A Few Questions

She said a lot there, but everyone is asking the same things here in the United States.

What I’m getting from this is disturbing because it seems that nobody knows what the U.S. is allowed to do, what our constitution provides for or forbids, what the UCMJ allows or what constitutes criminal actions, and equally important, what international law says about combat actions in international water during peacetime. Especially against civilians.

I’ll let you in on something really messed up: there are no countries that are allowed to do this. It could constitute a war crime, but there is no war, so these horrors are crimes against humanity, and terrorism; Murder and the threat of more. Except, I don’t understand why it’s happening if Trump just pardoned Juan Hernandez, former president of Honduras, who was convicted of trafficking cocaine into the United States by the ton.

How in perdition does that make any sense?

Answer: it doesn’t.

I honestly knew nothing about the 2 September incident in which the so-called “double tap” strike took place until mere days ago.

I’ll tell you my take as a Christian first: I believe the “first strike” to be immoral. Killing is immoral. My renewed faith has no room for arguing this point. Defense against an aggressor in a declared war is one thing; this is nothing similar at all. Jesus never said to go forth and kill and then pretend it never happened. Killing and lying are not just sins, but they go against the conscience most people are inherently equipped with.

So too, Pete Hegseth proved to be a coward, speaking boldly, indeed arrogantly, and then lying to cover himself from any fallout. Which he’s finally getting anyway.

FAKE NEWS

This is something we all have to contend with. It’s a problem because, first of all, some people like to disseminate lies. Secondly, propaganda is effective. Hitler had a dedicated propaganda minister, and the Allied resistance countered Nazi propaganda with outrageously funny and equally effective stunts through the use of radio and printed material. The underground was often connected between occupied countries and those involved risked their lives in their own fight against Nazis.

The Resistance against Nazi Germany was often funny, and one case in particular taught the Kriegsmarine in Norway an unforgettable lesson. Germany had confiscated the entire country’s catch of sardines because canned food lasted longer on U-boat sorties. U-boats were hot, cramped, and they went on long “Wolpack” patrols across the Atlantic to sink Allied escorts and troop ships, but also to stem the unbelievable flow of planes, tanks and a staggering amount of food, medical supplies, uniforms and blankets, a never-ending amount of ships, and while the Germans, including armored cavalry, pilots, and infantry, had been told that the U.S. military was weak and could never outfight Aryans, the Kriegsmarine knew better. Not only could they not stop the shipping, but the Americans became much more efficient at detecting and damaging or sinking their subs. It became necessary for the Nazi armed forces to take drastic measures. Occupied countries had crops and meat confiscated. Troops were resorting to horses and carts for transportation of troops and supplies, and horses were used to pull artillery, some of which were very antiquated pieces from World War One. Combat photography and film footage proves all of this, and perhaps there was a time when they may have prevailed except that Operation Barbarossa had already beaten them. It is the judgement of many scholars that it was inevitable; invading the Soviet Union was a dreadful move. By the time of the flight back to German territory, retreat and surrender was no longer worthy of discussion. Men froze to death lying on their backs, some with an arm bent upward. And the entire war was like that. By the time the U.S. sent its military to engage Germany, it sealed the deal.

The taking of food and even linen for bandages in Nazi-occupied Europe forced the citizens into serious resistance tactics. Men and women alike fought. But in Norway….all of their sardines?

This was too much for Norwegians to take. Fuming, they contacted Allies and ordered a lot of croton oil. They canned the tiny fish with this oil, which is a rather “violent” laxative. In other words, U-boat crews on submarines that had a single toilet were taken out of action and couldn’t return to port fast enough. The interior of the U-boats were wall to wall diarrheic disasters, their men severely dehydrated. There is no mention I could find on the vessel’s turnaround time, but if it took a week, and the crew had to be replaced, then it took the boat out of action and plausibly saved at least some Allied shipping across the Atlantic. The story spread throughout the underground and the Maquis made sure that everyone got the news. The O.S.S. and British agents were probably rolling around on their office floors, stomachs cramped as badly as a German submariner’s, but for a different reason: they were laughing.

When properly coordinated, propaganda is effective. You just can’t overdo it because that’s when the resistance begins.

Today, however, the Trump administration is constantly putting out senseless, uncoordinated and often contradictory fake news, and that alone is funny, yet people are dying. Many more are suffering.

And here’s the thing: sure, this administration is all for cutting out all healthcare even as Trump’s mouth spits lies about healthcare reform. Which, it turns out, would result in a lot of deaths. And this is not World War Two.

But a new Holocaust? Can that happen?

This is all about deporting arbitrary people to other countries, mostly under the assumption that they’re illegal aliens, despite being naturalized and even U.S.-born citizens.

A senator who just loves deportations recently wrote on social media how thankful he is that his parents brought him to the United States (!).

This administration is full of hypocrisy and lies, and it’s so stupid that, if people weren’t suffering and dying, it would be hilarious. One funny thing is a senator introducing a bill which, if passed, would see Melania Trump deported, her dual citizenship cancelled. I tell you, it boggles the mind.

But as I’ve said, people are dying. And the suffering is getting more widespread. Very few things are funny.

I misread, or actually did read, something about a foreign leader being transferred to the Hague and the ICC to face charges of crimes against humanity. It’s likely that I crossed stories, but at first I thought a foreign leader had been detained for the same things as our Navy attacking boats for trafficking drugs.

Actually it was a Libyan official who ran a prison in which he encouraged atrocities including various manner of torture including murder, rape, extreme violence and more. The U.S. and Germany protested, but the ICC overruled them. Knowing nothing further, I can only guess that “illegal aliens” sent to Libya and El Salvador were supposed to undergo such acts and conditions.

Doing so constitutes multiple crimes against humanity under the Trump administration. ICE is allowed to wear masks and vests and be heavily armed and freely roam like Nazi SS and Gestapo men, taking prisoners. ICE agents are feared, but more than anything, they are bitterly hated, and a reckoning is coming.

Even now, as I think about it, I get sick in my body and spirit. Is there really no limit to the evil this administration willingly plans and then commits?

Media like NewsMax and Fox are just as immoral, eagerly egging the administration on and heaping praise on a band of criminals with outrageous lies that defy belief that anyone could be so dishonest as to utter them. Propaganda used to manipulate the public. No matter how stupid, they all spit it out.

NewsMax even put out a poll saying the Fox News reported that Trump had a very low approval percentage. NewsMax wanted to prove them wrong. They’re fighting each other!

No one knows how many families have been separated or how many children have been sent to God-knows-where, or trafficked. Yes, who in this administration would have a problem with that, given how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, once legendary, has worked overtime scrubbing and redacting the material in the so-called “Epstein Files?”

It’s been claimed that the redactions are to conceal the names of victims, and I hope it’s true, but wait! If our military shoots people clinging to a wrecked boat, is it so farfetched to think that the Feds would cook the books to exonerate Trump?

You know what war crimes and crimes against humanity look like. You know what “ethnic cleansing” looks like. Now comes my question:

Are you really supportive of this kind of inhumanity? Or do you condemn these things?

The answer, that’s for you. It isn’t for me. Because if this goes on, it will get worse. I saw the video of the boat. It looked like a small open boat to me, and watching it explode sickened me. You want more? Or are you willing to stand for what’s right, risking your life to speak against evil?

And one more question. If you are in any branch of the military of the United States, and you receive an order to do something you know is illegal, how will you respond?

How will history, and God, judge you? You can’t get away. Everyone will know. Is “I was just following orders” a good enough excuse, like most Wermacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine claimed after VE Day? Right up to the minute they were imprisoned or executed?

It’s up to you.

“It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast. That, and one bad choice.”

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

I was recently faced with the statement that some past events that had occurred had been because of fate. In fairness, I can’t remember what was said or by who, or even what it was about.

I don’t always file bullshit away for future use; it gets put into the shredder that an old man’s mind regretfully keeps in “standby” mode.

The main idea I tried to get across to the person was that I no longer have such a belief. It’s bullshit and a protective thing we use on ourselves to soften the bruises to our egos after a failure.

Maybe there was a time. I don’t want to think that I did, but if I once believed in fate, then I didn’t understand what free will is.

Fate is a concept. Oh, it works well in assuaging guilt, calming the tears of a broken heart, or soothing the mind after finding out that the one person you’re really into doesn’t like you at all, but rather holds you in contempt. That’s the hurt before getting far enough to even get a broken heart. It’s called rejection and scorn.

But let’s say for a moment that maybe, if not fate, there are some pretty cool or weird things that happen, which we utterly fail to understand. Because of course there are. Random, whether we think so or not.

And if you believe in God, then tell me how fate is decided by him. Does that mean that he is always holding you by strings like a marionette, reading from a script that he laboriously wrote before time existed?

The evidence that God is real is all about; one has only to be willing to see. Hawking and others devoted their lives to proving that the Big Bang was random and spontaneous, but they failed, all of them. Einstein himself wasn’t exactly a believer but did write in a letter, “There is a God, but he is never listening.”

Bitter experience in his early years and his subsequent exposure to science prompted him to call scripture many things such as a book of lies used to condition children and a bundle of myths from various cultures in ancient times.

He did, however, believe that the universe had an order and a beauty that seems to be a description of a Creator God’s work. The fact is he changed throughout his life and deeply regretted writing the letter to Roosevelt that started the Manhattan Project. He said if he had known what would happen, he would have been a watchmaker.

Here we see a burning question: was the atomic bomb an inevitable creation? A matter of fate?

If one believes in the multiverse, then at least one Earth, parallel to us in time, never had the H-bomb. It’s possible that World War Two never happened.

The concept of different timelines or parallel worlds is fringe science at best. If there is no way to prove a theory, the concept remains just that. However, in this world, what if Hitler never took power, and the Empire of Japan never decided that war was necessary to get what they needed? What if it had favored trade instead of a military expansionist economy?

The possibilities are infinite.

World War Two did not happen because of fate, no more than any other war in world history. It happened because men chose things that led to it. Their actions and verbal abuse, and speeches of racial supremacy did it.

When the American Army found its first concentration camp, high command had been hearing through military intelligence what amounted to rumors, but ultimately, intelligence had confirmed that something terrible had been going on. It did not help that the troops who found the camp had not been told. They were in shock at the sight of men emaciated and pale, all but dead, some dehydrated to the point where their sobs terminated in their throats. And that first camp was a work camp, which wasn’t even an extermination center where Zyklon B, which superseded the original Zyklon, was used to kill Jewish people, political dissidents, Christians, homosexuals, people with disabilities, especially mental disorders, and others. Jews bore the brunt of Nazi hatred, though no one can explain why it went that far. Heinrich Himmler was suspected of being more cruel and far more sinister than the others who decided that the use of the pesticide was a humane way for a “civilized” nation to kill its enemies. The war crimes trials at Nuremberg proved otherwise. Antisemitism wasn’t new; the Nazis just industrialized their hatred. It was not humane (as if war crimes ever can be). It was an agonizing death.

These camps were to be visited at Eisenhower’s orders, later, by command officers. In one instance, General George Patton refused to enter a shack with dead bodies stacked in it. General Omar Bradley communicated, “Georgie wouldn’t go in. He said he’d throw up.” That’s a quote from memory and not exact, but I can’t stomach researching it right now.

George Patton was a true-blue, cocky, tough son of a bitch. I’m not so sure that the allies could have ended the war without significantly more casualties without him. He knew that the German people, military and civilian, would be massacred by the Soviets who had suffered horribly in Leningrad and Stalingrad and everywhere between those cities and the border. The Soviet Army shelled Berlin mercilessly before moving in, but when they did, anyone they found in house-to-house searches was shot, the women raped, random torture was used, and Patton knew that all of it would happen. He hated it. Protested the splitting of Berlin. Out of this, a myth was formed: Patton wanted to invade the Soviet Union. In fact, he knew better and was a keen tactician and historian. What he wanted was to get them back across the border. To put them in their place. George never liked the Soviets and he bristled at never getting the chance to fight them.

The result was that the war in Europe ended. The Soviets declared war on Japan, but before they had the chance to do much, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.

Einstein lived ten years past those bombings. He lived to see the Soviets use the same dreadful weapon in tests. Thus, we have his final words about regret at not being a watchmaker.

There is nothing whatsoever that I’ve written in this thought experiment that lends any credibility to the concept of fate. Himmler was a sadistic man with power, and he did what all sadistic men with power do. All his choices speak to that.

While I believe God is real, I see from history that he simply doesn’t control the affairs of humans. All of humanity has the gift of free will. Only one man was ever born for a set purpose. Yet, he still could have easily saved himself from the cross. He chose not to.

When each of us wakes from sleep, we don’t really consider how many choices immediately present themselves. For the needy, the poor, imprisoned, and the infirm, there are fewer possibilities than other more fortunate people have, but, yes, there are still choices. We choose with our free will.

But wait! There are so many things that can influence that will. You need to shower and go to work. That’s routine, right? Not so fast. Maybe you don’t feel well. You’re tired, sore, and you have a headache. Is that an excuse not to go to work?

Not sure? Well, wait until you step out of the shower. More tired, lightheaded, and no appetite. Little bit of nausea downstairs, too. You’re awake fully now, and your body is sending signals to your brain: don’t make us go.

What’s your choice? Call in sick, or go to work?

This decision is unique to every person and their jobs, their supervisors, their economic situations, their modes of transportation, and more. What they choose has nothing to do with fate.

Some people believe, as do I, that opportunities and chance encounters are the presentations of a higher power. In other words, God does not control your life. There is no fate. But consider how and when you met your spouse. Which types of things had to happen leading up to your crossing paths with each other? Now you see the complexities of life. You meet, but do you ask that person for a date, or do you let them go out of your life, most likely forever? Is that the right one to be with? Are you the right one to be with them?

A chance encounter can lead to happiness or misery. Did God drop a gift in your path for you to choose to take or refuse? Think of what that person makes you feel. How can you know even then?

The answer is simple: if, as many believe, there is true evil out there, and I promise you that there is, then is there not also good? God and Satan. The former wants what’s best for you, but ultimately, you’re the one who has to choose, as the latter puts tempting but destructive people and things in your path.

God gave us free will. He didn’t want to create just another animal. Even the earliest humans chose, developed, lived in peace, or became violent as a matter of choice.

This freedom is extended to our beliefs in him. He didn’t want us to automatically love him without deciding to. If that were so, we would be nothing more to him than what a child keeps trapped in a bird cage. The parakeet may appreciate getting food, but it can’t tell the child that it loves him. In fact, it has never known freedom, but at the first opportunity, it will fly away. The old saying applies: if you love it, let it go. If it comes back, then you can probably keep it. If it doesn’t, it never belonged with you at all. We can’t force love. We know if a dog loves us because they express it. But if that dog shows no affection, you have to let it go to someone it will be happier with. That’s what I think God’s dynamic with us is.

We are free to love. Free to choose. With that said, so is everyone else. So what they do isn’t up to you. Bad or good, they affect us. Sometimes, it’s not his will for us to suffer. Prayer goes a long way, and he does give us miracles, but pain can teach us things we never would have known. He sees that. He may know how we will be treated and what we will do with what pain teaches us. But that doesn’t mean that he controls it.

“Fate” is a false concept that we use to give up, take a pass, or deny our part in something negative. And all we really have is our faith and each other. That is why love and kindness are so important.

“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”- Jesus Christ

King Kong didn’t have to climb up the Empire State Building with a woman he could never mate with. He chose that irrational action. And then he was killed for it. But he was an animal. We are not, and we shouldn’t act like one.

Who Guards the Guards?

There’s a Facebook and YouTube guy. Skeeter-something. Probably used the first part because an ex-wife told everyone he’s got a skeeter-peter. That’s 70s slang for “tiny dick”.

I saw this video. On Facebook.

A Facebook video.

Skeeter-peter was working with a group who sets up pedophiles. Now, I have zero problems with anyone willing to catch predators, you understand?

Those animals are the dregs of humanity. I truly think, believe even, that they should all be executed.

I’ve studied shit like this for years, trying to figure out why what happened to me happened. Why it happens to anyone.

And I still have no idea why it happens.

All I know is that there’s something wrong with the scumbags that do it and that the world would be a better place without them.

But then again, this “sting” they did in Walmart was disgusting.

First, it’s vigilantism. I don’t approve of vigilante operations. They could be sued for what they do. Second, they engaged in a form of entrapment which some judges would use to disqualify any charges against the fuckwad in question. Oh, they had transcripts, and the bastard thought he was talking to a 14-year-old. He said sick shit like “can I fuck you without a condom” and worse. Absolutely a fucking piece of shit. At that point the file should have been submitted to local police. But they sent an operative into Walmart to make contact. Then more operatives entered the store with cameras. Skeeter-peter wouldn’t shut the fuck up, giving a running dialog that, judging by the comments, really turned people off.

I’m not going to say much more, except that the police did arrest the cockroach. The group got banned from Walmart, which is hilarious.

But they made jokes the whole time. Jokes!

Look. There’s nothing funny about child sexual abuse. These guys make survivors like me cringe. Your intentions to do something good can be lost in talk like that. It’s in bad taste, it’s bad form and it’s sick.

I’d like to be able to say I’m glad the cockroach was arrested, but the involvement of civilians risks them getting any kind of felony conviction. And predators learn from shit like this fiasco. Next time, he will be more careful and probably claim the victim he goes after.

He was incredibly stupid doing this, but he will not be so stupid in the future. And what happens if his victims won’t testify and don’t do a rape kit, and there’s nothing anyone can do?

You want to help police find predators, fine. I’m with you, but don’t do this. Because you’ll fuck it up. And I’d prefer you not get involved at all if it’s just a bunch of attention-seeking Skeeter-peter assholes who talk all the way through a 20 minute video. All you’ve accomplished is to get the guy detained and that’s not enough.

Who guards the “guards” like Skeeter-peter? They can gather all the intel and evidence they want, but actually confronting someone, no. You can’t do that. Work with the police and let them work. They can take it from there. Besides, how can you be sure that the confrontation doesn’t end up with you getting a bullet in your gut? Cornered predators are desperate and unpredictable. It’s a dangerous situation. If you’re not law enforcement, you’re taking chances with your life and anyone around you. Desperate men never stop at one shot and their hands shake. A customer 3 aisles away, maybe a kid with his or her mom, could die because of you. You can’t plan professionally and that’s dangerous. You talk the whole time and you sure aren’t aware of others. You put innocent lives at risk for your personal glory. And I’m sure you have Patreon members. Your motives, Skeeter-peter, don’t impress me. Your procedure scares me. You’re just a bunch of showboaters and hot dogs.

I have no respect for any of you. And as opposed to vigilantes as I am, I really wish you’d have just shut the fuck up and clipped the cockroach. Because you’ve created a true monster out of this predator. He will hurt kids next time.

You know, most police officers are competent. Dedicated. Some bad ones have surely gotten attention. The force does not miss them. But let them do their jobs. If you don’t, you are the goddamn bad guys. If you see something, say something. That’s how it works, Skeeter-peter.

To show how little the human race thinks of its children, then the Hamas attack of Yom Kippur proved it. I thought the attack was just rockets. It was so, so much worse. Tonight I found out. Hamas had planned this for two years. They had infiltrated Israel. They purposely targeted children. They tortured and killed them. It was an act and declaration of war and war is exactly what they’re going to get. Nobody will be able to stop Israel from the vengeance that’s coming.

Killing civilians, putting children in dog cages and torturing them to death? Crimes against humanity, war crimes and as evil as men can possibly get. And now it’s done. Hell comes next. Israel will never let this go. World War Three has probably begun.

I am done here. Pray for peace.