The worst President the USA has ever had!

Donald Trump was confirmed as the new “elected President of the United States”, having defeated the former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, in a most vulgar, dishonest, and degrading election campaign the United States has ever witnessed. Countless times in his crummy campaigning, and with noted irony, Trump had the temerity to label his opponent as “crooked”.

 

The swindling, tax-evading, Twitter crazed, Donald Trump deprived millions of their savings and cheated banks out of further billions with his dozens of declarations of bankruptcy. It required a female judge to uncover his sham, the so-called Trump University, but even so, he has not paid a single penny in federal income tax and continues to withhold public information, no doubt until such time as he is able to enact regulations that will enable him to keep his dubious finances a secret as an executive privilege.

 

I felt physically ill as I watched the ignorant majority of Americans falling for Trump as the Germans had fallen for Hitler. How the German industrialists took Hitler’s side and fed him the initial funds for his election in 1933, pushed through by his foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and how Joseph Goebbels, intellectually schooled by the Catholic Order of Jesuits, built the propaganda machine that would sway so many felt like memories of yesterday.

 

The male members of my aristocratic family served as officers in German royal regiments. My elder brother and cousin served as pilots in the Luftwaffe, and while they were shot down in action, I, myself, was spared participation in any combative missions as a fighter pilot, and thereby, I unwittingly survived World War II. In the 1950s, I came to Canada, and now my eldest son is a scientist living in the U.S., giving me more than one reason to hope to be able to count on the USA to guard humanity from a nuclear war which could annihilate the entire human population. The USA, in one way or another, is the most powerful nation in the world and must be given some credit for having so far prevented, albeit precariously, that war which could mean the end of a habitable globe.

 

The United Nations, as a replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, was established on October 24, 1945, at the end of World War II, with the express vision of preventing another such conflict. At its founding, the UN had collected 51 member states, a number which has since grown to 193, but despite its declaration of “eternal peace”, not one day has gone by since that time on which humanity could claim to have achieved universal peace on Earth.

 

Since time immemorial, men, with their God-given energy and strength, have failed to protect and promote generations of people, while the women of the world have given birth to and nourished them, ensuring the perpetuation of a human population that they have mourned with sorrow. Generations have been slaughtered because these women were never given the power to protect their own offspring. Clearly, a new Reformation of humanity is necessary to give rise to a world in which women may have their equal voice and faculty to negotiate terms of peace with justice and fairness at the forefront of every dispute’s resolution.

 

Barack Obama, the first black President of the United States, whose agenda was constantly sabotaged by a Congress dominated by the opposition, but who nevertheless served two full and exhausting four-year terms, maintained his energy to steadfastly produce conciliatory negotiated solutions resulting in peaceful compromises. He left the enemies to live for another day, but paved the way for the great opportunity for the first female President to take over the reins and lead us into a new world order as Germany did with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who by the way was Time Magazine’s 2015 Person of the Year. Obama might have justifiably thought his achievements would be carried on and that Americans would be ready to have a woman rule their nation with peace and harmony, however, he might also have suspected, from experience, that an alternate turn of events would be just as possible. And so it was.

 

 By chance, I recently saw an interview with two formidable women, Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, who exemplify that women could have the power to “make America great again”. Having celebrated my 91^st birthday, I may not live to see the dawn of a bright light succeed in America, but I am reassured by these ladies and my spirit is lifted, giving me the energy I need to fulfill my purpose with the writing of my philosophy on helping abused women to lead normal lives and the empowerment of women to reach and break the now famous Glass Ceiling coined by Hilary Clinton.

The Holy Qur’an, A Birthday Gift

For my 90th birthday, my wish was to acquire an English, large print edition of the Qur’an. I wanted to finally read it in its entirety as I felt this would enable me to make a more educated contribution to the necessary and imminent reformation of Islam, a reformation that will eliminate the hostile interpretation of this holy book that has resulted in sanctions of barbaric behaviours and discrimination against women.

I have only just read the introductory chapters, “How to Approach the Qur’an”, followed by “A Brief Look at the Life of Muhammad”, an historical account of the prophet’s activities. The latter chapter ends with the story of Barakah, Muhammad’s nursemaid who, by then over seventy years old, visited his grave every day to cry softly. Once asked why, she replied, “By God, I knew that the Messenger of God would die, but I cry now because the revelation from on high has come to an end for us.”

Painting of Mohammad

And how right she was. What a mess the Muslims have made of the “revelation”, twisting it into various misrepresentations of radicalism and hatred. These days, the two primary Muslim sects are on a constant war path. The Saudi Arabian Sunnis have enraged the Iranians with their execution of the Shiite cleric, Sheik Nimr al-Nimr, precipitating the burning of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and in turn, the order for all Iranian diplomats to evacuate Saudi territory within 48 hours. This stunning state of affairs has left the United Nations and Western powers at a loss. How might it be possible to prevent an armed conflict between the two largest Islamic religious communities in the world?

Fighting in Mosul

Hostilities have escalated frighteningly in both countries, further distressing the majority population of restless young adults who have been enlightened by the exposure to different cultural choices thanks to the Internet. Young Arabians are bombarded with everyday barbaric news from the Islamic State, but are also attuned to the liberal views of the democratic West, leaving them in a position to question, to choose, as they become more and more disenchanted with the status quo of their lives and mistrustful of the men who have not learned a single lesson from history, that absolute power cannot survive for thousands of years, such as Hitler had assumed. The princely rulers of Saudi Arabia have not learned that the “divine rights of kings” came to an end with the French Revolution in 1799 which overthrew their monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in Napoleon’s reign of dictatorship until he, too, was deposed as all dictators have been or will be.

French Revolution

Only reasonable, kind minds may prevent the disintegration of humanity in Islam. The new reformation can only become a bloody massacre, nothing more, in the absence of a new Enlightenment which would elevate women to an equal status of power, which would cultivate a peaceful coexistence between nations, and which would eradicate the perpetual uprising of brotherhoods spurred on by corrupt and hungry demagogues.

Muslim Women Give the Voting Finger

Let the United Nations intervene to stop the escalation of violence, to invite all factions of Muslim sects, as well as observers of other religions, to listen to women, to theologians, those who have the heart and the sanity to enlighten mankind. Let those who sit on high come to the realization that bloodshed will not serve in the defense of their beliefs, but rather, they might alter their stance to achieve universal peace through a tolerance of diversity.

My Book Cover Design

As I promised I would keep you informed as to the progress of my book. Here is the preliminary cover design, created by Elayne Griffith. A brilliant artist and a published author. (she is also a very funny cartoonist who appears regularly on my son Tom’s blogs) Thank you Elayne, it is better than anything I could have ever imagined. If you wish to see more of Elayne’s work you can visit her site at; https://elaynegriffith.wordpress.com/

Musings Inspired by my Journey to Vienna – Part 1

source google images Vienna

My trip to Europe this year was well-planned, but my getting sick during the flight to Berlin muddled my schedule. Five days in a Berlin hospital with a contagious intestinal viral infection forced me to cancel an outing to the Rhineland area of Germany, and the planned stops on the way in Düsseldorf and Stuttgart. I regretted missing visits with certain elderly relatives and friends, but I could not risk infecting them.

The day I was to be released from hospital, I had my son Christopher, my travel escort, book a direct flight to Vienna to make up for lost time. I wished to visit my late brother’s first daughter Charlotte and her daughter Alexandra, whom I had never met, but was eager to see for the first time. She’d struck me as being a very perceptive person for I had been deeply moved by the lovely condolence letter she had sent me upon the death of my Geraldine, the grandmother she would never meet, at least, not in this lifetime.

Vienna

Vienna was the place of my birth, and after World War II I studied there, graduating with my first Ph.D. I was also married there; the Catholic ceremony was performed shortly after my graduation in December 1949. Vienna was, at that time, an old and tired, foreign-occupied city with a war-weary population, but it has changed greatly and has regained its splendour from imperial times.

Vienna is intricately woven in my personal history with Salzburg, where my parents established their residence after World War I. My mother had inherited, or to be more specific, became the custodian of two villas which her mother had owned and had bequeathed to her grandchildren. My grandmother’s three sons had not sired any children, so her only daughter’s, my mother’s, children would inherit the properties.

Salzburg Austria

My future mother-in-law also lived in Salzburg, where she became a close friend and confidante of my mother’s. At that time, she was married to a dentist, Vokalek, with whom she shared a villa with extensive grounds in the neighbouring suburb of Parsch. As a clairvoyant, she was a much sought-after socialite, and was visited by many admirers, included among them such as Dr. Albert Schweitzer and other members of the theosophical society.

 

She was instrumental as an advisor to my mother, who considered aborting her sixth pregnancy as she was then in a troubled marriage. Also pregnant then, her friend counselled her against undergoing such a risky procedure at her age. They were both in their early thirties and could still look forward to leading productive lives. Were it not for this advice, I would not be writing this today.

To be con’t.

An Innocent Woman on Death-Row for 22 Years – Debra Milke

Debra Milke source google images

Debra Milke, née Sadeik, was born in Berlin, Germany, to a U.S. military family. In 1965, the Sadeiks moved back to the U.S., where Debra attended high school and college.
In April 1983, Debra met Mark Milke in a biker bar in Arizona. Debra and Mark were married in December 1984 and the following October, Debra gave birth to her only child, Christopher Conan Milke. By that time, Mark had become an alcoholic and a serious drug addict. One day, during a particularly violent altercation, he threw Debra and the little boy out of the house. They ended up moving into an apartment with Jim Styers, a man Debra knew through her sister. Debra and Mark were divorced in 1988.
Styers, a Vietnam veteran, had some mental issues, suffering from recurring nightmares of the killings in which he had participated, and he had a sleazy friend, a heavy alcoholic, named Roger Scott.
On December 1st, 1989, Debra took the young Christopher to the Metrocenter Mall in Phoenix to see Santa Claus. The next morning, on December 2nd, Styers asked Debra to let him borrow her Toyota for a trip back to the mall, and Christopher asked if he could come for the ride. He was hoping to see Santa again. And this is where the drama began.

Early in the afternoon on December 2nd, Styers, apparently in distress, called Debra on the phone to tell her that he had lost Christopher in the mall. He asked if the boy had called home to tell her where he is. Hearing her negative response, Styers insisted that she should call the police. Debra went into action, her concern for her only child and the love she could not bear to lose growing.

A police officer came to the home and agreed to stay by the phone in case Christopher should call. Being a clever four-year-old, Christopher had memorised and could dial his mother’s phone number. Needing to be with family, Debra hitched a ride to her father’s residence in Perryville, near Phoenix, where he worked as a guard at the local prison. Debra’s younger sister, Sandy, was still living with him.
When Debra arrived, she was told the Phoenix police wanted to talk to her. The sheriff picked her up and brought her to the police station in Perryville, where she was brought into an examination room. Soon after, a large, heavy man arrived in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a black tie hanging loose around an open collar, a prototype of the “red-necked bully”. Detective Armando Saldate, an ambitious, ruthless go-getter had a personnel record which showed a number of instances of misconduct, including lying under oath, a fact which would not be revealed during the conviction trial to come.
Saldate’s ensuing interrogation was not witnessed by anyone, it was not recorded or overheard, nor was his report signed by Debra Milke. He even went so far as to declare that he threw away his notes shortly after the interview. However, during the later trial, under oath, he stated that Debra had confessed to her role in the plot to murder her son.
Debra Milke offered a vastly different story of the interrogation and denied that she had confessed to any role. Saldate claimed that Roger Scott had told him that Milke had been involved in a plot to kill her son, but neither Scott nor Styers testified in Milke’s trial.

 

Prosecutors floated a likely motive, a $5,000 life insurance policy she had taken out on the child, but Milke had obtained the policy as part of the employee benefits package from the insurance agency where she worked. Apart from Saldate’s testimony, no other witnesses or direct evidence linked Debra Milke to the crime. The trial was no more than a he-said/she-said contest between Saldate and Milke.
Debra Milke sat silently, not allowed to speak, not even to cry, numb within her own thoughts. “I had to be quiet. But everything in my head was screaming: Liar, you’re a goddamned liar! He was so overbearing, so unbelievably arrogant. And he was allowed to describe in detail all the things I had supposedly confessed to him.”
Multiple opportunities were missed to challenge the presented “evidence” by Debra’s inept court-appointed defence lawyer, who counselled Debra not to cry out or to challenge, but to try to maintain a calm, collected demeanor. No doubt, to the judge and jury, preconditioned by the graphic delivery of Saldate’s concocted findings, the silent acceptance of the accused appeared to be the expression of a guilty person.
In October 1990, Debra Milke was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, child abuse, and first-degree murder. On January 18, 1991, she was sentenced to death.

Styers and Scott were charged and tried separately. Both were convicted of first degree murder and also sentenced to death.
Shortly after Christmas in 1997, Debra received a notification that her execution date had been officially set for the 29th of January, 1998. With it, the Arizona justice system issued its final declaration of judgment without any further possible appeal. However, Debra’s lawyer made a last-ditch effort to prevent the lethal injection and filed a writ of habeas corpus. The answer to this last question could save Debra’s life – were her human rights violated in the trial?
Over the course of years and two failed appeals, Debra Milke remained convinced that she would be free one day, that the truth of her innocence would be recognised. She educated herself about the American justice system by reading the daily Arizona Republic and, in that paper, found Mike Kimerer, a successful defense attorney. Debra wrote to her mother, asking her to contact the lawyer, to ask him to take her case. Kimerer accepted and worked on it for 15 years.

On March 23, 2015, after 22 years on death row, Milke was exonerated. Judge Rosa Mroz threw out her conviction and dismissed her case, ruling that she had not received a fair trial. It held that Milke’s rights had been violated by the failure to turn over Saldate’s personnel file to the defense. That file included eight cases where confessions, indictments or convictions had been thrown out because detective Armando Saldate had either lied under oath or violated the suspects’ rights during interrogations.

Throughout this tenacious fight for human rights, had a new legal ruling been created whereby an American lawyer is forced to submit all evidence in court, including evidence which would benefit the defendant, Debra Milke’s case would have been dismissed long ago. In my mind, there is still a fundamental problem with the U.S. criminal justice system, which is due to an ingrained culture that has not evolved in its democratic governing principles, unlike European states that have advanced from the barbarism of the Middle Ages to a more liberal but orderly society, and where the death penalty has been eliminated without effecting an increase in crime.
As reported in an article titled “The American Nightmare” in the German Magazine DER SPIEGEL, Issue Nr. 14/4.4.2015, page 85: “In no other country in the world are there so many citizens in prison awaiting to be executed than in the United States of America. Close to 3,000 inmates are waiting to be poisoned, gassed, hanged, or to be electrocuted in an electric chair, or otherwise just shot.”
On the other hand, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre, since 1973, 151 inmates have been released from death row and given their freedom as a result of an appeals process, where errors of fact or the violation of citizens’ rights have been made in judicial proceedings. It is ludicrous that the murder of a child could be committed by the mother simply for the sake of cashing in a negligible life insurance policy. It takes a criminal mind to construe such a motive, and a stupid mind to insufficiently scrutinize such a preposterous suggestion.

It is only possible to cultivate and enlighten the minds of the people of that great country by providing equality in access to higher education, and providing equal opportunities, particularly to women who have the good sense to study hard and who have the potential to become excellent lawyers, negotiators for peace, and world leaders.

Debra Milke listens to two windchimes at sunrise, one for her mother and one for Christopher.