Washington Times Editorial On Renaming Columbus Day

The Washington Times offers an editorial on the Washington D. C. Council renaming Columbus Day.

In its latest spasm of virtue-signaling last week, the D.C. Council further burnished its far-left credentials by adopting “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” as a legal holiday, replacing Columbus Day, to be observed Monday, Oct. 14.

It was only a matter of time before the District followed the lead of about 130 other towns and cities across the country with liberal mayors and city councils that have jettisoned Christopher Columbus, who they characterize as racist and genocidal.

“Christopher Columbus enslaved, colonized, mutilated, and massacred thousands of indigenous people in the Americas,” asserts the resolution (without any documentation) introduced by D.C. Council member David Grosso. It would be quite a mean feat for a single man to do all that, if it were true. But it’s little more than character assassination and historical revisionism at their worst.

History records that Columbus was a deeply religious man, a devout Catholic often seen wearing the Franciscan habit. As Ben Broussard wrote in an August 2012 article for a Catholic group, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property about Columbus’ missionary zeal: “Upon his first encounter with the natives of San Salvador [an island now part of the Bahamas, where he first landed], Columbus concludes, ‘I recognized that they were people who would be better converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force.’” Columbus’ records also show he characterized the natives as “sweet and gentle.”

As to the claim the explorer “enslaved” the indigenous peoples he met, Mr. Broussard first notes that “slavery was already widespread among the native Indians when Columbus arrived.”

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

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/13/editorial-dc-push-for-indigenous-peoples-day-is-ba/ 

On Columbus Day 2019: Stop Scapegoating Christopher Columbus

Aileen Riotto Sirey and Angelo Vivolo offer their take on Christopher Columbus in a piece at the New York Post. 

Why are we so eager to search out scapegoats for the injustices of history? Whatever the reason, Christopher Columbus is now the fall guy for the sins of slavery, the exploitation of indigenous peoples, the rape of natural resources and most of the legal, financial and territorial abuses that followed the first European steps in the New World. His accusers want to eliminate Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day.

Columbus is a 15th-century man in a 21st-century court, and the jury is stacked with self-righteous, injured parties who have 20-20 hindsight. Vilifying him won’t change the unfairness of history, but it will delegitimize the outright and undeniable contributions of Western civilization. Tearing down statues to him won’t undo the damage from two worlds colliding, but it will mask the progress and achievements that emerged from two worlds converging.

Columbus Day exists for two reasons. The first: Columbus was the explorer who completed four recorded voyages across the Atlantic, showing great courage, determination and skill. His audacity and vision revolutionized worldwide human migration. Hundreds of millions of immigrants have followed his brave example over the course of more than five centuries. Today, his legacy endures in every immigrant who seeks opportunity and a better life.

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

https://nypost.com/2019/10/13/stop-scapegoating-christopher-columbus/ 

A Little Humor: Ole Pa Goes To The Doctor

A man in his eighties got up from his rocking chair and put on his coat.

“Pa, where are you going?” his wife asked.

“I’m going to the doctor,” he replied. 

"Why? Are you sick? 

"No," he said. "I'm going to get me some of those new Viagra pills."  

His wife then got up out of her rocking chair and was put on her sweater.

“Ma, where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m going to the doctor too,” she replied.

“Why?” he asked.

“If you’re going to start using that rusty old thing again,” she said. “I’m going to get a tetanus shot.”

Note: The above photo is from the comedy film Ma and Pa Kettle Go To Town. 

On This Day In History The USS Cole Was Attacked by Terrorists

As History.com notes, on this day in 2000 the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists.

At 12:15 p.m. local time, a motorized rubber dinghy loaded with explosives blows a 40-by-40-foot hole in the port side of the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer that was refueling at Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed and 38 wounded in the attack, which was carried out by two suicide terrorists alleged to be members of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network.

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

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/uss-cole-attacked-by-terrorists?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2019-1012-10122019&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0
aa&om_mid=771082189&kx_EmailCampaignID=36687&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2019-1012-10122019&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61
b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with the Cole's Commanding Officer, Kirk Lippold, via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/08/a-q-with-commander-kirk-s-lippold.html 

My Crime Beat Column: A Look Back At Pre-Bond Sean Connery In 'The Frightened City'

I first saw actor Sean Connery on the big screen back in 1963 when I was 11-years-old. The 32-year- old Scot actor was portraying Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond in Dr No.

The James Bond films in the 1960s lead me to read all of Ian Fleming’s novels, which I was happy to discover were darker and more complicated than the films, and I been an Ian Fleming aficionado ever since. 

The early Bond films also made Sean Connery one of my favorite actors. 

After watching Sean Connery as James Bond, I tried to see all the films he made prior to his portraying Bond, such as Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure and Darby O’Gill and the Little People, both of which came out in 1959.

But there was on film that I was unable to see, which was 1961’s The Frightened City. 

But now, thanks to the Internet, I was able to finally see ole Sean appear in a movie that came out only two years before he appeared as James Bond. 

The Frightened City is a crime thriller set in the West End of London, where the “villains,” the Brit cop’s slang for criminals, ran protection rackets. (I liked the use of slang in the film, such as “she “shopped” you,” meaning she turned you into the police for favors, and “he won’t “grass” on you,” meaning he won’t become an informer for the police). 

Herbert Lom, who was outstanding as a crooked wrestling promotor in The Night and the City with Richard Widmark, is equally outstanding here as Waldo Zhernikov, an urbane, successful accountant and businessman who decides to turn to crime and form an alliance of the six West End extortion mobs into one syndicate.

Although Zhernikov became the head of the syndicate, he decided to stay in the shadows and used one of the local mob bosses, nightclub owner and crook Harry Foulcher, portrayed by Alfred Marks, as a surrogate syndicate boss. The syndicate divided the West End up and the six mobs no longer had to fight over territory. The syndicate also expanded, making more money for the greedy London criminals. 

Sean Connery portrayed Paddy Damion, a professional cat burglar who is sidelined due to his partner’s crippling accident on a job. The handsome, athletic and tough criminal is recruited to join the extortion syndicate and he accepts due to his need to help his partner and to bring in money for himself.

Damion also signs up as he was friends with one of the mob bosses, Alf Peters, an old, tough and crafty villain, portrayed by David Davies. Damion and Peters shared a prison cell together and the experience made them fast friends. 

Although Damion has an attractive and faithful girlfriend, Damion falls for a French singer at Foulcher’s night club named Anya, portrayed by Yvonne Roman. Anya is a girlfriend of Zhernikov’s, but they have an open relationship. Mostly, Anya wants her patron to get her a working permit so she can stay in London.     

Investigating the extortion racket is Detective Inspector Sayers of Scotland Yard, portrayed by John Gregson, who is frustrated as the victims of the extortion refuse to talk to the police out of fear. He later pulls in Damion.           
   
Although Damion is a criminal, he is not a ruthless killer, like Zhernikov and Foulcher. When Zhernikov orders Foulcher to kill one of the syndicate bosses, Foulcher said, “I thought you were against violence?”

“I am against smallpox,” Zhernikov replied coldly. “That doesn’t mean I’m against a vaccination.” 

Damion later turns against the syndicate bosses.  

One can see a bit of Bond in Sean Connery’s tough guy Damion. When Anya tells Damion that she doesn’t want to make unnecessary enemies, Damion offers a quip, “How many necessary enemies do you have?” 

I enjoyed finally watching Sean Connery in The Frightened City. 

Now, except for the British TV programs he appeared in prior to portraying Bond, I believe I’ve seen all of Sean Connery’s films. After he quit James Bond, he went on to make some very good films, such as John Huston’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer as Kipling, and Richard Lester’s Robin and Marion. 

Sean Connery portrayed an older Robin Hood who returned from the Crusades and did battle with the Sheriff of Nottingham, portrayed by actor Robert Shaw. 

Shaw was terrific as Red Grant, the psychopath killer who went up against James Bond in From Russia With Love. Connery and Shaw’s fight in the train compartment aboard the Orient Express is one of the best cinematic fistfights in my view. In Robin and Marion, Connery and Shaw once again offer a great fight scene, but this time it is with broad swords. 

Sean Connery also appeared in other films I like, such as The Hill, The Offense, The Anderson Tapes, The Molly Maguires, Marnie, Woman of Straw, The Wind and the Lion, and Zardoz. Of course, Sean Connery also made a couple of stinkers as well. 

He appeared in an awful film, The Next Man, rather than portray Blackthorne, the British sailor who traveled to 12^th century feudal Japan in the TV mini-series Shogun. James Clavell, the author of the historical novel the miniseries is based on, said he wrote the character Blackthorne with Sean Connery in mind and wanted him for the role. 

Although Richard Chamberlain was very good as Blackthorne, Sean Connery would have been great in the role. Although Sean Connery was great as a Chicago cop in The Untouchables, and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, I didn't care for the film.  

Sean Connery is now retired from making films and the 89-year-old is relaxing with his wife at his home in the Bahamas, but his fine films are still entertaining people of all ages. 

You can watch The Frightened City via the below links:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+frightened+city+1961&&view=detail&mid=
063C6E28E754CDAE0D49063C6E28E754CDAE0D49&&FORM=VRDGAR


https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+frightened+city+1961&&view=
detail&mid=BA1286C0F99581C6F05DBA1286C0F99581C6F05D&&FORM=VRDGAR

A Little Humor: Email From A Hotel Computer

A man checked into a hotel and as there was a computer in his room, he decided to send an email to his wife. 

While typing in her email address, he accidentally typed an extra letter, and without realizing, sent the email to a widow who had just returned from her husband’s funeral.

The widow decided to check her email, expecting condolence messages from friends and relatives. After reading the first email she promptly fainted.

Her son rushed in to check on his mother and saw the computer screen with the message:

“To my loving wife. I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here and we are allowed to email our loved ones. I’ve just been checked in. How are you and the kids? The place is really nice, but I feel lonely without you. I have made necessary arrangements for your arrival tomorrow. I am excited and can’t wait to see you.” 

Mob Talk 34: 'Operation New Connection' Takes Down Sicilian Cosa Nostra Members

Veteran organized crime reporters George Anastasia and Dave Schratwieser discuss the South Philly/New York connections to Operation New Direction, in which American and Italian law enforcement took down Sicilian Cosa Nostra criminals last July.

The reporters also discuss other organized crime news in Mob Talk 34.  

You can watch the video via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0-TgUG_FM