Redneck's Revenge

Fox News – It has taken months of bad news, but Democrats increasingly believe that President Obama might just lose his re-election bid.

The latest wake-up call comes in the form of a New York Times/CBS poll showing Republican Mitt Romney in the lead not just among registered voters overall, but with women and independents.

You need money to win Ohio, but it may not be worth the price of all this gay pride to get it. As the Times poll showed, a huge majority believe Obama’s rhetorical reversion was about politics, not a personal moral journey.

The Times/CBS survey is unique in that the pollsters called back the same phone numbers they had a month before. In April, Obama and Romney were dead even. Now, Romney leads by 3 points overall. That’s still within the margin of error — a statistical tie.

But the shifts with women, moderates and independents are all statistically significant. Obama lost 5 points with each of those demographics.

Team Obama has for months been warning Democrats not to be overconfident and warning of a close election, with the president increasingly sounding the alarm for donors and activists in recent campaign appearances.

Since the general election season kicked off in earnest in the last week of March, Obama has had an almost unbroken string of losing weeks, starting with his overheard conversation with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

There was the back-and-forth with the Supreme Court over his health law, the attack by one of Obama’s advisers on Ann Romney, the GSA Vegas scandal, the hookers in Cartagena and then the baffling case of the gay marriage half-reversion.

Some of the problems were just bad luck (hookers), some were just blunders (hot mic) but much of the rest has been about Obama trying to galvanize his base coalition and secure the massive donations he needs to finance the most expensive campaign in history.

His trip to New York on Monday was the best example yet. Obama delivered a groaner of a speech at Barnard College in which he did everything but shout “girl power” at the end.

And then in an appearance on a left-leaning ladies chat show, ABC’s “The View,” Obama rhapsodized about his partial reversion to previous support for gay marriage in advance of attending a fundraiser with his party’s fundraising shop for “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender” Democrats that featured Ricky Martin, he of Menudo, bikini briefs and “She Bangs.”

You need money to win Ohio, but it may not be worth the price of all this gay pride to get it. As the Times poll showed, a huge majority believe Obama’s rhetorical reversion was about politics, not a personal moral journey. Even those who are fine with gay marriage, may find it unseemly to see Obama waving the rainbow flag so vigorously in pursuit of cash.

While Obama was in New York, he also stopped by to scoop up some money from Wall Streeters, including some private equity folks — an industry his campaign was simultaneously describing as parasites and vampires.

If you wonder why Obama felt the need to single out JP Morgan Chase and its CEO for praise despite a $2 billion shellacking the firm took on its own investments, fundraisers like these are a big part of the answer.

All of this pandering may be necessary to keep Obama’s campaign dreadnaught moving ahead, but it comes at a cost, especially when so much of it is contradictory or confusing.

Obama believes marriage is a human right regardless of the gender of one’s preferred spouse, but thinks states out to be able to suppress that human right. Okay
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Obama thinks Romney is a vampire, but is happy to take the money of his rival’s fellow bloodsuckers? Gotcha.

David Brooks, a New York Times columnist who is quite taken with Obama, writes in today’s paper that while Americans think Obama is doing a bad job on the economy and that the country is off track, Obama stands a good chance of being re-elected because of his demeanor: an “ESPN” brand of post-modern machismo cool.

When Obama supporters like Brooks make argument like these, they are engaged in willful self-deception.

There has been nothing very cool about the past 7 weeks for Obama. The president has twisted himself into a policy and rhetorical pretzel to win the support and money he needs from the members of the Democratic coalition.

The Times poll tells the tale: Obama’s nuzzling of the base, beseeching of donors and policy contortions have given Romney the chance to start winning over the narrow band of undecided persuadable voters.

If Democrats don’t want to see Obama defeated, they had better suck it up. Obama is not the superman they believe him to be, nor is his campaign the masterwork they have been led to believe.

The president knows how tight a spot he is in. His supporters are just now realizing it.

This Is Not a Joke

The Pentagon was inundated with so many studies in 2010 that it commissioned a study to determine how much it cost to produce all those studies.

Now the Government Accountability Office has reviewed the Pentagon’s study and concluded in a report this week that it’s a flop.

The study of a study of studies began in 2010 when Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained that his department was “awash in taskings for reports and studies.” He wanted to know how much they cost.

Two years later, the Pentagon review is still continuing, which prompted Congress to ask the GAO to look over the Pentagon’s shoulder. What they found lacked military precision.

The GAO found only nine studies that had been scrutinized by the Pentagon review, but the military was unable to “readily retrieve documentation” for six of the reports.

The Department of Defense’s “approach is not fully consistent with relevant cost estimating best practices and cost accounting standards,” the GAO concluded. In fact, they often did not include items like manpower, the report found.

The Pentagon “partially concurs” with the GAO’s report.

The cost of the study of the study of the studies was not available from the GAO.

Inside the secret Miami meeting of George Soros’s liberal conspiracy

A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections.

The location of the conference had been kept a closely guarded secret by the members and guests of Democracy Alliance (DA), a collection of ultra-wealthy liberal donors formed in 2005, and is reported here in a Washington Free Beacon exclusive.

Attendees roamed the grounds at the 150-acre tropical resort on their way to cocktail gatherings, salsa dance lessons, and workshops such as “Occupy the Voting Booth” and “The 1 Percent Rule.” Local police guarded entrances as members attended a “partners only” meeting in the hotel’s Country Club Courtyard.

“Name badges must be worn at all times,” attendees were informed.

A Free Beacon reporter who tried to attend the conference after-party was intercepted by Alexandra Visher, the DA’s vice president of partner engagement and communications.

“These are individuals of considerable means” who often support policies that run contrary to their own interests, Visher said, as she escorted the reporter out of the party.

Earlier, the Free Beacon reporter was approached by a plain-clothes police officer who said taking pictures of the conference-goers was prohibited. The reporter was not taking pictures at the time.

Asked for an explanation, the officer said, “I can’t talk about it.”

The conference was attended by the biggest names in liberal politics, including billionaire financier George Soros, who has already pledged at least $2 million to pro-Democratic groups this cycle.

The actual amount Soros has contributed may be much higher, according to experts.

Contrary to Visher’s claim, in the past Soros has boasted that he “made many millions” off of similar political philanthropy, “which had at first looked like a fruitless venture.”

Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and frequent White House visitor, lounged by the Biltmore’s “lagoon sized pool.”

DA board member and Soros spokesman Michael Vachon swam laps.

Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters for America (MMFA), was overheard speaking to colleagues about his plans for a new MMFA fellowship, and bragging about a phone call he had received from Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the Obama re-election team.

Soros publicly contributed $1 million to MMFA in 2010, after years of speculation that he was the group’s primary secret donor.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank with deep ties to the Obama administration, was also heavily represented. CAP president Neera Tanden joined former Rep. Tom Perriello (D., Va.), president and CEO of the CAP Action Fund, and Van Jones, a senior fellow and former White House green jobs adviser, among others.

Jones did not respond to the Free Beacon’s requests for comment.

The Center for American Progress has been at the forefront of a coordinated campaign to discredit and demonize conservative donors and to demand transparency in political giving.

However, CAP does not disclose its donors, nor does it mention its participation in the Democracy Alliance on its website. Soros pledged an initial $3 million to the organization in 2003.

Perriello was overheard in between sessions talking to other attendees about President Barack Obama’s electoral prospects in Virginia.

“There’s going to be an insane amount of money on the other side, and we’ve seen what that can do in a Congressional [election]” he said, noting that a “gender gap” had opened up in Northern Virginia that may be “very helpful.”

Perriello, who represented Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District from 2009-2011, lost decisively to Republican Robert Hurt in the 2010 election.

When it comes to “insane amounts of money,” however, the Biltmore is hard to beat. Shiny black Maseratis, McLarens, and Jaguars fill the parking lots; exotic finches flutter about the lobby; and the hotel’s luxury spa offers “Antioxidant Foam Wraps” and “Moroccan Oil Scalp Massages” for a rate equivalent to $3 per minute (gratuity not included).

Inside the rooms, which cost as much as $3,000 per night, guests are invited to enjoy $8 bottles of Evian. The accompanying literature features advertisements for private Swiss banks such as E. Gutzwiller & Cie.

Controversial former Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), who nicknamed his most recent opponent and current congressman Daniel Webster (R., Fla.) “Taliban Dan,” cracked jokes in the elevators.

DA board members such as Steve Phillips, Donald Sussman, and Kelly Craighead, each with connections to major left-leaning political organizations, were less recognizable, but perhaps of equal or greater import.

Phillips, who serves as secretary for the DA, oversees a number of political action committees such as PAC+, which focuses on Latino voters, and PowerPAC.org, a “statewide social justice organization working with community organizations and activists to build political power in California.”

Sussman, a hedge-fund manager who invests in Chinese companies, is married to Rep. Chellie Pingree (D., Maine) and currently serves on the board of CAP.

Another prominent hedge fund manager, Thomas E. Steyer of Farallon Capital Management, also sits on CAP’s board.

Craighead is the DA’s president and managing director. She formerly worked as a “strategic consultant” to liberal groups like MMFA.

Other notable attendees include Cynthia Ryan, a principal at the investment firm Schooner Capital, who has bundled between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign.

Continue reading ‘The Soros Summit’ »

‘Total barbarity’ as Mexican cartel dumps 49 torsos along highway

MEXICO CITY — The headless torsos of 43 men and six women were found early Sunday along a highway between the U.S. border and the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, the latest in an escalating series of horrific mass killings among warring drug gangs here.

The dead were discovered just after midnight by a military patrol, according to officials in Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state. Some were in plastic garbage bags, others were scattered about in the dust, as if dropped from the back of a dump truck. All were without heads and extremities, officials said.

Scrawled on a banner left with the 49 victims was a message from the Zetas drug gang asserting responsibility for the killings, said Jorge Domene, a spokesman for the state government. The message included threats to Mexican authorities and the Zetas’ main criminal rivals, the Gulf cartel and Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

It was signed by the Zetas’ alleged top leaders, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, known as “Z-40,” and Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano Lazcano, Domene said.

“This was an act of total barbarity,” Domene said by phone. “It’s part of the same thing we’ve been seeing all over the country.”

With Mexico’s presidential election just seven weeks away, the country’s hyper-violent mafias have been seemingly engaged in a gruesome game of one-upmanship in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, 18 mutilated bodies turned up in abandoned vehicles along a highway near Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city. Local news reporters said many of the victims had nothing to do with the drug trade.

Zetas gangsters also took responsibility for those killings, which were apparently in retaliation for the murder of 23 of the cartel’s members in the border city of Nuevo Laredo this month.

Those victims were found ­May 4, with nine hung from a bridge in the center of town and the 14 severed heads of the others left in coolers outside city hall.

“All of these acts are part of a media strategy to get attention,” said Javier Treviño, the former lieutenant governor of Nuevo Leon.

Identifying the dead found Sunday will be difficult given the absence of identifying features, Mexican officials said, but they seemed eager to suggest that the 49 were not likely to have been innocent victims. Some of the torsos had tattoos of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, the iconic grim-reaper figure that is worshiped widely in Mexico’s criminal underworld, they said.

Forensic work will also be difficult because the victims appeared to have been dead at least 48 hours, and many of their bodies were covered in mud and dust. The site where they were dumped is near the tiny town of San Juan, about 75 miles south of the U.S. border town of Roma, Tex.

Authorities searched the area and found no other victims, Domene said, emphasizing the possibility that the dead were killed in another state or location and driven to the site to be dumped.

“They left them there so they would be seen,” he said.

None of the torsos had bullet wounds, and the bodies appeared to have been transported along the unpaved back roads that wind among local farms and ranches, Domene said. A large deployment of Mexican federal police and soldiers was sent to search the area.

Mexico’s presidential candidates have campaigned in the area on pledges that they will halt the violence that has turned Monterrey, the once-safe industrial capital of northern Mexico, into a gangster horror show.

An arson attack carried out by Zetas gunmen on a casino in the city killed 52 in August.

Monterrey’s renowned business community has been besieged by kidnappers and extortionists, and the threat to the city is so great that it risks becoming a drag on the entire Mexican economy, experts warn.

Troops Fight On Obama’s Behalf?

Leadership: Lost in his gay marriage flip-flop was the president’s claim that our armed forces fight for him, not their country. It was like following his spiking of the football over the Osama bin Laden kill with an end-zone dance.

Few caught the revealing Freudian slip during President Obama’s interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News in which he said he no longer considered what he described to evangelist Rick Warren in the election year of 2008 as the “sacred union” of marriage to be just between one man and one woman.

But there it was, from the lips of the man who considers the Navy SEALs as stage props in his re-election bid and whose use of the first person pronoun “I” has set some sort of Guinness Book world record.

“I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors,” he said, “who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage.”

This arrogant statement is reminiscent of the days of Imperial Rome, when the legions pledged their personal loyalty to the emperor. More modern tyrants have demanded and received such pledges of loyalty. But Obama surely must know that while he is their civilian commander in chief, he is not an emperor commanding his Roman legions.

Actually it explains quite a lot, from the faux Greek columns and the pompous acceptance of his party’s nomination in 2008 at Denver’s version of the Roman Coliseum to campaign flicks about his, not our, hunt for Osama bin Laden and the guided tours of the once privileged Situation Room.

Obama is our constitutionally designated civilian commander in chief. He sends our soldiers, sailors and pilots into battle and through the chain of command gives them their marching orders.

But they fight and die for their country, not Barack Obama personally.

Frankly, we doubt our forces fighting in Afghanistan have gay marriage uppermost on their minds. Survival might top the list, followed by having a job when they get home.

Those standing on guard elsewhere also might not consider gay marriage a legislative or military priority, considering that their country is waist-deep in a jobless recovery where the issues of debt and taxes should be paramount in their commander in chief’s mind.

They’re probably also worried about health benefits under ObamaCare. The administration recently unveiled plans to double or triple medical premiums for the military’s Tricare insurance program for active-duty and retired military personnel. Their country owes them a great debt; their commander in chief wants to put them in debt.

Fox News – A course for U.S. military officers has been teaching that America’s enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden.

The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

The teaching in the military course was counter to repeated assertions by U.S. officials over the last decade that the U.S. is at war against Islamic extremists — not the religion.

“They hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit,” the instructor, Army. Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, said in a presentation last July for the course at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. The college, for professional military members, teaches midlevel officers and government civilians on subjects related to planning and executing war.

Dooley also presumed, for the purposes of his theoretical war plan, that the Geneva Conventions that set standards of armed conflict, are “no longer relevant.”

He adds: “This would leave open the option once again of taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary (the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki being applicable….”

His war plan suggests possible outcomes such as “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation … Islam reduced to cult status,” and the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia “destroyed.”

A copy of the presentation was obtained and posted online by Wired.com’s Danger Room blog. The college didn’t respond to The Associated Press’ requests for copies of the documents, but a Pentagon spokesman authenticated the documents. Dooley still works for the college, but is no longer teaching, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said.

Dooley refused to comment to the AP, saying “Can’t talk to you, sir,” and hanging up when reached by telephone at his office Thursday.

A summary of Dooley’s military service record provided by Army Human Resources Command at Fort Knox, Ky., shows that he was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in May 1994. He has served overseas tours in Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq. He has numerous awards including a Bronze Star Medal, the fourth-highest military award for bravery, heroism or meritorious service.

In what he termed a model for a campaign to force a transformation of Islam, Dooley called for “a direct ideological and philosophical confrontation with Islam,” with the presumption that Islam is an ideology rather than just a religion. He further asserted that Islam has already declared war on the West, and the U.S. specifically.

“It is therefore illogical” to continue with the current U.S. strategy — which Dooley said presumes there is a way of finding common ground with Islamic religious leaders — without “waging near ‘total war,’” he wrote.

The course on Islam was an elective taught since 2004 and not part of the required core curriculum. It was offered five times a year, with about 20 students each time, meaning roughly 800 students have taken the course over the years.

Though Dooley has been teaching at the college since August 2010, it was unclear when he took on that particular class, called “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.”

The joint staff suspended the course after it had received a student complaint, and within days Dempsey ordered all service branches to review their training to ensure other courses don’t use anti-Islamic material.

On Thursday, Dempsey said the material in the Norfolk course was counter to American “appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness.”

“It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound,” Dempsey said when asked about the matter at a Pentagon news conference. “This wasn’t about … pushing back on liberal thought; this was objectionable, academically irresponsible.”

In his July 2011 presentation on a “counterjihad,” Dooley asserted that the rise of what he called a “military Islam/Islamist resurgence” compels the United States to consider extreme measures, “unconstrained by fears of political incorrectness.”

He described his purpose as generating “dynamic discussion and thought,” while noting that his ideas and proposals are not official U.S. government policy and cannot be found in any current official Defense Department documents.

A Pentagon inquiry is seeking to determine whether someone above the professor’s level is supposed to approve course materials and whether that approval process was followed in this case, said Col. Dave Lapan, spokesman for Dempsey.

The problem of negative portrayals of Islam in federal government is not new. A six-month review the FBI launched into agent training material uncovered 876 offensive or inaccurate pages that had been used in 392 presentations, including a PowerPoint slide that said the bureau can sometimes bend or suspend the law in counterterror investigations.

That is significant because ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI has stressed the importance of working with leaders in the Muslim community as an important part of the battle against terrorism. The FBI review began last September after Wired.com reported that the FBI had discontinued a lecture in which the instructor told agent trainees in Virginia that the more devout a Muslim is, the more likely he is to be violent.

Some Oklahoma Law Officers Wary of ‘Open Carry’ Bills

As this legislation winds its’ way through what passes for a legislature, I must admit to a level of hypocrisy towards this bill. While I do support the 2nd amendment, I do believe there are circumstances where some people will do something, in the name of gun owners rights, just to draw attention to themselves. For that matter, that’s the case with almost everything.
My personal reason for supporting ‘open carry’ is so I will no longer break the law. Every night when I leave the store, I break the law. If you are at the Kum & Go, putting gasoline in your car when I walk across the parking lot, it will take you 0.002 of a nanosecond to tell that I am armed. That’s every night. All the while, I hope and pray, I never have to use the weapon. When I leave the store, I’m not looking for bad guys. I want them to know I’m armed. I’m looking out for the cops.
In some ways, I think ‘concealed carry’ is a joke. You can only be aware of your surroundings so much. Every one is just as much a target as the next person. Open carry reduces the amount of time it will take you to defend yourself. Cliche’ time, when seconds matter, police are minutes away.

Legislation that would allow Oklahomans to display their handguns openly has some law enforcement officials on edge, but many people say the public may not see a big difference.

Oklahomans with a state-issued permit have been allowed to carry a concealed handgun since 1996, but if the so-called Open Carry legislation is approved it will be the first time since 1971 that permit holders could carry their weapon exposed.

Similar bills passed both the House and Senate this month and are working their way through the legislative process. Gov. Mary Fallin has said she supports the concept of allowing Oklahomans to openly carry guns.

The issue has a lot of law enforcement officials talking, said Norman McNickle, president of the Oklahoma Association of Police Chiefs.

While most support Second Amendment rights in general, some are wary people who openly carry their firearms in public might cause unnecessary distractions that may ultimately interfere with public safety, McNickle said.

“There is a universal concern that this will lead to more confrontations with our citizens,” he said. “How does the first arriving officers know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? It makes their job exponentially harder.”

Twenty-nine states have no law that prohibits the open carrying of handguns. Of the states that do restrict the practice, 14 allow it as long as a person has a state-issued permit.

Oklahoma is one of six states that currently does not allow for the open carrying of firearms, but if the proposed legislation becomes law it would join the group of 14 that require permits. California banned the practice last year with the exception of its unincorporated areas.

In states where Open Carry is allowed, law enforcement officials said it can cause inconveniences for police officers and the gun holder, but that most people don’t openly carry guns even though they are allowed to do so.

Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the police department in Portland, Ore., said residents there are also allowed to carry a handgun openly, but that it’s not something people tend to do.

“It can create 911 calls that maybe aren’t necessary and take police resources to go check out somebody that is legally carrying,” he said. “As a police agency we can’t ignore somebody calling saying there’s someone with a gun. We can’t assume that they’re legal.”

If the open carry legislation is approved in Oklahoma, there would still be many places one could not bring a gun.

Government buildings, schools, and many businesses don’t allow weapons on their property.

Most states that surround Oklahoma allow for Open Carry, with the exception of Arkansas and Texas. A similar bill approved by Oklahoma legislators in 2010 was vetoed by then-Gov. Brad Henry.

Proponents of the legislation say it’s about asserting citizen rights and allowing Oklahomans to more actively defend themselves.

Seeing folks with their firearms displayed openly could cause a criminal to think twice about committing a violent crime, said Tim Gillespie, director of the Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Association.

“We live in a dangerous world,” he said. “Open up the newspaper on any given day and there’s a report of car jackings or somebody coming into your home or whatever. Our membership wants to have the ability to defend themselves in case they’re ever confronted with that situation.”

It’s a belief shared by Rep. Steve Martin, R-Bartlesville, the principle author of the House legislation.

Concerns of the indistinguishable silhouette walking bowlegged down the street, hands at his holster and ready to draw are fantasies, he said.

“That’s what they do in `Gunsmoke,’ and `Have Gun — Will Travel’ and even shows that are newer than that,” he said. “It’s not going to be like that. It’s going to be more like you’re going to look over and someone is putting gasoline in his tank, and he happens to have a pistol in a holster on his belt as he’s doing it.”

Rep. Paul Roan, D-Tishomingo, who voted against the legislation, said people who openly carry guns may be putting themselves at risk when they enter a place with dangerous people.

“There may be a bad guy in there and that gives them an opportunity to take that weapon from you,” he said.

McNickle said trained police officers are killed on the job each year by their own weapon.

“You put a weapon on your hip, exposed, whether you’re a police officer or you’re a legally armed citizen, it makes you a target if something goes down, if something goes wrong,” he said.

Jim Maisano, deputy chief for the Norman Police Department, said with updated training he believes law enforcement agencies will be able to handle Open Carry. It’s how the law worked when he started at the department 28 years ago, he said, and other than possibly making some citizens nervous it should not significantly impact police operations.

Criminals won’t be the type to carry their handguns openly anyhow, he said.

“These are not people that usually go out and get their concealed carry license and follow the legislation,” he said. “They acquire a gun by some other means and commit the crime that they’re going to do with that weapon.”

New York Times – One night last September, a prisoner named Naji Najjar was brought, blindfolded and handcuffed, to an abandoned military base on the outskirts of Tripoli. A group of young men in camouflage pushed him into a dimly lit interrogation room and forced him to his knees. The commander of the militia, a big man with disheveled hair and sleepy eyes, stood behind Najjar. “What do you want?” the commander said, clutching a length of industrial pipe.

“What do you mean?” the prisoner said.

“What do you want?” the commander repeated. He paused. “Don’t you remember?”

Of course Najjar remembered. Until a few weeks earlier, he was a notorious guard at one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s prisons. Then Tripoli fell, and the same men he’d beaten for so long tracked him down at his sister’s house and dragged him to their base. Now they were mimicking his own sadistic ritual. Every day, Najjar greeted the prisoners with the words What do you want? forcing them to beg for the pipe — known in the prison by its industrial term, PPR — or be beaten twice as badly. The militia commander now standing behind him, Jalal Ragai, had been one of his favorite victims.

“What do you want?” Jalal said for the last time. He held the very same pipe that had so often been used on him.

“PPR!” Najjar howled, and his former victim brought the rod down on his back.

I heard this story in early April from Naji Najjar himself. He was still being held captive by the militia, living with 11 other men who had killed and tortured for Qaddafi, in a large room with a single barred window and mattresses piled on the floor. The rebels had attached a white metal plate onto the door and a couple of big bolts, to make it look more like a prison. Najjar’s old PPR pipe and falga, a wooden stick used to raise prisoners’ legs in order to beat them on the soles of the feet, rested on a table upstairs. They had gotten some use in the first months of his confinement, when former victims and their relatives came to the base to deliver revenge beatings. One rebel laughed as he told me about a woman whose brother had his finger cut off in prison: when she found the man who did it, she beat him with a broom until it broke. Now, though, the instruments of torture were mostly museum pieces. After six months in captivity, Najjar — Naji to everyone here — had come to seem more clown than villain, and the militiamen had appointed him their cook. Slouching in an armchair among a group of rebels who smoked and chatted casually, Najjar recounted his strange journey from guard to prisoner. “One of the visitors once broke the PPR on me,” he told me.

“Naji, that wasn’t a PPR; it was plastic,” one rebel shot back. “You could beat a pig with a PPR all day, and it wouldn’t break.” Besides, he said, the visitor in question had a ruptured disc from one of Naji’s own beatings, so it was only fair. The men then got into a friendly argument about Naji’s favorite tactics for beating and whether he had used a pipe or a hose when he gashed Jalal’s forehead back in July.

The militia’s deputy commander strolled into the room and gave Najjar’s palm a friendly slap. “Hey, Sheik Naji,” he said. “You got a letter.” The commander opened it and began to read. “It’s from your brother,” he said, and his face lit up with a derisive smile. “It says: ‘Naji is being held by an illegal entity, being tortured on a daily basis, starved and forced to sign false statements.’ Oh, and look at this — the letter is copied to the army and the Higher Security Committee!” This last detail elicited a burst of laughter from the men in the room. Even Naji seemed to find it funny. “We always tell the relatives the same thing,” one man added, for my benefit: “There is no legal entity for us to hand the prisoners over to.”

Libya has no army. It has no government. These things exist on paper, but in practice, Libya has yet to recover from the long maelstrom of Qaddafi’s rule. The country’s oil is being pumped again, but there are still no lawmakers, no provincial governors, no unions and almost no police. Streetlights in Tripoli blink red and green and are universally ignored. Residents cart their garbage to Qaddafi’s ruined stronghold, Bab al-Aziziya, and dump it on piles that have grown mountainous, their stench overpowering. Even such basic issues as property ownership are in a state of profound confusion. Qaddafi nationalized much of the private property in Libya starting in 1978, and now the old owners, some of them returning after decades abroad, are clamoring for the apartments and villas and factories that belonged to their grandparents. I met Libyans brandishing faded documents in Turkish and Italian, threatening to take up arms if their ancestral tracts of land were not returned.

What Libya does have is militias, more than 60 of them, manned by rebels who had little or no military or police training when the revolution broke out less than 15 months ago. They prefer to be called katibas, or brigades, and their members are universally known as thuwar, or revolutionaries. Each brigade exercises unfettered authority over its turf, with “revolutionary legitimacy” as its only warrant. Inside their barracks — usually repurposed schools, police stations or security centers — a vast experiment in role reversal is being carried out: the guards have become the prisoners and the prisoners have become the guards. There are no rules, and each katiba is left to deal in its own way with the captives, who range from common criminals to Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the deposed leader’s son and onetime heir apparent. Some have simply replicated the worst tortures that were carried out under the old regime. More have exercised restraint. Almost all of them have offered victims a chance to confront their former torturers face to face, to test their instincts, to balance the desire for revenge against the will to make Libya into something more than a madman’s playground.

Continue reading ‘Flush Twice ….. its a long way to Tripoli’ »

MSNBC – Republican foreign policy elder statesman Sen. Richard Lugar, 80, first elected to the Senate in 1976, was defeated in the Indiana primary Tuesday by state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who was backed by conservatives ranging from the National Rifle Association to local Tea Party activists to the Washington-based fiscal conservative group the Club for Growth.

Mourdock scored a landslide victory, winning more than 60 percent of the vote with almost all precincts reporting.

Conceding defeat, Lugar told his supporters “I hope that Richard Mourdock prevails in November so he can contribute to that Republican majority in the Senate.”

But Lugar also said that unless Mourdock “modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator.”

VDH Online – The temple of postmodern liberalism was rocked these last few weeks, as a number of supporting columns and buttresses simply crashed, leaving the entire edifice wobbling.

Fake but Accurate Identities?

The trivial Elizabeth Warren “high cheekbones” fraud nonetheless offered a draw-back-the-curtain look into the gears and levers of our national race industry. The real story is not that the multimillionaire liberal (and one-percenter) Warren fabricated a Cherokee identity for over a decade (to the delight of her quota-thirsty universities), but rather the notion that if a pink blond at Harvard can get away with faking a career-enhancing minority identity, then anyone, anywhere, can—or rather often has.

Give Ward Churchill his due: he worked at it—unlike Warren, who junked her supposed great, great, great grandparent once she got tenure and being “Indian” was a drag at Cambridge cocktail parties. At least, like the proverbial chameleon on the leaf, Churchill tried to alter his appearance with buckskin, beads, and braids to find an edge his otherwise mediocre talents and white male status would not supply. In contrast, Warren simply by fiat claimed high cheekbones—no beads, no trips to the reservation, no buckskin, no Churchillian effort. Note the connivance of Harvard, which hand-in-glove used Warren’s pseudo-identity to pad its “diversity” goals, which enable a mostly white yuppie left-wing faculty to, well, not feel too guilty about remaining a mostly white yuppie left-wing faculty.

Anyone who has taught in a university has come across the “Cherokee” con, especially given the Oklahoma diaspora in California. By the time I retired from CSU, I was exhausted with “1/16th” Cherokee students, who claimed success with their gambits. This was a world of Provost Liz Smith-Lopezes, José Beckers, Simba Bavuals, and all the other attempts to traffic in victimized identities.

Still, Warren, as no other recent examples, reminds us of the bald fakery in America these days. “Van” Jones was not born Van Jones. Louis (note the Jehmu Greene bowtie) Farrakhan was not born Farrakhan (yet just try to be a cool black racist as the Caribbean Louie Wolcott, aka Calypso Gene). In his twenties, Barry Dunham Obama went from Barry (a not very useful preppie suburbanite-sounding name) to Barack Obama. In the La La lands of academia, high journalism, and big government (though not in the landscaping business, farming, or short-order cookery), we sometimes wear identities in America as we do clothes, a different outfit as the occasion demands, given that our present-day Jim Crow racialists are busy figuring out to what degree pigment, ethnic ancestry, nomenclature, or assumed identity “counts.”

Cross the border and you in theory can go from an impoverished Mexican national that lived a wretched material existence thanks to grandees in Mexico City to a “minority” with vicarious claims against the American system who is suddenly eligible for oppression-based, affirmative action recompense. But if your family came from Egypt in 1950, you apparently qualify for very little reparations, even if you are darker than the recent Jalisco arrival. Yet again, score 1600 on the SAT and achieve a 4.5 GPA in high school, and if both Asian and wanting to go to Berkeley or Stanford, well then, who cares about the Japanese interment, the Chinese coolie labor of the 1850s, or the exclusionary acts of the 1920s? Too many Asians doing too well is not diversity at all, so we go into the reverse quota mode of exclusion. Warren reminded us that we will soon need DNA badges to certify the exploding ethnic, racial, and gender claims against society. And just as there are too few young these days to support the retiring Baby Boom generation on Social Security, so too we have too few oppressors left to pay out subsidies and recompense for the growing legion of Warren-like victims.

Continue reading ‘In The Minority When Its Convenient’ »