T2: Trainspotting: A Worthy Sequel

I’m a huge fan of the film Trainspotting. I’ve seen the somewhat demented but brilliant film several times and I look forward to seeing the sequel.

Thomas S. Hobbs at National Review Online offers a review of the new film.

In one of the many reunion scenes in T2: Trainspotting, the sequel to the 1996 indie hit film Trainspotting, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) tells his old friend Simon, a.k.a. Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), that after a heart attack, he had a stent inserted that will ensure that he lives 30 more years. He then laments his longevity. He would know what to do with two or three years, but he has no idea what to do with 30. “I’m 46 years old,” he moans, “and I’m f****d!”

As with all the major characters in the Trainspotting universe, Renton’s experience is framed by the emptiness of time in a world where meaning has been reduced to arbitrary consumer choice, a world in which, as Renton boldly proclaimed in his famous “choose life” speech in the original, it makes as much sense to be on heroin as not to.

Although it has been 20 years since the original, the characters, dialogue, and action feel fresh and smart. With another terrific soundtrack, and using the same source material (an Irvine Welsh novel), writer John Hodge and director Danny Boyle have achieved the rare feat of creating a film that satisfies the sequel viewer’s desire for both nostalgia and novelty.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446321/trainspotting-sequel-drugs-violence-aimlessness 

Krauthammer: By Freeing Traitor Manning And Other Acts Obama Shows His True Colors as He Leaves Office

Charles Krauthammer's column in National Review Online offers his take on Obama's true colors.

Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final acts were overshadowed, in part by a successor who refused to come in quietly, and in part by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour. But there was nothing nostalgic or sentimental about Obama’s last acts. Two of them were simply shocking. 

Perhaps we should have known. At the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he joked about whether he had a bucket list: “Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.”

Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. Commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning, one of the great traitors of our time, is finger-in-the-eye willfulness. Obama took 28 years off the sentence of a soldier who stole and then released through WikiLeaks almost half a million military reports plus another quarter-million State Department documents. 

The cables were embarrassing; the military secrets were almost certainly deadly. They jeopardized the lives not just of American soldiers on two active fronts — Iraq and Afghanistan — but of locals who were, at great peril, secretly aiding and abetting us. After Manning’s documents release, the Taliban “went on a killing spree” (according to intelligence sources quoted by Fox News) of those who fit the description of individuals working with the United States.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444044/barack-obama-exit-reveals-true-colors?utm_source=sailthru&utm_campaign=colors&utm_medium=email&utm_content=krauthammer&utm_term=VDHM

President Obama Is Visiting Hiroshima. Why Not Pearl Harbor?

Victor Davis Hanson offers a piece at National Review Online that asks why the president is visiting Hiroshima and not Pearl Harbor.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the December 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 Americans. 

President Obama is visiting Hiroshima this week, the site of the August 6, 1945, dropping of the atomic bomb that helped end World War II in the Pacific Theater. But strangely, he has so far announced no plans to visit Pearl Harbor on the anniversary of the attack. The president, who spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, should do so — given that many Americans have forgotten why the Japanese attacked the United States and why they falsely assumed that they could defeat the world’s largest economic power.

Imperial Japan was not, as often claimed, forced into a corner by a U.S. oil embargo, which came only after years of horrific Japanese atrocities in China and Southeast Asia. Instead, an opportunistic and aggressive fascist Japan gambled that the geostrategy of late 1941 had made America uniquely vulnerable to a surprise attack.

... The road to Hiroshima and the massive loss of life in the Pacific was paved by unprovoked Japanese aggression at Pearl Harbor. Americans and their president should remember the lessons of that surprise attack 75 years ago this year.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435850/barack-obama-hiroshima-visit-why-not-pearl-harbor

You can also read an earlier post on Obama's visit to Hiroshima via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/05/apologize-for-hiroshima-hell-no.html

Note: The above photo is of the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  

Bookmonger Podcast: Bernard Cornwell Discusses 'Warriors Of The Storm' And His Other Works Of Historical Fiction

John J. Miller at National Review Online offers a podcast interview with historical fiction author Bernard Cornwell.

Author Bernard Cornwell talks about his new novel, Warriors of the Storm, the challenges of writing about England before the Norman Conquest, and how he wound up as an American citizen. 

You can listen to the interview via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/media/bookmonger/bookmonger-bernard-cornwell-0

You can also read my interview with Bernard Cornwell about his Sharpe novels via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/12/a-q-with-sharpe-creator-bernard-cornwell.html

Peace, Patriotism, And Pollard

Tom Rogan at National Review Online offers a piece on the possible release of traitor and convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

Along with Ames and Hanssen, Jonathan Pollard is in his own very special category of treason.

Having sworn an oath to the United States, Pollard betrayed that trust with energetic glee. In return, Israel ensured that the American intelligence officer was handsomely rewarded for his crimes. Pollard’s efforts continued without hesitation, until the day he was finally caught, in 1985.  

Since then, pursuing Pollard’s release from prison has been a unifying cause for Israeli society. In tune with public sentiment, successive Israeli governments have spent many years petitioning successive American presidents to “do the right thing.” Those presidents have always said no. But now, it seems, that might change.

Yesterday, reports surfaced that suggest President Obama is considering releasing Pollard in exchange for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. That must not happen.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374685/peace-patriotism-and-pollard-tom-rogan

Note: I interviewed the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) special agent who investigated, arrested and interrogated Pollard. You can read my piece on Pollard via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/04/a-look-back-at-jonathan-pollard-spy-case.html

Note: The above photo was provided by the FBI.

Krauthammer: Not His War - Our Ambivalent Commander

  

Charles Krauthammer's column in National Review Online looks at President Obama's leadership of the war in Afghanistan.

 

By early 2011, writes former defense secretary Robert Gates, he had concluded that President Obama “doesn’t believe in his own [Afghanistan] strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his.”
Not his? America is at war and he’s America’s commander-in-chief. For the soldier being shot at in the field, it makes no difference under whose administration the fighting began. In fact, three out of four Americans killed in Afghanistan have died under Barack Obama’s command. That’s ownership enough.

Moreover, Gates’s doubts about Obama had begun long before. A year earlier, trying to understand how two senior officials could be openly working against expressed policy, Gates concluded that “the most likely explanation was that the president himself did not really believe the strategy he had approved would work.” This, just four months after Obama ordered his 30,000-troop “surge” into Afghanistan, warning the nation that “our security is at stake . . . the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.”

 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368668/not-his-war-charles-krauthammer

 

Note: The above U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Bertha A. Flores shows U.S. Special Forces soldiers fire a mortar round toward an identified enemy fighting position while assisting Afghan forces clear Bahlozi village in the Maiwand district of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, Jan. 1, 2014. Forces conducted the clearance mission to disrupt insurgents who hide in the village. The U.S. Special Forces soldiers are assigned to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan.

Krauthammer: If Obama Is Going To Strike Syria, He Should Do it Constitutionally And With Purpose

Charles Krauthammer in his column at National Review Online, offers his take on Obama's decision, or indecision, to strike Syria.

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian president Bashar Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action.

There are risks to any attack. Blowback terror from Syria and its terrorist allies. Threatened retaliation by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel — that could lead to a guns-of-August regional conflagration. Moreover, a mere punitive pinprick after which Assad emerges from the smoke intact and emboldened would demonstrate nothing but U.S. weakness and ineffectiveness.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357167/shamed-war-charles-krauthammer

Elmore Leonard, R.I.P.

Otto Penzler, publisher, editor and owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City wrote about his friend Elmore Leonard in National Review Online.

Leonard was the quintessential American crime writer, his prose matching the rhythms of American Jazz — that other uniquely American art form.

His ten rules of writing should be required reading for every student in an MFA program. Though he wrote tough books about tough guys, they were always compassionate; even the bad guys had hearts. This was a reflection of the man himself, a friend for so long, who never had a bad word to say about anyone (except Dustin Hoffman, who stood him up three times while they were trying to work out a movie deal).

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356313/elmore-leonard-rip-otto-penzler

 

You can also read an earlier post on Elmore Leonard via the below link:

 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/return-to-elmoreland-look-back-at-great_20.html

Krauthammer On Obama's Lexicological War

Charles Krauthammer looks at President Obama's war on words in his column at National Review Online.

Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” — the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of country.

Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano’s famous formulation, terror attacks are now “man-caused disasters.” And the “Global War on Terror” is no more. It’s now an “overseas contingency operation.”

Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of “workplace violence.” 

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack — and for days it is waved off as nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?

Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355340/obamas-lexicological-war-charles-krauthammer

Senator Lindsey Graham Defends NSA

Andrew Johnson at National Review Online offers a piece on Senator Lindsey Graham's defense of NSA.

Senator Lindsey Graham cautioned that sequestration could prevent precautionary measures such as this weekend’s embassy closings throughout the Middle East from taking place in the future.

“Sequestration has to be fixed,” the South Carolina Republican said on CNN’s State of the Union this morning. “If this happens a year from now, our intelligence community and military will be less capable.”

Graham hailed the measures as evidence that “the NSA program is proving its worth yet again.”

You can read the rest of the piece and watch the CNN interview via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/355088/graham-warns-sequester-makes-intel-less-capable-protect-embassies-andrew-johnson

Philadelphia's Burqa Crisis: Islamic Garb Used As An Accessory To Crime

Daniel Pipes at National Review Online reports on the disturbing trend of criminals committing crimes while cloaked in Islamic garb.

Philadelphia, the city where I live, has quietly and unassumingly become the capital of the Western world as regards female Islamic garb as an accessory to crime.

First, a tutorial on Islamic coverings, all of which tend to be called “veils” in English but fall into three main categories. Some (the abaya, hijab, chador, jilbab, or khimar) cover parts of the body, especially the hair, neck, and shoulders, but reveal the face and identity of the woman; some cover the face (the yashmak) but show the body shape; and some hide the whole body, including the identity and gender of the wearer. The lattermost — our topic here — is better described as a full-body cover than a veil: It in turn has two types, those that cover the person entirely (the chadari or burqa) and those with a slit for the eyes (the haik or niqab). By my count, the Philadelphia region has witnessed 14 robberies (or attempted robberies) of financial institutions in the past six years in which the thieves relied on an Islamic full-body cover. They took place in January 2007, June 2007, May 2008, November 2009, October 2010 (two), February 2011, June 2011, December 2011, January 2012, March 2012 (two), and April 2012 (two).

The most violent attack took place on May 3, 2008, when Police Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski was killed with an AK-47 in a shoot-out following a successful robbery in which the thieves wore burqas; the police then killed one of the criminals.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/341274/philadelphia-s-burqa-crisis-daniel-pipes

McCain's Last Laugh

Robert Costa at National Review Online offers a piece on the reception Senator John McCain received at an American Legion in Virginia.

Four years ago, McCain lost a presidential election by 192 electoral votes, but to Vietnam veterans and other former service members, he remains a towering figure. The second McCain steps inside, the packed banquet hall erupts with applause. As he walks toward the lectern, past a table piled high with Romney-Ryan posters, several men stand up and salute him. McCain squints and nods. This isn’t a mere rally; it’s a homecoming.  

... As a decorated veteran, a former presidential nominee, and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain gives the Romney campaign a certain gravitas among military audiences. In his 15-minute speech, he hits on two key themes: President Obama’s mishandling of the Benghazi mess, and his failure to take action to stop “sequestration,” a series of looming (and large) defense cuts that was brokered by the White House and congressional leaders in the effort to cut a spending deal.

But this speech and the others he has made this cycle are more than rote pro-Romney orations. They are a reminder that McCain, at 76 years old, is still in the game. After his loss four years ago, many of his friends urged him to retire. McCain ignored them. He yearned to remain a force, and that meant spending Sunday mornings in television green rooms, not on an emerald-green golf course. He became a fierce critic of the administration during Obama’s first year in office, and a year later, he won reelection to the Senate.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331884/mccain-s-last-laugh-robert-costa

Re-Branding Guevara: Che The Butcher

 

John Fund at National Review Online offers an interesting piece on the violent history (and myth) and continuing influence of the communist guerrilla Che Guevara.

The stern photo of revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda in 1960 is one of the most reproduced images on the planet, appearing on posters, flags, postcards, T-shirts, and even bikinis. Sadly, the ubiquitous appearances of Che — hailed today usually by his first name only — demonstrate the near-total failure to educate people about the blood-soaked cruelty he really represented. 

... After Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Che was instrumental in setting up forced-labor camps for dissidents, gays, and devout Catholics. He was put in charge of La Cabaña Fortress prison for five months. There are varying accounts of how many people were executed under his command during that time, and how many deaths are attributed directly to Che as opposed to the regime overall, but some sources say that more than 100 journalists, businessmen, and followers of the previous regime faced death by firing squad at La Cabaña, under Che’s jurisdiction.

... Nor was Che’s violence directed only against Cubans. Author Humberto Fontova points to evidence that Guevara, the chief instigator of Castro’s revolutionary efforts overseas, was involved in a November 1962 terrorist plot to use 1,200 pounds of TNT to blow up Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdale’s, and Grand Central Station on the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year. Such an act could have rivaled 9/11 in its destruction. This is hardly a man who deserves to be honored as a hero on T-shirts.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/321089/re-branding-guevara-che-butcher-john-fund#

You can also read my interview with Humberto Fontova about Che Guevara via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/Fontovache1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/Fontovache2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/Fontovache3.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/Fontovache4.jpg 

WMDs In Syria And Iraqi Irony

Victor Davis Hanson wrote an intersting piece for National Review Online about the chemical weapons in Syria that may in part have come from Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists.

There are suggestions that at least some of Assad’s supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein’s frantic, eleventh-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in neighboring Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the American media, the present U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, long ago asserted his belief in such a weapons transfer.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312299/iraqi-irony-victor-davis-hanson

On 'Military-Style' Weapons: Function, Not Style, Should Govern Gun Policy

John R. Lott Jr. at National Review Online explains that the gun used in the Auroro movie killings was not a rifle used by the military.

"AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities,” President Obama told the National Urban League on Wednesday. After the deadly attack in Colorado last Friday, the president’s concern is understandable. However, even — or perhaps especially — at such a time, distinctions need to be made.

The police in Aurora, Colo., reported that the killer used a Smith & Wesson M&P 15. This weapon bears a cosmetic resemblance to the M-16, which has been used by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War. The call has frequently been made that there is “no reason” for such “military-style weapons” to be available to civilians.

Yes, the M&P 15 and the AK-47 are “military-style weapons.” But the key word is “style” — they are similar to military guns in their aesthetics, not in the way they actually operate.     

... So President Obama wants to keep guns like the AK-47 “in the hands of soldiers.” But these are not military weapons. No self-respecting military in the world would use them, and it is time for Obama to stop scaring the American people.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312452/military-style-weapons-john-r-lott-jr

It Is Not About Guns: On The Aurora Movie Theater Murders

As I suspected, the knee-jerk calls for gun control are coming out in the wake of the terrible murders at the Aurora movie theater.

Yes, the suspect, James Holmes (seen in the above photo) used guns to kill and wound the theater-goers, but perhaps had one or more of the theater-goers had a firearm, they could have returned fire and killed the murderer and saved a few lives. For example, one can watch the video online of the brave 71-year-old man who drew his personal firearm and stood up to two armed-robbers in Florida.

Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review Online reports on the knee-jerk outcry for gun control.

What happened in Colorado in the early hours of this morning was not a “tragedy” but a willful act of mass murder. Beyond his age, name, and ethnicity, nobody yet knows who the shooter is, or why he chose to do what he did. In my view, this is a blessing, albeit a temporary one; for, as has been the way in recent years, once his party registration, television-viewing habits, and random scribblings become known to the public, all sorts of hysterical speculation and unlettered accusations will burst forth.

... Alas, this welcome early absence of opportunity for partisan political blame has created a vacuum that has been filled by another form of folly: Calls for “gun control.” Upon hearing the news, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence immediately changed the front page of its website to aver that, “This is yet another horrific reminder that guns enable mass killings.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/310138/colorado-our-odd-focus-charles-c-w-cooke
   

Remember Operation Fast And Furious' Mexican Victims

 

Deroy Murdock suggests we remember the Mexican victims of Operation Fast and Furious in a piece that appears in National Review Online.

Largely overlooked is this plan’s calamitous impact on Mexico, its people, and U.S.-Mexican relations. Fast and Furious has spilled American blood. But south of the border, it has made blood gush like an oil strike.

“One of the things that’s so offensive about this case is that our federal government knowingly, willfully, purposefully gave the drug cartels nearly 2,000 weapons — mainly AK-47s — and allowed them to walk,” Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) told NBC News. These arms were supposed to lead federal agents in Phoenix to the Mexican thugs who acquired them. Instead, Fast and Furious guns melted into Mexico without a trace.

These weapons became invisible, but not silent.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304835/remember-fast-and-furious-s-mexican-victims-deroy-murdock

You can also read an earlier post on Operation Fast and Furious via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2012/07/operation-fast-and-furious-timeline.html

Operation Fast And Furious: A Timeline

National Review Online offers a timeline of Operation Fast and Furious.

Above is a photo of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

You can read the timeline via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304215/fast-and-furious-timeline-nro-staff

You can also read an earlier post on Operation Fast and Furious via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/07/answers-needed-on-operation-fast-and.html

'Fast And Furious' Whistleblower Says He's Disappointed One Year Later

 

More than a year after ATF Special Agent John Dodson first blew the whistle on the scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, Dodson tells FoxNews that he's disheartened and disappointed by the congressional investigation and Attorney General Eric Holder's gunrunning probe.

You can read the story via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/18/fast-and-furious-whistleblower-says-disappointed-one-year-later/

You can also read John Fund's piece on Eric Holder at National Review Online via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303069/will-holder-s-politicking-finally-end-john-fund

The Gospel According To Peanuts: How 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' Almost Didn't Happen

Lee Habeeb at National Review Online looks back at the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Habeeb tells us the classic Christmas TV special almost didn't happen, because TV executives didn't like the idea of Linus reading from the King James Bible's Gospel of Luke.

CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special no less!

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284093/gospel-according-ipeanutsi-lee-habeeb?pg=1