Most Head Shakingly Bad Thing of the Week

Former Mafioso and confessed murderer of 19 (that he admits to - bada-bing!) Sammy 'The Bull' Gravono has pulled the trigger on a podcast about his life of organized crime.

Have an espresso and stir up some tomato sauce with sauted onion, garlic, and olive oil while you make your bones on this cold piece of anti-social media at: Our Thing podcast.

Watch the Sky For Secret Signals Over RAF Croughton

Well, it's finally come to this. The Dunn family's favorite charlatan is out of threats and arguments and is reduced to imagining secret signals in the sky over RAF Croughton. 

Check out this tweet:

We’ve always known that the good people of the 422nd Air Base Group at RAF Croughton have been on our side. The mast at the base lit up tonight in Kawasaki green in support of #justice4harry. Thank you so much guys from the bottom of our hearts for that lovely touch.

What is this? Have those (previously) evil Americans at RAF Croughton flashed a coded signal in the night straight from the covert heart of the U.S. military-intelligence complex to the supporters of Harry Dunn's family?

Uh, not so fast. That lovely touch is, in fact, just RAF Croughton's annual star lighting. It is done every December, and it is in support of nothing except raising “holiday cheer for the community and local village.”

Come on, man!© Just go to RAF Croughton's Facebook page if you want to know why that star is there:

The 422nd Communications Squadron Cable and Antenna Systems, “CABLE DAWGZ,” prepare the 250 ft tower at RAF Croughton for the upcoming 422 ABG official Star Lighting ceremony.

“The lighting happens annually to raise holiday cheer for the community and local village." said Tech. Sgt. Donnie Parsons, 422nd Communications Squadron noncommissioned officer in charge of cable and antenna systems.

#Pathfinders Light the Way!

Most Head Shakingly Bad Thing of the Week

Adolf Hitler Wins Election in Namibia, Has No Plans for World Domination - Newsweek

Adolf Hitler Uunona has been elected with 85 percent of the vote for a seat on the regional council in the former German colony, where street names, people and places still have German names ... He told German tabloid paper Bild: "My father named me after this man. He probably didn't understand what Adolf Hitler stood for. As a child I saw it as a totally normal name. Only as a teenager did I understand that this man wanted to conquer the whole world."

He appears on the election nomination list as Adolf H. Uunona. He won the seat on the ticket of the ruling SWAPO party which has ruled Namibia since independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990.

Harry Dunn Case Update: Demands to Meet Bo-Jo in Person After Loss at Judicial Review

Another Harry Dunn case update, just before the holiday lull sets in, which should last until late January when the family's civil suit in the U.S. has its next milestone. Anyway, the issues in that case captivate me, whereas Joe Biden does not, so it's the Dunn case again. 

Last Saturday we learned from the UK Mirror that the mother of the victim wants Boris Johnson to meet her following the dismissal of the family's judicial appeal:

The mother of tragic Harry Dunn wants Boris Johnson to meet her following a High Court ruling that his alleged killer has diplomatic immunity.

-- snip --

Charlotte said: “We still haven’t been able to meet the Prime Minister. We’ve asked him on no end of occasions to meet with us, but because he refuses, we’ve never been able to ask him questions directly and get an honest answer. Boris just will not meet us. It’s bizarre. We’ve met President Trump half-way around the world, but we still haven’t met our own Prime Minister who is an hour up the road. It makes no sense to me," she added.

You have to meet him in person in order to ask him a question? I’m not so sure that’s really necessary.

That aside, I have an idea why her own PM won’t meet with her. If you want to have private meetings with a head of state, it helps if you do not rely on a maniac ‘advisor’ to do all your reading-writing-speaking-and-listening for you, which is the role she allows him to play. 

The problem is, that guy is bad!, as the PM's staff knows, and no head of state will be caught in the same room as him. 

His recent over-the-top reaction to U.S. Embassy London's disinclination to include him in a private meeting that the mother had requested pretty much defines the word "manic." 

Speaking of that bad advisor, The Mirror's story included this latest announcement from him:

The family’s spokesman Radd Seiger has already spoken to officials from the US Embassy in London and the foreign office since Monday’s high court verdict.

“Officials.” Really? What officials are those? He did not disclose that information to The Mirror, so let me guess. It was the telephone operator at the embassy, and whichever Foreign Office duty officer got stuck with taking calls from random crackpots on Tuesday last week. 

It's hard to believe how thoroughly in thrall the family is to an obvious blowhard bullshitter, but see for yourself. Watch the video clip in which the mother - responding to that same embassy invitation which did not include her Svengali - describes how completely he interprets for her everything she sees and hears. 

Maybe someday the mother and the rest of the family will look back and see that everything he has told them about international law was wrong, that none of his assurances have ever worked out, and that none of the government agencies and officials who receive his frequent demarches care in the least about the demands he makes of them. 

"Come on, man!," to allow myself one small Bidenism. Get red-piled on that guy. Until then he’s keeping you out of discerning circles.

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Further Update as of December 1

The Dunn family announced today that they have dropped their legal dream team and are going with new representation for the appeal. 

Makes sense to me. If your legal dream team had been shot down as badly as their legal dream team was shot down at the judicial review, you'd want a new team, too. 

To recap, this is what the High Court justices thought of the old dream team's arguments:

Creative though they are, the Claimants' arguments under Ground 1 [whether diplomatic immunity existed] ultimately amount to playing with language in order to address the weakness in the case arising from the lack of an express waiver. This play is easily identified: they seek to avoid the effect of the VCDR [Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations] by re-classifying the advance waiver of Mr Sacoolas' immunity as a new creature ("limited immunity") and then arguing that this limited immunity, by implication, has also silently attached to the family members (whose full immunity has never been in fact waived expressly in accordance with the mandatory language of Article 32).

For completeness we should record that there was nothing in the case law and textbooks relied upon by the Claimants in relation to the so-called "derivative" nature of a family member's immunity which affects this conclusion.

 Yeah, I'd switch horses in the middle of the stream, too.

Judicial Review Decision in Harry Dunn Case Handed Down: Diplomatic Immunity Upheld

The UK High Court has ruled on the judicial review brought by the family of Harry Dunn in which they asked the court to find that the American driver did not have diplomatic immunity. The court concluded that the driver, in fact, was covered by immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction, affirming the position of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. Read the decision here. 

In short, the justices found: “Our conclusion is that Mrs Sacoolas enjoyed immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction at the time of Harry’s death. We do not come to this conclusion with any enthusiasm for the result, but it is compelled by the operation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.” 

Regarding the merits of the case brought by the family, the justices said this:

114. Creative though they are, the Claimants' arguments under Ground 1 [whether diplomatic immunity existed] ultimately amount to playing with language in order to address the weakness in the case arising from the lack of an express waiver. This play is easily identified: they seek to avoid the effect of the VCDR [Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations] by re-classifying the advance waiver of Mr Sacoolas' immunity as a new creature ("limited immunity") and then arguing that this limited immunity, by implication, has also silently attached to the family members (whose full immunity has never been in fact waived expressly in accordance with the mandatory language of Article 32).

115. For completeness we should record that there was nothing in the case law and textbooks relied upon by the Claimants in relation to the so-called "derivative" nature of a family member's immunity which affects this conclusion.

120. We grant permission to apply for judicial review in relation to Ground 1, but we dismiss that ground on the merits.

Is that the end of the matter? Of course not, because the family have refused all along to acknowledge the operation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Because, you know, they only listen to their ‘advisor.’ 

The mother of Harry Dunn was quoted today saying "Right from the start our team have advised us that Anne Sacoolas did not have diplomatic immunity when she killed Harry and that advice is just (as) strong now as it was at the start of our campaign.” 

And there it is. Exactly that, that right-from-the-start denial of legal and political reality on the part of her shady advisor in his encouragement of her wish fulfillment, is the cause of this tragic woman’s refusal to acknowledge the fact of diplomatic immunity. 

In the callous fantasy land that her ‘advisor’ has created for the family, there will be no grieving or acceptance until international law is overturned and diplomatic immunity denied. In other words, until they get the one thing they cannot get. 

The judicial review by the High Court was the deus ex machina wherein the family had invested all its hopes, until today. Now, the firm rejection by the High Court of the family’s weak arguments is "just a blip along the way" according to the victim’s mother. Now, they’ll appeal and make the same losing arguments to a Higher Court, where presumably they will lose again and then appeal again to the Highest Court in the UK. And after that to the Higher-than-the-Highest Court, if such a thing exists, and then to the World Court and beyond. It will never end. 

Here are the predictable further plot points in this tragedy.

January 20, 2021 – The family will now invest all its new hopes in President Joe Biden being more than happy to reverse the USG’s position and create a precedent by violating the diplomatic immunity of the spouse of an Administrative and Technical staffer. 

January 29, 2021 – The family’s civil lawsuit against the American driver will be challenged by the defendant in U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The suit was filed there under the very inventive premise that a U.S. court could have jurisdiction over a UK traffic accident. We’ll see. If not laughed out of court, a civil suit could end in a financial settlement, which is an outcome that might buy some temporary peace. However, a civil case cannot end in extradition and trial, and that is the one and only thing that will end this drama, or so the family has been convinced. 

February, 2021 – Biden’s presumptive SecState Antony Blinken will probably be asked by the UK to approve a new extradition request. My odds on that request not being approved are 99 to 1. When has the USG ever waived diplomatic immunity and allowed an employee to be tried overseas? The answer is once (here), and that was in a war-time espionage case that had profound political consequences for FDR’s 1940 reelection if the employee in question had not been locked up abroad. 

TBD, 2021 – When a new Ambassador to the UK is confirmed by the Senate, the family will have a new shuffle of the cards at Embassy London and a new clutch of long-suffering embassy people to approach with more demands for in-person meetings featuring their omnipresent ‘advisor’ in the role of stage manager, interpreter, and press release writer. 

Can we really be so sure Biden won't cave? Well, consider this Presidential statement which summed up the USG’s position on immunity during a particularly trying case in the recent past:

"We've got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future, and that is, if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country's local prosecution," Obama said in a press conference today. "We expect Pakistan, that's a signatory and recognizes Mr. Davis as a diplomat, to abide by the same convention... I'm not going to discuss the specific exchanges that we've had [with the Pakistani government], but we've been very firm about this being a priority."

That was Obama. But now, you may wonder, will the Biden administration have the nerve, or better yet the bottle, to say “no” to emotional coercion from the Dunn family? 

I can easily see Biden's people trying to find some sneaking half-way compromise that would placate the family. But then, the family insists on all or nothing. All is not possible, short of POTUS and the SecState breaking faith with our covered employees abroad, so it will be nothing. 

Lastly, an unseen actor in this drama is the American driver, who for over a year has been subjected to a constant stream of threats, insults, harassment, and obnoxious psychoanalyzing by the British tabloids and those U.S. media that are following along. She is the target of a daily Two Minutes Hate led by the victim’s family and joined in by the kind of online spectators (some of whom live in our common Northern Virginia neighborhoods) who are always eager to take a gratuitous wallow in someone else’s misery. 

Moreover, all of that abuse is directed at her, personally, as if there were no national interests involved. But the matter of diplomatic immunity is far from personal; asserting immunity is a matter of international law and diplomatic practice between nations. It is, as Obama said, a principle that every nation in the world has adopted in their mutual interests. It is not a personal choice by the covered individuals, it cannot be surrendered by them, nor does it depend on their wishes. 

The American driver in this case is receiving all that abuse because the U.S. government, and not her personally, is upholding the principle of diplomatic immunity in our national interest. It is upholding that principle even regardless of what she may, in fact, wish. 

I’ll say this: all of you USG employees and family members who are now abroad and covered by diplomatic or consular immunity, or will be in the future, ought to hope that President Biden will hold firm to the “very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future.” 

What is happening to one family member now might well happen to any of you next, and it is more likely to do so if the incoming administration compromises on that very simple principle.

Another Former Embassy Employee Prosecuted; Limits of the Polygraph Exposed Yet Again

A former U.S. Embassy employee from Mexico City has been charged with a string of sexual predator offenses, as detailed in today's NYT story. The circumstances are highly reminiscent of a similar case from 2010, including the fact that both employees had been polygraphed multiple times without the exams detecting any criminal behavior. 

From the NYT story:

In a petition arguing that Mr. Raymond should not be held in custody, Mr. Kirby said that Mr. Raymond had taken more than 10 polygraph tests and had passed every one of them, including a recent one, which addressed the allegations against him.

So, what's the problem with the polygraph? It's almost like it doesn't work, or something. 

The polygraph was the invention of one William Marston, psychologist, lawyer, and cartoonist, who created both the polygraph and Wonder Woman - with her Golden Lasso of Truth - out of a stew of bondage fetishism, woman's suffrage, birth control, moral panic, feminism, and polyamory. 

It's a story far too strange for fiction. Please read The Secret History of Wonder Woman by the fine historian Jill Lapore, which also has a movie version. You can thank me later. 

Does Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso of Truth really work? Let us say that it works as well as the polygraph.

---------------------------------

P.S. I'd forgotten just how good The Secret History of Wonder Woman really is, but this blurb sums it up nicely:

“Even non-comix nerds (or those too young to remember Lynda Carter) will marvel at Jill Lepore’s deep dive into the real-world origins of the Amazonian superhero with the golden lasso. The fact that a polyamory enthusiast created her partly as a tribute to the reproductive-rights pioneer Margaret Sanger is, somehow, only the fourth or fifth most interesting thing in Ms. Woman’s bizarre background.” — New York Magazine

  

Harry Dunn Case: You Can't Get Elvis Without Colonel Parker

That's right, the latest twist in this sad story made me think of the disasterously bad manager of Elvis Presley, the one who dictated every step Presley made and pretty nearly destroyed his career. Parker was summed-up thusly: "The Colonel was often described as a cross between P.T. Barnum and W.C. Fields; in the King's court, he was combination court jester, Svengali and Robin Hood." 

Wow, that sure does resemble someone I've blogged about quite a bit. He even has a physical resemblance to Parker.

I'm prompted to blog about him yet again because this week he and the family of the victim have whipped themselves up into a state of outrage that looks unprecedented. The cause of it all was the refusal of the U.S. Embassy in London to include the family's spokesman/adviser/lawyer in a personal meeting the family had requested with the Embassy's Deputy Chief of Mission. Compounding this alleged offense, the embassy directed its emails on the matter to the mother of the victim, the requestor of the meeting, and pointedly not to her spokesman. 

The Embassy responded today:

      

The US Embassy have denied they’ve been disrespectful to Harry Dunn’s family after allegations of bullying. The parents of the Oxfordshire teen asked to meet with US Government reps but were told over email that their family spokesman could not be present #CapitalReports pic.twitter.com/IfdKpO990u

— Capital Midlands News (@CapitalMidsNews) September 22, 2020

Here's a sample of the family spokesman's unbalanced response to this perceived slight:

    

Seriously, having heaped misery upon misery upon a grieving family, who would even think to get grieving parents into a room on their own when they are the very monster responsible for it? Beggars belief. And their reaction?! No self awareness? No apology?! They are poisonous. https://t.co/eVRRMAZrBP

— Radd Seiger (@RaddSeiger) September 22, 2020

"Misery upon misery ... monster ... poisonous" etc. It's enough to make me wonder why they sought a personal meeting in the first place. Such aversion to the DCM seems to have escalated all at once. 

Here's the mother citing what she believes is her legal right to have her spokesman present and managing every aspect of her engagement with the Embassy: 

When you seek to bully and intimidate a grieving mother into getting her into a room on her own when you were the one who added to her misery, are caught in the act and exposed, and then try to gaslight you’re way out of it. This tactic may work in the 🇺🇸 but not here. Be gone! pic.twitter.com/MFZDjoZZV0

— Radd Seiger (@RaddSeiger) September 22, 2020

Note she says "the Embassy is based in the UK ... I know my rights and I'm sticking to them." That refers to the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (the Victims' Code), which is the statutory code that sets out the minimum level of service that victims should receive from the UK criminal justice system. It does not, of course, apply to the U.S. Embassy in London, or impose any obligation on the USG to address the family through their chosen representative. 

That's the problem when you're managed by a Colonel Parkeresque pitchman whom you let dictate everything you do and say. He just isn't reliable. Only last week he was pitching a virtual trial of the American driver if she would do it from the UK Embassy in Washington because - as everyone who watches a lot of television knows - an embassy is the sovereign soil of its government. It isn't really, since the 'embassy as sovereign soil' thing is a myth. But, if only last week he believed that myth, then why doesn't he now believe that the U.S. Embassy in London is the sovereign soil of its government and therefore not bound by the UK Victims Code? 

Sovereign or not, the U.S. Embassy in London may be on borrowed time, since Colonel Parker's Twitter feed is full of calls for nothing less than a break in U.S.-UK relations. Oh, you embassy swells will rue the day you trifled with him.