advocating intervention, he said, describing Israel as “panicked.” “Advocates are saying bomb now.”

They see a window of opportunity. While Syria has restrained from retaliating against Israeli strikes on its soil, that is likely to change as the war draws to an end, raising the stakes of the occasional intervention with airstrikes that Israel is currently engaged in.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s growing strength has come at a cost, one that could cause personnel problems in the event of renewed conflict.

The group does not publish figures for the number of their members who have fought and died in Syria, but more than 1,000 have been killed according to one study of Arabic language press coverage of funerals in Lebanon.

On a recent day in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, a steady trickle of relatives passed through a newly opened cemetery for fighters recently killed in Syria. Marble slabs are adorned with photographs of the men in fatigues, some decorated with roses for Father’s Day.

Sitting quietly at the gravestone of a commander killed last year, a woman named Rukiya said her son died in the battle to recapture the northern city of Aleppo. “He knew he didn’t have to go, but he didn’t listen to me,” she said. “The resistance was everything to him.”

In April, Hezbollah organized a rare press trip to the border area to highlight what appeared to be newly constructed fortifications on the Israeli side of the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between the two countries.

Israel’s Defense Ministry confirmed that it was indeed bolstering its defenses, including walls near Israel’s northern communities that are vulnerable to cross-border sniper fire or antitank missiles, Israeli media reported. It also said the project will cost some $34.7 million.

“We are strengthening the border based on the understanding that in any future conflict, Hezbollah would make a concerted effort to cross the border,” said an Israeli Defense Forces official in the Northern Command who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

In the meantime, Israel will continue its strategy of “deterrence and prevention,” Nuriel said, managing the risks of escalation.

“You need to ask yourself, if you do this, what will the enemy do?” he said. “Many times we decide taking action is better.”

But Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah began when militants launched a cross-border raid on an Israeli patrol, killing three Israeli soldiers and abducting two. Nasrallah later said that if he’d known how Israel would react, Hezbollah would not have carried out the raid. The war left 1,000 Lebanese and nearly 160 Israelis dead. Now the stakes are higher.

“Syria made the machine faster,” said Kamal Wazne, a professor at the American University of Beirut who studies the group. “A confrontation is going to be deadly, destructive and painful for both sides.”