Aboard U.S. Carrier, Philadelphia Native Sees Typhoon's Impact

 

As a Philadelphian who served on an aircraft carrier when I was a young sailor during the Vietnam War,  I was interested in Michael Matza's piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a Philadelphian  serving on a carrier that is involved with the Philippines relief mission.

Working in classified intelligence aboard an aircraft carrier off the Philippines, Petty Officer Third Class Robert Nurse, a Philadelphia native, pores over aerial surveillance photographs of the typhoon-ravaged country, looking for safe places to land Navy relief helicopters. 

A 2011 high school graduate of the city's Science Leadership Academy, Nurse, 20, is in his second year in the Navy and is normally stationed in Japan.

Now on temporary assignment to bring food, water, and medical supplies to the Philippines, he is part of the 5,500-person crew of the George Washington, the nuclear-powered supercarrier longer than three football fields (1,092 feet), well over a field wide (252 feet), and 24 stories tall, and able to make 400,000 gallons of fresh water daily.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel ordered the vessel to the region to provide disaster aid Nov. 12. Sixty hours later, it was there.
 

"My job is basically to coordinate with pilots" of the 24 helicopters and V-22 Ospreys in the George Washington's battle group, Nurse said in a satellite-telephone interview Monday. The pilots ferry supplies and transport injured people.

"I look at the photographs to determine where it is safe to go. Are there downed wires in the area? Is the ground stable? Today, we looked at images of roads to see if they are capable of being used."

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

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20131119_Aboard_U_S__carrier__Phila__native_sees_typhoon_s_impact.html

Note: The above U.S. Navy photo shows the USS George Washington at sea.

Mark Twain, Smiley, Frogs

As Steve King at todayinliterature.com notes, on this day in 1865 Mark Twain published "Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog" in the New York Saturday Press.

The story was immediately popular nationally and then internationally, giving Twain first fame and the centerpiece for his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. As a sometime-reporter, Twain had been publishing such tall tales and hoaxes for several years -- writing them as "Josh" until 1863 -- but his frog story was an old chestnut, first heard from fellow prospectors while sitting around the saloon stove in Angel's Mining Camp, outside San Francisco.

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

http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=11/18/2013

Happy Birthday To Martin Scorsese

As Biography.com notes, today is the 71st birthday of film director Martin Scorsese.

Born November 17, 1942, in Flushing, New York, Martin Scorsese is known for his gritty, meticulous filmmaking style and is widely considered one of the most important directors of all time.

Martin Scorsese was born November 17, 1942, in Flushing, New York. Raised by Italian-American parents in the Little Italy district of Manhattan, Scorsese later remembered his neighborhood as being "like a village in Sicily." Scorsese's parents, Charles and Catherine, both worked part-time as actors, helping set the stage for their son's love of cinema.

Because Scorsese was afflicted by severe asthma, his childhood activities were limited; rather than play sports, he spent much of his time in front of the television or at the movie theater, where he fell in love especially with stories about the Italian experience and films by director Michael Powell. By the time he was eight years old, Scorsese was already drawing his own storyboards –often complete with the line, "Directed and Produced by Martin Scorsese."

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video clip about Martin Scorsese via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/martin-scorsese-9476727?et_cid=57335117&et_rid=704027439&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.biography.com%2fpeople%2fmartin-scorsese-9476727

You can also read my column about Martin Scorsese's world of crime via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/11/happy-birthday-to-martin-scorsese.html

Ex-Cosa Nostra Boss Threatens To Slaughter Prosecutors 'Like Tuna'

Nick Squires at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on Toto Riina, the former boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra.

A mafia godfather nicknamed The Beast has threatened to slaughter Italian prosecutors "like tuna".

Toto Riina, the former "boss of bosses" of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, delivered the threats from behind bars – he has been in prison for murder and other crimes since 1993.
 

He yelled the threats from his prison cell as he watched video footage of a trial, held in Palermo, which is investigating an alleged pact drawn up 20 years ago between the mafia and Italian politicians.
 

Riina said he would arrange for a prosecutor, Nino Di Matteo, to be killed like a tuna – an allusion to the "mattanza", the traditional tuna hunt off Sicily in which the fish are driven into big nets and then slaughtered with sharpened knives and spikes amid a sea of blood.
 

"He'll meet the same end as a tuna," Riina said, according to the accounts of prison guards.  

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10451214/Ex-Cosa-Nostra-boss-threatens-to-slaughter-prosecutors-like-tuna.html 

Mark Twain's Eternal Chatter

Ben Tarnoff at The New Yorker looks at the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2.

When Mark Twain opened his mouth, strange things came tumbling out. Things like hoaxes, jokes, yarns, obscenities, and non sequiturs. He had a drawl—his “slow talk,” his mother called it—that made his sentences long and sinuous. One reporter described it as a “little buzz-saw slowly grinding inside a corpse.” Others thought that he sounded drunk.

He loved to talk: to friends, to reporters, to the crowds of adoring fans who filled lecture halls to hear him. He gave famous after-dinner toasts and tossed off witty one-liners that made great copy for the next day’s papers. He could talk all night, preferably with a plentiful supply of cigars and Scotch on hand. He was always bursting with opinions on topics large and small and humming with ideas for new books and new business ventures. He often had trouble sleeping, and drank to numb his nerves. But he never had trouble talking.

He kept talking until the end. In the last years of his life, when he began writing his autobiography, Twain decided to do it mostly by dictation. He sat in bed, with his head propped up on pillows, and riffed and reminisced for hours at a time, while his stenographer took down everything in shorthand. When he was done, he had more than five thousand pages of typescript.

The result is the “Autobiography of Mark Twain,” a monster that has haunted Twain scholars for a hundred years. Its forbidding size and freewheeling structure have puzzled and infuriated generations of researchers who have descended into the archives, hoping to find a finished memoir and instead discovering ten file feet of musings, interspersed with letters and newspaper clippings. Twain insisted that his sprawling memoir not be published until a century after his death, in 1910, so that he could speak freely about everyone and everything. But he couldn’t resist publishing excerpts in the North American Review before he died. And, in the decades since, more has trickled out as editors have waded through Twain’s papers to uncover pieces that they considered worth publishing.

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

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/11/the-eternal-chatter-of-the-autobiography-of-mark-twain-volume-2.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20(60)
 

A Look Back At The British Traitor And Spy Kim Philby

Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins at the British newspaper the Guardian offera piece on British traitor and spy Kim Philby.

We may think there is nothing whatsoever new to say about the Cambridge spy ring, that exotic group of five (mainly) elitist, public school-educated, individuals who spied for the Soviet Union, or Communism, as they would have preferred.

We may be wrong .

But a BBC 4 documentary, Storyville: The Spy Who Went Into the Cold – Kim Philby, Soviet Super Spy, to be broadcast on Monday,18 November, sheds some new light, and contains a new mystery, about the defection of the "Third Man", Kim Philby.

Philby was protected by former colleagues in MI6 up to the moment he jumped aboard a Soviet freighter in Beirut in January 1963.

Philby was suspected by MI5 and the Americans as being the Third Man who tipped off Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, that they were about to questioned.

The two fled to France and ended up in Moscow in 1961. Philby was publicly cleared of being the Third Man, partly because of lack of hard evidence, partly because of his friends in MI6.

However, suspicions, notably within MI5 and America's CIA and FBI, grew to the extent that even his friends in MI6 could no longer withstand them

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

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/defence-and-security-blog/2013/nov/14/mi6-mi5

Somali Pirates Sentenced To Multiple Life Terms In Murders Of Four Americans Aboard SV Quest

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information yesterday:

NORFOLK, VA—Somali nationals Ahmed Muse Salad, a/k/a “Afmagalo,” 27, Abukar Osman Beyle, 33, and Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar, 31, who were previously found guilty of piracy, murder within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, violence against maritime navigation, conspiracy to commit violence against maritime navigation resulting in death, kidnapping resulting in death, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, hostage taking resulting in death, conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death, and multiple firearms offenses, were sentenced this week.

Salad, Beyle, and Abrar were all sentenced to 21 life sentences, 19 consecutive life sentences, two concurrent life sentences, and 30 years consecutive, for their roles in the February 22, 2011 murders of four Americans aboard the sailing vessel Quest. The victims included: Scott Underwood Adam, Jean Savage Adam, Phyllis Patricia Macay, and Robert Campbell Riggle.

Dana J. Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; George Venizelos, Assistant Director in Charge (ADIC) of the FBI’s New York Field Office; Royce E. Curtin, Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office; and Charles T. May, Special Agent in Charge of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Norfolk Field Office, made the announcement after sentencing by Chief United States District Court Judge Rebecca Beach Smith.

“These defendants, in violation of U.S. and international law, commandeered an American-flagged sailing vessel, refused to release the hostages to the Navy, and brutally murdered the four Americans on board,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Boente. “The multiple, consecutive life sentences imposed today send a clear message that piracy, hostage-taking, and murder on the high seas will not be tolerated.”

Assistant Director in Charge George Venizelos said, “The sad fact about this case is that four Americans are dead because of the actions taken by the defendants and their associates in the form of modern-day piracy. On a fateful day in February 2011, they boarded the sailing vessel Quest with the goal of using violence to get monetary gains. Today’s life sentences provide a vigorous deterrent to armed bandits roaming our seas. The FBI remains vigilant in our responsibility to bring these pirates to justice.”

Special Agent in Charge Charles T. May said, "NCIS worked closely with our uniformed partners in the Navy, the FBI, and the United States Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Virginia in bringing these Somali pirates to justice for their senseless kidnapping and murder of four American citizens. Piracy and other transnational crimes such as narcoterrorism and human trafficking represent global threats to maritime security. NCIS, with our unique mission, is especially well-suited to investigating acts of piracy on the high seas, and we will continue to work with our U.S. and foreign law enforcement partners and prosecutorial entities from the U.S. and foreign nations to eradicate this global menace. "

Salad, Beyle, and Abrar, were indicted in a 26-count indictment on July 8, 2011, and were found guilty by a federal jury on all 26 counts on July 8, 2013. According to court records and evidence at trial, Salad, Beyle, and Abrar, along with co-conspirators, gained control of the Quest while armed with firearms and a rocket-propelled grenade and took the four Americans hostage on February 18, 2011. Their plan was to take the hostages to Somalia, where they and their additional co-conspirators in Somalia could commence ransom negotiations. While they sailed toward Somalia, they took turns standing armed guard over the hostages; at the same time, United States Navy ships headed towards the Quest to aid the hostages and attempt to secure their safe release.

On February 22, 2011, without provocation and before the hostages could be rescued by members of the military, a co-conspirator fired an RPG in the general direction of the USS Sterett. Witnesses testified that sustained firing came from the Quest and that glass could be seen breaking on the starboard side of the Quest. Witnesses also testified that Salad, Beyle, and Abrar, were the shooters and responsible for the deaths of Scott Adam, Jean Adam, Phyllis Macay, and Robert Riggle. After the gunfire died down, the Navy dispatched SEALS to the Quest. The pirates aboard the Quest began surrendering and some were seen throwing AK-47 rifles into the water.

This case was investigated by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Assistant United States Attorneys Benjamin L. Hatch, Joseph DePadilla, and Brian J. Samuels prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.