Karma always wins in the end. Their bad deeds and petty vindinctiveness will eventually catch up with both Donald J. Trump and Peter B. Hegseth. Pete will never get an award for Outstanding Government Employee and Trump will never see his visage on Mt. Rushmore, nor take posssession of Greenland or get a Nobel Peace Prize. Their names won't go down in history as visionaries admired and respected for their contributions the humankind. Quite to the contrary, the name Donald Trump--and also possibly that of Pete Hegseth--will become pejorative, like Ivan the Terrible or Tricky Dick Nixon, a US president who resigned in disgrace.
Trump is certainly no modern-day George Washington, the Founding Father of our country, nor is he today's equivalent of Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. In fact, Donald Trump is not apt to be ever remembered as a great president and Pete Hegseth is unlikely to be remembered at all.
Pentagon officials stunned by Hegseth decision on troops in Poland
Pete Hegseth’s last-minute decision to cancel the deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland caught Pentagon staff and European allies by surprise — the latest example of an abrupt personnel move from the Defense secretary that blindsidedt both sides of the Atlantic.
Hegseth, as Secretary of War, seems to like making arbitrary dictatoral decisions without even saying why. He doesn't feel a necd to issue a warning or give an explaination. He is following Trump's playbook of acting on his own gut instincts without offering any reasons.
Both Trump and Hegseth should rightfully feel an obligation to explain their decisions. We are living in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Hegseth, who has never even been elected himself and whose own job credentials are rather shaky (National Guard duty), still has a duty to offer the reasons for a decision, even after-the-fact in the case of an emergency, which the Poland decision certainly was not. Is Hegseth now acting arbitrarily, even carelessly, just to display his authority? As long as the president still supports him, he will continue to do so. The US and the rest of the world need to find ways to curb both Trump and Hegseth, sooner rather than later, as they pose serious threats.
History offers stark examples of blind obedience, showing that simply stating: “I was just following orders,” is no defense. Former Schutzstaffel, or SS, officers attempted this argument after World War II, claiming they were not personally responsible for the atrocities committed during the war. The Nuremberg trials unequivocally rejected their defense and established the principle of command responsibility. Those trials further reinforced that individuals have both a legal and a moral obligation to disobey unlawful orders, even when doing so carries significant personal risk.
Hegseth is still doggedly trying to demote and censure an actual war hero, Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), a retired Navy Captain, for saying that service members can refuse to carry out illegal orders. Meanwhile, Trump still backs up war criminal Pete Hegseth, the Caribbean boaters' murderer, and, by so doing, could be considered a war criminal himself.
Or could Trump perhaps plead not-guilty by reason of insanity?
This is happening now in New York City.
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Yahoo News, Despite a fragile US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, Israel carried out strikes on Gaza City targeting Hamas’ most senior military leader, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, according to a joint statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz. The Israeli strikes killed at least seven people, with more than 50 others injured and taken to Al-Shifa Hospital, according to the emergency services in Gaza. It was not immediately clear if al-Haddad was one of the dead.
I consider Bibi Netanyahu yet another blatant war criminal being stubbornly protected by Donald J. Trump. They apparently are best buds. So now, let's just forget all about that pesky ceasefire! Netanyahu had simply decided to violate the ceasefire and try to kill a Hamas leader, who might have thought the ceasefire protected him. but whether they got him is uncertain. Who really cares about the ceasefire anyway? Netanyahu knows he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, even violtate a ceasefire (another war crime), since Trump will always back him up. Much of his success with Trump is based on his own ability to speak American English, as Trump certainy has never learned any other language and even his command of English is shaky. So far, Netanyahu's tactics have kept him out of prison and even from going to trial. He may never be punished for his crimes, which may even be forgotten.
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US plans to unveil criminal charges against Raul Castro next Wednesday, official says
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May 15 (Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to unveil criminal charges against Cuba's former president, Raul Castro, based on a 1996 incident in which Cuban military jets killed four people, according to a U.S. Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Here are details about the incident:
On February 24, 1996, Cuban jets shot down two small planes being flown by Brothers to the Rescue, a group of Cuban exile pilots. All four men aboard were killed. Cuba said the planes were in Cuban airspace, while the United States said they were over international waters. Cuba defended the shootdown as legitimate defense of its airspace but the U.S. position was later backed up by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which concluded the attack took place over international waters.
I am certainly no fan of the current Cuban leadership, but suspect that now as he approaches age 95, Raúl Castro Ruz is still a tad more alert than Donald J. Trump.
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A former DC neighbor reports:
I was walking home from the bank a couple days ago and decided to check to see if there have been any changes in your old house. Turned out someone is working on it. The front doors have been replaced and there were people digging out the basement. Looks like the house might be turned into a multi-tenant project.
The mulberry tree in the side yard is dropping berries like crazy. It is an annual chore to clean up fallen fruit on the sidewalk multi times a day. However, there is a big plus from the abundance of birds it attracts. Starlings, robins, English sparrows, mourning doves, and an occasional cardinal are the major customers.
The upcoming elections look like they will be very interesting, particularly with the current mayor not running.
Here was my reply: Is there a mulberry tree in a neighbor's yard? I know there were a couple of trees still in the side yard after I cut down the tree where raccoons were accessing my roof. Wasn't that a mulberry tree? The raccoons were feasting on mulberries. You know I really wish I still lived in that house and in my old neighborhood with all you good folks, but my kids, especially Stephanie, my financial adviser, insisted that I move and sell the house. I had to pay humongous capital gains taxes, not the case if I had died there, as I had intended. But no, she thought the property taxes and needed repairs for such a huge house built in 1893 would be too costly, so I bought the house I own and live in now, here with my son Jon and his dog. I gave the kids/grandkids some money, also some to Hondurans in US $100 bills. Now at age 88, I've given up my part-time Spanish medical interpretation work, as there's no demand for that out here. My passport has expired, so I may never be going back to Honduras.. It's kind of lonely out here in the country, especially when Jon is away at work, as he is right now. Here is our house, which I am also posting on the blog, honduraspeacecorps2.blogspot.com
It's a brand new one-story house, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, no fireplaces. I had 4 fireplaces and a wood stove in my former DC house. I do miss you all. I don't know any neighbors out here and none live close by. Abrazos, Barbara
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Another report from a former neighbor had speculated that the new owners of my DC house had planned to raise up the whole house starting from the basement ceiling, which needed to be a certain height for a legal rental, a plan I'd considered rather risky with such a big, old house. Now perhaps instead of raising the house, they may have just decided to dig deeper below the basement floor, which seems much safer. Apparently, they want to put a rental unit down there, so to do it legally, the ceiling must be a given height that maybe the current basement ceiling fails to reach. There is already a full bath down there.
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When I look at my blog posting on-line, some items appear there in all-cap, which, of course, is not how I wrote them. I don't know if that is just a quirk of my system or is the same for all readers.
