Iran Contra and Bill Barr

Why Iran Contra ought to be in the news again.

William Barr Role in Iran Contra

Iran/Contra should be back in the news due to the fact that Bill Barr is being nominated to be the new Attorney General. The mix of pardons and classifications of information made much of the material from Watergate a secret until fairly recently. It also successfully buried the Iran Contra Scandal and enabled a number of the perpetrators to escape true justice. William Barr was Attorney General at the time of these pardons and was a principle agent in engineering them. He was successsful at obstructing justice then. We should be alert he will do so again if Congress lets him get away with it.

At the time the Prosecutor:

“President Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office -- deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.” [Iran Contra Pardon]

Again Trump is seeking people who will protect him, not justice in the United States. This reminds us that George HW Bush was no saint.

Further Reading:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-pardon.html?module=inline

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/trump-william-barr-attorney-general-iran-contra-mueller.html

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/thepardons.php

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1224.html

Lament of the Messiah

Lament of the Witness I

My youthful indescretions haunt me.

In the eyes of my children

and in their own mistakes.

 

How can I communicate what I have learned?

unless I somehow can communicate this;

In my aching bones, I am reminded

Of Youthful stupidities.

I thought I was indestructible.

And My elder stupidities hurt even more.

I have lied

I have run away from what I feared.

And now I pay.

And now I pray.

And now I ask:

 

Said I:

Why do you call me, to meet you?

At this same place I tarry

Pointing out a path

You and I might have taken sooner?

Then you send me a human messenger

Quoting old and dusty tomes

Written by mere men.

 

More

Status for November 21 2018

Status Thanksgiving 2018

It is hard to keep up with everything happening. I gave up trying to report on all of it. Instead I'm focusing on the most important things to me, things I noticed, or reactions I want to share. I'm writing this on the MARC train. The internet sucks and there are no plugins, so my time is limited. The nice thing is that I can see the towpath from the vehicle. It is almost winter and the leaves already fall. So the view includes the potomac through the trees.The Potomac is high and muddy. Looks almost more like the Mississipi as I remember it than the Potomac I'm used to. Normally the water is boiling and swirling over rapids here. But it looks tranquil right now. The Sun only recently came up. I can hear snips of conversation from commuters. To me this is very peaceful. I never expected my legs to give out the way they did. One of the things I loved the most was walking. Never was good at running. But I could walk for miles. Now it hurts to walk half a mile. So I don't go to DC as much as I planned to when I moved to Brunswick. I'm only 63 years old. Maybe this will improve. Passing point of Rocks. Went under the Bridge that marks route 15.

I should have given you permission to skip this post. But indulge me please

I'm calling Trump Trumptater from now on:

Just for Fun -- How would I do Mars

How would I do Mars? I'd start by setting up a support system for humans. We've done a lot. We need to do more surveying and to put into place an infrastructure for communications and information.

Step One

Need to pre-position:

• GPS, Weather, Ground imaging and communications satellites. Put 8 in Polar orbit and 8 in Mars-Synchroneous equitorial orbit; minimum. That would cover the entire surface.
• Also satellites have to be in orbit that image our Sun and with Earth. These can be part of the ground imaging satellites.
• We need supplies in orbit. Including vessels for emergency return to Earth. The first landers sent to Mars should be empty and sit in orbit.
• We need to pre-position enough equipment, gear, vehicles and supplies so that they will already be there when humans arrive.
• Continue exploration

Drones to explore and hunt for lava tubes, resources, and map out landing sites and mineral resources.

Including flying explorers, tunnel exploring unmanned vehicles, etc...

First Milestone

No humans until shelter, water supplies and minerals are mapped out.

Step Two

• Pre-Position habitat, energy production, and similar resources near the best located site for a human settlement. A mix of equipment in kit format that can be assembled by humans and equipment assembled by robots.
• Send Robots to assemble what is needed
• Assemble, power, energy, water, fuel storage and generation abilities.

Including solar panels, cleaning robots, fuel cells, wind mills and the like.

• Stockpile backup parts and backups to the backups.
• Continue exploration, including new drones.
• Run power, communications between the assets
• Prepare a landing site.
• Lay guidance and communications assets at each site.
• If tunnels available, put assets in the tunnels. Bury what can be buried.

Second Milestone

Go/No go based on whether enough supplies are pre-positioned for Marsnauts to use and live on.

Now you can send humans.

Daydreaming.

Garcia Lorca and Charlie Chaplin

Naturally, As soon as I finished my post “The Death of Garcia Lorca”, I'm lying in bed and I start thinking:

“Hoover!”, “Garcia Lorca!”, “Emma Goldman!”, “Red Scares!”

Garcia Lorca should have lived a long and productive life had he not been shot down in a fusilade of bullets along with other "rebels" in 1936.” There are real parallels.

Darn! I'm not done. Oh no! Oh My! “Charlie Chaplin was in many ways our Garcia Lorca!”

The Death of Garcia Lorca

This post follows where I wrote in the post: “The Life of Garcia Lorca and Fascist Spain.”

Garcia Lorca, knew with a massive dread that his days were probably numbered. Yet he soldiered on in his project to improve the live of Spaniards and Spanish people in general.

Trump Escalates -- Trump is not Above the law

We won the house. That means our Democracy is not yet dead. But it is still endangered as illustrated by what Donald Trump did yesterday.