SUZANNE CARR ROSSI / THE FREE LANCE-STAR
Chris Cameron was all set for a dinner engagement with some friends Friday evening when he stopped by the basketball courts in Olde Forge subdivision. After several impromptu games with some neighborhood kids and other members of the Stafford Sheriff’s Office, the sweaty detective decided he’d better clean up before continuing on to dinner.
Cameron, who earned the nickname “Officer Swish” from the kids after sinking a few baskets, was one of about a dozen members of the Sheriff’s Office who showed up in Olde Forge for a gathering arranged by subdivision resident Kathleen Wright. “When the community reaches out, the least we can do is to extend our hand back,” Cameron said. “Besides, I had a lot of fun today.”
Wright, 29, who has lived in Olde Forge for two years, said she came up with the idea for the gathering in response to the recent nationally publicized police-involved shootings, which continued over the weekend with the killings of three officers in Baton Rouge, La. She decided it would be a good thing to encourage more deputies and residents to get to know each other on a personal basis. (Keith Epps/Free Lance-Star)
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This is why I like reading my local paper. There is plenty of good news, as well as thought provoking news, to balance the ever present bad news. And stories like this certainly increase this old New England Yankee’s pride in his Virginia home. The only sour note was when someone from the HOA showed up to complain about the lack of prior HOA permission to hold the ice cream social. These HOA types can be such dicks.
I have always been impressed by our Stafford County Sheriffs. They look sharp. They act professionally and courteously. SWMBO and I have always noticed that they invariably catch the bad guys who pass through our county. I’m convinced this is primarily due to the character and efforts of our recently retired, long time Sheriff Charles Jett. He’s a life long Stafford resident who aggressively sought to bring his department closer to the community it served. His predecessors were no slacks either. This is a home grown sheriff’s department… the best kind of law enforcement.
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In other news, today’s Free Lance-Star included an AP story about the Nice attacker being recruited by an Algerian IS member only two weeks ago. So, if this guy’s uncle is to be believed, it wasn’t self-radicalization and it wasn’t an angry, depressed loser acting out. It was a damned effective IS “case officer” who spotted, assessed, recruited, trained and tasked his agent. All this in a few weeks. Stopping these people is going to be tough. Certainly doable, but tough.
TTG
TTG:
Read that he gave 110,000 Euros to his family prior to attack.
At the risk of being too snarky for my own good, as long as mostly people with mental health issues are recruited by terrorist “case officers,” the problem is not really terrorism, but mental health issues, much the way all auto accidents can be blamed on the invention of the internal combustion engine.
Babak,
If so, that would clinch the IS recruitment theory for me. If I was allowed to throw that much money at an agent, I could have recruited someone in a couple of weeks, too.
TTG:
This is clearly off subject. But some time back, it was around Thanksgiving, someone from N.E. entertained us with a story about growing up in a small town (Conn.?) where there were caves on the outskirts. As I recall there were three Cavaliers who had fought under Chas. I who subsequently departed for the colonies. Later they hid out in the caves when Roundhead officials showed up looking for them. If it was you, would you mind revealing the name of the town. It is a great story.
What was not in the newspaper was a story about H Clintons emails. Two weeks ago on this blog I predicted that the HRC email story was over and would be forgotten in a few weeks by everybody except DT.
Stonevendor,
I’m pretty sure it was me. I and my friends roamed the Blue Trail system that criss-crossed Connecticut. One of the trails, the Regicides Trail, ran along the ridge close to my home down to Judges Cave on West Rock Ridge overlooking New Haven. Here’s a link to a good article on Judges Cave.
https://environment.yale.edu/blog/2013/11/welcome-to-judges-cave/
I’m struck by the line on the historical plaque for the cave. “Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God.” Sounds similar to Virginia’s motto and our committee’s blog’s title… in a very Puritanical way.
r Whitman
She is liable for much more that the e-mail caper. pl
TTG,
I share your respect for the Stafford
County S.O. and the previous Sheriff Jett.
A very professional and successful organization.
To paraphrase your remarks above re recruiting, if my
target asset pool were young,unemployed,
ignorant,brutal, drugged young men with
mental health problems I could be tremendously
successful recruiting in 2016 America. In
my day “crazy in the head” was about #10,000
on the list of desirable asset traits [of course
some were anyway as I sometimes found out the
hard way; some great stories there but they
weren’t so funny at the time!]
Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96
TTG,
‘Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God.’
Ah yes. But then, people here had to live with Cromwell’s Major Generals. And – a lot of us didn’t like it. Hence the Restoration.
After Cromwell’s death, Lord Fairfax, who as Sir Thomas Fairfax had been ‘Lord General’ of the ‘New Model Army at the decisive defeat of the Royalists at Naseby on 14 June 1645, was instrumental in bringing back Charles II.
In the Civil War, he had and his father had been critical in swinging the North behind the Parliament; the former ‘Lord General’ was equally critical in the destruction of the ‘Parliamentarian’ cause there a decade and a half later.
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Fairfax .)
There is an odd American coda to all this.
In his last story Herman Melville gave the English captain who – reluctantly – hangs the press-ganged American sailor Billy Budd the name ‘Edward Fairfax Vere’.
The captain’s nickname ‘Starry Vere’ is taken from the poem ‘Upon Appleton House’ – Fairfax’s house in Yorkshire – by Andrew Marvell, who was tutor to the Lady Mary Fairfax, the Lord General’s only surviving child, there at the start of the 1650s.
In the poem, ‘Starry Vere’ is Lady Mary’s mother, Anne, daughter of Sir Horace de Vere, who had been Fairfax’s commander in the Netherlands, when he ‘cut his teeth’ on military matters there as a young man, fresh out of St John’s College Cambridge and the Inns of Court.
When her husband was listed as one of the commissioners to try the King, and his name called, Anne de Vere called out in the courtroom ‘He hath more wit than to be here,’ before being forcibly removed.
They were, in my view, consistent people – always trying to hold a centre.
TTG,
Having just watched a documentary on Deutsche Welle on anti-depressants, which were argued as causing in some cases either suicidal or homicidal or both tendencies, I did a few minutes of google research and:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/15/bastille-day-truck-driver-was-known-to-police-reports-say
He also was on anti-depressants, which would also make him a good recruiting target.
in the DW documentary one of the interviewers related how she started having fantasies about killing her parents…..
David Habakkuk,
That was a fascinating time in history. I remember being shown an old Catholic church in a village outside RAF Sculthorpe where the baptismal font still showed the damage wrought by the musket butts of the New Model Army. I could see the musket balls embedded in the rafter beams.
There was a BBC series about that time that you’re probably familiar with. “By the Sword Divided” traced the lives of two families during that time in a most entertaining way. I watched it on PBS out of Boston while stationed at Fort Devens.
TTG sorry for being OT but for all the US elections is very important.
Colonel Lang, you can call this my Middle Eastern conspiring mentality, but IMO last night’ plagiarised speech of Trump’ wife was planted and an insider job. Mistakes like that ar not common in key not speeches in presidential election’ of major parties. Last one I remember was Joe Biden when he ran for president a while back. IMO someone was fully ready for this and the MSM was very ready on how and how fast to run the story. If I am corect, a planted insider job by the other camp then IMO this is no less than the watergate.
All
IMO that was just buffoonery followed by MSM pursuit of HC’s election. pl
Kooshy,
Someone in the Trump camp screwed up royally. Who was supposed to check the speech? I’m sure Melania didn’t write the speech by herself and keep it to herself until she gave it. Or maybe she did and that’s why Trump didn’t fire somebody over this. Your conspiracy theory of a plant in the top circles of the Trump campaign is a little too rich for me unless it was a closet Republican Dump Trump person. That would have been obvious at this point. Of course the MSM jumped all over it like it was a mass murder. As Colonel Lang said it’s part of their pursuit of HC’s election.
Mr. Habakkuk,
I’ve always felt an empathy for Cromwell.
Kooshy,
Wouldn’t be surprised if it was a purposeful “inside job”, much like other supposed slip ups by Trump.
Melania’s whole speech was packed full of hatefacts that the Left tries to bury and pretend does not exist. Now people are going to go read the whole speech because of two lines of common rhetoric.
CNN continues to whore for Clinton, between panning away from Sen. Sessions’ speech on illegal immigration and referring to those who had family members killed by illegal aliens “impacted by undocumented immigrants”.
Then perhaps you should study up on what he did in Ireland.
Sorry, but that’s BS all over.
1 – Quote : « The uncle said he learned about the Algerian recruiter from extended family members who live in Nice »
So far none of the relatives of Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel interrogated by the police has said such a thing. Look like the guy, who see the guy, who see the guy.who see the guy……………………..the guy who see the bear.
2 – If someone in a poor city as Msaken has received 100 000 €, approximatively 352 months of average tunisian income, il should have directly gone to a supermarket and buy a new fridge, a freezer, a hair cooler, and all the things you need when you are poor. And probably a new car, a new flat or a new house.
Even if he had gone to the bank to put such a sum on his account, everybody would have know this before the end if the day.
Don’t be tricked please, I know Tunisia quite well, it’s a poor country.
Give 300 or 500 $ to a guy ( brother or uncle ) and he will tell you what you want to hear.
The Twisted Genius,
The commenters over at Naked Capitalism have discussed the “Melania speech plagiarism” and generally seem to feel that it is the sort of thing that only a bunch of twittering liberals would get upset about. Some of them speculate that the Trump Team has a hidden Clintonite mole who was involved in seeding that speech with “plagiarism” in order to fabricate a lifesize cardboard-replica scandal.
Cville,
I did well before you mentioned it.
TTG thank you for your reply, a few points that comes to mind, first I agree that Melina did not write the speech frankly I can’t think that Trump, his children, his campaign, and above all RNC would want Melina, who english is not her first language to write the opening night’s keynote speech. Second I would think all above mentioned persons would one a good professional speech writer to write that important speech from wife of the nominee, I would think that professional speech writer will do a through research on the past party’s first ladies convention speeches and who said what, how and when starting with current first lady’s speech. So IMO that speech writer knew exactly to the last word what Michelle said in her speech, professional speech writers know how to not plagiaries specially not in this obvious way almost word for word. Once that speech is written and before be delivered by the party’s first lady I am sure someone trusted by Trump once to check and read it, same as for RNC after all is their convention, Trump is not even the leader of the party until he is officially nominated by the roll call. Diffidently something major went wrong, but it could have been a mole planted knowing the campaign don’t have many points of checks and balances.
If I were the campaign I wouldn’t fire anybody yet till investigation is done and people get questioned, who did what and what connections he or she has. The point pressed by the media and clintons was well delivered, as I heard, even inside the RNC convention, the point raised was if Trump is so incompetent to have a control on his campaign to protect his own family, how can he be competent to hold and govern. Clintons, are their usual, are doing politics like Mafia do business. For them is a no holds barred match.
different clue,
The level of outrage is clearly partisan. A similar situation doomed Biden’s presidential bid in 1987. He was forced to withdraw when a few sentences in one of his speeches were very similar to those in a Brit politician’s speech. There are many services dedicated to finding potential plagiarism now. I consider it to be political incompetence not to use something like this to check these kinds of speeches. The stakes are too high.
In reply to The Twisted Genius 19 July 2016 at 09:25 PM
The speech by Mr Kinnock, as he desperately tried to remodel and rebuild the Labour Party, was widely judged to be a dramatic and powerful piece of political rhetoric – making it particularly tempting, but also unusually unwise, for Mr Biden to borrow its most significant passage without attribution to the British politician.
NEIL KINNOCK addressing the Welsh Labour Party conference May 1987:
“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what we had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand”
JOE BIDEN IN Sept 1987 first presidential campaign stump speech:
“Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife… is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? …Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It’s because they didn’t have a platform on which to stand.”
Biden shamelessly stole a key passage from Kinnock’s speech – it was a good speech that got massive coverage – how on earth he thought he’d get away with it I have no idea.
Dubhaltach,
At the risk of being off-topic, the Kinnock speech has always amused me.
The opportunity for Welsh boys from families without means to go to university came as a result of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, which was passed in 1889 under a Conservative Government headed by Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury – a descendant of Lord Burghley and the 1st Earl of Salisbury, chief ministers to Elisabeth 1.
The Act predated similar legislation in England by a dozen years.
It was the Labour politician Anthony Crosland – an English public school boy – who replaced the grammar schools with comprehensives in 1965. If his wife Susan is to be believed, he told her: ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland.’
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Crosland .)
David Habakkuk
“grammar schools with comprehensives” Unfortunately few of us gringos know the difference. pl
“Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God.”
A fine Shia sentiment.
The effectiveness of the Islamic State’s strategy for inciting a reactionary response from the West can’t be denied. These continuing attacks in France and the US have already manipulated Obama into dropping his ‘no ground troops’ pledge and US troop deployments are increasing especially in Iraq which is what the IS wanted from the beginning. Even Muqtada al Sadr is responding to this reoccupation with threats to target these troops. France has no real option but to increase their involvement in the MENA because these individual and small group attacks are nearly impossible to interdict.
The other very effective part of this strategy was explained by OBL as helping the West to restrict and eventually destroy the liberty that they are supposedly fighting for and since 9/11 that destruction has increased rapidly in the US and France is heading in that same direction.
It’s quite amazing that this small Islamist group has been able to so effectively manipulate the most powerful nations in the world to do their bidding.
Colonel Lang,
It is a complicated history, particularly as many of today’s ‘public schools’ – which means ‘private schools’ – started out as ‘grammar schools’. (The King’s School, Canterbury, dates back to AD 597.)
But an underlying principle was that such schools could provide an education, ultimately based in the ideas of the Roman ‘grammarian’, to academically gifted pupils from families without means.
An ironic feature of the Welsh ‘county schools’ was that the initial intention had been to emphasize the technical aspects of education.
And Major Edgar Jones, who created one of the greatest of them, Barry County School, did not in any way despise technical education. He always believed that the ‘grammarian’ style of education was appropriate only for some of his pupils, and in 1914 reorganised the school into General, Technical and Commercial departments.
However, Edgar Jones also did not see any reason why Welsh boys who did have academic aptitudes should not get a free education as good as any that an expensive English public school could provide.
From an account of the history of the school he wrote in 1939:
‘A notable feature of Academic achievements is the varied character of the subjects in which success has been attained. In addition to the more usual subjects of Modem Languages, the Classics, English, History, Mathematics, and Science, marked successes have been gained in Medicine, Engineering, Economics, Law, Archaeology, Philosophy, and in such an unusual language as Russian.’
(See http://www.garethjones.org/margaret_siriol_colley/barry_schools.htm .)
One pupil who gained a ‘marked success’ in Russian was the headmaster’s own son, Gareth, who went from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, to Trinity College Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours in French, German and Russian.
As a result, he was responsible for the only significant on-the-ground reporting on the ‘Holodomor’.Subsequently he took one risk too many, and was murdered by bandits in Manchukuo in 1935. Whether this was at the instigation of the NKVD I am not clear.
I must declare an interest in this, being the son, and grandson, of former pupils of Edgar Jones.
David Habakkuk,
Do the words “public school” and “grammar school” have different meanings in Englandish as against Amerenglish?
TTG,
Thanks for the background. “Regicide Trail”, I love it! I grew up in a very different part of the country where our focus was more on Mexico than England in the colonial days. I had no idea of the extent to which English politics and score settling had carried over to this side of the Atlantic. The next time I am in that part of the country I definitely will have to check out the trail and the cave.
I know Republicans that were chagrined when Shrub went around the table to massage Angela Merkel’s shoulders. The same way Republicans, as well as Democrats, were put off by the plagiarized speech on prime time. (Do we still use that expression in the internet age?) Whatever the politics of the individuals, we have certain expectations of those who occupy the White House. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3610965/Sexy-photo-Melania-Trump-pointing-gun-thong-bra-runs-Michelle-Obama-dress-pearls-meme-calling-Lady-haters.html
The other day Richard Sale wrote a piece for SST that bemoaned this cultures, “drive for superficiality.” Along that line, I found this to be quite interesting: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/health/boredom-extreme-politics/index.html
alek,
lmbo more taquiyya disinformation.
1) I doubt that his family is going to admit to anything. Like saying that because the San Berdoo shooters family denied anything, that Omar Marteen’s family didn’t hear anything, he’s not a terrorist.
You’re full of it.
2) Now you’re claiming to know how someone should have spent money? Get out of here you friggin dhimmi.
Interesting Tyler, admiration? Something like cognitive empathy? If admiration you share that with John Milton and Leon Trotsky. I am more with David …
Actually, it was three Puritan Parlimentarians who had voted for the execution of Charles I who hid out in those caves on the outskirts of New Haven.
In reply to different clue 20 July 2016 at 02:16 PM
Yes “public schools” are elite, private, fee-paying, schools such as Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, and so on.
Grammar Schools were and still are state secondary schools that, unlike the majority of state schools in the UK select their pupils using an exam. The curriculum tends to be more academic than the typical UK state school.
In reply to David Habakkuk 20 July 2016 at 11:21 AM
The UK educational “reformers” have a lot to answer for. I’ve had to interview many UK schools’ products for job (apprenticeship) interviews. They can’t read what they call “joined up writing” and they can’t do “joined up thinking” either.
Dubhaltach,
Interesting. What exactly did Crosland have against the grammar schools?
What did they represent to him at an emotional level in his own mind? Who did he think he would help by shutting them down? Who did he think he would hurt?
LeaNder,
Cromwell knew how to make a decision. What can I say?
Stonevendor,
The same people who called Clinton’s escapades a non-issue are losing their minds over a few lines in a convention speech.
Do you realize how mendacious and ridiculous you people look to America?
Babak,
I don’t know how much you know of the Puritans, especially the early New England Puritans, but you would be surprised how similar they were to the Shia.
Dubhaltach and different clue,
In my Connecticut town in the late 50s and 60s, grades 1 through 8 were considered grammar school. We didn’t have a high school, grades 9 through 12. When I first met my future SWMBO in college, she could not tell where I was from. I still had a New England accent of sorts and talked about grammar school and other Connecticut oddities. She thought I might be English. Seemed this was all strange to this Saratoga County gal.
Tyler,
The true believers on both sides will never understand how “how mendacious and ridiculous” they look. But to compare the inadvertent plagiarism of a woman not running for public office, not used to public speaking and speaking English as a foreign language to the actions of a sitting Secretary of State amounting to gross negligence as a minimum and criminal activity to many is beyond ridiculous.
Tyler,
Oh my, we are going into Defcon 4, are we. 1. I do not appreciate being called mendacious. 2. Despite our heavy electronic invasiveness, plus eyes in the sky, I rather doubt the American public can see me, nor be very interested. 3. The only thing that would bring me to vote for Hillary would be if through some miracle my solidly, deep crimson state were to have the pre-election polls at 49-49. Then with barf bag in hand, I would enter the booth and vote against Trump, rather than for Hillary. In case you missed it in my previous comment, I do place a certain value on having presidents know how to act. Hillary may be despicable, mendacious, and traveling with baggage that includes bad decisions from Afghanistan west to Honduras. But she isn’t a clown. She is not espousing building a wall on the Mexican border, though I can see some merit in the latter if they made it of stone. As my nom de net may imply, I deal with the construction industry. I don’t cut much slack for people who stick it to their contractors. I find it immensely unsettling that there are days when I’m tempted to sound like an old fart muttering about how the republic has gone to hell in a hand basket. And for what it is worth, I plan to vote for Gary Johnson out of protest.
Malania’s speechwriter is a Democrat and Trump is not going to fire her.
In reply to different clue 20 July 2016 at 07:43 PM
Grammar schools were seen by Labour (which was far more of a left-wing and socialist party then than it is now) as a bastion of conservatism.
Perhaps Mr. Habbakuk will chime in here but briefly grammar schools were seen as providing a better (I mean more rigorous) education and that pupils who’d been through grammar school were far more likely to go university and enter the professions.
Crossland saw them as entrenching privilege – in this case middle-class privilege, although I suspect the fact that they also adopted many of the forms of Public Schools such as school uniforms, “houses” and so on deepened his loathing of them.
English educational structures are weird as is their terminology.
Calling grades 1 -8 “grammar” as presumably you learnt the basics of language reading and writing seems entirely reasonable to me.
Your accent story makes me smile. When I was younger I didn’t have standard “Danish” (‘pære dansk’) accent I liked to think that it would make me more interesting to girls. But as I got married young to the (literally) girl next door whom I’d known since we were babies I never really got the chance to put this theory to the test.
Babak,
You mean you are Christians at heart?
TTG,
I feel sure that none of the department trained abroad.
Not so here
An internal police report exposed by the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz this month, revealed that Israeli Border Police in Jerusalem “deliberately provoke Palestinians” in order to get a violent response.
Mimicking Israel
The Atlanta Police Department has been sending personnel to Israel since 1992, as part of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange.
GILEE, a project of Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, sends high-ranking public safety officials to Israel for “counterterrorism” training every year.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/atlanta-mayor-rejects-demand-end-israel-police-training
Now this insanity
http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/video-shows-unarmed-man-hands-shot-police-40763296
Cee,
I don’t think they do. Being just south of the FBI and DEA training academies, we really have no reason to send officers to Israel for training. We are now building a new tactical training facility in Stafford that will primarily be used to teach de-escalation techniques. Sheriff Jett said he wanted something like this for five years when it was announced last year.
That incident in Florida is unbelievable. I watched the video and thought those officers must have gone insane with fear to act that way. I heard a commentator say they weren’t sure whether the officers violated the victims civil rights. Sounds more like assault with a deadly weapon at a minimum.
After delivering a speech promising America the moon, with balloons floating down and standing next to his running mate The Silver Back, they play the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” A soundtrack is supposed to support a narrative and not undermine it. Very strange.
The Miami cops need training to learn how to listen to people instead of just barking orders. The Cleveland police, on the other hand, are doing a great job of stopping potentially volatile situations early before they get out of hand.