Tag Archives: President Joe Biden

July 19, 2022 · 22:27

The Bloody Trail of Documentation Leading to American Carnage: The 7th Hearing of the January 6th Committee



Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Pardon the delay in the publication of this article. I started it the day after the hearing and didn’t finish it because I was tired. The next night I went to dinner and Top Gun, Maverick. Then for the next few days between work around the house, catching, doing some work with publicity for the book, catching up on some reading, watching some movies and documentaries about the Civil Rights Movement as I ponder my next book, in light of current reverses to civil, voting, reproductive, and religious rights by Christian Nationalists and their militant supermajority on the Supreme Court. I need to get with my agent soon for his advice in regard to the five other books I in some stage of development.

I will be making a trip to Washington, DC tomorrow to see DC United play my all time favorite team, Bayern Munich. Thursday I will visit the National Museum of African American History, then have some dinner before heading back to my hotel to watch the live hearings on Thursday Night. Friday I will visit some of the preserved Civil War fortifications around DC, and spend the night in Annapolis and return home Saturday. I will be my first trip to see and do things I want to do since the beginning of COVID. So without further delay the long delayed article.

On December 14th, 2020 the Electoral College cast its ballots and elected Joe Biden as President Elect. Between November 4th and that day President Trump’s legal team had filed 61 challenges in State and Federal Courts, filing 61 lawsuits, losing 60 outright and winning a portion of another that had no bearing on that court’s final decision.

Likewise, Trump personally attempted to pressure Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger to find over 11,000 votes to flip Georgia into his column and disenfranchise Georgia voters. Raffensberger refused and testified as to that fact before the committee.

White House advisors and cabinet members told Trump that he lost and needed to concede. He did not, even as then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recognized the legitimacy of the election. However, Trump would not do so and turned to allies outside the administration willing to do anything, especially illegal, to keep him in power.

The situation came to a head on the evening and night of December 18th when in a surprise visit by Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne obtained access to the President when a junior White House aid admitted to the White House without higher authorization. That is hard to get. I know, because in 2009 a friend of mine from Iraq, who was then Chief of Staff to the National Security Advisor, got Judy and me a private tour of the West Wing, not even to meet the President. The amount of background checks and security required was incredible. One does not get to casually drop in to the Oval Office unless something is seriously awry. Thus when the clown car of clueless, criminally minded, conspiracy theorists pitched a draft executive order for the President to order the Department of Defense to use the military to seize voting machines, and to appoint Sidney Powell as a ”Special Counsel” with full security clearance to do the job of ensuring Trump remained President despite having lost the election and having every lawsuit to overturn the election defeated, often dismissed by Trump appointed Federal judges.

At this point Cassidy Hutchinson, realizing that there were no adults in the room notified Pat Cipollone, and Mark Meadows. Cipollone was the first to arrive followed shortly by Meadows and senior advisor Eric Hirschmann. There was a heated argument which included much profanity and threats, with Hirschmann telling Flynn to ”sit his ass down.” Cipollone demanded their evidence which they failed to supply. There was much profanity, threats of fist fights and violence before the meeting finally ended, with Meadows escorting Giuliani off the White House Grounds. Trump, now realizing that there was no legal way to overturn the election, and the the clown car had no way to keep him in office, decided to use the mob of his supporters to do that very thing. Barely two hours later, Trump sent out a tweet for his supporters to come to Washington on January 6th because it ”would be wild.”

Almost immediately right wing activists, militia groups, and provocateurs, began calling for violence and revolt to keep Trump in power. One used an image from Game of Thrones to call for a ”Red Wedding”, a reference to the murder of people coming to what they thought was a wedding but in which they were massacred. Others, talked of a ”rope day” which is a reference to bringing ropes to hang Trump’s enemies, which included the gallows that was set up hang Mike Pence. Many provocateurs including Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and many others spread the call of Trump to overthrow the election, start a revolution and kill their opponents.

The violence incited by Trump’s YouTube, Instagram, and other social media propagandists became so vile, violent, and profane and murderous that it makes any person with a modicum of decency, a moral center, and respect for our laws and our system of government sick and frightened for our future as a democracy.

During the following two weeks leading up to 6 January there were meetings, a ”war room” was set up in the Trump Hotel where Trump’s cabal of coup planners made their contacts and gathering their shock troops that led the assault on the Capitol. These included the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Members of these group brought military grade weapons, including AR-15 type rifles, grenades, body armor, kevlar helmets, bear spay, stocks of ammunition, and a 30 day supply of food. They were primed for battle, and as the day grew closer and it became clear that Vice President Pence would most likely fulfill his duties to certify the Electoral College vote and formally declare Joe Biden as President, Pence became one of their targets for death.

The night before the assault on the Capitol and Trump’s own rally on the Ellipse, a large rally was held within hearing distance of the Oval Office, complete with Sidney Powell, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Alex Jones, Proud Boys and other miscreants urging the crowd to fight like hell for Trump the next day. The language was that of a pre-combat pep talk. It was incendiary and promoted violence against anyone who opposed Trump or supported Biden, continuing to promote the big lie of the stolen election. According to testimony Trump had the doors of the Oval Office in order to take it in and enjoy it.

That same evening two pipe bombs were left near the offices of the Democratic and Republican parties near Congress. The person who left them has never been identified or arrested.

I will return to 6 January after I come back. between then and now I will post about my travels.

Until next time,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 12, 2022 · 02:38

The Perpetrators, the Victims, and the Bystanders: Putin’s War and War Crimes and Us


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The Czech-Jewish historian Yehuda Bauer, who escaped the Holocaust with his family the day that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, which had been abandoned by England, France, Italy, and even indirectly the United States which was battling a pro-Nazi isolationist movement, made this commend that none of us should forget: “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” 

The Perpetrators: Putin, his Enablers, and those Who Carry Out His War

Bauer’s words are so applicable today as Vladimir Putin and his willing accomplices in the Russian government and military, having miserably failed to overthrow the Ukraine in a fast military campaign have now resorted to using massive artillery barrages, dumb bombs, and long range missiles to directly attack and massacre Ukrainian civilians, including children.

In the long build up to his attack on Ukraine Putin, his advisors, his military planners, as well as the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko and his advisors easily could be charged under the same counts as were the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg. The first is “CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.

The facts of this case are that beginning in 2014 Putin’s Russia invaded the eastern regions of the Ukraine and Crimea based on the deliberate lie that Ukraine was committing genocide against Russia speaking people in those areas. the fact is that there was no genocide or even any government organized systematic persecution of any Russian speaking people there or anywhere in Ukraine. this is back up by the testimony of Russian speaking Ukrainians who are now fighting for the Ukraine against Russia. Likewise, the fact that Russia had nearly eight years to bring evidence of the alleged genocide to the U.N. and the International Criminal Court demonstrates that the Russian allegations were lies. They repeated and doubled down on those lies when they began their invasion in February, not only invoking they were invading to prevent genocide, and to destroy “the Nazi regime that had taken over Ukraine.” One again this was a lie. there was no genocide, as Russian speaking Ukrainians call a lie as they fight for Ukraine against Russia, and Ukraine is not a Nazi state. It is a liberal democracy which has free and fair elections, which coincidentally has a Jewish President.

Putin, his advisors, and his military planners began their preparations and planning for this attack in 2021. They built up forces along their eastern and southern borders with Ukraine and in January began conducting joint exercises with Belarus which enabled them to put tens of thousands more troops on Ukraine’s northern border. This would not possible without the cooperation of Belorussian President Lukashenko.

The invasion was in clear violation of international agreements and treaties to which Russia is a signatory, and they all participated in a common plan and conspiracy to make this possible. Those who should be charged with this count include Presidents Putin and Lukashenko, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has been masterminding the Russian diplomatic lies and propaganda, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Chief of the General Staff General Valery Garasimov, First Deputy Chief of the General Staff Colonel General Nikolay Bogdanovsky, the commanders of the Western and Central, and Southern Military districts, their subordinate commanders in Ukraine, and the Commander of the Russian Air Force, Lieutenant General Sergey Dronov, and the commanders of Air Force units that are conducting attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine, General of the Army Viktor Zolotov, Commander of the Russian National Guard which in addition to breaking up anti-war demonstrations in Russia are now deployed in Ukraine. The list could go on but many of these leaders are not readily findable on the internet. Regardless, they are known and their names should be placed before the International Criminal Court for investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Victims: The Ukrainians

Putin’s war has bogged down. The Ukrainians are fighting with a heroism, patriotism, and ferocity that nobody imagined. Despite being outnumbered, they are killing thousands of Russian soldiers and destroying hundreds of Russian tanks and armored vehicles, and shot down dozens of Russian aircraft and helicopters, and taken hundreds of Russian soldiers as prisoners of war, most of who had no idea that they had no idea why they were in Ukraine. Despite that Putin mpushes forward destroying more towns and and civilian targets while making up lie after lie.

Putin is desperate, isolated and has changed his tactics to target civilians, hospitals, homes and apartment buildings, cut off Ukrainian civilians from evacuation along agreed to evacuation corridors using direct fire from tanks and artillery to kill them and force them back into battered encircled cities with no electricity, water or power. That is not a new thing for the Russian and the Soviet militaries of the past century. When they are bogged down because of poor training, leadership, logistics, and intelligence they resort to brute force. They do not use precision weapons to target military units or facilities, but use artillery already in Ukraine and missiles fired from Russia and Belarus to devastate Ukrainian cities, towns and people.

The Russian military controls the former but still potentially deadly nuclear plant and Chernobyl, and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest nuclear plant in Europe. The attack on Zaporizhzhia was premeditated and experts now believe that the attack brought the plant closer to disaster than before, had it melted down with would have been similar to the disaster at Fukushima. The Russians have now set up a headquarters and forward operating base manned by 500 soldiers at Zaporizhzhia.

The Ukrainian staff are being held captive to run the plants, even though Russians are now calling the shots, including cutting off the electrical power to Chernobyl and the reporting systems used to let the International Atomic Energy Commission to monitor what is happening at those facilities. It is well within the realm of probability that the Russians will either inadvertently or intentionally trigger a nuclear catastrophe at either of these plants, or the other three Ukrainian nuclear plants.

Wednesday the Russians accused Ukraine and the United States of operating secret chemical weapons facilities in Ukraine, the then convened a meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations where they made the accusation, and were basically told that they could not use that forum to spread lies with absolutely no evidence. Their accusations are false but being fanned by Russian and Chinese media outlets as a pretext to attack Ukraine with chemical weapons.

The Russians have three chemical weapon research and production facilities which they have never allowed international inspectors to inspect. Likewise, the vast amounts of chemical weapons which the Russians had committed to destroying in the 1990s cannot be confirmed to be destroyed, and new production cannot be overseen. These facilities are illegal under international law and produce chemical and biological weapons, some of which have been used in Syria, Chechnya, and against individuals, especially dissidents in Russia and abroad. The Russians maintain missile, tactical rocket, artillery, and bombs which can be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons against Ukrainians. These weapons include Sarin, VX, Tabun, Soman, and Novichok nerve agents which even a singled drop on contact with skin can shut down the human nervous system Lewisite, and Mustard gas blister agents which when inhaled so scar the lungs that people die by drowning in their own bodily fluids, choking agents such as phosgene, and blood agents. Their biological agents include Anthrax and Ricin.

The United States ended its offensive chemical and biological weapons programs in 1969, and the programs in Ukraine ended with their independence from the Soviet Union. However, the Russians have played this game before in Syria, where after its weapons were removed, mostly by the United States, the Russians used them numerous times on civilian targets. The Russian accusations against the United States and Ukraine developing chemical weapons are a certain false flag operation to allow the Russians to claim that they are using chemical weapons in self defense, which is also in violation of international treaties and protocols that they have signed. The Russians have vast stockpiles of these weapons which they have continued to develop and use during and after the Cold War.

The second count is WAR CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

There is absolutely no doubt that they will use them as they get more desperate to finish this war which they refuse to call a war and have made it illegal for Russian media or citizens to call it such. The Russians have already attacked over 20 civilian hospitals and many other purely civilian targets, including attacking refugees and relief convoys in prearranged humanitarian corridors. The have attacked nuclear facilities and will not hesitate to use chemical weapons as long as the United States and NATO do not call their hand and find a way to get the Ukrainians weapons that can effect tactical actions such as the Stingers and Javelins, and those include the MiG 29s offered by Poland and other heavy weapons systems that the Ukrainian military has experience using. Likewise, Russia needs to be warned that we will hunt down and take into custody any member of the Russian government or military who has take part in these war crimes, and hand them over to the International Criminal Court, from Putin down, diplomatic status notwithstanding.

Finally we come to CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

The Russians are doing this impunity because not a single leader of any NATO, E.U., or the United Nations has authorized anything more than the shipment of tactical weapons, humanitarian supplies, and yes, massive Economic Sanctions. But Putin is a bully. He is willing to toss around threats of using nuclear or chemical weapons because he knows that we are afraid of crossing his red lines due to fear of World War III and mutually assured destruction in a nuclear war. He is counting on us to back down like Kruschev did in the Cuban Missile Crisis against President Kennedy who put our nuclear forces at THREATCON II, the next to highest and when the Soviet Union under Brezhnev threatened to attack Israel and send nuclear weapons to Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and President Nixon responded by both mobilizing troops and increasing our Nuclear Threat Condition (THREATCON) to THREATCON III. in both cass the Soviets, fearing the complete destruction of their country backed down. Likewise, when Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislov Petrov was alerted to a nuclear launch of five nuclear missiles realized that the new missile detection system had malfunctioned because such a strike did not match U.S.first strike doctrine, as a result Petrov refused to notify the High Command of the threat, which with only a minute or two to order the retaliatory full nuclear strike mandated by Soviet Doctrine would have certainly ordered. He was relieved of his duties and retired from the Soviet military, but he prevented a world wide nuclear war, which would destroy, him, his family, and his entire country. He later said:  “I had obviously never imagined that I would ever face that situation. It was the first and, as far as I know, also the last time that such a thing had happened, except for simulated practice scenarios.“ Petrov made the right decision, as will any officer order by Putin to launch a nuclear weapon, regardless of Russian doctrine. Putin cannot get around that, and if he ordered such an attack he would be eliminated by Russian military or security officers more committed to the survival of Russia and their loved ones than Putin.

The final count is that of conspiracy of Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

Every single Russian leader involved in the invasion of Ukraine is guilty of this.

The Bystanders and their chance to intervene

From now on the United States and NATO need to look at history and realize that Putin’s words of nuclear escalation are a bluff that needs to be called without threatening Russia with a nuclear strike but by simply doing what we did in World War II before we were attacked by Japan. We passed the Lend Lease, giving the British, and the Free French, and the Soviets weapons to fight the Nazis and even use American ships and aircraft to escort convoys to Britain. Not only, that but American officers flew is British aircraft during the Battle of the Atlantic, one of them who spotted the German Battleship Bismarck, enabling it to be disabled and sunk by British Aircraft and battleships. Likewise, our involvement did not come without cost. The USS Kearny was damaged by a torpedo while coming to the aid of a convoy in October 1941 with the loss of 11 sailors, and the USS Reuben James was sunk with the loss of 100 of 144 crew members.

Other Americans fought to aide countries being attacked by Fascists, as did American members of the Lincoln Brigade who fought Franco’s Fascists, Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and Hitler’s Condor Legion in Spain, and the American pilots who flew with the Nationalist Chinese against Japan as the ”Flying Tigers” who valiantly fought the Japanese. Today, thousands of Americans, Europeans, and others are volunteering to serve in an international unit of the Ukrainian army. Many are professional soldiers and highly trained combat veterans.

Diplomacy sometimes has to edge towards brinksmanship. Lend Lease and the Cold War demonstrate this. Putin is a typical Soviet KGB hack who only remains in power through the fear of people who are afraid that he is a madman. He is not. We need to give him a way to save face and end his war with Ukraine while claiming that he ended Ukraine’s threat to Russia without destroying Russia, and with it his at least temporary power as its leader. It is the only way to return to what Putin’s Foreign Minster referred to the normal days of the Cold War.

Calling out Putin’s threats, providing the Ukrainians the weapons they need to defend themselves and escorting those weapons to them, daring Putin to do something about it. Despite his bluster and threat of using nuclear weapons or engaging American and NATO units in combat he will not. All of his threats have been political theater to conjure up the fear we have of nuclear war, World War III, and mutually assured destruction. But his is an empty threat, other Russian leaders in the Soviet era made similar threats and never pushed the button because they knew that it would involve the absolute destruction of ”Mother Russia”, the preservation of which is paramount to Putin, who has allied himself with the keepers of this sacred mission, the Russian Orthodox Church. This being the case he will be loathe to start a war that would destroy the holy land he is committed to preserve. For those unaware of the political power of the Orthodox Church in Russia have to rem that its leaders and theologians consider it the Third Rome, in terms of the authority of the Christian Church. It sees itself as the successor to Rome and Constantinople. The Russian Orthodox Church will not permit the destruction of ”Mother Russia” and Putin will not dare cross them. Since the fall of the Soviet Union he was baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church and has presented himself as its defender. To allow it to be destroyed would be tantamount to destroying the Church and Mother Russia. Putin would be damned by the Russian Orthodox Church and his people for letting that happen. Do not underestimate the power of that Church in Russia to deter Putin.

The only way that Putin has a chance to remain in power and salvage a bit of self respect in Russia by declaring his ”limited military operation” a success. If he doesn’t do this the mothers of all those Russian boys killed in Ukraine will rise up like those mothers of the Russian boys lost in Afghanistan. The wounded will come home and tell their stories of the lies they were told, and how honorably and valiantly the Ukrainians fought.

Of course all of this requires the courage of American, NATO, and E.U. leaders to call Putin’s desperate bluffs. We should immediately agree with Poland’s idea to transfer their MiG 29s to Ukraine. The Russians will not do anything to stop them. Despite his threats he does not want war with NATO. He cannot defeat Ukraine unless he totally destroys it, and he is failing. He cannot risk war with NATO.

We should tell Russia directly that if they use chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine that we will find and destroy the Russian military units responsible for their use, declare and enforce a defensive no fly zones over humanitarian aid corridors, airfields, and rail lines, not to destroy Russian military forces. Likewise, we should demand the immediate access by the International Red Cross and other non-aligned humanitarian Non Governmental Organizations to precent a humanitarian catastrophe, that Putin alone would be responsible. Do not be be deceived, despite his false claims about coming to the rescue of of ethnic Russians against Putin and Lavarov’s fake claims of ”genocide” against them, one has to remember that the majority of the people he is killing in Ukraine are the ethnic Russians in Kharkiv, Marianopul, Khorsun, and other cities who have now take up arms against him.

The slaughter can be stopped. Nuclear war avoided, but it cannot be stopped unless we act from the position of moral, legal, economic, diplomatic, and military strength. Putin’s military cannot subdue Ukraine, much less than the full diplomatic, informational, military, and economic might of the United States. President Biden and the leaders of NATO need to call Putin’s bluff knowing that without destroying Mother Russia he doesn’t have the cards or chips to do anything but fold.

For far too many years Western leaders have allowed Putin to get his way by playing on our fears rather than facts. It is true that Russia has the weapons to destroy the world, but when one looks at history, culture, and the preservation of Mother Russia it is a calculated risk that we should take. Putin is not stupid. He is not crazy, he gambled that he could conquer Ukraine in days, that the Inited States, the E.U. and NATO would acquiesce to his seizure of Ukraine. But he was arrogant, made far too many faulty assumptions about how Ukraine, the United States, the E.U., NATO and the world would respond.

Now is the time to take the calculated risk and call his bluffs. If we do not he will continue to wreak havoc in Ukraine, and promote unwarranted fears in the West. The fact is that a militarily, diplomatically, economically and informationally superior NATO is more than a match for him. He is playing the part of a fear filled bully who when push comes to shove, he will back down, or if he continues down this path, members of the Russian military leadership, the FSB, the Oligarchs, and the Russian people will rise up against him. Putin might not face a War Crimes trial if these people kill him and hang him up by meathooks like Mussolini.

The truth is that Putin is playing a weak hand that gets weaker every day. The United States, NATO, and the E.U. need to stop encouraging his aggression by giving in to his threats that paly upon our fears. This is the only way to stop Putin.

The first and final count was the conspiracy charge, which could be used against anyone cooperating with the other charges. It is time for the United States, the E.U., NATO, and the ICC to hang this like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of Putin’s willing helpers. Believe me, none of them want to lose everything for a cause that benefits none of them.

Ukraine will not surrender. That is a given. Many of the Russian people, including senior officers of the FSB are against this invasion, and if the United States, the E.U. and NATO act to support Ukraine beyond supplying short range tactical weapons, fly the Polish MiGs into Ukraine and supply that nation long and medium range air defense missiles, coastal anti-ship missiles, as well as surplus Russian made tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles that Ukrainian military personnel are already trained to use. That is not an escalation as Russian will allege, but something we have always done to help nations being attacked by criminal nation states, just like we did Britain and the Soviet Union through Lend Lease before we were officially at war.

Economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and the use of intelligence and information do not deter a state using illegal war built upon lies and disinformation, and threats that it will not Putin will not carry out because they will result in the destruction of the Holy Nation Putin has promised to preserve. Thus the theory of calculated risk. Miether Putin or Russias other leaders will risk the existence of their families and Mother Russia for a war that they cannot win. Standing up and doing these things will bring about peace, enable the Russians to withdraw from Ukraine while preserving the myth that they succeeded in their operation

Sanctions should be maintained until Putin and his willing henchmen turn themselves in to the International Criminal Court, or a new Russian government surrenders them. That being done the people of Russian, many who oppose Putin’s actions should be offered ever resource to rebuild their lives and bring Russia completely into the fold of freedom and democracy without further punishment or declaration of guilt of their nation. This was a terrible legacy of Treaties of Brest-Livstock and Versailles that led to the Soviet Revolution, the Nazis, and World War II.

The Ukrainians need to be free, and the territories seized by Russia in 2014 restored to them. Instead of Russians wealth being seized by the west, a fair amount needs to be given to Ukraine as reparations, but Russia will also need to be rebuilt and its citizens who lost sons and husbands in this war be compensated. The toxic seeds of blame and shame cannot be placed on all Russians, even as their leaders are tried for their conspiracy to commit illegal war, the conduct of that war, and the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by that regime. We have to separate the ordinary citizens, many who are risking their lives by protesting or fleeing the country because they do not want to be associated with Putin’s regime’s malevolent crimes.

There is justice and there is mercy, but the path to them is filled with danger. That danger includes taking calculated risks against a malevolent dictator attempting to use the fear of World War III to keep powers capable of preventing his war crimes and crimes against humanity from intervening more forcibly. This is where the principle of calculated risk helps us and Ukraine, and eventually the Russian people.

It will take time, and in that time tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives, but fewer lives will be lost if these actions are taken sooner than later. They are a calculated risk but necessary unless we want to see a complete disaster in Ukraine and and an emboldened Russia that will beging planing attacks on the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania. It will also deter China from making attacks against the Republic of China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. They want an empire but traditionally they are patient and will not take risks that will endanger their nation.

The United States, NATO, the EU, and the World cannot remain bystanders, we must do all we can based on facts, history, diplomatic, informational, military, and economic power cannot be paralyzed by fear by the threats of a bully whose only winning card results in the destruction of his nation. As I have described this is based on the principle of calculated risk. To assume that Putin will resort to a nuclear war that will destroy Mother Russian is to play into the fear that he wants to engender in us, like Hitler did to Britain and France in 1938 at Munich. Putin cannot be appeased. Meeting him with strength the combined weight of Western diplomacy, information, military power and economics might very allow his opponents at home to overthrow him.

It is a risk we must take, sooner rather than later for the sake of the valiant Ukrainians, led by their incredibly brave and insightful President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

That is all for tonight. Glory to Ukraine.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under crimes against humanity, Foreign Policy, History, Military, national security, nuclear weapons, Political Commentary, ukraine, war crimes

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March 5, 2022 · 02:41

Welcome to the Old New World of the ”Hot” Cold War

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I do apologize for not writing in so long, it has been to long and my loyal readers deserve better. Truthfully, much has been going on at work, on the book, and at home. So much that every time I thought I might write something, I either procrastinated waiting for more information, or got a brain cramp and writers block. But tonight after 10 days of an illegal, immoral, and criminal war of aggression by Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine, I am going to speak some hard and bery personal experiences and truth.

This is a long, but necessary post because it deals with a reality that many people have either forgotten or have never experienced. Please understand it in that manner and please feel free to share.

In the 1980s I served as a platoon leader, Company XO, and Company commander in Central Germany at the climax of the Cold War. Our mission was to help,reconstitute the 11th ACR after they were decimated on the Fulda Gap. We were expected to take 70-90% casualties in the process. I was a Medical Service Corps officer with specialized training as a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare officer.

So much of that experience is seared into my brain. I can recite how chemical weapons including choking agents, blood agents, and nerve agents cause death. I know far too much about how biological agents do the same. If you are unfamiliar, depending on your ability to handle horror do some research, if you cannot because of your life experience, don’t traumatize yourself.

But most of all I remember the effects of nuclear weapons, the blast effects of air and surface bursts of various size and types of weapon, and what would happen to people, equipment, and structures from those blasts depending how far one was from the explosion. I understand the firestorms they would ignite, and the effects of radiation on the human body. I know from memory how many RADS one can live with without getting immediate radiation sickness, how long one could remain in an irradiated area, and how much radiation would give a person serious radiation poisoning and bring about death. I understand how the process of how people die from radiation poisoning not just from the immediate effects of the blast, and burn injuries.

I understand how to plot fallout patterns, and had to do so on 1:50,000 maps that had my house on them. I remember receiving and decoding FLASH messages in training exercises, saying where the nukes were going off and plotting the fallout patterns on those maps. If you want to see how frightening that is just watch the film “Crimson Tide.”

I predicted what Putin was going to do in Ukraine and even when he would do it as far back as last fall as he began to build up his forces and issue threats. you can check my Facebook and Twitter feeds to verify that information.

I knew that the Russian Army would struggle in this war because it is poorly trained, most of its soldiers are poorly motivated and trained, and its senior officers and commanders are inexperienced at the operational level of war. as a result they resort to destroying everything in front of them, even as whole Russian units surrender in mass as they suffer massive casualties.

The Russian Army has a nightmarish history of poor logistics, and its soldiers, mostly conscripts are ill-trained, and badly treated. This is nothing new, the Russian Army, including the victorious Red Army of the Second World War has had the same problems, neither is it prepared for a massive insurgency after it takes control of major cities, the Ukrainians will never give up. They will kill so many Russian soldiers in an insurgency that when the bodies come home and the Russian mothers demand justice, when the wounded return and tell their families and friends what they experienced. These accounts will end Putin’s nefarious regime, just as the Red Army’s defeat in Afghanistan sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Soviet Union, and brought about the rule of a disillusioned KGB Agent named Vladimir Putin, who is determined to “Make Russia Great Again”, and damn the cost to his country and people. Despite Putin’s suppression of his opponents, the free press, and trying to cut off Russians from foreign news outlets, these stories will rock Russia, and bring about his fall.

But unlike some, I hate being right in my predictions. I don’t make any money from them, and you don’t see me as a talking head on cable news. Sadly, I am probably a better military historian, theorist, strategist, and subject matter expert than I am a Priest.

Personally, I am not sleeping well. I am having flashbacks, including from when we had to take action to protect us, our families, and even pets when the fallout from Chernobyl passed over us. Judy and I talk about this often. She remembers that time all too well.

Putin’s threats of nuclear war and his forces attack on the largest nuclear reactor, and seizure of the Chernobyl site, and the possibility of the Russians doing something with those places as the mother of all dirty bombs, make what is happening in Ukraine an existential crisis. Putin is now far more reckless than any of his predecessors in raising the nuclear weapons rhetoric.

Thus it is important that the United States, NATO, and the E.U., need to thread the needle of this historic crisis, because it is different than any of the major crises of the Cold War, by giving every means of assistance to Ukraine and punishing Russia without a direct confrontation with Russian military forces. Such a confrontation would give Putin the opportunity to use it as an excuse to launch a few nuclear weapons to test our response. Putin has crossed a line that no Soviet leader other than Krushev did when he placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, and the brinksmanship he engaged in with John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In order to help the Ukraine without a provoking a direct confrontation that would likely lead to nuclear war, we will have to do things that will cause us pain, like cutting off all Russian oil and LNG trade to West, including us. This will result in higher oil prices with a ripple effect that all of us will feel in our pocketbooks in a myriad of different ways, but we and Europe have the means to compensate. But that is a small price to pay to help cut off Putin’s ability to make war by using economic means and hopefully stir the Russian people to rise up against Putin, and maybe even inspire someone or a faction in the FSB and military to remove Putin from power. But, in the mean time we cannot trust a word that Putin says and be wary as he grows more desperate in the military situation and the massive sanctions that are crippling Russia’s economy and those to follow.

These weapons include more anti-tank and and anti-aircraft missiles like the Javelin and Stinger, as well as the former Soviet Su-27s and MiG-29s that are part of Air Forces Eastern European NATO nations that used to be part of the Warsaw Pact. We can also provide former Soviet artillery from those nations. We need to help Turkey provide more of their very effective and inexpensive drones to Ukraine. Speed is of the essence, while some would like to equip the Ukrainians with Patriot missiles, M-1A Abrams tanks, and F-16 fighters, the pipeline to provide them and train the Ukrainians on them is too long to help at the moment.

We also need to cross the line and provide Ukraine the best real time intelligence to allow their air and ground forces every advantage. Some say this crosses the line into deeper involvement, and possibility of conflict with Russia, but we will not be taking direct military action, simply providing information. This is a moral obligation.

Likewise, we need to let the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies use experienced contractors with Special Forces backgrounds to help arm, train and advise Ukrainian insurgents as we did the Afghans in the 1980s. The use of contractors and mercenaries to do this provides the cover of plausible deniability, and does not involve U.S. or NATO troops taking direct action against the Russias just like we did in Afghanistan.

Additionally we need to keep building up forces in Eastern Europe because there is no doubt that Putin harbors desires on Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Romania, and has pledged to punish Germany. That will mean deploying more U.S. Army, Marine, and Air Force units to those countries, and provide massive military and humanitarian aide to Ukraine and to the countries providing for the million or so Ukrainian refugees. We probably need to sent another three to five Brigade Combat Teams, and a Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

As for the United States, we need to reverse the historic mistake of President George W. Bush and every President after him and fulfill our commitment to joining the International Criminal Court. We helped establish international criminal at Nuremberg. Our refusal to join the ICC is a black mark on our moral and legal history. As Justice Robert Jackson said when the International Military Tribunal to prosecute the major Nazi War Criminals: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

For those born after the Cold War or those born at the tail end of it this is a foreign world, but to us who grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation, and served looking at the Soviets face to face in the Cold War, it is nothing new, and our President understands it far better than most. Whether you like him or not, he is handling this as good or better than any of our Cold War Presidents did the threats from their time, as this is similar to those but very much different.

Welcome to the old new world of the “hot” Cold War, war crimes, crimes against humanity, mutually assured destruction, and few good answers.

So, until the next time,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under crimes against humanity, Foreign Policy, History, Military, News and current events, nuclear weapons, Political Commentary, PTSD, russia, ukraine, war crimes

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January 24, 2021 · 02:24

“They will have no respect for us unless we whip them & and I say it in all earnestness ” Thoughts on the Assault on the Capitol and the Continued Attempts to Destroy Our Republic after the Inauguration of President Biden

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I apologize for the long delay in getting this article online. I began it Wednesday but had a number of interruptions which culminated last night when most of the article was lost when it did not automatically save. I was almost ready to hit the publish button when I noticed so much was missing.

Wednesday I felt a tremendous sense of relief as President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office. It felt like the threat of dictatorship, a violent coup, and the destruction of our Republic by President Trump and his violent supporters led by Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and self-proclaimed anti-government “militias” had receded into the background, at least for the moment. It also felt incredibly hopeful as an incoming administration guided by what is best for the lives, health, and security of all Americans was taking charge. Watching the President and Vice President begin work shortly after the inauguration to begin to tear down the legacy of destructive tyranny and lawlessness built by Trump over the last four years was heartening.

i have to admit that I cried a lot on Wednesday, tears of joy and relief, tears that helped remind me that somehow we as a nation and our Constitution had survived the most malevolent President and his cult followers attempt to destroy it by every means possible including violence and murder.

The setting of the ceremony was almost surreal. Just two weeks before thousands of violent protesters, many armed stormed the Capitol, smashing windows and battering down the very doors that the new President, Vice President and members of Congress were now entering the West side of the building for the inauguration.

There was also the absence of millions of people who would have attended had the Coronavirus disaster been managed effectively by the outgoing Trump Administration. As of today over 25 million infections, many suffering long term dehabilitating medical conditions, and 420,000 deaths, millions of lost jobs, tens of thousands of businesses closed forever, shutdowns of schools, businesses and mass transportation systems that people depend on. I have to also mention how overwhelmed our hospitals, medical system, and the physicians, nurses and technicians who are worn out from trying to save the lives of dying  COVID-19 patients, many becoming sick or dying of COVID as they try to save their patients.

Likewise the threat of violence which had been promised by those who executed an insurrectionist assault on the Capitol building just two weeks before forced the deployment of Secret Service, FBI, Capitol Police, Washington Metro Police and 25,000 National Guard troops backed by specialized active duty troops to deter those threatened attacks. In addition to the unprecedented number of National Guard and police officer, there were the barriers, the blocking of major thoroughfares, and dividing the Capitol into Red and Green Zones.

That was unsettling but necessary. The seditious and treasonous mob which had been incited and encouraged on by President Trump, his son Donald Jr., his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama, and a number of others were ready to strike again, The terrorists who assaulted and breached the Capitol Police security killing and wounding police officers who they called “traitors” as they beat them with baseball bats, flagpoles with American, Trump, MAGA, Christian Flags, and of course the Confederate Battle , but most ironically the “back the blue” versions of the American flag.

I am sure that the massive show of force for the inauguration at the Capitol and in various State Capitols deterred another assault, but I don’t think the threat is over. The many disillusioned followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement are being actively recruited by anti-government, Neo-Nazi, White Supremacy groups for radicalization into violent for soldiers of a revolutionary movement that has much more in common with Hitler’s SA, or Stürmabteilung Brownshirts, than with the American patriots who fought for our independence in 1776. There is no comparison between those Trump’s Cult and their Neo-Nazi thugs and our founders. The ideology of the Nazis and our founders were and are polar opposites, and anyone who believes that the violent overthrow of the ongoing American experiment is a domestic enemy, and a supporter of terrorism. They are no better than Al Qaida, ISIS, MS-13, or any foreign enemy. Despite the return to normalcy their threat remains and decent people must oppose them to identify them for who and what they are.

Likewise the ignorance that helped fan the flames of radicalism that led to Trump’s election still remains. The comments on Facebook by rabid Trump supporters are worryingly absurd. They claim “the left and mainstream media bowing down to Biden” without any self reflection how they formed a personality cult around Trump in which they abandoned all the principles that they had once stood for, except perhaps White Supremacy. While they condemn actual media sources and reporters be they on television or print, they don’t actually read them or watch them. They simple take the carefully edited snippets given to them by the Fox News nightmare, or nighttime lineup, those of Newsmax or OAN, or radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh as gospel. They never do their own research in fact they are actively doing that. Basically they are like the Germans who unquestionably took the words of me like Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher as truth, especially after the Nazis shut down all opposition newspapers.

It was they who wanted to overthrow the Constitution, its protections, and the guardrails which provided the guarantees that regardless of which party won the Presidency or controlled Congress in order to make Trump a President for life and in the process crush any opposition to him or them. They were the ones who used executive orders and passed laws to disenfranchise people of color, to roll back the rights of women, LTBTQ people, immigrants, religious minorities, and political opponents. The aided and abetted antisemitism including attacks on Synagogues and Jewish community centers resulting in mass murder. They gave their blessing to attacks on Black churches, and those who peaceably protested the violence committed against and the murder of black men and women, the Black Lives Matter movement.

After the agonizing eight minute and 46 second long public murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer they cheered on brutal attacks by police, and armed white Supremacists on protestors, including one led by President Trump and a heavily militarized police and National Guard attack on peace protestors in Lafayette Park and St. James Church to the President could get a photo-op outside the Church with a Bible in hand. When Right Wing terrorists murdered police officers they said nothing. They said nothing when immigrant families and refugees were separated from their children at the U.S. Mexican border, when children were locked in cages without beds, toilets, and nothing by aluminum blankets. They said nothing when at least 500 children were separated from their families, sent to countries not their own, and cannot be found. They said nothing when contracted doctors at border detention facilities forcibly sterilized immigrant and refugee women. This makes me doubt the pro-life credentials of Right Wing Christians who voted, supported and marched against the Capitol because Trump was allegedly anti-abortion.

Finally his supporters overlook his incompetent and criminally malicious Non-response to the Coronavirus 19 pandemic which has infected two and a half million Americans and killed over 420,000. Those numbers are probably an undercount because of inconsistent accounting measures and the lack of transparency of the Trump administration and many GOP led state governments in providing the information, counting the numbers, and lack of attention in providing PPE, building up supplies of what medical personnel and first responders needed, and their willingness to let people die certainly qualifies as a Crime Against Humanity, and needs to be prosecuted as such.

Despite all of this and the urgency of the situation with COVID-19, the economy in massive crisis with so many businesses barely hanging on, some in a death circle that will create even more economic disaster, more job losses, more business failures, more Coronavirus infections and deaths, and maybe even the collapse of our medical system. This is a national emergency and National Security Crisis. Yet many in the Republican leadership, including members who actively supported and incited sedition and the overthrow of a valid election by force and violence, are fighting President Biden’s efforts to protect Americans, save the economy and protect our national security. In the process they are seeking to break our democracy, destroy the Constitution and bring about an authoritarian government based on minority rule. Even though Donald Trump is gone there are alt least two score Republican members of the Senate and House trying to be the next Trump. That doesn’t count many in state office who would like to do the same. These are all Mussolini’s in the making or worse embryonic Hitlers. Trump was to incompetent to fulfill their vision and many who still support him are very angry and ready to follow anyone who is more violent, radical and competent than him.

Senator Ted Cruz who Helped Incite the attack on the Capitol wearing a highly disrespectful “Come and take it” mask at the inauguration of Joe Biden. If he had any sense he would know that there was no correlation between the Goliad Flag and his treasonous attempt to overthrow the government and Constitution of the United States. 

Since they are now in the minority they must be defeated and the actions needed to save our country and help all Americans must be passed with or without their help. Senator Schumer the new Senate Majority Leader can end the filibuster, which due to the GOP is a filibuster in name only, a member on has to say he or she is filibustering a measure to stop action. It is not like the old days where Senators had to either make arguments against it or just keep talking, like the late Senator Robert Byrd who could do would simply begin reading a book, or even a phone book to keep the filibuster going. But it was the racist Dixiecrat turned Republican Strom Thurmond who set the record for the longest single speaker filibuster in the history of the United States in opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Trust me there is no one in the Republican Senate capable of speaking that long for anywhere close to that.

If enough Republicans fail to support bills that help their constituents that has been endorsed and is fully supported by the National Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the most conservative business organizations, as well as President Trump’s former top economic advisor, the House and Senate can resort to a process called reconciliation to pass the the Coronavirus and economic relief bills with a simple majority. The Republicans themselves have done this on more than one occasion.

President Biden and Democrats in the House and Senate should not repeat the mistake of President Obama who waited on key legislation, or modified it with conservative Republican ideas, such as the Hermitage Foundation’s health care plan used by Mitt Romney that became the Affordable Health Care Act or as it is better known “Obamacare” hoping for Republican support which never came. If the Republicans attempt to thwart the legislation, shut down the filibuster and move to reconciliation. To paraphrase Mitch McConnell, “elections have consequences, winners rule and losers go home.” 

It is not enough to sit back and feel good. Democrats have to show that they care about all Americans by pushing these laws through against the reticence of Republicans and the histrionic and vitriolic pundits like Sean Hannity and others like him. The GOP is not the party of the little guy, the small business owner, the worker who works for barely enough money to house and feed their families, without affordable health care, or any real pension or savings plans. They are the party of the rich and whenever they do a tax cut the majority always goes to the most wealthy as well as corporations that already use existing tax laws to pay nothing in taxes.

They are not the party of people trying to ensure that their kids have a solid education that provides a way to either get into college and afford it, or rediscover the necessity of public schools teaching vocational education for kids that prepares them for high paying technical jobs. We had those programs when I was in high school in the 1970s. Kids had educations that either prepared them for college or good paying jobs. That can be done again, but it means that local, state, and the federal government must invest in that education. It sure the hell is a lot more affordable than for profit colleges that take students for every dollar they can under federally backed student loans which are nearly impossible to pay back, for students who did not get those skills in high school or in public community colleges.

They are not the party of Public Health and basic preventive care that could prevent the need for expensive health care to treat conditions that could have been treated early. Under Republicans at all levels of government those services have been gutted. There is no safety net for healthcare, just as there is no safety net for the poor, those who lose their employment, those who cannot afford housing, or for that matter anything and mind you most of these people live in the poor rural regions of Republican governed states.

They are not the party that wants to invest in the infrastructure needed to ensure or economic and military security. That includes roads, bridges, power plants, electric and gas distribution networks, dams for hydroelectric power, wind farms, and solar power, and the hardening of the cast computer networks to protect us from hacking or even electromagnetic pulse attacks. They refuse to deal with sea rise which threatens our critical seaports, coastal communities, farmlands which are inundated when levees fail, and even major military installations along the coast and in hurricane zones. This isn’t fantasy, it is a reality that for more than a decade the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and many other Federal agencies have warned us about for years.

I could go on, but unless the GOP and its leadership is willing to divorce itself from the conspiracy theorists, the anti-Constitutional terrorists, the science and climate deniers, the believers in voodoo economics, and be willing to go back to its roots as a party that promoted emancipation, suffrage, and equal rights. At one time they were the party of free labor and free land, the party that established the National Parks and Wildlife refuges, the party that invested in interstate highways and world class international airports. But they are not that anymore. They are a party of ideological nutcases, conspiracy theorists, religious theocrats who want to enforce their minority views of the Christian faith on all Americans using the police power of the state to do it, and a party without a platform which merely believes in the seizure of power and the willingness never to surrender it.

The beliefs of today’s Republicans were clearly enunciated by none other than Hermann Goering, Hitler’s number two man until April of 1945. Goering said:

“It was understood by all of us that as soon as we had once come into power we must keep that power under all circumstances. We did not want power and governmental authority for power’s sake, but we needed power and governmental authority in order to make Germany free and great. We did not want to leave this any longer to chance, elections and Parliamentary majorities, but we wanted to carry out the task to which we considered ourselves called. In order to consolidate this power now, it was necessary to reorganise the political relationships of power. That was carried out in such a manner that, shortly after the seizure of governmental authority in the Reich and in Prussia, the other States followed automatically and more or less strong National Socialist Governments were formed everywhere. Secondly, the so-called political officials, who according to the Reich Constitution could be recalled at any time – that is, could be dismissed – would naturally have to be replaced now according to custom by people from the strongest Party – as is everywhere customary…” 

However, Goering lied about the situation, even in a subsequent election following the Reichstag Fire the Nazi Party never had an absolute majority. It was their outlawing of the German Communist Party and temporary alliances with German conservatives that they later broke that gave them a majority in the Reichstag. A minority succeeded in overthrowing a divided majority. As the various German conservative and nationalist parties folded their tents and allowed themselves to be absorbed by the Nazis, the Catholic Center Party, also threw in the towel. The only party in Germany to go out with its honor intact was the Social Democratic Party which voted against the Enabling Act that gave the Nazis unlimited dictatorial power. Shortly after that final vote of protest the Nazis outlawed them, shut up down their newspapers, their affiliated labor unions, and murdered or placed their leaders in concentration camps. Given the chance and opportunity Trump’s radicalized supporters and those more violent than them would do exactly what the Nazis did, the 6 January assault was their attempt to do exactly what the Nazis did to their opposition.

Let me reassert that this is a time to be joyful that President Biden, Vice President Harris and their incoming team are in office and taking actions to try to save all of us from the steaming pile of rat feces that Trump has left them to deal with, and we cannot rest on the laurels of a hardy inauguration if the task before us it to be fulfilled.

You see to bring this article back to a more American setting let us go back to the inspiration for Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which in the light of the recent assault by seditious, treasonous rebels is more appropriate than his Second Inaugural Address because while one assault was turned back, the battle is not over because those who orchestrated it, including the former President and Republican members of the House and Senate embraced and supported the overthrow of the legally elected government remain at large, as do the leaders of the groups that served as their foot soldiers. So the battle cannot be considered won until these people return to the Constitutional norms and laws of how we govern. If they cannot do that, especially those who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, they have betrayed their oath and are traitors who need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law or if they chose bullets over ballots, cartridges over the Constitution, or lethality over law then they must be fought to the death.

As Senator Stephen A. Douglas said when the new Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter “There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors.” The Senator’s words are as correct now as he when he spoke them. He then pledged his loyalty to the Union and his former opponent President  Abraham Lincoln. He understood that he had policy differences with the new administration but placed his loyalty to the Republic and Constitution above party loyalty or his personal friendships with the men now leading the insurrection against the Union.

All of us have the responsibility, especially anyone who has sworn the oath to the Constitution to oppose such enemies of it, even if they are friends, family, or politicians we support. If we do not we betray our oaths despite the statements of the self proclaimed Oath Keepers terrorist group. Each of us has the choice to uphold the Constitution or to betray it by attempting to toppled our Republic and democracy.

Our Union means more to me than most people can imagine. My ancestors of both sides of my family fought to overthrow it in the War of the Slaveholders Rebellion, which I think is a far more honest name for the American Civil War. In reality that war was an internal rebellion conducted by men who determined to destroy the Union in order to maintain and expand the institution of slavery even into the Free States which had outlawed it, to all United States territories, and even into the Caribbean and Central America. For me those are unfathomable reasons to destroy the Union and fight the bloodiest war in American history. I will be damned if I allow such people to get away with sedition and treason killing police officers and attempting to kill the former Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and many other Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate.

But getting back to the inspiration for Lincoln’s few remarks at Gettysburg we have to remember both the Declaration of Independence and the words of prominent thinkers who influenced his choice of words, for they call come down to the fundamental principle of all of American government, “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson who wrote these words was a flawed man, he own slaves, but on the other hand he saw his words as an ever expanding principle of liberty for all people in all nations and in all times.

The Unitarian pastor, abolitionist, and leading Transcendentalist thinker, Theodore Parker wrote:

“Our national ideal out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began our national career by setting all history at defiance – for that said, “A republic on a large scale cannot exist.” Our progress since that has shown that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The practical ideas of the nation are transcendent, not empirical. Human history could not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of the new idea: the nation went beyond human history and appealed to human nature.”

Parker’s words also prefigured an idea that Lincoln used in his address. Parker, like Lincoln believed that: “the American Revolution, with American history since, is an attempt to prove by experience this transcendental proposition, to organize the transcendental idea of politics. The ideal demands for its organization a democracy- a government of all, for all, and by all…” 

Likewise, George Bancroft the great American historian wrote words that also echoed in Lincoln’s address:

“The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice…. The heart of Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind and all coming generations, without any exceptions whatsoever.” 

Barley five months after the battle, when less than a third of the dead had yet been buried and much of Cemetery Hill was marked with the physical scars of the battle Lincoln spoke these words following the nearly two hour long primary address by the eminent scholar, professor, and orator Edward Everett. Lincoln gave these brief remarks:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.[6]

We must continue the fight and we cannot abandon the principles of the Declaration, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms, and Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” his “I have been to the mountaintop” and “I have a dream” speeches.

President Biden echoed those words in his inaugural speech. It was not the dystopian fear presented by President Trump in his inaugural address, but a message of hope and unity tempered by reality. Since his inaugural address is available in full on the White House and other news sites I will not repeat it here.

Believe  it or not I began this post on Wednesday night but got involved in editing and expanding it to put it in the context of history. I was about ready to post it last night when half of it disappeared as my system updated unexpectedly. So I decided to finish it Saturday, which became early Sunday morning. But before I sign off for the night let me express my opinion about those who attacked the Capitol and those who supported, encouraged, incited, or enabled them. To that end I will quote the words of Colonel Strong Vincent who led his bridge and died in the defense of Little Round Top on the afternoon of 2 July 1863 at Gettysburg. Not long before the battle he wrote his wife words that I think that every man and woman who values our Union, our Declaration, and our Constitution:

“We must fight them more vindictively, or we shall be foiled at every step.  We must desolate the country as we pass through it, and not leave a trace of a doubtful friend or foe behind us; make them believe that we are in earnest, terribly in earnest; that to break this band in twain is monstrous and impossible; that the life of every man, yea, of every weak woman or child in the entire South, is of no value whatever compared with the integrity of the Union.”

Likewise his subordinate, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who repelled the Rebel advance at the end of the Union line, and later rose to great fame wrote:

“We have this war upon is & we want to stop it. It has cost us already too much precious blood. It has carried stagnation, starvation & grief in to too many villages of our fair land – brought death to too many noble hearts that we could ill afford to lose. But the only way to stop this war, is first to show that we are strongest…I feel that we are fighting for our country – for our flag- not as so many Stars and Stripes, but as the emblem of a good & powerful nation – fighting to settle the question whether we are a nation or a basket of chips. Whether we shall leave our children the country we have inherited – or leave them without a country – without a name – without a citizenship among the great nations of the earth – take the chief city of the rebels. They will have no respect for us unless we whip them & and I say it in all earnestness….”

The words of all of these men need to be take to heart today against the men and women who fought then and now for the principle of rending our Union asunder and proclaiming a White Supremacist theocratic autocracy.

So until next time,  ready to fight the good fight against seditious traitors, murderers, and rebels who attempt to hijack the words of the Declaration and the Constitution to justify their crimes against those documents, our Republic and their fellow citizens, for they will not give up until they are completely whipped.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

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January 20, 2021 · 03:06

The End of a Criminal Presidency

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today marks the end of the most malevolent, evil, and incompetent American Presidential administration in history and the worst President who ever served. James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover must be breathing undead sighs of relief in their graves as Trump vaults over them all to claim the title of the worst, most malevolent, incompetent and evil man ever to hold the office. Their spirits might even be dancing on their graves in celebration tonight. I wonder what they are drinking, but I digress.

Even though he has less than twelve hours left in office he has been preparing a list of pardons, attempting to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation of his campaigns ties and connections with Russia in 2015 and 2016, and even discussing splitting the Republican Party by forming a new Party which he wants to name the Patriot Party. We cannot stop his pardons but they will further demonstrate his lack of respect for our laws by pardoning the worst of the worst: men and women who committed treason, others who defrauded millions of people of life savings, their properties, and finances, others whose crimes would only encourage others to do the same. Since he has already pardoned convicted war criminals I would not be surprised if he pardons more such people, as well as law enforcement officers convicted of crimes, and preventive pardons of political allies and White House staffers involved in illegal activities.

The number of crimes and criminal actives President Trump and henchmen is unsurpassed. Many of these have not yet been charged as the President used the powers of his office to protect himself from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.

He has not been charged with his manifold violations of the Hatch Act which was enacted to keep members of the Federal Government from enriching themselves or business interests at the expense of taxpayers. Federal funds from a multitude of agencies using Trump owned properties often paying far higher rates than allowed by the GSA or other Federal agencies.

He has not yet been fully charged or prosecuted for his collaboration with Russia, his support and instigation of Neo-Nazis and other White Supremacists at Charlottesville calling them “very fine people.”

He has not yet been charged with the actions of his administration against immigrants and refugees on the U.S. Mexican border where families were separated from their children with the whereabouts of hundreds, maybe thousands of children unaccounted for, while their parents were deported to countries that would not assist them with their applications for admission to the United States. Such actions by the Nazis were considered Crimes Against Humanity by the United States and the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. How we can allow an American President and his administration to escape prosecution for crimes we prosecuted the Nazis is incomprehensible. The same is true regarding the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic where Trump, fully realizing the deadly nature of the virus ignored it, denied it, hampered the CDC, FDA, his own Task Force, and State Governments from making a coordinated effort to contain the spread of the virus for a year, resulting in the infections of nearly 25 million people and the deaths of over 400,000 Americans, which is more than the number of our World War Two dead. It took nearly four years of war to lose the 405,000 World War II dead, but just a year to allow more than that number to die of COVID-19 and that battle is not done. It is expected that by the end of February that number will be more than a half a million Americans. The negligence, denial, and malfeasance of his actions in regard to COVID should also rise to the level of Crimes Against Humanity.

The President’s frequent use of physical threats against the press, political opponents or American Blacks is unheard of by any American President. Even before his election he encouraged his supporters to physically attack opponents and that he would pay for their legal fees.

His thugs have made numerous attacks against individuals, and even State Governors and legislatures, including armed assault on the Michigan Statehouse in April, and one the United States Capitol, Congress, and his own Vice President on 6 January. His incitement of the 6 January attack was so heinous that he was impeached a second time for inciting an insurrection which killed people including a Capitol Police Officer and injuring over twenty five more Capitol Police and Washington D.C. Metro Police who were attempting to defend the Capitol and Congress. One officer was beaten with a Back the Blue flag on a flagpole, while other terrorists called the police who stood their ground traitors even as they threatened to find and kill Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hang Vice President Mike Pence. After delaying any comment for hours while watching the President issued a video statement asking the attackers to leave while praising them and expressing his “love” for them.

Since the failed Coup attempt Trump has always been uncharacteristically silent, but since he has been banned by almost every social media site, especially Twitter, he has lost his his voice. He can only make video statements which he can only hope are played by the media. Meanwhile some of his thugs still appear to be ready to disrupt the inauguration through violence, but if they do so he will not be in town. He will be in the air on his way to Mar El Largo after an anyone on his email list and their five best friends who wants to brave D.C. rush hour traffic for his departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews-Anacostia. Anthony Scaramouche declined saying that he was having his fingernails pulled out and couldn’t attend. Vice President Pence and Mitch McConnell will be at the Capitol preparing for the inauguration of President Biden. While it appears that Trump will get some kind of relatively small military send off including an honor guard and color guard it is not yet known if he will get his military band or 21 gun salute. Evidently he also plans on making some kind of speech which if it is extemporaneous will be a disaster that may assist Federal and  State prosecutors and just might ensure his conviction in his impeachment trial.

In addition to Trump’s escape from D.C. and the inauguration of President Biden  we still have to be concerned about violent acts by Trump Cultists in, around and outside of Washington D.C. they will certainly fail if they try but one cannot take any chances with desperate and violent true believers, even after the inauguration. Any violence or attacks must be met with superior firepower and no quarter. Terrorists don’t get mercy when they attack the very foundations of our country, Constitution and democracy. Those who exchange their ballots for bullets in order to overthrow our Republic, Constitution and democracy deserve every bullet that hits them, especially the Neo-Nazis.

It may seem contradictory but I wish you peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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January 18, 2021 · 15:37

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors” The Words of Stephen A. Douglas and Padre Steve for Today

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Sorry I have not written in the past few days but I’ve been trying to sort out all that is going on in our nation between the relentless Coronavirus 19 Pandemic and the threat to our Constitution and Republic posed by the domestic terrorists, so-called militias, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, fascist authoritarians, Conspiracy theorists, QAnon thugs, and Christian theocrats dedicated to the person of Donald Trump. Their assault on the Capitol, Congress, and Vice President Pence should have exposed Trump and these thugs to his anyone and the criminal he is. However, according to an AP poll some 80% of Republicans and identified Trump supporters refused to admit that he was responsible in any way for that terrorist assault that he organized and cheered before, during and after it.

Now instead of a normal celebratory inauguration the Capitol is locked down with about 25,000 National Guard troops and countless Federal police from a multitude of Federal Law Enforcement agencies. Meanwhile around the country similar precautions are being taken due to the FBI assessment of potential violence of these violent Trump Cultist groups attacking Statehouses, Governors mansions, and other government offices, Federal, State and local. I personally expect them to make attempts to seize military weapons and equipment from National Guard armories as well as Army and Marine Reserve Centers not located on actual military bases.

We are not in a good situation. We face raging pandemic coupled with the very real threats of declared enemies, weakened alliances, a crumbling economy, and a tremendously unstable and narcissistic sociopath President capable of unleashing any destructive and dishonorable actions in his last few days in office cannot be underestimated.

Thankfully nothing happened over the weekend outside of small protests by armed protestors in a number of state capitols. That doesn’t mean that there have not been upticks in chatter about possible attacks, but it is possible that the response of the FBI in identifying and arresting the terrorists who attacked the Capitol and killed and wounded Capitol and Metro Police, the investigations by Congress, the Capitol Police, and FBI into the real possibility that Republican members of Congress, staffers, and members of the Capitol Police might have aided the attack.

Likewise the strong the stand of senior military commanders ad the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and units, 25,000 in Washington D.C. alone and thousands in State Capitols might have acted as a major deterrent despite the threats of some of the terrorists to begin another Civil War. They banners they flew in their attack on the Capitol showed just that. They are not conservatives even though many call themselves Republicans. The are anti-U.S. Government radical extremists who hate the Constitution, its limits on Presidential power who are willing to kill to overthrow the government. That is demonstrated by history.

They are anti-United States Government, so long as they hold the Presidency, and absolutely committed to overthrowing it if they don’t hold it. These traitors bet their all on Donald Trump to be their Führer and savior. But Trump failed. He sent them into an attack and the abandoned them. So long as they think he has a minute chance they still might storm the Capitol Wednesday and attack soft targets in other states. But with just a few exceptions over the weekend they remained curiously silent, as if waiting for another order to attack.

That being said given the opportunity or a word from Trump they might might make another attempt before he leaves Washington or to cause death and destruction at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. That too is a real possibility given the situation, there are some who have gone so far down the road of sedition and treason that they cannot turn back. Their only recourse is violence now, or violence later once they think they have a better opportunity.

I think that there is the possibility of both, but their failed Coup D’tat encouraged  by Trump and his surrogates for weeks failed and  more and more are being caught up charged, jailed and paraded before the world to see might tamper more large assaults. The more dangerous threats now are against individuals they identify as their enemies or raids or attacks on soft government targets, be the Federal, State, or local. That would include National Guard Armories and Army, Marine, or Navy Reserve Centers not located on an actual military base but those in the community where they might get inside help to seize military weapons. An up-armored HUMMV was stolen from a National Guard armory in Bell California over the weekend. Most of these armories or reserve centers have very few personnel on duty on non drill days, and an insider could facilitate the theft of weapons and vehicles that would facilitate further large or small scale attacks.

After Biden takes office I am more concerned about small terrorist cells or individuals making assassination attempts, kidnappings, and other violence against individuals or specific targets they believe to be vulnerable and which would send a statement. Terrorists of every kind resort to such tactics when defeated at the ballot box or military force. Our own history or Reconstruction and it’s subsequent defeat by Klansmen and other racist paramilitaries used such violence as to ensure that President Rutherford Hayes ended Reconstruction and threw newly freed and no enfranchised blacks to the wolves not only in the South but the entire country. After the failed Kapp Putsch and Bier Hall Putsch German right wing terrorists used individual assassination tactics throughout the 1920s instead of insurrection.

Like I said at the beginning of this article I apologize for not posting sooner. Even though I started this article days ago I had to wait complete it.

As always I have been getting threatened and harassed by Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and Christian Taliban and dealing with them and real life has been exhausting and I just didn’t have the energy to complete it.

Likewise, I put out a post on my Facebook page that if I found out that any member of my family or friends took part in or supported the attack on the Capitol that I would turn them in. Shortly after a cousin who I have sparred with many times because of his attacks on me his theocratic fascist beliefs, and unremitting support of Trump dropped and blocked me from his Facebook account.

I cannot prove it yet, but I believe that he might have be a conspirator or participant in this plot to overthrow the government. I plan on contacting the Norfolk FBI field office to let them know of my suspicions. I have his contact info and a recent photo to help the in their investigation. If he wasn’t involved I would be surprised.

Some would same that family ties should be stronger, but for me loyalty to the country, Constitution, and our democratic norms matter more. I cannot sit by and allow the Union to be overthrown by seditious traitors, regardless of the are family or friends. The American Civil War pitted brother against brother and so such threats against our Union pit me against anyone who threatens it.

I can only echo the words of Senator Stephen A. Douglas after he lost the 1860 Presidential election to Abraham Lincoln because his former Southern Democrat friends decided to splinter the party and torpedo his Presidential campaign by supporting a second Democratic ticket headed by James Buchanan’s Vice President and former Kentucky Senator John C. Breckinridge. Douglas, knowing he lost toured the South to try to convince Southern Democrats not to rebel or support secession. For doing so he was condemned. When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter, Douglas who had spent most of his political career brokering compromise said:

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors”

Douglas, a man who had spent his entire career to further compromise with men who refused to do so finally recognized that the secessionist traitors were just that, and that there was not way to describe them as anything else. He was absolutely correct. Those who assault our Capitol, kill and injure police officers defending it, and calling themselves “Patriots” are not Patriots or freedom fighters. They are domestic terrorists, insurrectionists, and enemies of everything our founders believed was right and true. Honestly, I don’t care if the are blood relatives or long time friends. Anyone who attempts to overthrow this Union is my enemy. I did not spent nearly forty years in uniform swearing my sacred Oath to the Constitution not to tolerate or resist attempts by anyone regardless of their relationship to me to overthrow that Union and Constitution. I might be retired now, but I will remain faithful t my oath, and if any group ever launches an insurrection against the United States I will volunteer to my new State, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Federal Government to serve to defeat it, not as a Chaplain but as a line officer in any component of the State or Federal military who will accept my service. With my experience as a company commander, battalion, group and brigade staff office before I was ever a minister, and my advanced military education I could command a company, battalion, or regiment of volunteers willing to fight for the Union.

I am angered by the insurgents and terrorists who turned their backs on the Constitution and our country to support the Coup by Trump and his Cult to overthrow it on 6 January. They are traitors. If anyone I know or are related to or served alongside supports their attempted overthrow of of our Republic and Constitution, they are my enemy. There is no room for compromise. There are only two sides now.

So until Tuesday I wish you the best. I have to finish an article for the German newspaper Die Zeit about pastoral for the dying in mass casualty and pandemic events where combat triage, that is treating those most capable of surviving first and giving palliative care to those who cannot. The. I have to finish my photograph credit section of my book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory! Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era and the or Continuing Importance, to send to the publisher and my agent by Wednesday.

I have more work to do after that, but I won’t stop writing or telling the truth. I know too much about these people to from previous associations with them and listening to their propaganda three to nine ours a day before I went to Iraq. I feel for it from the time I was a teenager and while never an extremist by any means I never spoke up against the lies and conspiracy theories until I came back from Iraq in 2008 to find out that most of the GOP, and other supposed conservatives neither cared about the international law that we as a nation established against war crimes at Nuremberg, the country or people of Iraq, or the military personnel sent to either conquer, subjugate, or occupy that unfortunate country. By May of 2008 I knew the GOP war party had betrayed all of us. They bankrupted the nation, abandoned the troops, and the people of Iraq who initially welcomed us as liberators only to find that we were not liberators but another in a long series of occupiers, from the Assyrians, to the Persians, to the Greeks, the Sunni forces of Mohammed, the British and finally us. I saw the suffering there, I met our friends and allies, and I saw the destruction that we did to that country. If we were held to the standards of the Nuremberg trials our nations leaders would have easily been convicted of the crimes that we charged convicted, and either jailed or executed the Nazis for their crimes. With the exception of committing genocide our leaders and military forces could have been convicted of three of the four counts we convicted the Nazis.

So now, some 57 hours before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take their oaths as President and Vice President and former President Trump holds some kind of seditious rally when he trundles down the steps of Air Force One for the last time, without any military honors as he departs Washington D.C. he doesn’t deserve any honors of any kind. He has again been impeached and this time he may well be convicted. Likewise, he is going to face a multitude of State and Federal charges. I hope that he is put in the dock and convicted of every one of them. He needs to spend the rest of his natural life in prison as a traitor to the United States, as do many of his violent seditious followers.

So, until Tuesday, peace, be safe, and turn in anyone suspected of attempting to overthrow our Republic, Constitution, or those who want to do harm to our validly elected leaders.

Again I apologize for my delay in writing.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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January 11, 2021 · 02:31

“Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.” Bring Justice to Trump and all Connected with his Coup

 

 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is time for justice in the matter of America’s most lawless, amoral, and savage President. For years I have warned about him. For years I was told that I was overreacting, being an alarmist or being histrionic. And for years I have been threatened even with death by his cultists, as well as White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis, not that there is that much difference between them. I have had his cultists in a Navy Chapel try to have me tried by Court Martial for preaching the Gospel, straight out of the Bible and undisputed Christian teaching.

I would like to say that my heart was big enough that I had grace enough to love and forgive them. Honestly, I did try but was met with rejection and further threats. Now I have to quote the Psalmist who wrote in Psalm 139:22 who wrote:

“I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.”

There was a time I could have not said that, or even quoted it out of fear of losing any sense of grace, mercy or humanity. I have not lost those, but Imam angry and I cry out for justice as did the prophets of the Old Testament, especially when the people committing and supporting the acts or terror are supposedly Christians. Their flags and banners were on prominent display throughout the assault. They were among the people shouting “hang Pence!” 

Many of them as well as Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and others have attacked me personally and threatened me with death for a decade.  They attack my country and the Constitution for 40 years I swore to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. They are domestic terrorists and enemies of our Republic, it’s Constitution and form of government and they have become my personal enemies.

Our system is not perfect and can be improved. Many of our elected officials use their offices for their political power and financial gain. But we have dealt with such issues since our founding. The answer is the ballot box and reforming the system. Many people have ideas of how to do that. I don’t presume to have the answer, but the answer is not mob violence committed by radical terrorist insurgents.

Yet, President Trump, Senators Mo Brooks, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, over 140 members of the House and Senate, members of the President’s family, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, at least 13 state representatives, and god knows how many more traitors attempted to overthrow our Republic and Constitution, endorsing their violent overthrow. That my friends fits the definition of sedition, and to being accessories to a terrorist attack and murder of a police officer in the performance of his duties. Do the math.

In the classic film about the Nuremberg Judges Trial, Judgement at Nuremberg, Spencer Tracy, playing Judge Dan Haygood made this comment in the declaration of guilt concerning the Nazi Judges in the trial: “The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime — is guilty.”

In the context of our time this includes Trump, his son Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani, Mo Brooks, Lin Wood, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and over 140 other members of the Republican House and Senate. They all invested themselves in this attack which resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. The people who made the actual attack included elected officials, law enforcement personnel, as well as former or active military personnel. Every single one of them swore an oath to the Constitution which they not only broke, but trampled.  One cannot forget what Trump said on March 14th of 2020:

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,”

Trump’s words were an open declaration of war on our people and political system. He spoke the words every true tyrant believes, and last week he acted on it as part of the Götterdämmerung of his final days, and his cult like followers followed his orders to the letter and will do so again.

These terrorists aided and abetted by the President Trump and many others  successfully attacked the largest symbol of our nation’s democracy, something nobody has done since the British burned it in 1814 during the War of 1812. Even the Confederate Army during the Civil War could not seize or damage it.

These traitors attacked the Capitol building with the intent of killing Vice President Pence, Leader McConnell, Senator Schumer, and Speaker Pelosi, not to mention others. The insurgents and terrorists included elected political officials, law enforcement officers from various states, and former or retired members of the military. They not only seized the Capitol after being exhorted by Trump, his son Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and Mo Brooks to name a few, but planned to arrest and kill Vice President Pence, Majority Leader McConnell, Senator Schumer, and Speaker Pelosi. They even erected a gallows outside the Capitol. this was no spontaneous demonstration, it was a coordinated attack against our democracy for which the perpetrators deserve no forgiveness or mercy.

Even now these terrorists do not care about the lives that were lost, even those of their supporters. Those deluded individuals will probably be canonized like Horst Wesel, the Nazi thug killed in a street battle with German Communists. Likewise they murdered a Capitol Police Officer, who actually was a Trump supporter. However, regardless of his political beliefs he took his duty seriously enough to die in the pursuit of his duties. He is dead because people who defiantly claim to support police killed him just as they promised they would when they issues their call to arms weeks ago, they promised to “kill cops and security guards.” 

You see, to me someone’s political beliefs do not define them when they obey their oath and die in pursuit of their duty, in his case, defending the Senators, Congressmen, staff members, and the Vice President. You see so long as men and women obey their oaths and discharge their duties in the manner prescribed I don’t care what their political beliefs happen to be. Loyalty to the Constitution and country are more important in the long run than one’s particular political beliefs. The officer died in the line of duty, while many of his attackers and their propagandist enablers are free right now, including the President, Senators, and Congressmen who urged on this violence. Those who died in the attack from whatever cause brought on their deaths. The officer did not deserve to die, but his killers and their supporters do deserve to die for their crimes.

So, let us have the courage call these people from President Trump on down to the lowest of the thugs who attacked the Capitol what they are, terrorists, criminals, and insurrectionists. They are the most reprehensible form of humanity to exist. If they had been Frenchmen in 1940, they would have cheered the Nazi conquest of France and collaborated with the Nazis. As General Weygand the last commander of the French Army before France’s defeat in 1940 hated the French Republic and its democracy stated: “I didn’t get the Boches, but I got the regime.” No military commander could ever make such a treasonous comment. But this is exactly how Trump’s most bloodthirsty supporters think, it is who they are. They have no loyalty to the United States, their only loyalty is to Trump and as such nothing they do is illegal, as many rank and file Nazis proclaimed “Der Führerbefhle, wir folgen.” Or in English, “The Leader commands, we follow.”

These people honestly believe that Trump is above the law and those no matter what they do is legal. This is why they are and will remain dangerous whether Trump is in or out of office. That is the power of a death cult.

As such all of us need to shake off the shackles the blind us into not believing that what people, even pathological liars are capable of telling the truth. Hitler did, as did Donald Trump.

Dr. Timothy Snyder wrote something in 2016 that is completely valid in our present crisis:

Even when everything comes apart around them and their leader collapses they cannot admit that he was deceiving them. At the end of the war a German soldier told Victor Klemperer that “Hitler has never lied, I believe the Fuhrer.” Snyder writes: “The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.”

Snyder also warned us in 2016:

“The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.”

Two weeks before Trump’s election in 2016 I wrote on this blog:

As I watched and listened to Donald Trump before and after the third and thankfully final debate of the 2016 Presidential election, I was struck with just how viscous, vulgar, and venomous this man is. I cannot remember anyone in American politics at the national level, Republican or Democrat, or for that matter even Whig, who ever managed to immerse himself so deeply into the amoral, unethical, and undemocratic sewer that Trump has bathed himself, the Republican Party and this nation.

Trump’s toxicity is unparalleled in American politics. Everything and everyone who has ever had anything to do with him is poisoned by his touch. Wives, business partners, contractors, employees, political advisors, and supporters have all been stained by the Mustard Gas that Trump emits on a minute to minute basis. Maybe the most stained are the Evangelical Christian church leaders who have not only endorsed and defended Trump, but  who positively described his character as Christian and said nothing about Trump’s words and actions, which if an opponent had uttered, or had been accused, they would have excoriated with a particularly “Christian” self-righteousness.  Their actions have stained the witness of the church for at least the next generation and it is no wonder that young people are fleeing the church. I specifically use the imagery of Mustard Gas, not just because of its toxicity, but because of its persistence. The battlefields of World War One France and Belgium are still contaminated by it, and the toxic residue still injures people today. 

That my friends is the poisonous and corrosive effect of Donald Trump on this country.  He is a toxic and persistent threat to everyone, even his most devout followers. Race baiting, misogynistic, narcissistic, vulgar, and ignorant, Trump spews his vile venom of conspiracy theories wrapped in fiction, and coated in lies, and buttressed with near pornograpic misogyny in every direction. He has given his supporters in the heavily armed Alt-Right, the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and White Supremacists the boldness to come out of hiding because he has normalized their hate, something that no Western statesman or politician has done since before the verdicts at Nuremberg. 

I have long felt that Trump reminded me of Nazi leaders, but frankly most of them, while every bit as toxic as Trump were both more intelligent and were better able to cover the darkness of their amoral souls with a modicum of respectability, with the exception of one; the publisher of the infamous newspaper Der Sturmer, and Gauleiter of Nuremberg, Julius Streicher. 

Robert Jackson, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who served as the Chief American Prosecutor at Nuremberg referred to Streicher in his summation:

“Streicher, the venomous vulgarian, manufactured and distributed obscene racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of “race purification.” 

Is that not exactly what Trump has done during his seventeen month campaign to stir up race hatred against Mexicans and Arabs, not to mention Asians and Blacks? Of course it is, which is exactly why the leaders of the Alt-Right claim him as their candidate, the man who in their perverted minds has made them respectable again and ready to assume their place in Trump’s new order. Anti-Semitism and racism runs rampant in the words of his closest collaborators such as the Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon, as well as Alt-Right Neo-Nazi and KKK leaders like David Duke, Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and Peter Brimalow. 

My friends, what you see in Trump is what you get. Unlike Hitler and Goering, but much like Streicher, Trump has no capability of maintaining any sort of respectability. He has been stoking the fires of violence by claiming that the election is rigged and pumping up his followers for violence if he loses.”  The link to that article for doubters is here: https://padresteve.com/2016/10/21/the-venomous-vulgarian-donald-trump-and-the-alt-right/

That will be all for tonight because we do not presume what tomorrow will bring from Trump and his Cult. It is the time of every American who believes in our Constitution, democracy, and the founding principles of our Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” and “I have been to the Mountain” speeches.

I spent almost forty years in uniform supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, and though now retired I will not abandon that oath. As the German General Ludwig Beck, an opponent of Hitler who died in the attempt to kill that genocidal dictator said:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.” 

Every man and woman who has sworn the Oath of Office of our country, especially those in positions of authority in the military, police, homeland security, or Justice Department need to remember and do over the next few weeks.

So, until tomorrow stay safe, remain vigilant and resist all who desire to overthrow our Republic and Constitution. They cannot be allowed to run free. They need to face justice and we cannot fear them, or they will win and we cannot allow that to happen. J

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 8, 2021 · 20:43

A High Crime, not a Misdemeanor: Hold Trump and His Minions Responsible for their Coup Attempt


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The time for reckoning with the manifold crimes of Donald Trump, his Administration, his enablers in the Republican Party, and his coconspirators inside and outside government has come. The organized, encouraged and ordered an assault on the U.S. Congress by a massive number of supporters who proceeded to take over the Capitol Building as the House and Senate were beginning their ceremonial count of the the Electoral College votes that would certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President. For over two months Trump and his nefarious allies like Rudy Giuliani and countless others have been calling the election rigged, the results false, and despite all evidence to the contrary they continued to claim yesterday that the election had been stolen, and Trump claimed that he had been cheated. Of course recount after recount in states with Republican governors, legislatures and Supreme Courts rejected his spurious and conspiracy riddled claims. Over 60 of his vaunted legal team’s lawsuits were laughed out of state and federal courts including the completely Republican Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and the United States Supreme Court where Trump himself had appointed three of the six Republican appointed justices. The fact of the matter was that Trump lost, there was not a shred of evidence of voter fraud and during all the counting and recounting of the ballots Trump, his enablers, and his often heavily armed Cult members made numerous threats, including death threats against governors, state attorney’s general, state and election officials. Not a single one stood up in court. Undeterred some tried to submit Trump friendly elector slates outside of those approved by the various state legislatures.

Despite all the failures Trump persisted in claiming fraud and even threatening the Various GOP officials who though they wanted him to win stood by the election results in their states. They upheld their oaths and the law. That further enraged Trump and his egregious actions against elected GOP officials ended up so poisoning the electorate in Georgia that in the two Senate runoff elections both incumbent Republican Senators lost ensuring that the Democrats will now have not just a House majority but a Senate majority. In his actions against his own party supporters he also lost the GOP majority in the Senate. This was the result of his arrogance, hubris, and narcissistic need for attention and the limelight. But I digress…

Trump encouraged sedition and treason. He, his son Donald Junior, Rudy Giuliani, and several others encouraged violence against the Congress and his own Vice President. He and they put the lives of every member of Congress, Vice President Pence, and countless others at risk. As a result of this violent craven assault on the “People’s House” at least five people died, including a Capitol Police Officer who was smashed in the head with a fire extinguisher by one of the terrorists. Many others were injured.

The primary targets of this attack were Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as well as Democrat and Republican members of the House and Senate who opposed Trump. All had been targeted by Trump and other leading Trump supporters as they gathered at the White House and were addressed by Trump, Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani and others and exhorted to violence and combat.

Of the thousands who assaulted the Capitol and threatened those of both parties in it less than 60 were arrested. Most were allowed to leave the premises without being arrested or charged. That is criminal negligence on the part of law enforcement. If the people who attacked the Capitol had been Black Lives Matter protestors, or any other peaceful non-white Supremacist Trump supporting group there would have been thousands of arrests and a massive unbridled display of force against them.

What happened needs to be investigated from top to bottom and all those complicit need to be charged and tried. Every single one of them from the President to the most pathetic of the violent ignoramuses who attacked the Capitol and committed violence needs to face justice for what they did. That includes the Senators and Representatives who encouraged them, the President and his fellow conspirators who ordered those people into the assault, any public official who aided or enabled these terrorists to breach the perimeter of the Capitol building, or those who deflated or prevented law enforcement reinforcements from getting to the Capitol before the attack.

Now is the time for justice and retribution. Criminal charges need to be filed against everyone who participated in the attack and who conspired to make it happen. None should go unpunished. They planned, encouraged an attack on the Congress by violent insurgents Bent on destruction and assassination. The had firearms, IEDs, Molotov Cocktails, and other weapons with them. In addition other groups attempted to assault the Georgia and Michigan State Capitol buildings and the Governor’s mansion in Washington State.

Of the President does not resign he needs to be removed through the 25th Amendment or impeachment. His movement needs to be restricted so he cannot leave the country In order to flee justice after he leaves office. Senate and House members who took part and encouraged this assault including Senators Cruz and Hawley as well as House members need to be censured and removed from office by the the members of each House. There is no place for those who attempt to overthrow elections and incite violence in either house of Congress. Such removals are not without precedent and need to be undertaken immediately.

All of these people, especially the President pose a clear and present danger to the country and Trump’s actions have set up a national security crisis as our enemies realize how vulnerable we are with a President who cannot be trusted with handling any National Security issue for fear that he might attempt to use one in a vain attempt to remain in power or declare a state of emergency in order to make further attempts on his domestic opponents.

The next 12 days are filled with danger, from American citizens turned terrorists and insurgents to foreign enemies hoping to humiliate us when our President is busily trying to undermine our domestic and national security.

We cannot let our guard down because the danger is too great. This is probably the most vulnerable our nation has been since the secession crisis in 1860-

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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January 7, 2021 · 02:29

The Beginning of the Trump Coup and Insurgency: It is Not Going Away

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have longed warned that President Trump and his supporters would not go quietly. I have lost count of the number of warnings I have given since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and how he described the loyalty of his supporters when he said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible…” 

At the time many thought that he was joking. I knew he wasn’t  joking because I had run ins with those supporters long before he ever announced his candidacy. They were a ready made constituency. Since the late 1980s frustrated conservatives led by pundits like Rush Limbaugh and dozens of others, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, hundreds of right wing radical pastors, and an increasingly radicalized Republican Party with the Tea Party Movement, and the Congressional Freedom Council.

Over the past three decades the Republican Party, once a mainline Conservative party was transformed into an anti-democratic, theocratic, racist and authoritarian party completely devoted to overthrowing the Constitution and Republic all because Trump lost the election and incited them to violence. That violence culminated today after Trump and Rudy Giuliani encouraged them to violence at a rally. Trump told them to continue to fight, Giuliani told them to prepare for combat, further inflaming the mob which charged down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building.

Following that rally the crowds marched on the Capitol Building, where they were met by Senator Josh Hawley who encouraged them from the beginning and then threw up a clenched fist as if he was leading a revolution. The insurgents overwhelmed the few Capitol Police who were manning the barricades giving little resistance to the insurgents. Some actually appeared to be friendly and supportive of the insurgents. After breaking through the lines broke into the building and took over both chambers of Congress, occupied Senate and Congressional offices, and vandalized the building, causing a great deal of damage. During their rampage those outside the buildings they attacked reporters and bystanders. Inside the building they planted Improvised Explosive Devices, and and someone shot and killed a woman, while the insurgents trampled her body as they advanced.

They flew many flags with the name of their leader on them, Donald Trump. They flew numerous variations of the Confederate Battle Flag, the Gadsen Flag, White Nationalist flags, Christian Flags including one that had a Jesus Fish with the name Jesus in black, in a white oval surrounded by a red banner. I have never imagined that the most ancient symbol of the Christian faith would be turned into a Nazi symbol. By the way, Wal-Mart sells it and it is out of stock.

Vice President Pence and the members of the Senate and House had to be evacuated to safe areas where they holed up for hours as the building was cleared.

Trump and his Fascist thugs are trying to overthrow the election and the Constitution. Don’t call them “conservatives” because they are radical, anti-democratic, insurrectionists bent on sedition and treason. How they were so easily breach security at the Capitol is beyond me. This attack was telegraphed by Trump, Giuliani, Cruz, Hawley, and others. Trump is still even this moment inciting them on Twitter justifying their actions. One woman was shot and killed, circumstances still unknown, numerous others injured, IEDs inside the Capitol disarmed, much of the Capitol damaged, further threats of violence and worse is to come.

In June the crushing police and military assault on the peaceful protesters of the George Floyd Murder, begs me to ask how come peaceful protestors, mostly Black were the subject of an unprovoked violent assault while mostly White Trump supporters who violently attacked the US Capitol were treated with kid gloves. There are two systems of justice. One for the violent Trump Cult and one for others, especially Blacks.

In the wake of this very few of the insurgents were arrested or charged. Can you imagine if Black Lives Matter protesters had done the same how law enforcement would have reacted. They would have opened fire, beaten, arrested, and maybe killed the protestors. The protestors would not gotten past the plaza in front of the Capitol before their protest would have been crushed. You and I know it. The evidence from Charlottesville, Lafayette Park, and so many other cities  is irrefutable. The racist tenor of how Whites and Blacks are treated under the law has not changed since Dred Scott, or Plessy v. Ferguson.

President Trump and his allies and enablers have ensured that the stain of racism, nationalism, and Trump’s cult will remain free to infect our country for the foreseeable future. In the next few weeks I believe that these insurgents will attack various state houses. After President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Harris I expect the insurgents to take a lower profile but engage in targeted assassinations of Trump’s opponents regardless of their party. They are domestic terrorists and should be treated as such. They need to be hunted down arrested and brought to justice. While we want them to be arrested and brought to justice, if they decide to resort to violence in that they deserve whatever happens to them. Though I am against the death penalty I believe that those who assault our Constitution and Republic are deserving of death, and I hope that these people are brought to justice, and if these choose to resort to violence then they deserve whatever happens to them. If we cannot depend on Trump’s Department of Justice to do the job then we will have to depend on Attorney General nominee Merrick Gerland to prosecute them To the full extent of the law.

Tonight the Senate and House are going through what used to be a ceremonial vote to approve the results of the Electoral College vote. The violent coup attempt shook up many Republicans including those who were willing before to to support the objections. It appears that they now lack the fortitude to support Trump’s Coup attempt. It is amazing to see what happens to people when they are threatened by violence, especially by the people of your political party.

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors”


That being said Senator Hawley, Senator Cruz, and the four others who supported the move to invalidate Arizona’s Electoral vote still did so without censure by their party. Not only that but Senator Pat Toomey who excoriated Trump as a demagogue but said in rejecting further objections said that he wanted Trump to win. I cannot understand how someone can call a man a “violent demagogue” could say they wanted him to win. Really, what kind of morality and ethics allows that?

Their votes are still going on but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to be the President and Vice President of the United States with a House and Senate Majority that would not have occurred without Trump’s hubris. He has destroyed his presidency, he has destroyed the GOP Senate majority, and he has done everything he could to destroy the foundations of our nation. The man is a criminal, a traitor, a seditionist, and a serial liar, except for one tiny thing: he has promised to overthrow the election, he has promised not to give up his fight, and not to leave power peacefully. In those things he was telling the truth, proving that a serial liar can on occasion tell the truth, and many people will fight and die for his illegal actions.

That is why I said that this is the beginning of the Trump Coup and Insurgency. He and his followers will begin a campaign of violence like the KKK, the Red Shirts, the White Leagues, White Liners, and Nazis. They are a doomsday cult led by an unbalanced, unhinged, unstable and unimaginably evil and demented President who still has two weeks to do his worst.

He needs to be removed from office by Vice President Pence and the Cabinet by the 25th Amendment or by an immediate move to impeach him. Military commanders need to be ready to disobey any unconstitutional actions by Trump in the country or attempts to send the nation to war.

In the next few hours the Senate and House will certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but that will enrage these insurgents, elected or not to more violence.

I fully expect the situation to get worse before it ever gets better. Our nation’s reputation and honor is stained with the blood of Trump and his Cult. Over half of the GOP House still supports Trump and his illegal actions. That shows that the GOP is hopelessly corrupt and unable to reverse the decades or rot that it has cultivated and encouraged.

That is not the worst. The fact is, unless Trump is removed through the action of Vice President Pence and the cabinet by removing Trump from by the 25th Amendment, or the House fast tracking impeachment chargers and the Senate trying and convicting him, he retains the control of the Presidency and could even launch us into war or further attempts to overthrow the Constitution and Republic. The next two weeks are going to be incredibly dangerous and violent as Trump and his Cult, including those in elected office or law enforcement work to throw the country into chaos. Such people are domestic terrorists but our laws don’t treat them as such. Laws on terrorism need to be changed to include such people.

Sadly, I fully expect that these people will resort to further violence before Trump leaves office. If they do commit further violence they deserve no mercy. Hopefully they can be arrested and tried, but I do not believe that many will submit to that. I expect them to commit violent acts including murder of law enforcement officers attempting to arrest them, as well as assassinating those they believe are their political enemies. If they do so law enforcement officials should be able to resort to deadly force to put down their insurrection.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Be ready for anything. I know these people, many are decent people but others are lawless, racist, authoritarian, and theocratic and they do believe that their so called “God” is one their side. That is what the Taliban, Al Qaida, the Nazis, and others believed. Should they commit any more violent acts I believe that our only recourse is force, and if the situation requires, the lifting of Posse Comitatus and use of the active duty military to crush them. This is no longer about the election, it is about an insurrection to overthrow our government.

The President is committing criminal acts, inciting insurrection and needs to be removed from office before he can destroy the country and Constitution.

This is not some histrionic prediction, it is based on his words and actions since 2015. The man is certifiably insane and willing to commit violence to keep power. What happened today was an attempted coup and what happens next will be violent insurrection and assassinations, as well as possible war against foreign enemies.

Donald Trump, his enablers and the violent actors who attack Congress today have to be brought to justice. Senators Cruz and Hawley need to be removed from office as well as 130 house members who have completely disregarded their oaths of office to fight for Trump. Senator Mitt Romney offered a devastating critique of Republican objections. My respect for Romney has risen incredibly since 2012. Romney has become a voice of conscience for conservatives but far too many supposedly “conservative” Trump supporters don’t get it.  That is because they are cultists, and one cannot convince cultists, be they religious or political.

So until tomorrow this now retired Navy Chaplain, veteran of nearly 40 years of military service, and historian of both the Weimar, Nazi, and post-war Nuremberg trials, as well as American slavery, the Civil War, and Jim Crow Eras will settle into bed. However, I will never stop exposing these criminals for what they are. How can I not as a Priest sworn to my vows, a military officer sworn to uphold the Constitution, and a historian who is committed to speaking and writing the the truth.

The President and his violent supporters attempted a coup, the began an insurrection and they are not done. They will kill many more people before they are done. Any American regardless of their party needs to stand against them. As Stephen Douglas said after he lost the election of 1860 and his former friends attacked Fort Sumter in 1861:

“There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots – or traitors”

That my friends is the the crux of the question. Trump encouraged yesterday’s violence and failed. That doesn’t mean that this amoral narcissistic sociopath is done and neither are his supporters.

If Americans of all political types do not resist the damage will take decades to repair if ever. All over the world allies are weeping and enemies rejoicing over what happened yesterday. Some things cannot be unseen or undone, and those events will forever redound against the United States. Honestly, with so many Trump supporters now fighting an insurgency against our legally elected government what nation or people could ever trust us regardless of how hard President Biden tries to repair the damage to our Republic?

If you can answer that with any positive response you are much more optimistic than me. However, we are now facing a long term violent insurgency with right wing death squads similar those we have condemned in other nations or the insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This is all on us, our President and his cult. The threat is real because you can bet that Russia, China, Iran, and many other adversaries are now wondering and planning how they well take advantage of the unpatriotic chaos unleashed by Trump and his goddamned cult are done. This is far more than a domestic political crisis, it has ramifications for our national security and peace around the world.

This was an attempted Coup no different that the Kapp Putsch or Bier Hall Putsch in Weimar Germany. We need to be vigilant and very concerned. In an hour or so Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the undisputed President and Vice President elect and nothing apart from a violent revolution and insurgency can stop it. If that happens all bets are off.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 29, 2020 · 00:50

Will Last Century’s Crimes Against Humanity Be This Century’s Too? Robert Jackson’s Closing Arguments at Nuremberg

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I spent much of the past week, until I had my emotional and physical meltdown discussing the importance of the Nuremberg Trials to today’s world. To do so I went through the five parts of Supreme Court Justice and Chief American Prosecutor, Robert Jackson’s opening address to the Tribunal. Tonight I will begin to work through his closing arguments, which like his opening are considered to be among the most powerful and definitive legal addresses in history.

We cannot forget or we will be doomed to repeat them, for the Holocaust was not an anomaly, it is the ever present part of the dark part of humanity.

Historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote:

“It’s very, very important for people to get a sense of what the potentialities of people really are, what the dangers of ignorance can be. It is in this context, that a supposedly advanced society risks descending into the sewer, that the Holocaust is a warning to people who think of themselves as an advanced, modern society….”

Historian Timothy Snyder was even more forthcoming:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

After four decades of the hate preached by White Supremacists, their willing conservative radio, television, and internet enablers, some who still raking in the cash for spreading race hatred, not to forget the titanic role played by President Trump in encouraging race hatred and violence, even state sanctioned violence against American citizens has placed us again at a place where an American genocide could take place, or more likely, nations under authoritarian rule inspired by Trump could and do commit atrocities and even Genocide knowing that under Trump the word and leadership of the United States.

It will take years to rebuild so long as Trump remains his alive and his political enablers and personality is cult do what they can to destroy and undermine the United States.

Immediately after leaving office if not before, Trump and his cult will go to war with Biden and the part of the country that didn’t support him. Let me spell out my predictions of what he and they will do.

1. On the day of President Biden’s inauguration or shortly after Trump will announce his candidacy for the 2024 election. His current political allies will vow their obedience to his will.

2. Trump will write a book similar to Mein Kampf. It will be full of conspiracy theories how he was cheated out of the election, it will make brazen and false allegations against his opponents, it will have profound racist and xenophobic messages, and it will describe his plan for when he gains absolute power. Like Mein Kampf it will be nearly unreadable, but his followers will buy it and it will become required reading for them and members of churches pastored by his supporters.

3. He will continue his mass meetings and will forgo no chance to get television coverage, probably on Newsmax, or OAN which he will either purchase or begin his own network where he can be on every day for maximum exposure.

4. His lawyers will do all they can to prevent him from being tried in state or Federal Court. His followers will be subjected to constant harassment to give to pay his legal bills and maybe even his massive financial debts when they come do, since Fox News, with the exception of a few hosts is dead to them now. 

5. His loyal members of the House and Senate and their state counterparts will do all they can to oppose any legislation he proposes, even if it benefits their constituents. They will be like the Nazi members of the Reichstag who abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States and swear a personal oath of loyalty to Trump. 

6. Many of the judges he appointed will seek to undermine, weaken, or overturn any executive orders based on spurious lawsuits filed by Trump supporters. Sadly, Christians and Christian Churches will be at the center of these efforts. Their actions will ensure that the Coronavirus Pandemic continues to escalate so they can blame Biden, regardless of how many American die. The are truly sociopaths an capable of any evil imaginable. One cannot forget that the most horrible genocide of the last 30 years was committed by Rwandan Christians against other Christians Just after Easter. American Christians have shown themselves to have little regard for the life and liberty of others under Trump, they just haven’t had the opportunity commit genocide, though with the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic they have made a pretty good start with over 270,000 deaths to date. Not bad when you don’t even have to shoot or gas them.

7. Trump will form a private army under his command, bound by an oath of loyalty to him from the bands of lawless, heavily armed, violent, White Racist, and conspiracy theorists similar to Hitler’s SA Stürmabteilung to intimidate people, and to commit murders and political assassinations. These groups will include The Oathkeepers, The III % Militia, and any number of the White Nationalist, Neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, and other racist terrorist groups and self-appointed militias.

8. Some Trump supporting Sheriffs who believe that they are the ultimate law in their counties will bind their deputies with personal loyalty oaths to Trump will be part of this. Additionally, there will be some police who turn their heads in order to allow these people to operate safely.Likewise, some in the military, especially in the National Guard and Reserves of heavily Trump states will supply them with weapons, ammunition, and training, with or without the approval of their local superiors. There has already been evidence of this in the recently o covered plan to kidnap, try, and execute Michigan’s government. we have evidence of such behavior by police and military, or former military personnel in our country, especially in the Reconstruction and Jim Crow South, and Northern cities where local law enforcement worked in cahoots with Organized Crime, as well as how local, and state police violently attacked and even Civil Rights workers and protestors.

9. As Trump moves forward his supporters will conduct political assassinations and acts of terror. They will blame them on Antifa without proof and accuse the Biden Administration of being weak in crime.

10. He will work with members of Eric Prince’s and other paramilitary contractors for hire will to work with hostile foreign powers and terrorist groups in order to draw the United States into a disastrous war. 

Tell me in six months to a year if I am wrong, and I really hopefully, truthfully, pray that I am wrong, but I don’t tend be be that wrong about him. All you have to do is look up the articles that I first posted from 2105-2018 and then reposted in their entirety over the past couple of months to see that. I profile authoritarians based on history, psychology, sociology, and even religion. 

Hopefully  Trump and his henchmen will be indicted and imprisoned Before they can do worse. Hopefully, the spell between Trump and many of his Congressional enablers will be broken and they might return to placing the country, our people, and Constitution above their loyalty to Trump. The same might be true of Trump’s judges, but I cannot preclude the fact that many will place their loyalty to Trump for their appointment, their ideology and especially their religion and ideology override their loyalty to the Constitution, the same can be said for the Sheriff’s, other law enforcement officials and military personnel. Trump is playing Hitler in order to overthrow the his version of the Weimar Republic, which according to their conspiracy theories repeated by White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and QANON true believers, is controlled by Jews, Communists, and other racial inferiors. 

But enough of that, that future is not yet written, but when it comes to Trump I have a pretty good track record. Check back around July to see if I am right. Trump and his followers are lawless and bent on destroying the country in order that they might establish a dictatorship. It might take them a while, and they certainly won’t succeed in overthrowing Biden in the first year or two, but do not

But back to the Nuremberg Trials, which if there is any justice Trump and his henchmen will end up in the dock of justice charged with Crimes Against Humanity and countless violations of U.S. Law. It would take at least an hour to name all of them, without the multiple specifications Of each charge. Sadly, I don’t have a staff of hundreds of lawyers and legal staff to do what Jackson did in prosecuting the Nazis. 

Jackson’s closing occurred 178 days after his opening address, after nearly nine months of testimony and evidence was presented by the prosecutors and the defense. It was The Nazis own records provided massive amounts of damning evidence which the prosecution presented in such a manner that it couldn’t be denied by defendants or history.

Jackson was masterful as he made his synopsis of the evidence and testimony presented over those nine months. To do so he had to come back after a poor performance against the former Nazi Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering. It was a day that shook his confidence, but after Jackson’s performance, British prosecutor Maxwell Fyfe destroyed Goering on cross. Many in the media believed that Jackson could not come back, in fact he wanted to resign as Chief Prosecutor. But he remained and delivered his second masterpiece of the trial.

His words should give us all pause when we think that we view the events of the past in a patronizing manner, thinking that we are too advanced to be capable of such such behaviors. We trust in technological advances and affluence but human nature remains unchanged and the crimes of the Twentieth Century which Jackson detailed in his summation could be eclipsed by worse today. There are plenty of monsters in the United States and the world all too willing to reprise the crimes of the Nazis. Let the reader understand.

So we begin where Jackson began on the morning of Friday, July 27th 1946.

Mr. President and members of the Tribunal:

An advocate can be confronted with few more formidable tasks than to select his closing arguments where there is great disparity between his appropriate time and his available material. In eight months -a short time as State trials go -we have introduced evidence which embraces as vast and varied a panorama of events as has ever been compressed within the framework of a litigation. It is impossible in summation to do more than outline with bold strokes the vitals of this trial’s sad and melancholy record, which will live as the historical text of the twentieth century’s shame and depravity.

It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilisation, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronisingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be “progress”. The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is to redeem its first. These two-score years in this twentieth century will be recorded in the book of years as some of the most bloody in all annals. Two world wars have left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any war that made ancient or medieval history. No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportations of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities. The terror of Torquemada pales before the Nazi Inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade. If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events, it is not an irresponsible prophecy to say that this twentieth century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilisation.

Goaded by these facts, we were moved to redress the blight on the record of our era. The defendants complain that our pace is too fast. In drawing the Charter of this Tribunal, we thought we were recording an accomplished advance in International Law. But they say that we have outrun our times, that we have anticipated an advance that should be, but has not yet been made. The Agreement of London, whether it originates or merely records, at all events marks a transition in International Law which roughly corresponds to that in the evolution of local law when men ceased to punish crime by “hue and cry” and began to let reason and inquiry govern punishment. The society of nations has emerged from the primitive “hue and cry”, the law of “catch and kill”. It seeks to apply sanctions to enforce International Law, but to guide their application by evidence, law, and reason instead of outcry. The defendants denounce the law under which their accounting is asked. Their dislike for the law which condemns them is not original. It has been remarked before that:

“No thief e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law.”

I shall not labour the law of this case. The position of the United States was explained in my opening statement. My distinguished colleague, the Attorney-General of Great Britain, will reply on behalf of all the Chief Prosecutors to the defendants’ legal attack. At this stage of the proceedings, I shall rest upon the law of these crimes as laid down in the Charter. The defendants, who except for the Charter would have no right to be heard at all, now ask that the legal basis of this trial be nullified. This Tribunal, of course, is given no power to set aside or modify the Agreement between the Four Powers, to which eighteen other nations have adhered. The terms of the Charter are conclusive upon every party to these proceedings.

In interpreting the Charter, however, we should not overlook the unique and emergent character of this body as an International Military Tribunal. It is no part of the constitutional mechanism of internal justice of any of the signatory nations. Germany has unconditionally surrendered, but no peace treaty has been signed or agreed upon. The Allies are still technically in a state of war with Germany, although the enemy’s political and military institutions have collapsed. As a Military Tribunal, this Tribunal is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations. As an International Tribunal, it is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional systems, nor will its rulings introduce precedents into any country’s internal system of civil justice. As an International Military Tribunal, it rises above the provincial and transient, and seeks guidance not only from International Law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence, which are assumptions of civilisation and which long have found embodiment in the codes of all nations.

Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favour. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.

But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The prosecution’s case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case, by one after another of the defendants, that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubt of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped to write their own judgement of condemnation.

But justice in this case has nothing to do with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilisation of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of International Law had it not been utilised to goose-step the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge and intent.

We charge unlawful aggression but we are not trying the motives, hopes, or frustrations which may have led Germany to resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy. The law, unlike politics, does not concern itself with the good or evil in the status quo, nor with the merits of the grievances against it. It merely requires that the status quo be not attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by war. We may admit that overlapping ethnological and cultural groups, economic barriers, and conflicting national ambitions created in the 1930′ s, as they will continue to create, grave problems for Germany as well as for the other peoples of Europe. We may admit too that the world had failed to provide political or legal remedies which would be honourable and acceptable alternatives to war. We do not underwrite either the ethics or the wisdom of any country, including my own, in the face of these problems. But we do say that it is now, as it was for some time prior to 1939, illegal and criminal for Germany or any other nation to redress grievances or seek expansion by resort to aggressive war.

Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgement of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution. But in summation we now have before us the tested evidences of criminality and have heard the flimsy excuses and paltry evasions, of the defendants. The suspended judgement with which we opened this case is no longer appropriate. The time has come for final judgement, and if the case I present seems hard and uncompromising, it is because the evidence makes it so.

I perhaps can do no better service than to try to lift this case out of the morass of detail with which the record is full, and put before you only the bold outlines of a case that is impressive in its simplicity. True, its thousands of documents and more thousands of pages of testimony deal with an epoch and cover a continent, and touch almost every branch of human endeavour.

They illuminate specialities, such as diplomacy, naval development and warfare, land warfare, the genesis of air warfare, the politics of the Nazi rise to power, the finance and economics of totalitarian war, sociology, penology, mass psychology, and mass pathology. I must leave it to experts to comb the evidence and write volumes on their specialities, while I picture in broad strokes the offences whose acceptance as lawful would threaten the continuity of civilisation. I must, as Kipling put it, “splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of camel’s hair”

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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