He Broke the Law

Posted on November 2, 2017 by Muller

UPDATE 3 November 2017

When Peace Nobel Prize laureate, law professor and then president of the United States Barack Obama made this statement in 2011 at a fundraiser in San Francisco, he was not conscious that his casual conversation was caught on camera. It did not go immediately viral but was an embarrassment, for sure. It was about Chelsea Manning who had just been relocated from the Marine Corps base in Quantico to another prison facility at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Manning was still waiting for her trial for leaking hundred of thousands classified documents to WikiLeaks, and the president and commander in chief uttered his personal opinion about her. Manning’s sentence to 35 years in military prison was commuted by Obama as his last act in office.

Today, Obama’s successor in the White House prejudged the suspect of Tuesday’s New York terror attack and called for his transfer to Gitmo and execution.

 

 

Regarding Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009 and was immediately abducted by Taliban insurgents who kept him partly in a cage and tortured him until, in 2014, he was released in a controversially discussed prisoner swap in exchange of five Taliban Gitmo inmates, Donald Trump is of the opinion that he is a “dirty rotten traitor” and should be executed.

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Trump Doesn’t Know What His Troops are Doing in Niger

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Muller

“He knew what he signed up for” were reportedly president Donald Trump’s words when offering his condolences to Sgt Johnson’s wife in the car, after her husband had died in an ambush in Niger, together with Staff Sergeants Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson, Dustin Wright. “But it hurts anyway.”

You may indeed perceive that as insensitive, in particular in a situation when the 24-yr-old pregnant wife and mother of two apparently didn’t know what her husband had been doing in Africa. What matters is if the widow perceives that as insensitive.

President Trump, who had acknowledged the ambush only twelve days after it had happened when having been pressed by a journalist, still denies that he was insensitive; that he even forgot Sgt Johnson’s name when calling his widow. But that’s not an issue. Empathy cannot be learned later in life. One must not condemn him for another proof of insensitivity here.

What is alarming is that US soldiers (who of course know what they have signed up for) are put at risk in Africa now, with a president without a clue what they are doing there. No strategy.

May these four soldiers (who did knew) may rest in peace.

24 October 2017 @ 7:04 am.

Last modified October 24, 2017.

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Five Years With the Taliban

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Muller

Thirty-one-year old Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been kept in captivity by Taliban in Afghanistan for five years after having left his post had pleaded guilty to desertion. Now he is awaiting being sentenced in Fort Bragg in N.Y. He might face life in presence.

Bowman was  freed after President Obama had agreed to release five Taliban terrorists in exchange. I have reported about that moment here. It had reminded me of the fate of Daniel Perle and Nick Berg who had been killed by al-Qaida terrorists in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Bergdahl was lucky that he survived his captivity.

President Trump had called Bergdahl a “no-good traitor” who would have been executed “in the old days” when campaigning for presidency.

22 October 2017 @ 6:43 pm.

Last modified October 22, 2017.

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Human Nature is That of a Virus

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Muller

Pollution

Agent Smith: I’d like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

The above quote is from the famous Wachowskis movie The Matrix (1999). Smith, an “agent” computer program teaches Morpheus, a human who has freed himself from the “Matrix”, a computer simulation of the world as it seems to be in 1999.

A new study published today in The Lancet illustrates how humans destroy the environment and themselves just by pollution. The study speaks of 9 million premature deaths in 2015 due to pollution. Pollution disproportionately kills the poor and vulnerable.

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No Kufic Script on Viking Funeral Garment

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Muller

Kufic

Couple of days ago, it had been reported that a funeral garment, datable to the 9th and 10th century, which had been found in Sweden contains the words Allah and Ali (the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law) in Kufic script. Textile archaeologist Annika Larsson of Uppsala University had re-examined the remnants of burial costumes from male and female boat and chamber graves originally excavated in Birka and Gamla Uppsala in Sweden in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.

Dr. Larsson assumed that the fragments may have originated from Iran, Central Asia or even China, as some design elements on the fragments reminded her of those she had seen in Moorish textiles. BBC reports that she identified Arabic Kufic script rather than Viking patterns and recognized, with the help of an Iranian colleague, the words Allah and Ali.

I suddenly saw that the word ‘Allah’ had been written in mirrored lettering.

The possibility that some of those in the graves were Muslim cannot be completely ruled out.

We know from other Viking tomb excavations that DNA analysis has shown some of the people buried in them originated from places like Persia, where Islam was very dominant.

However, it is more likely these findings show that Viking age burial customs were influenced by Islamic ideas such as eternal life in paradise after death.

Dr. Larsson has found these two words which always appeared together, in 10 of 100 fragments screened so far.

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